Colorado harvest company near me license#

I swiped my driver’s license on the scanner to the right of the glass-and-metal reinforced door out front. (The company plans to open two more grow sites before next summer.) A heavy, skunky aroma enveloped the block. One day this past winter, I pulled up to the curb outside CHC’s 8,000-square-foot, cinderblock-and-concrete facility on South Kalamath Street.

That doesn’t take into account the electricians, plumbers, and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning specialists who continue to benefit from the hundreds of marijuana retailers in the state.Įven if you’re not a hard-core stoner, it’s difficult to wrap your mind around the enormity of a grow operation-and the fact it’s all happening under the watchful eye of state and municipal bureaucrats. By October, the Colorado Marijuana Enforcement Division had issued 18,666 occupational licenses not all of the people who’ve obtained licenses work in the business, but many do (one estimate puts the number of pot workers at 12,000). While the overall financial haul is substantial for an industry still in its infancy, it doesn’t begin to capture the impact of cannabis in the state. More than $1 million of that tax revenue will come from CHC, which is considered a midsize weed business. “For every person you bump into at the front of the store, there are four more making the magic in the back.” Since recreational shops started selling cannabis on January 1, CHC’s team has produced about 2,000 retail plants and turned the end products into everything from traditional, smokable pot to vaporizer-pen oils, topical creams, and edibles.Ĭombined with medical marijuana-which has been available to Red Card holders at licensed dispensaries since 2010-recreational pot in Colorado is estimated to pull in $47.7 million in tax revenue in fiscal year 2014 off $400 million in sales. “It’s like Disney World,” says CHC grow manager Greg Fortemps. Among the superstars will be 4045, one plant among many that will help make the owners of this business very, very rich.Īt Colorado Harvest Company’s grow site in Denver, 45 people care for the sprawling subdivisions of green-pruning, spraying, and feeding hundreds of marijuana plants each day until the buds eventually are cut, trimmed by hand, cured, dried, packaged, and sold. Five months later, the survivors from Box 4 will be packaged and sold. In two weeks, the clones will be transplanted into small containers. One by one, the STD clones and stoppers are put into their temporary homes, followed by others with names such as Jack-47, Herojuana, Juicy Fruit, and Sour Kush. The clones are then plugged into Box 4, an aeroponic setup made from plastic and PVC pipe that holds up to 77 future plants and looks like a massive block of Swiss cheese. She dabs nutrient-rich purple goop at the base of each of the freshly cut clones and pops rubber stoppers around the middles. She grabs more clones and repeats the process. These last two cuts are where the plant’s roots will grow. Imperi uses a razor blade to make a 45-degree slice across the base, then makes a vertical cut an inch higher. She trims a couple of leaves near the bottom, then cuts a half-inch off the tops of the two leaves she keeps. Imperi collects her 10 Strawberry Diesel clones in a plastic beaker, sets it on a bench, and pulls out the first clone. For cannabis companies like CHC and its sister business, Evergreen Apothecary, whose combined revenues are estimated to reach $7 million this year, anything less than perfection is pot heresy. Pick the wrong plant to clone or fail to prepare it properly, and the results-anything from mold to mite infestations to less-than-stellar bud-can kill the bottom line.

Taking a marijuana plant through its three-and-a-half- to five-month grow cycle is a time-intensive, exacting job from the first day. In less than a minute, a small bouquet of jagged-edged leaves blooms from her hand. She searches the mother plant for nine more “clones” and squeezes the clippers again and again. Imperi makes a cut, and the first five-inch clipping falls away. The space is bathed in cool light, which casts a bluish-green glow over the 220 marijuana plants lined up in the back room of this warehouse on Denver’s southwest side. Tim Cullen (above left) and Ralph Morgan (above right), who became business partners in the summer of 2011, are the two men behind Colorado Harvest Company and Evergreen Apothecary.

Colorado harvest company near me