When we call our products ‘Sungrown cannabis’, we literally mean that we harness the natural power of the sun. And how do we do that? With SunLab¹, our unique greenhouse, which is the only one in the world specifically designed for cannabis cultivation from the ground-up. SunLab¹ took two years to design and another two to construct, with input from some of British Columbia's foremost agricultural scientists.
Top-quality cannabis is the result of a few simple variables; the quality of the genetics, the quality of the inputs (water, nutrients, light) and the environment the plant is cultivated within (such as temperature and humidity). Here’s how we combine technology and nature to grow clean cannabis.
Adaptive Technology
Technologies from various industries have been adopted and specialized at SunLab¹ in order to maintain compliance in areas such as security and quality assurance. Automation and software are utilized in areas such as drip-line fertilizer and irrigation, cannabis-specific airflow optimization, and environmental monitoring through an array of novel sensors. SunLab¹ represents a design choice to harmonize technology with nature, creating a cultivation environment that is supernatural.
Harnessing Natural Sunlight
Cannabis cultivation uses 1% of North America’s energy resources but SunLab¹ reduces electricity demand by up to 90% compared to traditional indoor cannabis cultivation. The sun naturally provides full-spectrum light, to nurture plants with ideal photosynthetic input, so we simply use the sunshine (yes, even in rainy BC) to provide plants with what they need. SunLab¹ provides an optimal way to fuel plant growth with sunlight, drastically reducing the power consumed by artificial lamps alone. Greenhouses are industry standard in other environmentally controlled crops such as tomatoes, peppers, and bedding plants in Canada. However, growing cannabis in a greenhouse while abiding by stringent Health Canada regulations is still an emerging practice.
Pure Filtered Rainwater
An innovative rainwater recapture system draws from abundant and pure coastal rainfall that is collected, filtered, and drip-line fed to every plant. The roof of our facility has a series of draining pipes that allow us to collect and store rainwater. Because of this natural water source, our plants receive pure water that has never been treated by chlorine or fluoride. From our holding ponds and tanks, the water is triple filtered (through sand-disk, UV light, and reverse osmosis) before being sent to plants during irrigation.
Airflow Filtration
SunLab¹’s active air filtration allows for maximum airflow; cooling the growing environment and preventing stagnant moisture. SunLab¹ cycles its air every seven minutes, reducing the risk of pests and mould to enable the highest Quality Assurance standard on Earth, naturally.
Our odour filtration system works by pulling odorous air through a filtration bay before that air exits the facility. The bay is filled with wood chips, which contain a bioactive medium that eats organic smells. Once these wood chips are spent they are now ready to be composted.
Growing Clean Cannabis
From the ground coconut husks that we use as a growing medium to the ‘good bugs’ that act as natural pesticides, we grow clean cannabis by taking the natural environment and nudging it in the right direction.
Tantalus Labs cannabis is absent of pesticides. Because of this, we have to work hard to ensure our environment is always optimal for plant growth, as stressed plants are more prone to pests and disease.
Coco coir is an inert growing medium that consists of ground-up coconut husks. It’s ideal to hold water and allow for airflow to the roots of the cannabis plants. Since this medium doesn’t provide any nutrients to the plant, base nutrients such as nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus are mixed into the water and fed to the plants through irrigation lines.
It takes us 18 months from the time we pop seeds to delivering a finished product to market, so we have time to create phenotypes that can be safely replicated and have been carefully grown and preserved to produce high-quality, clean cannabis.
Does Tantalus Labs Irradiate Cannabis?
Tantalus Labs ionizes our cannabis to ensure it is pharmaceutical grade and safe for use by patients with compromised immune systems. We use E-Beam ionization as opposed to Gamma Irradiation. It's a complex process, but the best description we've seen is that e-beam ionization uses energy to shake DNA bonds in mould and other pathogens to render them inert.
There is a myth that irradiation degrades the quality of cannabis, and this myth is patently untrue, with no scientific evidence to support it. It is likely that the transport of cannabis from LPs to 3rd party irradiators is more destructive to the perception of quality than the actual irradiation itself. Thousands of everyday human-consumption products, especially perishable ones, are irradiated or pasteurized every day.
The "terpene destruction" across various tests and studies shows consistently <5% terpene degradation. Considering terpenes are often <3% of the dry weight of the end product, there is no cannabis expert on earth that could identify irradiation by feel, smell, or taste.
Even in the absolute most destructive irradiation processes, a small subset of the most volatile compounds in the plant are changing less than 1/20th of 1%.
To learn more about the strains we cultivate at SunLab¹, visit TantalusLabs.com.
