MJBizMag August 2021 - 46

Business Under Fire
is really going to affect your garden, "
Johnson said. Based on the results, you
then decide what kind of companion
plants and animals are best suited for
your farm.
" Often, the soil that you're starting
out with could have perfectly adequate
amounts of all the minerals needed
throughout the season. But if they're
not in an available format to the plants,
if they're not bioavailable, then they're
essentially locked up, " Avila said.
" Cover crops help make all of what is
in your soil available to your plants. Then
your plant can feed itself from the soil
and select exactly what it needs at the
time it needs it. ... So you're feeding the
soil, and the plants are feeding themselves
from what you're providing in an
optimal biological soil process. That's
what our ultimate goal is. "
The companion plants Avila and
Johnson like to use include vetch, peas,
oats and fava beans. Legumes are especially
conducive as cover crop, Johnson
said, because " they have little nodules
that accumulate nitrogen. So, when
you're composting that back into your
soil, you're actually accumulating more
carbon and more nitrogen into the soil
that becomes available for your plants. "
Natural Ingredients
Other important elements in
Flowerdaze's soil-building are farm
animals, hügelkultur and compost.
Animal manure is a rich source
of nitrogen, phosphorus and
potassium-elements that are especially
critical during the flowering phase of plant
growth, Johnson said. Their preferred
manures are cow, chicken, rabbit and goat.
" Essentially, you're going to be taking
the manures of those animals, which are
accumulated from the biomass, the foods
that they eat on your land, and then that
manure is composted into soil along with
other organic matter that's accumulated
from your land, " Johnson said. " We don't
have any loss of carbon from that and
instead are sequestering all the carbon.
That's the ultimate goal: to take that
46 MJBizMagazine | August 2021
Karla Avila and Jacob
Johnson are committed
to farming cannabis on
native soil. Courtesy Photo
" It can seem overwhelming if you are at
the beginning of a process to transition
to regenerative practices, but I think
that they are very friendly practices
where, once you start applying them,
you see the benefits right away. "
- Karla Avila, Flowerdaze
carbon and harvest it and put it back into
the ground and build more soil with it. "
To make compost, Flowerdaze uses
" pretty much anything, " Johnson said.
That includes plants the couple don't
want in the garden, animal manures,
food scraps, wood chips and fallen leaves.
They also use more specific composts
made from rabbit or chicken manure for
different stages of plant growth.
Avila and Johnson noted that they
prefer finished (broken-down) composts
to unfinished composts because they
bring fewer pests and fungal problems.
Therefore, they use " biodynamic
composting preparations " made from
various plant materials, each activating
a different composting process and
enhancing quality.
" When you have the final product,
it's the most nutritionally dense,
bioavailable, ready-to-go thing that
you could possibly add to your soil, "
Avila said. They generally do a major
compost application in the spring and
lighter monthly applications during the
growing season.
Another important element in
Flowerdaze's soil-building regimen is
hügelkultur, a raised garden bed built
from the bottom up with leaves and
branches, woodchips, grass clippings,
animal manure, food scraps and
eggshells. Hügelkultur's purpose is to
make soil nutrients more bioavailable for
cannabis plants to absorb by retaining
moisture and creating an environment
favorable to beneficial insects.
MJBizMag August 2021

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