Spiritleaf Vernon finding that BC Interior cannabis beats them all

Photo: Contributed

Sarah Ballantyne toured the Organnicraft facility in Vernon recently.

They are three Interior producers who use their own unique methods to make three kinds of cannabis.

And Sarah Ballantyne cannot keep it on the shelves at her locally owned and operated Spiritleaf Vernon location. Her customers want the best, and it looks like no one grows it better than those in the Thompson Okanagan region.

“It’s important to get the message out there that they’re doing such a good job with it,” Ballantyne says. “It’s definitely a different class of product compared to some of the stuff we’ve seen over and over again over the last three years. They’re really different, and I sell out almost every week of those products. I have waiting lists for them.”

Photo: Contributed

The Organnicraft package information is very detailed.

Saturday marked the third anniversary of recreational cannabis legalization in Canada, but it has taken nearly that long for the smaller producers to elbow their way into the market. Ballantyne is making it her mission over the next 12 months to visit as many craft cannabis producers as possible.

One of those is Habitat, which is near Chase, B.C., and uses a deep water culture system to grow its unique cannabis. At its very basic level, it involves putting coho salmon in tanks and using the nutrients found in the waste water to grow the cannabis. The process is called aquaponics, which is a food production system that couples aquaculture with hydroponics, or cultivating plants in water, whereby the nutrient-rich aquaculture water is fed to hydroponically grown plants, where nitrifying bacteria convert ammonia into nitrates.

“It’s really cool what’s going on,” Ballantyne says.

Next she stayed right in Vernon to check out Organnicraft, a licensed producer in an industrial part of town that is making its way into the market with some premium bud.

“I was able to see them the day that they transplanted some clones, and I was been following them, watching them grow,” she says. “And then I’ve seen it go through packaging, and then I bought it and brought it into my store and sold it. So I’ve been able to see the process go full circle here, and it’s all with B.C.-based products and B.C. employees, and then of course my store is a locally owned and operated store, too.

“These things fly off the shelves. Everyone wants the best of B.C. bud, and they’re one of the best out there.”

One of the unique aspects of Organnicraft is it goes the extra mile to inform its customers about the product, including cultivar facts, terpenes, grower, kind of soil used, trimming facts, harvest date and packaging date.

The third local product Ballantyne raves about, but whose facility she also has yet to visit, is Pineapple Bud in Osoyoos. It is an Indigenous-owned licensed producer, and she can’t want to see the type of growing methods they use and what they do differently.

“It’s pretty cool what’s happening right here in the Interior,” Ballantyne says.

Anyone who wishes to get their hands on some of the aforementioned local cannabis can have it delivered right to their door, as Spiritleaf Vernon’s delivery service is operating and proving quite popular with patrons.

Spiritleaf Vernon is open from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily at 102-2500 53 Ave. in Vernon. Product and delivery information can be found here.

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