Exploring Innovative R&D and Crop Steering Techniques with Endless Biotech | Ep 16

Whether you're a seasoned grower or just starting out , the Grow Show is your go-to podcast for growing quality cannabis at any scale , batch after batch .

He has such a wealth of knowledge and experience in the industry and I can't wait to have him back on the show in the future . So a huge shout out to John . I'm also joined by special guests Travis , courtney and Gary of Endless .

Thank you and expertise of crop steering , plant health and more , which is a large reason why I wanted to have them on the show . Today . We're going to talk about ideal substrates , configurations , crop steering methods , running higher ECs , coas , ipm plants and so much more . So , without further ado , here is my conversation with John and Endless Biotech .

Gary works on the cultivation side cultivation operations , all that good stuff and I work more on the company with Gary , so we're the co-founders of the company . Gary works on the cultivation side cultivation operations , all that good stuff and I work more on the investor relationship and the corporate side of the business .

From that perspective , I'll let Gary tell a little more about what he does . Courtney , you can introduce yourself , We'll go from there .

We want to know more what's going on in the plant , basically in real time if possible , and that allows us to do some really interesting things for our case studies and so on , which I'm sure we'll get into in this podcast .

He had a grow which he was doing , a nursery grow , and I created a traditional grow , and then the circumstances kind of pushed us together , which made a pretty interesting team and the circumstances kind of pushed us together , which made a pretty interesting team .

And then , because of my background , that's when we decided , at least on the grow side , go focus towards the science type of thing .

And then that brought in Courtney , where she came into our grow one day , was bouncing around really happy , and Travis was telling me about her and I said , well , let's try to hire her , but she was starting her own grow at the time .

And then circumstances about a year later I said , well , let's try to hire her , but she was starting her own grow at the time . And then circumstances about a year later I think , led her back to us and we hired her about I think , a year and a half ago or somewhere in that area , and she's been with us ever since .

I claim that I hired her , gary claims that she hired , but nevertheless , we're so glad she's part of the team and , uh , it's probably nice to be fought over about him here .

One is when we started this this is something I'll tell other growers that we do a lot of consulting to is one of the things that I didn't want to do , and what I saw in the industry was a lot of people put a lot of money into a grow and then they would try to grow , they would watch videos , they would talk to people that have been doing it for a

while and from my perspective , I consider us more of a manufacturing company . We manufacture a nursery from clones and we're doing tissue culture and we do flower , which was primarily originally kind of more of a research development to cell genetics and so on .

But if you're going to do that kind of stuff and you're a manufacturer and you're producing something , in order to understand what you're manufacturing and how you're manufacturing , and is that quality consistent and consistent over time , you have to have a lot of data .

Every manufacturing company in the world tracks all that through data , otherwise you don't know where you're at and if you don't have a consistent outcome , then there's no way you can improve . And so to me , because of my background , to me , that answer lied in the data associated with the light plant , and that data came from our research and development side .

So we invested in people like Courtney , we invested in research equipment which we can discuss a little bit , and so on , and what that allowed us to do was basically see what's going on virtually in real time with a plant , versus putting a plant in the ground and watering it and trying to look over a couple cycles , which to me , in most cases , I think , is

why some grows fail in the end because they can't produce consistent quality product quickly enough and then they can't meet the requirements of staying in business . So that's the little bit different outlook that we took .

So , as a manufacturing company , in that sense , we wanted to see how that manufacturing process is going , see how that manufacturing process is going and , like I said before , dealing with live plants versus a widget car or whatever that concept is , it's a whole lot different game when you're doing that .

So we decided to hire people like Courtney and she's been collecting data for us for about a year and a half now and we do all kinds of case studies , for example , like when do you actually want to cut on a plant ?

What happens when you change certain aspects of the stimuli within the climate or feed or any of those type of things , and by doing so , it took us probably about six to seven months before we started seeing a true outcome from that .

Most people are not going to hire a biologist they're not cheap , by the way and so you don't want to hire these type of people because they don't increase revenue up front , but indirectly they will , and and in the end it's paid off immensely and it's allowed us to do some pretty remarkable things in the industry .

But it's just that perspective is what drove us to where we're at today yeah , and then just to kind of jump in on it a little bit .

You know , just from you know whether it's getting some sort of certificate of compliance or something . You know on the on the local municipality perspective , um , but , uh , but we have a . We have a roadmap that we built out .

Where I'm tired with that and these expansions that we've done over the course of the last couple of years tied directly into where we planned on being today , versus , in addition , to where we're planning on being the next four years .

So , uh , so it's all planned out , um , with a pivot here and there , because if you , if you , if you can't pivot , you're never going to be successful . That's the reality of it , right , one of the biggest things for sure is just construction delays . Um , I mean , that's that's , that's , that's number one on the list .

Uh , construction delays , uh , always slow things down . Um , but we've got . We've kind of dialed that in at this point . So we learned a little bit along that through that process and we really have that dialed in .

So as we move forward with these next expansions on what we've got planned , I don't foresee that being an issue and outside of that I wouldn't say there's anything major that I can recall . Gary , is there anything major you can ?

It was remarkable to me to tell you the truth so .

Let's call it right , because of course , everything said every can of scoops in the world makes a billion dollars , right , and so they want to capitalize on that , and so now we have process in place to make sure that doesn't happen .

But that's definitely ties into construction Construction along with just sadly , greedy people trying to take advantage of you as you're trying to build a business .

Before we kind of get really really into this , I kind of just give everybody a brief description of the topics we're going to be going over today .

We're going to be talking substrates , configurations , lighting , coas , research , endless Biotech does an incredible amount of education and teachings and case studies , and that's something we kind of wanted to talk about , which is , to be honest , probably the most unique that I've seen outside of the way that you guys built and the different divisions that you have .

But really the education was just something very unique to me that you guys , similar to us , really like to share your knowledge and help grow your fellow grower , which is just really amazing .

And I know that there's a reason behind that , but I think it's it's just , you know , it touches me because I feel like in this industry , I think like when we all grow together , um , and and I think it's really important that you know the more that we can help grow , the industry is just going to , you know , make it better .

So I think maybe one of the major areas that I kind of want to get into , because I think it's going to flow through everything else , is really just talking about substrates . You guys were in a couple of mediums before you guys switched into stonewool .

Can you tell us a little bit about why you guys started using growing in your stonewool some of the substrates that you're using before and what facilitated that switch ?

One was the soil business , which you try to perfect , and the other one is the growth side of things . And of course , when you're starting to look at a business itself , you got to start looking about labor costs and all these other issues that come with it . So we decided to switch to cocoa at that point .

So when we with our first commercial grow , we were growing in cocoa and I did that , or we did that for about , I'd say , by a year and a half to two years , and the main thing we didn't really care for at that point was you're typically the salt problems you have with cocoa , and the other one is the bugs that you come in because you never know where

those bags are at and so on . And of course the third problem is all the potting and so on and the messes it creates . And so we started looking at Rockwell and I looked at several different types of Rockwell and we ended up with Grodin the first time . We tried it , though it wasn't very successful .

I mean , I'd heard all the you have to be basically more dialed in with Rockwell , and so I was trying to grow in Rockwell , like I was growing in Cocoa , which didn't work very well . So we kind of dropped it for , I'd say , another four or five months .

And then we seriously started to contemplate it again when we started hiring more and we started growing , started realizing that it was more cost effective , and so we started looking , we started testing Rockwell and then you know , this is before we hired Courtney , but we hired a grower who had never grown in before .

But we hired a grower who'd never grown in before , but he and I sat down and started trying to figure out exactly how do you order and understanding the crop string methodology , at least on a base level .

At that point , and once we started figuring that out , we started seeing some pretty impressive results , and so some of the issues that arose there was trying different manufacturers . We found different effects and channeling effects and so on that we didn't really like .

And then we ended up with Grotans , probably Get-So , and once we switched to that , that's when we really started seeing the dramatic results and so on . So at that point then , we started saying , okay , if we're going to do this now , let's start perfecting it .

And that's when we started applying the science and so on behind it , and that's what's led us to where we're doing today excellent .

But in all of our flower rooms we'll use a four-inch block on a multi-slab and we found that configuration gave us better watering configuration .

Now , because of who we are , as far as we're research-prone , we are going back and trying different configurations a six-inch block by itself , a six-inch block on a unit slab and we want to see can we accomplish the same goal now that we're more dialed in as a grow at that point .

But so far the four-inch block on a multi-slab really gave us some pretty remarkable results .

Probably 30 to 40 percent of them are using cocoa , and so we will grow ready-to to far plants in cocoa for them , but we only use a certain cocoa , uh , that we consider sterile and doesn't bring in problems in the grow but and then .

And I think the only time that that becomes a difficulty I'm sure you guys understand this is if they're in a variation in place , so if they're hand watering , obviously Rockwell becomes a more difficult thing to manage .

But outside of that we're almost always able to convert a customer over a specific period of time over to Rockwell because they see how we do it and what comes with that ?

of them I want to try rock roll , I want to try this , and one of your reps , andrew , is always here on those times , and so he gets a lot of business that way .

Uh was a basic understanding of how to grow in rockwell and uh and it .

It seems like growers are a little apprehensive , but especially , like you said , when they come into the facility they see how , what can come from that right , what you can actually produce is a rock wool , it uh , it gives them that that kind of push over the edge and say , okay , maybe I do want to try it , and then tying that into at least you know , the

people that come to us being able to help them . You know , with that education it's , it's just , it's magical at that point and we really are able to convert most people over to it because they they feel like between us and between you guys , they have that support network .

Now , right , they got somebody kind of locally and they got you guys , and so collectively they feel like , okay , I can do this , right and I , and not like I can't do it . I wanted to because I see personally , I see in this particular room , the result that can come from it Right .

But at this day and age , with all the monitoring and alarms that we are able to use , once people see that they have that capability and you create some redundancy in your system , then they see the water holding capacity and how much you save in terms of fertilizer . You're not pushing as much runoff , so you're saving .

When it comes to all of that , which is huge Right To us .

But when they had all the using cocoa and all the potting mix and all the machines out back and they just said it was really hard to keep things clean and just the added labor they had especially nowadays with labor shortages to really make it work , so he said at first they were thinking , oh , we're going to get better yields and everything .

But he said he couldn't believe the success they had in other areas . That really kind of made it a . This is what we're going with from now on .

I think a lot of the listeners would really benefit from what you guys are seeing results , wise , in terms of veg and things like that . Let's talk about the environment . Let's talk about lighting , what you guys are doing there in terms of pruning , topping , not topping what you guys are seeing . Are you guys tuning your lights ?

. So just , uh , preface that because there's no way we can get to all the detail in this podcast

. So we grow two different ways in the sense of the way we look at our moms , versus a vegging plant , versus a flowering plant . So our moms are a little bit different in the sense of you know , they're more long-term in the sense of a vegged plant and our moms are kept for about three , three and a half months on average .

So in those we decided to go with the six-inch rockwell block , a guardian block with a unit slab , and all of our moms are in a double-tiered environment , which makes it a little more challenging in the sense of trying to grow a mom which you're cutting clones off weekly , and so in that environment there we use the double-tiered racks .

We have a light that we've tested that we think are one of the better vegging lights . It's actually a veg and flower light , but we felt that it allowed us to grow more healthy and quicker veg plants , which is one of our goals for when you're producing ready-to-flower plants and so on like that .

So the other thing that we focus on that's probably a little bit different is we will use a standard type crop steering with our mom , but it's more the vegetative steering just because it's a mom plant .

But what we do focus on in our vegging scenarios is the minimization of stresses on the plant , and that's one of the keys that we learned early on with our research was you can grow quality plants , but in order to grow a quality plant fairly quickly and maintain longevity of that plant , you have to minimize stresses , and we do that in the way in which we

maintain all of our environments . For example , our mom rooms are roughly about 78 degrees Fahrenheit and 70% humidity , and we don't , when we make any changes to the stimuli of our plants for the feeding or environment or whatever that may be , it's always done in a gradual motion .

In other words , we don't do dramatic changes in our humidity or temperature or feed . We maintain . We try to maintain within a one to two percent variance at all times . One of the things that Courtney is working on now is in some of our rooms .

We still have some older equipment in there and in those rooms the humidifier is quite large or dehumidifier , I'm sorry and what it does is it causes large changes within the room and by doing so it's causing stresses within the plant .

So what we're trying to do is determine , in large variances , even within every 20 minutes or so , for like five minutes ago , is that enough stresses to cause the plant to have issues of genetic drift and so on , which you typically would see .

So we do those type of things , but what we're trying to primarily maintain is a consistent , non-dramatic change within our rooms , and that's what we focus on in our mom rooms Now , in our veg rooms that we veg plants for other growers . That's a little bit different scenario , because what we're trying to do there is grow plants fairly quickly .

It's a production model and quality model right . Grow a plants fairly quickly , you know it's a production model and quality model right . So , for example , in in cocoa we tested this in cocoa in rockwool we typically grow a team which is , say , 12 inches tall .

Then we'll grow an rtf , which is 12 to 18 , and then we have an rtf plus , which is 18 to 24 , and we started . You know we're trying . We have a lot of orders for these . We're trying to produce these quickly but still maintain quality . In Rockwell I can grow that 24-inch plant in seven or eight days .

In cocoa it takes 10 to 11 days on average , and so there was a huge change there . So that's another reason why we would obviously prefer to stay with Rockwell . But there's more challenges to that .

One is , for example , one of the things we learned early up front was when you're growing in cocoa , what I used to see was a lot of people would just wet the cocoa , put a plant in there and go .

The problem with that is you don't have uniformity of moisture throughout the cocoa and by doing so you'll get leaching of nutrients out of the plant pretty quickly . And I've seen that in other grows .

Where they'll put something in there , the plant will get stressed pretty quickly because it doesn't have the nutrients available at the root zone and you'll start seeing deficiencies in the plant . It can't handle the light because it does have the nutrients right . But we don't see that in rock wool .

As long as you prep the block first up front and that's one of the things we do we as long as you prep the block first up front , and that's one of the things we do . We soak our rockwood blocks for an hour all the time and it gets good uniformity of nutrients throughout the block and it's prepped to put the clone in there .

Whatever it is , we're trying to do and move forward .

So in order to counter that , you have to veg it longer , which is fine in in mom , among plants . Uh , our RTFs we will , if people request it , and probably about , I would say , 60 to 70% of growers do talk , but in our flower rooms we never talk .

What kind of is your methodology when it goes into flower and what are you guys seeing morphologically in the plant ?

a grow . Again , we're more science-driven and so we want to look at everything aspect of it .

And so because of that and it is also a business model that comes into play here , and so one of the things that when I'm showing or telling or teaching people about the way we grow is I preface that with the fact in our business model , we wanted to maximize harvest per year and in order to do that , your typical maximum is about 5.2 harvest per year in

an internal grow room , which gives us a 10-week schedule . So when you start looking at that , that kind of controls the way you look at things . Right , we can't do soil because we couldn't reach that , and so on . Then , of course , we talked about coco and to us , that has too many detriments to it .

You know the bugs and inconsistency and salt and all these other stuff . So when we started doing this with rockwell , the one thing that I started looking at is taking away um genetics out of the picture for a few minutes . How do you maximize grow potential within a room ? Well , it comes down to primarily three basic things .

One is lighting or energy , the other one is environment and the third one is feeding . And so we started looking at that . And once we determined that , that's when we tested a bunch of different lights and we came to the conclusion that the foes a3i that we use allows us to produce or put the most energy at the plant into the canopy .

And the example , just to give a quick example that we tested a bunch of different thousand watt lights and our lights are at about 11 feet and when we would turn those lights at 100% power , I wanted to see how much energy you can put to the table which is nine feet below , and most of those lights were produce about 250 micromoles .

Now the FOSE A3i , when we turn those at 100% , it would put 1,600 micromoles at the table , so basically four times the amount of energy which told me it could drive that energy into the canopy canopy .

And then , of course , it's a multi-spectrum light which allows us to use a heavier blue spectrum , a mid-range kind of full spectrum and a far red spectrum like an HID bulb at the end . So those two factors alone is what allowed us to do it , and so what we can do with those lights is we can push 1600 micromoles to those plants .

Now , typically we don't find that most cultivars can handle that , but that's what drove our crop steering methodology and sugar production and things that we focus on that we've talked about before .

higher lighting density , higher EC , et cetera .

Okay , so once we get that preface in there , then we started looking at the crop stream methodology and so , in sense of that , then what that forced us to do was things we don't .

Like you said , we don't top a plant , we don't defoliate a plant and we don't lollipop a plant , and the reason for that is that is that's where your energy absorption is and that's where your sugar production is and so on , and we want to maintain that high .

So once we understood that and we got our sugar levels up and we got our plant prepped for that grow , then we can start raising the right lights , and most of the time I would say that we're pushing 13 to 14 , maybe 1500 micromoles . Now , when you're pushing that kind of energy into a plant , you would typically burn that plant up .

So the only way that plant can survive that type of stress is to absorb as much nutrients as possible , and this is where I typically freak out a lot of growers , because most growers , especially in the cocoa world , in the early and the rock world , they'll run probably a 2 to 4 EC within their media and we're running between a 12 and 20 EC in our media .

And the theory behind that is is that plant's trying to protect itself against that kind of high energy . In that sense , right , it's trying to protect itself against that kind of high energy . In that sense , right , it's trying to grow as fast as possible .

And because we're getting this energy , in order for that plant to do that , in order to accomplish that goal , it has to uptake as much nutrients as it can as quickly . So by stacking that hive and ec in there , it readily has that nutrients available and that's kind of where we want that . Now . You asked about what it did in production .

So when I first started this , we looked at what's going on in the industry as far as production . You have to do that .

If you're a company , you want to see what you can produce , and every every bit of research I found is that typical grows in the industry are between 40 and 55 grams per square foot and that seems to be for most average grows is what I've been seeing , and when we first started off we were around 65 ish in that area 70 , which we thought was pretty good .

But since we started this venture and moved over to Rockwell and applied our science to it with our crop steering , we're now averaging over 120 grams per square foot . We've had as high as 147 grams per square foot and our terpene average now is typically between four and six . We've had rooms as high as 5.78 .

I think our lowest terp profile in recent memory is about 3.5 , but most of the time it's in the 4 to high 5 range and so on . So it's been a remarkable turnaround .

So I let them in the room and the first thing they said when they walked in the room was my God , the smell in here is awesome and that's what we keep seeing . I mean , it's like in any living organism , if you give it the best potential to do something in our case grow it will do it .

But you got to get it set up first and give it the right environment and the right energy and so on and so on . Absolutely , but it will produce .

But it was more of I wouldn't say afterthought , but it was more of something to prove our genetics and it wasn't something we were going to bet our company on right . But it's got an enormous amount of notoriety because of the yields that we're producing , the quality we're producing .

I mean that's why we're on podcasts like you guys right Because of our production here and a lot of that gets back to the understanding of how to grow and the science behind what we do . I just can't express how much that's helped us improve things .

And so , as we're collecting that data , our objective is that we're going to be defining this crop sharing methodology right , refining a recipe and then , as you get those genetics , we can say this is the turf profile we're able to successfully achieve , this is the turn profile we're able to successfully achieve , this is THC , this is yield and this is how we did

it . And so if you want to achieve the same level of success from a flower production perspective , here you go right , and we give that for free right , because we want other growers to be successful . That's our whole objective .

And so all of this data that we're collecting is designed not only to produce the best right , but the reality of it is it is research and development right . It's not our mainstay , it's not our primary business right .

The real motive and design behind that is to be able to give other growers how we believe is the best way to do it and with proven results , and say here you go , this is how we did it with this particular genetic . Now , if you have any questions , let us know . We're happy to help .

We've spent a year and a half with biologists , microbiologists , molecular biologists on staff and we do all this research and we create these recipes , as Travis just mentioned , and we give that away for free . We teach it in our crop string methodology for free and people go . Why are you guys doing that ? Well , it helps the community .

That's the number one reason . And , of course , from our perspective , it's good for business . People will come to us if they need help or they want to buy genetics and so on . So to us it's a twofold thing here , but it's amazing the reception we get because of it . Yeah , I love that .

You know , usually when we tell people about , the first thing they ask is how much does it cost ? Right , we're like it's free , it's free to anybody yourself , your grower , your team . You know , yesterday we had a grow flight . Two of the team members are from ohio to attend the crop steering class , right , um ? And ?

And , like gary said , it's all about community engagement . Right , we want to . We want , we want to take things to the next level and I think , taking these next levels , community is starting to share information , right , um , and so that's , that's the point of the objective .

You know proper recipes and actual proper crop steering , and then good genetics , of course , as well , right , right .

Some people come out of the gates really hot , but it tapers off and so you've really been able to see which ones have survived and how they've gone about it . And I've talked to a lot of them and it seems like that's what they're most . You know , they make small changes , they perfect , they make small changes and they subtly improve .

And that was one thing that we talked about with why you guys , you know , do all the trials in R&D that you guys like to make small changes , perfect and then take on to the next step . Can you tell me a little bit about your philosophy around making those changes and why you guys put such a stress on doing these trials in R&D ?

Because it's one thing that at Grotan we never just release a product or we never just release things . We've been testing for years and trialing it , and that's really important to us and it's how we built our name , and it seems like that's what you guys are also kind of striving for as well .

manufacturing aspect of it gets larger , to again get the consistency that other industries tote as a quality and then also get the high quality of that product out there , and then also to compare different results . We get out of different equipment that we were gearing to our SOPs and procedures and equipment for the best to get the best out of it .

There was hit and misses here , but we finally found a research paper that compared cannabis to tomato plants , and so we started doing this research . Okay , if it really is true that when you're looking at the results of rye beating a flour , is that sugar is really that important ? What's nominal value in a tomato plant ?

We started looking at that and it does , in the end , turn out to be that cannabis and tomatoes are very similar .

But Courtney's data collection showed us that that was true , and that's when we started realizing that up front , with the ability to her to collect data and see things in real time and then raise those values up , and then it allowed us to get more energy into the plant and our production went up dramatically .

But it was that kind of research and her ability to collect that data and show us those use case or those case studies is what allowed us to do what we're doing today .

But taking the correct sample size from each population is imperative , especially since , um , our rooms they are not that big . I've worked in a couple of our girls .

This is a really uh , great facility in that it's not boutique style growing , but it's like each of these rooms have the perfect amount , or the optimum amount of plants inside , with , uh , that corresponds to the amount of lighting they're getting and you know , a nutrient , nutritive application they're getting , so that it's , um , not , I would say , it's not lost .

At least I see it . I'll say that the data isn't lost in such a large population size , so we keep them small . Our runs pretty average or just small , I would say . And then , um , we get a good population size from it . Yeah , throughout the flower room , mainly .

So we created a case study which Courtney ran through and she can explain it in more detail . But what it ended up really telling us roughly is you only cut on a plant an hour after sunset . So , for example , our lights come on at 8 am in the morning for our veg rooms and in flower rooms and it's between 9 am and 2 pm in the afternoon .

That's the only time we cut on plants and there's several reasons behind that , but the primary reason is the ability for the plant to handle stress . Like , remember I told you we minimize stress .

So Courtney's in and she's been collecting all this data and she showed when the transferration is at its highest , which is inversely proportional to stress levels , and that told us when we can cut on and cannot proportion of the stress levels .

And that told us when we can cut and cannot , or trim or not trim on a plant and that made a dramatic difference in the quality of our moms , the vigouriness of our clones and , of course , later on , when you're taking a clone into flower and trying to grow that we tend to find that our clones are about 15% to 20% more vigorous than a typical nursery clone

. And that gets back to all these things that we're doing .

It's more like taking with the main instrument that we use the Lycor or that uses the Lycor , taking readings off of those that are non-destructive and can be replicable , and again with the sample size and whatnot indicative give the population yeah , that's awesome .

I know you guys use biologicals but minimize on the pesticides , I believe from what I remember from the tour .

So we well insulated our rooms and we gave the ability to foam or clean our rooms all the time , and so all of our rooms and hallways . We see a hallway that goes into our rooms . The same cleanliness as our grow rooms , because once you walk into that hallway or you open that door , everything that's in that hallway goes in that room .

So we're real sticklers about that . Every day all of our rooms are mopped , sterilized and so on , all of our hallways , everything at the end of the day . So without that you can't have nothing . Else matters at that point if you don't have cleanliness . As far as IPM goes , yeah , we do try not to ever spray , especially in flower .

We don't want to use any fungicide or insecticide in that . We will use , for example , in our veg rooms and clone rooms and so on . We will use an IPM where we'll use , for example , athena IPM stack on Mondays and on Friday we'll use another product if you want me , pure Crop 1 and Blue Magic .

And then , in order to minimize stresses on all of our vegging plants because of the cutting aspect , we'll use hydroponic research as push on Wednesdays . You get calcium back in it because it's immobile within the plant . It's the quickest way , easiest way to minimize stresses on those , especially those mums , who are getting cut on all the time .

And then we do use beneficials . We primarily use a couple of things .

One is every Monday all of our plants are hand watered , even though we have auto watering systems , with a nutrient solution that has a biosiris powder and nematodes in it and that keeps any fungi or , sorry say , any larvae and so on out of your media , and so that way we don't have bugs . Then we'll use road beetles , for example .

Every two weeks we'll get road beetles in here , which are very vigorous little critters and they keep pretty much everything out . And then usually once a month , we'll just use a standardized mite that just covers the broad spectrum aphids , spider mites and so on .

Not that we have that , it's just we have so many visitors here you just never know what could be coming in the door . And then all of our plants are tested . We have internal testing here for humps . Every one of our plants , any genetic coming into our facility is tested . All of our moms are tested every other month and then our output's tested .

So we randomly test all of our clones traditional clones and our tissue culture clones and so that way we're doing all the input and output and so we're doing everything we can to keep bugs , mold , any of that type of stuff and viruses out of our facility .

We know there's going to be no bugs , no mold , no , nothing like that , and we don't have to worry about salt issues , bug issues or any of that type of stuff . So we have a known substrate which all these changes and all this data , research and things that we do . We now have a base point which we can always start .

It's never inconsistent in that perspective , and the watering capabilities of the substrate makes it really , really great for crop stirring . To tell you the truth , Love it .

Can you speak a little bit more to that please ?

We try to buy breeders' cuts because they're already pre-phenol hunted and we will do a run with them anyway before we put them out . But we do pop seeds . But we will do a run with them anyway before we put them out .

But we do pop seeds , but we do it a little bit differently . The one thing that we've always seen associated with seed is contamination . Almost virtually all seeds are contaminated , and especially the way they're handled .

When they get them , people hold them in their hands , they put them in soil , whatever it is they're doing , and by holding in your hand you're contaminating it .

And so when we get seeds and we run it through the same cleaning process as we do any tissue culture , uh mass that we bring in , and by doing so , what we do is we'll clean these seeds for roughly an hour , an hour and a half through our process and then we germinate them in petri dishes and then we'll put them in our tissue culture initialization and we'll

get them to grow . And once we get them to grow and get a clone off of that , that's what we'll put in instructive and phenol hunts with . But that gives that that genetic a much higher potential of being able to at least uh , you know uh have its highest potential of success in the end . So we do it a little bit different there .

Now we we are bringing in subdued genetics . We just brought in a couple different types of phenos of Dante's Inferno . We have , like Black Velvet , the number six cut from Mile High Dave , and then we also have Pablo's Pineapple we just cut again from Mile High Dave .

But one of the things that we're really focusing on is we're putting a large investment into CRISPR technology that's coming in the future and with that technology we hope to be able to produce our own genetics and tissue culture . So our desire there is to create custom strains and using genetic modification . Very cool .

The process that you guys do actually because , um , I'm previous episodes I've had a kevin cullum of culprit on the show you know has a lot to do with um , you know biologicals and everything , and one of the major things that he stressed actually was especially in cannabis is really understanding the importance of what comes into your facility , um , and that a lot

of people they deal with issues and it's because they don't , um , they don't vet everything the same way that they might bring in something else , they think , oh , yeah , I'll just bring these in and then they don't think , oh , that that that could be the result of you know where things are started , um , but also , when you have multiple people coming and visiting

your facility and you , you , you touched on the fact that , um , you , you don't just let anybody into the rooms , like there's tours and everything right , there's a reason why , and and it's it's what we kind of talked about in that episode as well , where you know just the importance of proper ppe , the importance of having quality control , and that you know , by

having these and started like you know , no one's ever going to be . Um , you know , maybe there are some , you know growers that have this but have never had an issue .

It's not like that's ever going to happen , but you can very much limit these issues and and it's it's really , you know , interesting to hear , to hear that you guys really have a process for everything that you go through , and so I really enjoy hearing that and especially to serve your customers , it's really important .

Like Gary said , no one goes in the rooms . We have windows throughout the facility to allow for those tours while mitigating risk . So it's all a risk mitigation game . Essentially , in the end , you want to mitigate every risk possible in order to have ultimate success .

But even more so , like I said , it's not just our success , it's our customer success , which is what matters , because if we give a customer an issue , they're no longer going to be a customer . That's just the facts , and so we take it extremely serious .

So we have a molecular biologist here on staff that does disease testing and so on , and we specifically primarily focus on hops laden , and the reason for that is some of the studies have shown for example that I think Dark Heart did in California that 90% of the plants they tested tested positive for hops .

Now one of the things a lot of people don't realize is if somebody has hops at their grow and they go to a grow store , they can carry that with them . It could be on the counter , it could be on things they touched .

If they walk in they could live on hard surfaces for months , and so that's another reason why we suit everybody up we put them in booties and so on here and we have cleanliness standards here is because somebody could walk through this grow that has hops . One of our people could walk right over top of them and carry it right into the room .

And because of the fact that we have an extensive tissue culture lab here , we get a lot of genetics coming in that people want us to put in culture to clean up and silo .

We've had people show up here with plants that had hops , and so we learned early on that that's a very dangerous proposition as far as the growth is concerned , and , as Travis said , our whole business is based on , you know , genetics and plants and so on that we sell to other growers , and the last thing we can do is pass that along to our growers .

We can't do that .

I want to you know , as we , you know , kind of get near the ending here . I just want to again thank you guys for coming on . It's been amazing listening to you guys process from all the different rooms , from cultivar to cultivar , and the quality that you guys put in . It's just really remarkable .

I always kind of like to close out the show with just some really fun Q&A . Just makes it a little bit light . I always say it's lightning round , but I don't think any of them has ever been lightning round . They always go a little bit longer . But this is going to open up to all three of you Travis , gary , courtney and John .

If you want to jump in as well . As it's your first show , I'm just going to throw this out there . So what is everybody's favorite strain or cultivar ?

Actually , when I got to Hawaii , I'd had many surgeries and the doctors there said , hey , why don't you put your medical card ? Now I was shocked , because these are VA doctors and I talked to five doctors .

One of them was a neurologist and he said , as a matter of fact , when I went and talked to a neurologist , he goes not only should you get your card , I just came back from a symposium and these three strains you should try . And I was actually a little taken aback for it .

So , sure enough , I went and got my card and I tried the cannabis for the first time and it worked . And I was completely amazed . I had severe migraines . I've had a lot of surgeries . I was always in pain and it's a miracle , to tell you the truth , I was quite surprised . And so after about a week I said I'm going to learn how to grow this stuff .

And so after about a week I said I'm going to learn how to grow this stuff . And so I started growing in my closet , like anybody else , actually in my bedroom and then I put some plants outside in Hawaii and everything grows like nuts there . I mean , these plants grew six and seven feet in a couple of weeks . I couldn't believe it .

And then my sister here back in Oklahoma had started , her and her husband started to grow and he said if you move back to Oklahoma , we'll give you some of our farmland and you can build a building there and grow .

So I told gary listen , the crazy industry , are you sure you want to do this kind of tried to talk him out of it , to be honest with you . Um , and then he didn't listen to me and he came back to oklahoma and well , there's another side of that .

I said I'm in the grow growing . He goes hey , can I come over ? I go sure . And he came over with his wife and I'm showing the facility and he's going hey , I'll be right back . And he goes to his car and he comes back with , I think , eight clones . And yeah , I go what are those for ? I go , where'd you get those ?

It turns out he had to grow as well . Yeah , he didn't tell me that , that he had to grow as well . And he was having a nursery and he was having some issues and so on . And he said just keep these genetics . And he told me what he was doing . I go . He told me he had a nursery or they were selling clones .

I go , wow , why would anybody want to buy clones ? I said I can grow them all day long here in my little room , you know , and uh . And then he came back later and started showing me the business model that he was using and so on . And that's when we decided to uh collaborate together and uh open up our , our , our endless uh company together .

So but yeah , he had to grow . It didn't tell me what about , uh ?

And I found a way to do that as cannabis became deregulated in Oklahoma and I found these cool guys that also like science and cannabis and we joined forces .

I mean , we work more than we probably should , but we're trying to build something really cool and so , you know , put the time in now and then , you know , take it to the level of the window we can . Wonderful , wonderful .

We created this roadmap a few years ago and we've stuck to it . I mean , there's been ups and downs and you're always going to have issues . Never is going to be perfect , but we are sticking to that roadmap and we're well on our way . We think so

. And the other thing is just to be honest about everything . Don't lie to your employees , don't lie to your company . You know , know where you're at , where you're going , and be truthful about everything and treat everybody with respect that they deserve , and that's basically our philosophy Wonderful .

It is right . And a lot of people have opportunities across their path every single day . They don't action them and if you don't action it , it doesn't happen . And so , like what Gary said , the last few years , or where we are today , in the next few years we've got some extremely exciting things happening in Endless . We're getting ready .

We're working right now on filing with the SEC Securities and Exchange Commission for a public offering for Endless . So anybody's going to be able to participate and become an investor in the company here in the next several months . So there's , you know , and then that leads to , you know , the next three or four years . Ultimately , you know listing .

So we've got a lot of really fun stuff happening that wouldn't be happening if we didn't continue to push through the easy times and the hard times . That's just what it matters . You can't give up . You got to keep plowing through until you get some sort of breakthrough or some door opening .

So I would say , piggybacking off of what Travis and Gary said , just persistence and have a goal and definitely follow through on that goal and acting , putting action towards it , because even if something isn't available for example , the job I have now wasn't available when I started college it's still a possibility .

You know just how to find a way and work towards it .

If this is something that you want to do for a long time and stay relevant , you got to just keep at it and try to be passionate and , like I said , just help each other and be together with the community , because it's super important to help support each other and be there for other people that are going after the same goal and are very passionate about the

plant Beautiful .

So lately I've just been enjoying it and as a student I'm continuing learning , so I'm constantly just reading anything anybody puts out , to just try to . I'll never be where John is , but hopefully one day I can get there . But again , I just want to thank you guys all . It was just a wonderful show today .

It was a pleasure to have John on as his first show . You're , guys , going to see a lot more of him down the road , but Travis , courtney , gary , just a pleasure . I can't

wait to . The case study will be out by the time this episode releases , but please take a look , check out , contact them . Like I said , they do a lot of tours and education and that's something that we believe really solely in . So again , huge thank you to you guys all for coming on the show today . Well , thank you , it was a pleasure .