Grower Stories #76: Sunny Montoya

An Interview With the Founders of Colorado Breeders Depot, a Hemp-Based Brand Built for Medical Patients

For medical patients and fans of natural green medicine in Colorado, CBD is more than just a chemical compound. For them, those letters stand for Colorado Breeders Depot, the one-stop-shop for wholesale CBD & CBG seeds, plants, and strains. AskGrowers talks with their administration and sales director, Sunny Montoya, about their origins, their brand, and the future of the hemp industry overall. #growerstories

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Tia (AskGrowers) : How did you start the brand? Tell us your origin story!

Sunny Montoya : One man passionate and experienced in the THC cannabis space met with a man who understood and loved small stores and smoke shops. This man happened to have a brother immersed in the medical industry and eager to promote natural beneficial medicine through media. Together these three partnered with the dream of building a foundation for the entire hemp industry. By producing quality hemp genetics they could support the medicinal CBD industry, as well as the renewable resource building and manufacturing hemp industries. All three men were already successful in various business ventures but together they wanted to work on something that was more than just a business. They wanted to bring something to the world that could revolutionize the way we farm, the daily materials we use, and the way we conceptualize health care.

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Tia : When did you make the decision to start the seed company? What inspired you into action?

Sunny : After selling the THC license and growing hemp flowers for the first year the owners discovered the seed they had purchased was completely unstable. The product wasn’t regulated like it is in the THC world and seed brokers could get away with selling anything. Instead of becoming discouraged by the challenges they encountered in their first year, they became inspired by the unique opportunity. They had so much experience in the THC world growing and breeding quality flower. They were positioned to be one of the pioneers in the hemp space with the chance to develop some of the classic strains that would live on for years.

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Tia : What’s your best-selling product? Why do you think that your customers like that particular product so much?

Sunny : Purple Urkle CBD flower. This flower smells and tastes exactly like dispensary-grade cannabis. We grow it indoors in small batches and we slow cure each batch. This means that the rich cannabis terpenes along with eye-catching sparkling purple buds have a wow factor that immediately acquires a reputation.

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Tia : What’s your personal consumption routine? What do you think are the best ways to consume cannabis?

Sunny : We love the taste and smell of smoking a joint. All of our flower is grown organically in living soil with a grow team touching each plant; watering each pot; and trimming each flower. Rolling a joint feels like the most simple, natural extension to our growing process. We break up the sticky buds between our fingers feeling the rosin that is left behind. Simple, natural, organic.

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Tia : In your opinion, what makes a good cannabis seed? What should buyers be on the lookout for when picking up some seeds of their own?

Sunny : Buyers should be learning about the company that is selling the seed. There are so many things about a cannabis seed that a buyer can’t understand by looking at it. A buyer doesn’t know if it’s a male or a female, or if it’s going to grow good terpenes, or have a high cannabinoid potency. A buyer doesn’t know if the seed they are looking at is actually the seed represented by the label on the package. Essentially a hemp seed is a mystery and the only clue a buyer can have about its quality is from the company that is selling it. Do they have multiple third-party lab reports connected to each strain sold? Do they grow their own flower from the seeds they are selling to customers? Is there a competent representative available to answer questions about the strain and the breeding process? Are you able to visit their facility and their grow rooms? Are you able to access pictures and descriptions of their grow room, plants, team, etc. ? Building a relationship with your hemp seed breeder is the best thing a customer can do when choosing hemp seed.

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Tia : Are there any difficulties in growing rare (in your state) cannabis strains? Why? What makes growing that particular strain so challenging?

Sunny : Colorado is a particularly dry state. Any strains that require a specific high level of humidity are more challenging to grow here in Colorado.

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Tia : There are hundreds of cannabis seed banks and companies out there. Why should someone choose your seeds over someone else? What sets you apart from your competition?

Sunny : We are a vertical company with our own smokable CBD flower store online. Once a year we grow our strains in outdoor fields, and we have a constantly rotating greenhouse and three constantly rotating indoor grow rooms throughout the year. This means any farmer or grower who wants to buy a particular strain can benefit from all of the data we already have on the strain from our own operation. The farmer can look at our grow room data. She could see how it grew outdoors, and she can even buy a sample of cured flower from that particular strain from the online store. We also have customer data and we are plugged into wholesale buyers. This means if a grower is trying to choose a strain that she will be able to sell again in the future we can discuss which strains are popular and even link her into a network of bulk buyers, so she has a better chance of making money with her harvest. A buyer who purchases one of our strains isn’t only purchasing good genetics she is purchasing a connection to a genetics company.

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Tia : What are some of the hardest seeds to find? What makes them so difficult to track down?

Sunny : Cannabis seeds with a high concentration of CBN or CBC cannabinoids are very hard to find. It takes many generations of breeding to create a strain particularly high in a newly desirable cannabinoid. Right now it is not difficult to find seeds high in CBD, and it is becoming much less difficult to find seeds high in CBG but high CBN and CBC seeds are still very hard to find.

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Tia : What are the hardest seeds to grow and why? What are the easiest seeds to grow? Which ones would you recommend to a first-time grower?

Sunny : Non-feminized 1st generation seeds are the most difficult to grow. Right after two different strains of hemp have been crossed they include many different combinations of the genes contained in the parent strains. If an inexperienced grower plants male and female seeds from a newly crossed strain they will cultivate hemp plants that grow at different heights and mature at different times and need different amounts of humidity with different types of nutrients. There is no consistency among the plants and the grower will also have to watch for males and hermaphroditic females to make sure the flower doesn’t get seeded. First-time growers should look for feminized seeds from a strain that has been backcrossed and stabilized for five to seven generations.

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Tia : Do you have any difficulties in selling your weed to dispensaries? If so, what are the major challenges?

Sunny : We do not have difficulty selling our hemp to dispensaries, though the main consideration is finding a price point that allows us to grow the highest quality flower while still leaving a margin for the dispensaries to charge their retail customers.

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Tia : What’s your advice to cannabis start-ups? Any tips? What are the major stumbling blocks that first-time cannabis entrepreneurs should avoid?

Sunny : Our advice would be to get plugged into a group of people who you trust quickly. It’s very easy for fraudulent companies to take advantage of new businesses. Buying seeds from someone who represents their seeds with fake COAs is a fatal business mistake. Buying flower from someone that doesn’t test their material for heavy metals could pose a major health risk. It always pays to meet the people you are sourcing your materials from and pay for your own tests on seeds or flowers or oil. Spending the money in the beginning while you are forming your foundational business relationship is always worth it.

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Thank you so much, Colorado Breeders Depot team, for taking the time to do the interview. To learn more about them, head on over to their website.