Listen: A Deeper Look At Cannabis Aquaculture With Living Things' Founder Alex Noland

This article was originally published on Confident Cannabis and appears here with permission.

Living Things is Oregon’s original aquaculture cannabis farm. What makes their farm so special? To start, they use living fertilizer from fish and beneficial bugs to grow their cannabis. That means no liquid fertilizers or pesticides touch their plants. This family-owned farm has been in the industry for over 13 years.

Confident Cannabis Sales Manager, Hannah Hayes, had the opportunity to chat with Alex Noland, founder of Living Things on the latest episode of “High on Our Own Supply” by Confident Cannabis, to share the story of how his unique cannabis business came to be and what the benefits of aquaculture are.

Alex has a nosey neighbor to thank for the idea to start Living Things. One day Alex was cleaning out his fish tank and went outside to dump out the water and fate intervened. Alex explained, “There’s this ninety-year-old lady who just sat on her front porch all day and she yelled across the street, what are you doing?” After explaining the benefits of freshwater, she instructed Alex to dump the water on his flowers to help them grow. “That’s kind of what sparked the idea,” Alex shared.

Alex started with hydroponics, then with the soil, and finally he introduced fish into the equation, “It took several years of figuring out how to do it,” Alex noted, “I feel like it always produced really good quality weed, but it took a while to get the production down. Now it does really well, we’ve kind of figured it out. We produce a lot of high quality weed.”

Hannah posed an interesting question to Alex, “Is there anything that you wish more people knew about aquaculture or growing in this style?” According to Alex, the relationship between plant and fish provides benefits most aren’t aware of. “It’s a little more natural,” he explained, because they don’t put anything in the fish tank that would harm the fish, you can rest easy knowing the plant is grown with the help of only natural and organic ingredients.