AskGrowers Lazy Bee Gardens Feature
AskGrowers Feature with Our Founder Matthew Frigone
AskGrowers recently featured Lazy Bee Gardens on their site. Our founder Matthew Frigone is interviewed in their Grower Stories . We discuss what it means to grow sustainably, our cultivation techniques and the future of the industry. Read more below:
Grower Stories #107: Matthew Frigone
Lazy Bee Gardens Focuses on Growing Weed Sustainably
Matthew Frigone chats with the AskGrowers team about the history of Lazy Bee Gardens and its strong focus on sustainable growing. He shares his cultivation techniques, talks about the future of the cannabis industry, and shares his personal smoking routine. If you’re wondering which strains an industry leader prefers to smoke himself, you’ll find that answer in this Grower Stories as well. #growerstories
Tia (AskGrowers) : Tell us how you started Lazy Bee Gardens?
Matthew Frigone : I started growing medically back in 2010 when my father was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. At the time I was living in Park City Utah and a friend of mine turned me onto Rick Simpson oil or RSO.
After digging into it for a while, we talked about it as a family and decided to give it a try. The following summer, I moved home and we planted our first crop. Continued to do that for the next handful of summers as growing started to become a passion. I was actually really not interested in starting a business in the rec market when the chatter started that the application window was approaching. I kind of liked bouncing between Washington and Utah playing in the snow at the time.
After dragging my feet about it for some time, a co-worker finally asked me if I was going to “hike the line and not drop in?”, referring to me spending the previous 5 years learning how to cultivate and knowing I had gotten passionate about it. I remember thinking he had a point. I put in my application the following week and started building a plan.
Tia : How does your brand differ from others similar to yours?
Matthew : That is really hard to say. There are a lot of really great farms out there that have done amazing jobs. I know we put a lot of our focus on sustainable growing practices that attempt to mimic nature as closely as possible in a commercial setting.
We have been a water-only farm since the beginning and made the switch to no-till a few years ago. I guess as brands go, a brand is a promise, so our promise is to provide a consistent, clean product to the Wa market that was grown in a conscious manner.
I do spend a lot of time chucking pollen, popping beans, and pheno-hunting as well. I would eventually like to have a full lineup of in-house-made genetics, but that will take years. It’s no quick task hunting beans. This year alone, we have 15 new crosses in the hunt, most of which were made in-house, but there are always a few from other breeders as well.
Tia : I’ve noticed that you have a lot of awards. What’s your secret in that? 🙂
Matthew : Oh man, honestly, luck? Some might say it’s preparedness meeting opportunity, but it has felt like downright luck a couple of times lol. I really don’t know why we have done so well…..I mean, not to undercut what we do – we do put out some bangers from time to time and I do have a good group of genetics in my stable – but I can’t think of any one reason. We put a lot of care into our plants and the genetic selection, and I guess it shows.
Tia : Talking about sustainability. Do you position Lazy Bee Gardens as a sustainable company?
Matthew : Yes. Sustainability has always been one of our major goals as a farm. For that reason, we have worked to be a water-only no-till farm. We amend our soil every spring and typically give it a few AACT inoculations a year. The idea is to encourage a strong living soil food web in the rhizosphere that stimulates the plants to use their natural feeding process.
The current state that the midwest is in is alarming to me. If we keep pumping salt-based fertilizers into the ground and killing off all the microbiology, we will end up with another dust bowl out there. The idea is to build soil that is alive, not to strip it to dead dirt. This is how I feel about commercial farming in general, not just cannabis. I don’t get too bound up over one grow method vs. another.
I’ve seen some amazing products from all types and I respect others’ opinions and their freedom to grow as they see fit, but once we start stepping into the huge arena that is commercial agriculture, I feel like we have some responsibility to act as stewards of the land if we wish to continue for generations. We try to do our part to keep our ecological impact at a minimum.