Ohio’s first recreational marijuana for sale planted at Yellow Springs greenhouse

YELLOW SPRINGS, Ohio (WCMH) — A cannabis growing facility in Ohio is making a significant move on the heels of a hinted start date for Ohio recreational marijuana sales.

On Wednesday, Cresco Labs staff began planting around 1,000 seedlings indoors in its Yellow Springs greenhouse. The company, headquartered in Chicago, said the crops will be sold to recreational customers after harvesting later in the summer. Jason Erkes, Cresco’s chief communications officer, said the facility is planting unique marijuana for what they anticipate are quickly approaching sales.

“It’s four new strains we’ve never grown before, in a brand new room with every state-of-the-art bell and whistle you can imagine,” Erkes said. “We’ve been planning for this ever since Issue 2 passed … we’re beefing up our cultivation and our grow process to make sure that we have product as quickly as we can to market.”

The seedlings will get taller before eventually blossoming into marijuana flowers commonly known for their green buds, according to Cresco Labs. During the plants’ growth, Cresco staff will tend to them with LED lights as well as an in-house cooling and humidification system, which mimics day cycles and seasonal changes.

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At harvest time, caretakers will move the adult plants into a separate room where they begin cleaning up the buds. Erkes said the team’s first crop will provide more than 400 pounds of recreational cannabis, which translates to a massive number of individual products.

“The 400 pounds of flower that these plants in this room today will produce, is equivalent to 65,000 Ohio tenths, which is the way cannabis is sold here,” Erkes said.

The large plot of crops is necessary, according to Erkes. He cited past experience when he said he suspected demand would be high for the start of recreational sales.

“We’ve done this in other states, so we know that there will be a mad rush of people that are interested in buying legal cannabis,” Erkes said. “In Illinois where we went through this conversion process, there were waits, sometimes up to seven hours, outside in the freezing cold for people that wanted to make that first purchase.”

Cresco Labs has both grow facilities and dispensaries in multiple states under its belt, meaning it controls both the supply and sale of cannabis brands like Cresco and Good News. Its Yellow Springs greenhouse already packages and ships medical marijuana to its shops within Ohio, like Sunnyside in Chillicothe. Similar to Cresco’s existing medical brands, the recreational cannabis will be sold in the state’s dispensaries as marijuana flower, or converted to products like vapes or edibles.

To make all of this happen, Cresco Labs’ greenhouse needs workers. And while training programs like the Cleveland School of Cannabis are available, Facility Director Joe Chek said he’s brought in people from “all walks of life” with a passion for cannabis.

“When we voted last November, we had about 80, 85 people at the site. We’ve hired close to 50 so far, and we plan to hire another 25 to 50 from that point,” Chek said. “At this facility alone, our headcount is likely going to double … between now and July.”

Cannabis seeds are legal even at the federal level to purchase, and Ohio’s recently passed law for recreational marijuana allowed residents to grow up to six personal plants. But Cresco’s crops mark the first commercial effort to raise cannabis for sale to the public in the state, as it sits in limbo with no legalized vendor.

Cresco Labs seems to be banking on a summer start to recreational marijuana sales after developments Monday on the legislative front. A lawmakers’ committee over the state’s agencies approved proposed rules from the Ohio Division of Cannabis Control, which would let medical dispensaries convert to dual-use.

“What we’re being told is that will be kind of a scattered start, they’ll be approving them in batches or bundles as they get them in,” Erkes said. “We don’t expect that it will be every dispensary in the state that opens up the same day for sales. It will be kind of piecemeal across the state as they get approved.”

The DCC previously estimated the shops could apply to become dual-use dispensaries on June 7, but a member of the lawmakers’ committee took that further. Rep. Jamie Callender (R-Concord), co-chair of the approving committee, alluded after the hearing that recreational sales could begin at these new types of dispensaries as soon as “mid-June.”

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