Mohave Cannabis Co. | Ground Up Ep. 1
Watch the video episode now for free on the Cannabis Cactus mobile app & YouTube to see behind the scenes video and interviews from Mohave Cannabis Co.
Mohave Cannabis Co. is celebrating their 9th year anniversary as one of the 1st legal cannabis producers in Arizona.
Mohave has grown from a handful of employees into a multi-state operation with hundreds of employees. We sat down with some of the team to learn more about how they grow hundreds of pounds of beautiful cannabis each week and still have time to host community clean ups and summer river concerts. Enjoy these excerpts from our interview with Wes Brodbeck, Jay Walker and Branden Wickham from the Mohave Cannabis company.
Tell us your names and a little about your role here at Mohave Cannabis?
Wes: Hi, my name is Wes Brodbeck, the director of cultivation operations for Mohave Cannabis. I was the first employee who started with the owner, Curtis Devine, in 2012. Mohave has 3 facilities but they actually count as four because one of the buildings houses two operations separately. Overall, we’re looking at about 350 to 400 pounds per week coming from thousands of plants. We always have thousands of plants in the flowering stage at any time, not including veg and clones.
Jay: Hi my name is Jay Walker and I’m the facility manager from a cannabis hobby. I’ve been with the company for over 5 years. Here, a normal day starts around 6 AM everyone starts filing in and getting sorted. Getting their tasks for the day.
What is the inspiration for the company motto, “Established Before It Was Legal”?
Jay: Established Before It Was Legal… comes from the fact that a lot of us have been doing this for a long time. For us, as a company, it also means we were in the medical market, in Arizona, before legalization started. We’ve been here doing this since it was just medical and long before then.
Tell me about the process that each plant goes through here at the facility?
Wes: Everything starts in the clone room, also called propagation. We keep it simple, we use rock wool as the base to root the clones. We cut clones off our mom’s, fix them in the rock wool and let them root. In the veg room is where we do our transplants of the clones into their final growing pot. Each plant goes into 6″ Cocoa blocks for a couple weeks and then transplants to a 2 gallon Coco bag. These are both fed by the Rhythm dosing machine.
Branden: My name is Branden and I’m the cultivation manager for the Courtney Place facility. I overlook every phase of growth, including daily operations, employees and functions of the Rhythm system. The Rhythm dosing machine monitors and adjusts everything from nutrient solutions, ph levels, water, and feeding schedules. It’s kind of new for me because we started out by hand watering and hand fertilizing and now have moved to much larger systems as we expand. The technology has picked up and it’s pretty cool to make changes and monitor the plants in real time with the push of a button.
Wes: During the first couple weeks of flower, the plants are moving out of a vegetative state and into a flowering state. They start bushing out a little more and start to stretch. That’s where they get the majority of the overall growth before they start to bud.
Wes: By week’s 8 and 9 in the flowering room the plants are finishing their swell and we start to flush the nutrients. The buds ripen off and we get ready to chop them down after about 60 days or so. After harvest, the buds get hung for a couple weeks to dry. After about 2 weeks we pop them off the stem and put them in containers to start curing. A couple weeks later they are packaged and hit the store shelves.
Tell us about Mohave Reserve and Mohave Select?
Wes: The only difference between Mohave reserve and Mohave select is that Mohave Reserve is chosen first from the harvest and is obviously the best of the best. Mohave Reserve has the most bag appeal, great potency, great terpene content and it’s always connoisseur smoke. Mohave Select has the same traits but not everything can be chosen as the best. Mohave Select is a great flower at a great price and we know you’re going to enjoy it.
Tell our readers what Mohave Cannabis means to you as a brand?
Jay: Mohave Cannabis to me is a family of people. We’re all like minded and we’re all trying to give the best product and medicine to people in need that we can. We’re not playing games trying to cut corners, we’re not trying to make extra money.
Branden: We have been to plenty of shows and events where we won awards and all kinds of stuff. We feel we have that little bit extra quality in our product. It’s the love we put into it from being here every day from sunup to sundown. Non-stop. It’s a full time job and an art form. I’m sure any cultivator would tell you the same thing. We strive to make the product perfect and if it doesn’t meet those standards we can’t release it on the shelves.
Wes: When we first got our caregiver’s licenses and it was legal in Arizona we didn’t know what law enforcement was gonna do. We didn’t know what the other people growing around us were going to do. I remember driving up-and-down the street from the grow in the morning to make sure no one was watching us before I would go inside. I remember taking our first orders to the dispensary and how strange it felt. We’ve gotten past that paranoia since then and local law enforcement has been really supportive. It’s normal now.
Jay: So pretty much my family has been growing forever. I was the nephew who was always poking my head around corners. When I was a kid, if I would pull a leaf off the tree, my grandpa would snatch me by the head and say, “That’s how that plant felt and you didn’t like how that felt, so leave my plants alone.”
Thank you for taking the time to show us the beautiful operations at Mohave cannabis. Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
Wes: We’ve come a long way and look forward to growing more with the Arizona and California communities. Thanks for checking us out and don’t forget to shop at Debbie’s dispensary!
Jay: I would like to thank Cannabis Cactus Magazine for coming out and shining a light on our situation here at Mohave. That we’re really here growing medicine for the people. The guys are the reason we’re doing this. We really appreciate your support.
Brandon: We are excited to show off our new genetics in the Arizona in California markets. Look for new strains throughout the Arizona Valley and you can find everything we always grow at Debbie’s dispensary.
Ground Up Episode 1 featuring Mohave Cannabis is available on YouTube and the CannabisCactus app. Ground Up was filmed and produced on location by Cannabis Cactus Magazine in collaboration with Culture Studios. Special thanks to Austin Cabral, Christian Hosley, Mitchell Gleason, Debbie hunter and Ayumi Hanaoka for making this video possible.
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Michael Cassini is the founder and editor in chief of The Cannabis Cactus Magazine. He focuses on community relationships with a goal to maintain a culture of love, peace and knowledge in the cannabis industry.