What Is Living Soil Cannabis?
A Licensed Producer Explains
By Tyler Rumi, Co-Founder & Cultivation Lead, GOOD BUDS
We have been growing cannabis in the same soil since 2019. Not the same type of soil — the same soil. We have never emptied the beds in our indoor facility on Salt Spring Island. Our outdoor fields — the first licensed outdoor cannabis cultivation site in Canada — have been in the ground through every harvest since our first crop. We amend between cycles, tend what's there, and let it keep building.
That is what living soil farming actually looks like in practice: a continuously cultivated, biology-rich growing medium that improves over time instead of being discarded between runs. The soil is alive — populated by bacteria, fungi, earthworms, and a web of microorganisms that feed the plant through the same natural processes that sustain a forest floor. No synthetic fertilisers. No sterile substrate. No plastic pots heading to a landfill at the end of every cycle.
We hold FVOPA Organic Certification from the Fraser Valley Organic Producers Association, a CFIA-designated certifier that has operated under the Canada Organic Regime since 2001. Here is what growing in living organic soils means — and what it means for what ends up in your jar.
Why the Growing Medium Changes What You're Smoking
Most cannabis you buy at a licensed retailer was grown in a pot. Frequently, a single-use plastic pot, filled with an inert medium — coco coir, rockwool, or a hydroponic substrate — and fed with a precise, bottled nutrient solution throughout the plant's life. When the harvest is over, everything goes out: the pot, the substrate, the unused nutrients. Coco coir and rockwool are not recyclable through standard waste streams, and spent synthetic nutrient solution is typically discharged or disposed of as liquid waste. A new pot comes in for the next run.
This discussion is not a criticism of those growers. That system offers real advantages: consistent nutrient control, faster growth cycles, and predictable yields. A lot of excellent cannabis is grown that way.
But here is what it cannot do: it cannot build a relationship between the plant and its environment over time.
In living soil, the plant gets its nutrition the same way a tree in a forest does. Beneficial fungi — mycorrhizae — extend the root system far beyond what the roots could reach alone, trading minerals with the plant in exchange for sugars. Bacteria cycle nitrogen. Protozoa release nutrients by consuming other microbes. Earthworms aerate the soil and deposit castings. This network of biological activity is what soil microbiologists call the soil food web — a self-sustaining nutrient cycling system that has been building fertile ground for billions of years.¹
The plant is not being force-fed. It is drawing on a living system that responds to what it actually needs.
What Living Soil Does for Flavour, Aroma, and Smoke Quality
The clearest thing we can say, backed by what our COA data has shown us over six years: plants grown in living soil tend to produce more complex, more layered terpene profiles than the same genetics grown in inert, nutrient-fed systems.
It is not about one terpene being higher. It is about the full picture being richer.
In 2020, we brought our first outdoor harvest to market — three pre-roll varieties made from our 2019 Salt Spring Island outdoor crop: Island Glue, Island Chem, and Island Fig. Three completely different strain families. Island Glue was a blend of GG4 crosses, a precursor to what would become Gluerangutan; Island Chem came from Chemdog variants, and Island Fig was created with AK47 variants. Totally different genetics resulted in totally different aromas.
But when we looked at the COA data across all three, the same thing kept showing up: nerolidol as a top-three terpene in each one.
Nerolidol is not a dominant terpene in any of those strain families by reputation. It is not what those genetics are known for. But it showed up consistently, across three distinct plants, grown in the same soil on the same island. We think it is a signature of our farm — something the living-soil environment pulls from the plant that a more controlled, substrate-fed system might not.
We have seen this pattern hold since. Our outdoor strains — Gluerangutan and Timewarp — consistently show elevated nerolidol levels in COA data across multiple harvests. It is one of the reasons we pay close attention to our own data rather than relying on what strain databases say a terpene profile "should" look like.
The other thing growers and consumers consistently describe about living soil cannabis: smoother smoke. The reasons are connected. When plants receive nutrients through biological processes rather than synthetic salts, there is less residual chemical accumulation in the flower. The nitrogen cycle in living soil delivers a less volatile form of nitrogen to the plant, which slows breakdown and contributes to better terpene retention after harvest.
There is a practice in conventional cannabis growing called flushing — running plain water through the growing medium in the final weeks before harvest to clear out residual nutrient salts that have built up through the feeding cycle. When it is done well, it reduces harshness. When it is skipped or done late, you can taste it. That harsh, throat-catching burn on poorly grown cannabis is often residual salts in the flower.
Our plants do not need flushing because there is nothing to flush. They pull nutrients from soil biology rather than from the nutrient solution we feed them, so they are never loaded with synthetic salts in the first place. We sometimes describe it to retailers this way: our plants are essentially being flushed from day one. It is not a process we do at the end — it is just how the system works.
None of this means hydro cannabis is bad cannabis. It means that if you are someone who notices flavour — who opens a jar and smells it before anything else, who prefers a joint that burns clean and slow — the growing medium is worth thinking about.
How We Actually Farm in Living Soil
Here is the part that surprises people: we do not replace the soil between crop cycles. Ever.
Our indoor facility uses raised soil beds. Our outdoor fields use row-mounded beds. At the end of each cycle, we remove the plant material, assess the soil, and amend it with organic inputs to restore what the previous crop took. Outdoors, the primary amendment is alfalfa meal — a nitrogen-rich organic input that feeds soil microbiology and rebuilds fertility naturally. Indoors, we use a range of certified organic amendments to balance the nutrient profile between runs.
Then we plant again.
When Health Canada inspectors came through our facility for the first time, they saw the raised soil beds and asked how we planned to sanitise the soil between cycles.
We explained: we don't. The soil stays.
Health Canada cannabis inspectors come largely from pharmaceutical and controlled-facility backgrounds. Their frame of reference is sterile environments — clean rooms, single-use containers, and substrates that get swapped out and replaced. The idea that soil would stay in place, cycle after cycle, was not something they had encountered at a licensed producer. They kept coming back to it. How do you sterilise it? What do you replace it with? We had to walk them through the same explanation several times before it landed — this is a raised soil bed, not a pot. We leave it in. We add organic inputs to rebalance nutrients. The biology in the soil is the point, and not something to eliminate between runs.
Every other organic licensed producer they had visited used single-use plastic pots. Our setup was the first of its kind that they had seen at a licensed facility.
It was, from our end, a funny conversation. From theirs, understandably less so.
The Environmental Picture Nobody's Talking About
When people think about cannabis and waste, they think about packaging. The plastic tube the flower came in. The Mylar bag. The pop-top container. That conversation is legitimate — packaging waste in cannabis is real, and the industry has a long way to go.
But there is a much larger waste story that happens before the product ever reaches a shelf, and almost nobody is talking about it.
Most licensed cannabis is grown in single-use plastic pots. After every crop cycle — typically every few months — those pots, along with all the spent growing substrate inside them, go to the landfill. Coco coir and rockwool, two of the most common growing media, cannot be recycled through standard waste streams. The nutrient solution that feeds the plants — synthetic salts dissolved in water — is discharged as liquid waste. Then new pots come in, new substrate goes in, and the cycle repeats.
That 7-gram flower tube you bought? The packaging you held in your hand is a fraction of the waste generated in producing it. The pots, the substrate, the nutrient containers, the disposal — none of that is visible to you as a consumer, but it is real, and at a commercial scale, it adds up fast. And for what it's worth: the plastic tube itself is not optional. Health Canada requires child-resistant packaging on all cannabis products. Every producer is working within the same constraints there.
At our farm, none of that waste exists.
What we put in. Synthetic fertilisers are manufactured from mined or industrially processed inputs — energy-intensive to produce, and a source of chemical runoff when they leach from agricultural land into waterways. We do not use them. Our soil amendments are organic: alfalfa meal outdoors, certified organic inputs indoors—the same category of inputs that have been feeding farmland for centuries.
What we do not throw out. Our soil beds are permanent. There is no end-of-cycle disposal because there is no end-of-cycle replacement. Outdoors, the stems and fan leaves from harvested plants get composted back into organic matter that feeds the next cycle. The loop closes on our farm rather than at a landfill.
Water. Our outdoor farm does not draw from local aquifers during the dry summer season. We irrigate from on-site rainwater retention ponds — collected during the wet season and stored for when the plants need it. On Salt Spring Island, where summer water availability is a genuine constraint, this matters.
Indoor lighting. Our indoor facility runs LEDs exclusively. They draw less power than HPS systems and run cooler, which also reduces the HVAC load. The energy reduction across lighting and cooling is real at the facility scale.
We are not claiming a zero footprint. We ship products across three provinces. We use equipment that consumes energy. But the waste that happens before cannabis reaches its packaging — the part consumers never see — is where the biggest gap exists between how we farm and how most of the industry operates.
What Our Certification Means — and What It Doesn't
FVOPA — the Fraser Valley Organic Producers Association — is one of Canada's accredited organic certifiers. Getting certified means a third-party audited our farm and confirmed that every input meets the Canadian Organic Standards. No prohibited pesticides, no synthetic fertilisers, no synthetic growth regulators. Audited annually. Not a self-declared claim.
We received our initial certification in early 2020 and have maintained it since.
But organic certification applies at the farm level. It does not automatically follow the product all the way to the shelf — and there are a few reasons why.
The main one is irradiation. Health Canada sets federal microbial limits for cannabis products, and those limits are significantly stricter for concentrates and infused formats than for dry flower. Our flower and pre-rolls typically pass microbial testing without irradiation. But for infused pre-rolls — hash-infused, for example — the microbial threshold is roughly one tenth of what it is for dry flower. The combination of flower and hash concentrate makes it almost impossible to pass without irradiation, and we would be surprised if a single non-irradiated infused pre-roll exists anywhere in Canada. It is not a farming decision. It is a federal regulatory reality.
Our vape products are different. The hydrocarbon extraction process used to make cured resin and the decarboxylation process used for live rosin both eliminate microbial content during extraction—no irradiation required.
One other quirk worth knowing: if you are buying our products in Ontario, you may not see "Certified Organic" on the label even when the product qualifies. The OCS does not currently permit organic claims on cannabis packaging sold in Ontario. It is a provincial retailer policy, not a reflection of how the product was grown.
A Note on What "Organic" Is Not
Organic is not a health claim. It is not a potency claim. It is a production standard — it describes how the farm operates, not what the cannabis will do for you.
What it does mean: no synthetic fertilisers, no prohibited pesticides, no synthetic growth regulators, and a traceable chain of custody for every input that touches the crop.
If you care about what went into the plant — and what did not — the certification is a meaningful signal. If that is not your priority, that is a legitimate position too.
Good Buds Company Inc. is a family-run, FVOPA Certified Organic licensed cannabis producer on Salt Spring Island, BC. We were the first licensed producer in Canada to receive an outdoor cannabis cultivation licence in May 2019. Our products are available at licensed retailers across BC, Alberta, and Ontario.
FAQs
What is the difference between living soil and regular cannabis growing?
Most commercial cannabis is grown in an inert growing medium — coco coir, rockwool, or soilless hydroponic systems — and fed precise nutrient solutions throughout the plant's life. When the crop is harvested, the substrate is discarded and replaced. Living soil is biologically active: it contains bacteria, fungi, nematodes, earthworms, and organic matter that work together to cycle nutrients and feed the plant through the same processes that sustain forests and grasslands. The medium is reused across multiple crop cycles, improving over time rather than being replaced.
Does living soil cannabis taste different?
Many growers and consumers describe living soil cannabis as having a more complex, layered flavour and aroma profile compared to synthetically grown flower. We attribute it to the broader range of micronutrients available through biological nutrient cycling, which supports more diverse terpene expression. Our own COA data across multiple harvests consistently show high total terpene loads in our outdoor strains — including the recurring presence of nerolidol, a terpene we associate with our specific farm environment rather than any particular strain genetics.
What is FVOPA, and why does it matter for cannabis?
FVOPA (Fraser Valley Organic Producers Association) is one of Canada's accredited organic certifiers, operating under the Canada Organic Regime and holding a CFIA designation. It is one of the few Canadian certifiers that has developed a specific certification pathway for licensed cannabis producers. Certification requires documented use of organic-compliant inputs, annual third-party audits, and full input traceability from sourcing through to the farm gate. It is not a self-declared label — it is independently verified. Good Buds has held FVOPA certification for both our indoor and outdoor facilities on Salt Spring Island since 2020.
Why do some Good Buds products say "Certified Organic" and others don't?
Organic certification applies at the farm level. Whether a finished product can carry an organic label depends on what happens after harvest. The main factor is irradiation. Health Canada sets federal microbial limits for cannabis, and those limits are considerably stricter for concentrates and infused formats than for dry flower. Our flower and pre-rolls typically pass microbial testing without irradiation. Infused pre-rolls — such as hash-infused formats — are a different story. The combined microbial load of flower and concentrate makes it nearly impossible to pass Health Canada's limits without irradiation, and irradiated product cannot carry an organic label regardless of how it was grown. This is a federal regulatory requirement, not a farming decision. Our vape products do not require irradiation because the extraction process itself eliminates microbial content. If you are buying our products in Ontario, you may not see organic claims on the label at all — the OCS currently does not permit organic labelling on cannabis sold through their system, which is an Ontario-specific policy quirk rather than anything to do with the product itself.
Why is living soil cannabis less common at the licensed producer level?
The licensed cannabis market in Canada was built largely around indoor, controlled-environment cultivation for consistency and regulatory compliance. Licensed-scale living soil requires a different facility design — permanent raised beds rather than modular pot systems — and more hands-on soil management between cycles. There is no equivalent of "turn it off and sanitise it" between runs. Living soil requires ongoing attention rather than a clean-room reset. Most licensed producers, including large-scale operators, use single-use substrate systems because they are more scalable and easier to audit for contamination control. At GOOD BUDS, our facility was designed around living soil from the start, which is why our inspectors had never seen anything like it.
Is outdoor cannabis lower quality than indoor?
Not inherently — but the answer depends on the strain and what you are optimising for. Outdoor cannabis grown in living soil, in the right climate, and with the right genetics can produce terpene complexity and natural density that indoor growing cannot replicate. Gluerangutan, our flagship outdoor strain, was pheno-hunted from 150,000 plants over multiple seasons specifically because it performs exceptionally outdoors — denser, stickier buds than the same genetics would produce indoors. The answer is not that outdoor is better or worse. It is that the right strain, in the right environment, with living soil under it, produces something specific to that place. That specificity is what we are trying to protect.
