A NASA-Smart Grow

This article originally appeared in the May/June issue of Cannabis Business Times. To subscribe, click here.

David Holmes was no stranger to cannabis, and saw his first plant, in an uncle’s California garden, when he was just nine. But when he saw his first indoor cultivation site while in college, he says, “It just blew me away, and I immediately told myself, ‘I really would love to try doing this.’” Upon graduation, he set up his first indoor grow and “it just expanded from there,” he says. After growing for California collectives for years, Holmes established and serves as CEO of Clade9, a full-service cannabis-cultivation business that designs, builds and manages cultivation, as well as sells a nutrient line. The company currently has an exclusive contract (where they can't manage other grows in Arizona) with Herbal Wellness (a cultivator with a 30,000-square-foot facility in Phoenix), and it manages an 18,000-square-foot site in Las Vegas. In the past six years, Clade9 has helped more than 50 facilities/cultivation projects get off the ground. Clade9 also operates its own cultivation facility in California, and the company has become a respected name in modern cultivation.

This issue’s Guest Interviewer, interviewing Holmes, is the legendary Mel Frank, who likely will need no introduction — but if you aren’t familiar with him, you should be. In addition to having nearly five decades of cannabis cultivation experience, Frank is an internationally recognized book author and contributor to many cannabis-based magazines. But he is perhaps most well-known for his 1977 “Marijuana Grower's Guide Deluxe,” which he co-authored with Ed Rosenthal. “Deluxe” distilled what was scientifically known about cannabis and brought the reality of home growing anywhere, indoors or out, into public awareness.

To read the full article in our May/June edition, click here.