PESTICIDE 101

Growing beautiful cannabis flower is our passion and why we started Avitas. So keeping our herb healthy is of utmost importance. However, we’re also committed to creating a product that we can be proud of and that we can enjoy ourselves. That’s why one of our founding principles is our commitment to all-natural, organic growing practices and why we never use any harmful chemical pesticides, insecticides, or herbicides on our flower even though they might make our lives easier.

So What?

But, why does that matter? It’s true that chemicals are everywhere. Everything made of matter is a chemical. The food we eat, clothes we wear, and even our own bodies are composed of or actively engaged in chemical reactions. However, some chemicals, particularly those used in certain pesticides, herbicides, and insecticides are particularly dangerous when smoked, combusted, or vaped. This danger to our Avitas family is unacceptable. That’s why we use only natural oils, beneficial fungus, and living beneficial, predatory insects to fight damage from things that might harm our crop.

Our Soil

Keeping up with our rigorous standards all starts in the soil. We use over seven all-natural soil additions to build a living ecosystem that’s both excellent for the health of our plants and defends against any and all bad-intentioned interlopers. Employing an all-natural integrated pest management strategy with cannabis plants is not easy, mostly because there are very few established protocols or research data to help growers in this area. However, we’ve been seeing great success and continue to hone the science behind our soil with every strain we produce.

Going Above & Beyond

We’re so passionate about being pesticide-free that we go above and beyond those measures, because not only do we care about our own flower, we’re fanatical about testing buds we get from other farms for pesticides as these products come into our facility. Many growers claim to have 100% organic herb, but analytical labs report finding banned pesticides in many products on the shelf. That’s why we’ve not only forged close relationships with a small group of farms that share our values, but we also implement testing that’s more rigorous than state-mandated requirements. We test both the flower we buy and each lot of flowers that go into our extractors to ensure a clean process from start to finish. These tests come at considerable cost, but we think it’s well worth the investment both for the sake of plants and our customers.

HAND CULTIVATED

At Avitas, we’re passionate about bringing you the absolute best product possible. We work hard to perfect our hands-on horticultural know-how. We use an innovative perpetual cultivation technique that ensures the freshest flower available on the market. Here are some of the deets.

Down in the Dirt

We start with organic methods and great soil. We deliberately mix every batch of our specially formulated soil  with seven all-natural additions to create a living ecosystem that’s both great for the health of our plants and defends against anything that might harm them. Using pesticides may have made this process easier, but we’re determined to be pesticide-free.

Year-Round Grow

We grow indoors to ensure a steady supply of high-level bud. Our years of experience allow us to perfect our growing conditions including temperature, humidity, light/dark cycles, CO2 levels, nutrient levels, and pH levels. All of which are carefully monitored and adjusted as needs arise. Our processes optimize our strains and reduce variability from crop to crop, ensuring that our terpene profiles are always spot on and our bud formation is dead steady.

Dry, Cure, Package

When our plants are ready to be harvested, we start by stripping the fan leaves immediately from the plants to help with the airflow around the buds as they dry. Once dried and cut from the stems, the buds go through one last round of hand manicuring before they are placed in glass curing jars in a climate-controlled room with special humidity adjustment for a minimum of two weeks. This final step brings out each strain’s unique aroma and flavors.

At Avitas, we’re all about the best product. Period. That’s a promise both to ourselves and to our customers. Our hand cultivated cannabis process may be more arduous than some, but we wouldn’t have it any other way. From seed to sale, we continually work to ensure that our buds are in the best possible condition before they’re packaged up and delivered to a store near you.

GENETIC STABILITY

At Avitas we pride ourselves on consistency, quality, and variety. Three characteristics that are often difficult to align correctly, but we pride ourselves on hitting every time. We start by bringing in a wide range of strains to our labs. We want to be able to bring a broad spectrum of quality strains to our customers, and so we make sure to choose the best of the best. We judge each one on flavor, smell, and effect. After selecting the highest quality plants with the greatest number of desirable characteristics, we start to hone in on consistency.

We pursue stability in our crops by utilizing clones from our chosen mother plants. Cannabis mother plants are female cannabis plants that have the best or most desired characteristics of a strain. Mother plants are used to create “clone plants” that continue to display particular traits such as the ability to produce large yields, the ability to ward off disease, or the taste, smell, and effect of the flowers they produce. As each cloned batch moves along the growth cycle, we continue to monitor aroma, flavor, appearance and production efficiency. We replace mother plants as soon as we see any change or shift due to epigenetic factors.

Genetic stability in our plants provides our customers with the best and most consistent products available on the market. We choose our strains based on flavors, aromas and cannabinoid profiles and also develop in-house strains to bring out specific characteristics unique to Avitas. We’re always looking to push the limits of possibility by providing our customers with a variety of high-quality cannabis strains that remain consistent with every puff and pass.

AVITAS GIVES BACK

We love what we do. We work hard to create excellent, pesticide-free cannabis products, and we’re passionate about getting them right. But that’s not all we think about. Flower and oil may be our bread and butter, but we believe it’s our responsibility to make sure our vision is broader than just our products, and we’re seeking out ways to go above and beyond the demands of our business. We want to make sure that we’re taking steps to make our products better, but also keeping an eye on the larger picture.

That’s why giving back is ingrained in the DNA of our company. We’re building a company that we can all feel proud to be a part of. How we run the company matters, not just the products we’re putting out into the world but also, how we treat our employees, and how we use our success to give back to the community.

It feels good to do good isn’t just a slogan for us. We’re always on the hunt for ways to put even just a little bit of tangible goodness into the world. That’s why we’ve partnered with several local food banks who work tirelessly to ensure that all Washington residents have access to food while respecting their dignity and promoting good health.

We’re always looking for ways to give back to our community. If you know of a need in the community or a local charity or nonprofit organization that we might be able to help, send us an email. We love being able to support the community that’s helped us grow.

After all, it feels good to do good.

ENVIRONMENTALLY CONSCIOUS

We believe the Earth is a vital resource and want to make sure that we’re doing all we can to protect and sustain our environment. After all, we all need to live here. We also know that growing indoor crops is a resource-intensive undertaking. That’s why we work hard to limit our impact in as many areas as possible.

Our environmentally conscious practices start with our soil. We source local compost and use organic and living soil amendments instead of harsh chemicals. Even though it’s more of a challenge, we choose organic growing practices and use beneficial organisms to combat any pests that may come along. The only thing we use on our plants are hydrogen peroxide (OMRI listed for organic use), beneficial fungus (OMRI listed for organic use), mineral oil (OMRI listed for organic use), and four species of beneficial insects. This potent combination allows us to bring you the cleanest flower possible.

We make sure that we don’t simply meet state regulations for pesticides and chemicals, we exceed them in all of our products. We believe that what you put into your body is important and we think that what we’re putting into the environment is important to think about as well. So we go above and beyond in testing all along the production process.

Whenever we have the opportunity, we choose green energy providers including solar and wind energy even if they’re more expensive. We treat all of our water on site using two levels of filtration. This both offsets the cost of filtered water and limits the impact of water transportation to our facilities. Also, we recycle all fertilizer runoff, soil, and plant materials so that we produce as little waste as possible.

The bottom line is that we are fully committed to decreasing our impact on the environment and reducing the consumption of nonrenewable resources. We never use any harmful chemical pesticides, insecticides, or herbicides. We want to do as much good for the earth as we do for our customers and are committed to driving sustainability as a key component of the cannabis industry.