Medical marijuana dispensary re-review: Fall harvest at Grassroots Grown in Sunnyside
Grassroots Grown has been on my radar for a fall visit since an ill-timed drop-in this past spring to the greenhouse-only dispensary.
And it was well worth making a return trip.
Grassroots GrownI didn't originally stop by for a review, I just happened to be in the area and remembered someone telling me that the shop's fall harvest was finally starting to come in. And for Grassroots, that's kind of a big deal. Colorado may be known for herb (especially now), but we aren't necessarily known for our outdoor herb.4379 Tejon Street
Denver, CO 80211
303-420-6279
www.grassrootsgrown.comHours: 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Sunday.
Raw marijuana price range (members and non-members): $20-$25/eighth, tax included. Ounces, $140-$180.
Other types of medicine: Hash, BHO, edibles.
Online menu: Yes.
Handicap-accessible?: Yes.
Most places here grow their cannabis indoors using thousands of watts of lights (and energy, and natural resources, and... well, you get the point). But everything at Grassroots is grown on a 70-acre plot outside of Boulder. The word "outdoor" isn't exactly accurate, though. Grassroots grows its crops in massive greenhouses that allow the farmers to control variables such as temperature, water and even light.
A quick junior-high-level science refresher: Most marijuana varieties in the world go from their growing, vegetative state to a flowering state based on light changes from season to season. Generally, that's why herb planted outdoors in the spring starts to change after the summer solstice, when the days begin to get shorter and shorter. In more equatorial climates, that doesn't change as much. But as you move north, our sunlight time dwindles to about nine hours and twenty minutes in the middle of winter (compared to eleven hours in places like, say, Jamaica). 
Grassroots Grown's controlled greenhouse.
Last winter, the owners of Grassroots used light deprivation on the greenhouses -- which is a fancy way of saying they pulled dark tarps over the top of the clear buildings to trick the plants into flowering. But that produced the meager and at times unimpressive harvest I saw back in April. The owners recognized that, too -- and since then, they have focused on cranking out two harvests of organic, solar-powered herb worth smoking to maximize the shorter grow times we have in Colorado.
Grassroots has also solved its other little problem since our last visit: a letter from U.S. Attorney John Walsh claiming that its old Tennyson location was a criminal enterprise because it operated within 1,000 feet of a school or daycare center. Another, even more intensive change: The center has essentially moved into a fully functional dispensary previously occupied by Cannabis and Company, a shop police say was actually just a front for lots of marijuana moving out of state.
Hopefully, Grassroots brings some needed good mojo to the space. But for now, the staff has not done too much to alter the former storefront, even keeping the massive lime green wall outside. The new Grassroots doesn't have the knick-knack charm its old two-story house did. No more bright wood floors, quirky paint job on the inside and huge coffee-shop style lounge set-up for patients. But function wins out over décor, and the space clearly works for what Grassroots is doing now.
Grassroots Grown 707 Headband x Maui
Staff was still just as great as before, and the manager on duty was pumped to be showing off the fall harvest; he let me take my time with everything. The bud bar is a few glass cabinets, with buds on the right side and edibles and concentrates on the other. Buds were on the counter when I stopped by, each labeled with the strain name. Simple. Easy.
Continue for the rest of the review plus photos.
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