The following information was provided by Canopy Growth Corporation's communications co-ordinator, D'Arcy McDonell during a tour of the Smiths Falls' Tweed plant.

What's the best way to grow a cannabis plant?

There are two ways to start a cannabis plant — either from a seed or from a clone taken from the mother plant. They are clipped at a 45-degree angle, dipped in a rooting solution, then put into peat moss domes. Cloning is more reliable than growing from seeds and the genetics would be more consistent to each other. Seed to seed, you can get vast variations.

How long do the mother plants live and how many babies will she have?

Mother plants live for three to six months, depending on the strength of the plant, producing 200 to 500 clones each — up to five clippings per day, so as not to stress out the plant.

Just like babies in a hospital, these young cannabis plants each have ID bracelets.

How many stages of growth are there for a cannabis plant?

Three stages to growth: seedling or clone, the vegetative stage and the flowering stage. In vegetative stage, we mimic late spring, early summer growing conditions — 18 hours of sunlight, six hours of darkness. In this stage plants put a lot of energy growing taller and stronger, but they don't produce the buds.

In the flowering stages, lights are adjusted to 12 hours on, 12 hours off. That tells the plant that the seasons are changing, and so it starts to produce flowers, and that is where the buds come from.

The entire grow process takes between 18-20 weeks, depending on the strain.

Plants are stress-trained with fans, which also provides quality air flow. Small ligatures are created when the plants "shimmy," causing more nutrients to be released into the stock from the soil.

What types of cannabis is grown at Canopy Growth?

The two major types of cannabis plants are indica and sativa. Each strain has its own range of effects on the body and mind, resulting in a wide range of medicinal benefits.

CBD works as an anti-inflammatory and anti-anxiety product, which can be found in indica or sativa.

One of the workers picking off some of the buds from a mother plant. 

Indica and sativa are monikers showing where they have come from, but they are also known to have certain effects. Indica is more sleepy, sedative and is deep-body relaxing, while sativa would be more wakeful and energetic.

Sativa grows long and skinny and shoot higher toward the light, while indica plants are shorter and stockier and produce denser buds.

What about terpenes?

Now that cannabis is legal, scientists are discovering that it's not actually indica or sativa that are defining the effects by users, it's the terpenes that will indicate this. Terpenes are a large and diverse group of molecules that are produced by nearly every single plant in nature, including cannabis. For example, para-Cymene is found in many essential oils like cumin and thyme. It has a slight citrus smell, but also imparts a gasolinelike odour. This can be obtained in a cannabis product 'Tweed CBD' or 'Donegal.'

How are the plants fed and watered?

Water reservoirs — repurposed from the former Hershey plant — hold town water to which nutrients are applied for each of the different types of strains. When it is sent out to feed the plants, it is automated to feed specific nutrients to each stage of growth. Run-off water comes back to see how much nutrients are being absorbed by the plants, and some of the water is also recyclable.

Different terpenes that exist in pot strains.

There are dozens of flowering rooms, each at different stages of growth. To avoid the cola bud (or that first big bud on the plant) you would clip it. Then two buds will start to grow — clip them, then four will grow. It will spread the plant out to become bushier and heartier. Scrogging (or a netting system) is also used to ensure the plant's stability and encourages an even canopy of growth.

Once the plants are grown, they are cut down and sent to the trim room. Then they go to the dry room, after which they are packaged and sold as dry flower or processed into oils.

Bug infestation is controlled organically (with other bug-eating critters), so no pesticides or insecticides are used.

How is the oil from flower separation done?

Some of the harvested cannabis from the Smiths Falls cannabis manufacturing plant.

There are different ways to extract cannabinoids from the plant, like CBD and THC. Health Canada has regulations on how you can extract right now.

Cannabinoids are extracted and mixed into coconut oil, which can be sold as a straight coconut oil product or put it into gel caps. This makes it more of a familiar format for older age groups, as it's an easier transition or a softer introduction into cannabis usage.

Decarboxylation — or heating — has to be done to the cannabis buds to activate the cannabinoids.

The cannabis is put into ovens, heated to certain temperatures to decarb them, removed, then processed using a supercritical extraction (heat and pressure). The oil extracted is put into bottles or capsules.

What are the steps of harvesting?

When harvesting cannabis, there are three stages of trimming: first a manual trim by employees who finely cut from the stock; from there they go into a machine called the twister, which will knock off a layer of dry leaves; then to another machine that has steel tunnels with blades inside where the bud will get a finer trim.

The trimmed plant is trashed at this point, but eventually, there will be mass potential for the leftover stock to be used. "You can't do everything overnight, now that we have the supply grow and distribution capacity set up our focus can turn to finding efficiencies in our grow process, save money while we do it and produce a better product, (and) to process the fibrous materials that come from it."

Canopy Growth also has hemp grow operations, and cannabis and hemp (the male cannabis plant) fibres can be used in all kinds of things like textiles and clothing. As the industry matures, scientists are finding more and more potential, like biofuels.

The automation room was off-limits to photographers. This is where measured grams of cannabis are dropped into canisters for shipping, and cannabis oils and soft gels being packaged.

The liquid gels spiked from 3,500 a week and are now being packaged at a rate of three million a week — as there is a huge medicinal market, called Spectrum at Canopy Growth. There is a spectrum of colours and each one coincides with a different cannabinoid profile.

Where can one buy your products?

Recreational and medicinal cannabis cannot be purchased over the counter at the Smiths Falls facility. To find out more, visit their website. Cannabis products can be purchased at cannabis-licensed retailers in Ontario. You can also check out the Tweed visitors' centre (the former Hershey Chocolate Shoppe) and see how the operation works.