Moses Levin and Dan Marinelli, both seasoned cannabis cultivators, crossed paths when their kids shared a kindergarten class.
“I was in charge of the school garden,” said Marinelli, who has a degree in horticulture from UCLA. “I have a love for horticulture and growing plants.”
The two soon realized their common love for hemp farming. When it was federally legalized in 2019, they embarked on a venture to discover, breed and refine what they believe to be the best legal CBD seeds for their particular climate. That’s when CBD Seed Labs was born.
Although located in Southern California, the business caters to Texas farmers because of the environmental similarities.
“A lot of what we do in our genetic development is called climate tuning, which means picking out the best varieties to reproduce that tolerate the challenges of a particular climate,” Levin said. “The particular climate that we’re in has a variety of challenges that match very well with what the Texas farmer has.”
From heat and high humidity to sometimes cold temperatures, CBD Seed Labs breeds plants that are resistant to those challenges, giving the seeds an advantage to those that are produced in Colorado, Oregon and other states where there are vast climatic differences.
Additionally, “If you grab a map and draw a line from Southern California to Texas, you’re going to find that we’re at the same latitude, so we have the same light cycle, too,” Marinelli said.
Soil is also a factor. While there are many soil variants in Texas and California, Levin said one characteristic many of them have in common is their ability to drain quickly, which is exactly what hemp plants want.
CBD Seed Labs emphasizes quality over quantity, offering only three seed strains: ACDC, Cherry Blossom and Mountain Mango. Each is robust and high-yielding with a high concentration of terpenes, or aromatic compounds. They also have consistent CBD-THC ratios that ensure the plants can be harvested legally.
“We’ve done a lot of that legwork for the farmer and gone through all sorts of specific genetics to lead us to the few that we do represent,” Levin said. “Our focus is genetic selection and choosing the best of the cycle to continually improve our seed strain. Our goal with each reiteration is to stabilize them and improve them even further.”
Each of CBD Seed Labs’ strains is also 99.9% feminized with 99% viability.
“Growing feminized seeds is almost a no-brainer in the industry these days,” Levin said. “Growing a crop that has males in it is almost always doomed to failure if you’re growing CBD flower.”
CBD Seed Labs also prides itself on its exceptional customer service, providing consultations and helping with product distribution when requested.
“We are a small family-run business,” Levin said. “We answer the phone. We answer questions. We want to see our farmer’s succeed.”
In addition, CBD Seed Labs pours 100% of its efforts into seed production, which means they are not competing with farmers.
“We have a deep connection with all our products, and we want to offer expertise,” Marinelli said. “We want people to succeed, and we like working with other small family-run operations with a similar mindset. It’s a relationship business for us. We definitely try not to be that company where customers are numbers. Customers are part of the family.”