5 Buds Bio: How We Grow Premium CBD Products in South Carolina

5 Buds Bio

Founded in 2019, 5 Buds LLC was developed to produce the highest quality organic craft hemp products.  With many convoluted hemp products floating around in the market, five local friends Will Metts, Gianpaolo Bonaca, Bob Brock, and Matthew Pirkle sought to produce a clean and trusted product for their friends and family in Greenwood SC and beyond. For the farmer, Will Metts, it has a much deeper meaning. His father, Bill Metts, had been suffering since 2010 with stage 4 prostate cancer.  Bill experienced much needed relief from his cancer and chemotherapy treatment symptoms from using cannabis products.  There was just one problem, it was hard to find a reputable source.  Will wanted to use his knowledge of organic growing and farmland to provide a reputable trustworthy product made with integrity and the end user in mind.

One day, in the fall of 2018 Will was at The Mill House, a local restaurant owned and operated by Gianpaolo Bonaca (Geep) and his wife Riley, eating lunch. Geep happened to walk by and they sparked up a conversation about what each one was up to as they both stayed busy trying to grow their businesses.  Will told Geep he was thinking about growing hemp since the SC hemp program was expanding their program from 20 growers to 40 growers.  Geep was very excited to hear this info and was eager to be a part of they obtained a permit.  Will went on and filled out the application and underwent the necessary background checks.  Initially, we were not granted a permit in the first round of approvals. Seeing how many applications were generated that year, the SCDA decided yet again to expend the program.  While Will met with his CPA, Bob Brock, to do taxes, he told Bob of his plans and current application. Bob, like Geep, was also very excited and eager to be a part of the grow. Now there were three buds in the mix.  Concurrently, Geep, told his friend Matthew Pirkle about the grow and he jumped on board, thus forming what is now the 5 Buds brand.  While patiently waiting through the spring for their permit, they began to gather all the necessary materials and prep the 3 acres on which they would conduct their grow. Geep made contact with an old high school friend Cole, who was working with Eric McClam at City Roots organic farm in Columbia SC with their hemp project.  Cole was able to help us source our organic genetics in the form of seeds and transplants. It was just about time to plant in June before they received their permit to grow. They were able to plant just in the nick of time.

During the grow, Will used organic techniques to mitigate crop damage from pests and disease.  These practices included extra spacing, cover crops, trap crops, biological controls, mechanical weeding, hand removing insects.  Extra spacing allowed for better airflow and therefore helped reduce the amount of disease pressure.  It also allowed predators to better see pests therefor also lowering the pest pressure and damage.  Cover crops were grown prior to planting in order to sequester nutrients, improve soil filth, and increase the fields water holding capacity.  Trap crops rows were planted on every seventh row. Trap crops are comprised of plants that are desired more by pests than the hemp. This reduces the amount of pressure on the hemp and also creates beneficial insect habitat.  Biological controls consisted of predatory insects that eat pests of the hemp crop.  If pressure got too bad we would periodically use biological sprays to reduce the population of pests. These are bacteria that disrupt the lifecycle of pests, not harmful chemicals that kill everything.  We managed weeds by hand pulling directly around plants, using a power barrow that tills horizontally instead of vertically within walking paths, and wide variety of hand tools.  As we inspected the crop daily, we also hand picked any pests that we noticed doing damage to the crops. Being very aggressive at this is a critical component since it reduces the amount of breeding adults of pests.

We used a combination of all of these practices over the crop's 120 day life cycle and ended up with a very high quality healthy raw crop.  We then hand harvested and hung the material in climate controlled environments to cure the raw material.

The curing faculty was 10,000 square feet.  We hung over 2200 plants for a period of 10 days at 60% humidity. Once cured, we then hand separated the biomass from the stalks.

The material was then delivered to our processor, Carolina Botanical Development, in Anderson SC to be extracted as full spectrum distillate and blended into our high quality products that we offer today!