Virginia Co. is a cannabis producer operating out of Spokane, WA located in a discreet part of town. Their building is as plain as it could be on the outside—an office connected to an industrial warehouse complex. While the exterior doesn’t look too pretty, the interior is absolutely worth writing home about.
Virginia Co. was started by two friends attending school on the East Coast. Scott Walsh and Christopher Lane were attending East Carolina and Virginia Tech when they decided to move to Washington with a plan. Their plan was rooted in gaining residency and breaking into the recreational cannabis industry.
Before Scott and Christopher’s big move, they pitched the idea to Christopher’s parents and the board saw the business potential. Together, they formed Virginia Co. and brought their Virginian-style to Washington’s recreational market. Walsh and Lane didn’t want to grow cannabis like everyone else, they wanted to set a new standard and attempt something nobody else had. This lead them to a High-Pressure Aeroponics (HPA) system.
HPA is one of the most advanced approaches to cannabis cultivation on the planet. It was made popular by NASA in the 1990’s. NASA tested different ways to grow plants in space, and their studies concluded that HPA was the most effective.
NASA sponsored a study in 1997 that compared plants grown with HPA on the Mir space station and on the surface the of the earth. While all of the plants grew well, the plants on the space station actually grew better. HPA systems have been used for all types of plant grows on earth, but the technology is relatively new to the cannabis space.
The biggest benefit of HPA is the reduced water use…90 percent less! HPA uses 60 percent fewer fertilizers and nutrients than other methods. This system suspends the roots in the air, and completely removes the need for a growing medium. Then the water and nutrients are pumped through pipes directly to the roots.
The plants get to suck up all the water and nutrients they need as they’re pumped through the system. This method saves extreme amounts of resources because as the bioavailability of water and nutrients skyrockets—nothing is lost through the growing medium.
Virginia Co.’s HPA system is housed in a highly advanced facility. It looks more like the operations center of a dam than a cannabis grow, frankly. The plants enter the HPA system during the vegetation stage. The vegetation room can house 4,000 plants at a time. There are eight 1,000-square-foot flowering rooms, each could have anywhere of up to 1,500 plants.
Each room distributes a different nutrient recipe depending on the strain inside. Dominique is one of the people behind the controls of the nutrient pumps. She’s a high-energy personality who spoke very quickly and passionately about her time with Virginia Co. Trained for this position on-site at the facility, she has now been with the company for well over 40 harvests.
Many of the employees were brought to Virginia Co. with little too, or no prior experience in the industry. This was done intentionally to ensure people come to Virginia Co. with fresh eyes and hopeful expectations. This helps employees soak-up details of the operation free of bias.
Dominique reports that they have “recipes on deck.” Each strain has different requirements as far as nutrient recipes and feeding schedules go. Each strain has its own mood and personality. Dominique attempts to bring each strain’s unique characteristics out with the proper nutrient cocktail.
Every strain has different nutrient requirements on each week of its cycle. “MK [Ultra] gets hungry,” she said. MK Ultra is named after the CIA study that experimented with mental manipulation and brainwashing. T.H. Seeds bred OG Kush and G-13 together to create MK Ultra. The result is an indica hybrid that provides strong waves of cerebral and physical euphoria.
Virginia Co. has a menu full of cannabis staples like Blueberry, MK Ultra, OG Chem, Sour Diesel, and OG Kush, all the while still testing out beta strains. Some of those beta strains blossomed into hitters like Black Dog and Raspberry Dos-si-do. Black Dog became Walsh’s favorite strain, a combination of Blueberry Kush and Emerald Headband. Be on the lookout for Virginia Co. at a retailer near you, and get a little piece of Virginia in Washington.
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