But with so many shops claiming to have Colorado’s best weed, how does one distinguish those who are in fact selling a “premium” product? You know that special flower that turns even the most experienced connoisseurs into believers and warmly welcomes first-time enthusiasts with the very same smoke. It’s not hard to imagine how much care must go into every strain in order to produce the type of bud that allows customers to feel this incredible.

Awards and accolades aside for the moment, Billo-grown flower starts its life as clippings from mature plants that have already proven their worth. These standout specimens have been selected because of how they proliferate with exceptional terpenes and desirable potency.

So what makes the difference between what Billo is doing versus the alternatives you can find in other dispensaries? At the core, it all begins with passionate care and attention to every detail in the growing process. From the time fresh clippings start to sprout roots; the soil nutrients are continually monitored, the grow light intensity is regulated, ventilation is adjusted, and the feed water is pH balanced. Beyond that, Billo growers continually test different cultivation strategies such as the plant’s proximity to its neighbors as well as the amount of access the plants have to life-giving sources of energy.

The end game with all of this time and research is to grow the “perfect plant.” When you talk to Dave Kulberg, head of Billo’s weed grow operation, the idea of perfection is about minimizing all forms of negative stress in the plant’s life. There are any number of variables that can introduce bad stress on these living specimens and fine-tuning the environment is about enabling these sprouts to do what they were born to do, which is to flourish and thrive.

“It’s all about timing; making sure the plants get what they need when they need it,” says Dave. “In a successful grow you can’t take shortcuts. Each plant must get specific and individual care so they can produce at their best.”

When you begin to comprehend this level of care and how it’s encouraged among Dave’s entire staff, one can begin to understand why this operation is so special. There’s not a single person on the team who doesn’t wholeheartedly believe in refining the art of growing to the level of “boutique” marijuana.

“Most everyone here has dedicated the majority of their lives to the science of cannabis,” Kulberg says. “This job is more about passion than anything else.”

Oftentimes it can take three to four rounds of growing a specific weed strain to perfect it. And that process is all about allocating an extraordinary amount of time and care to each cycle.

So the next time you decide to make a purchase from your local weed dispensary, consider asking the budtender how much attention to detail went into producing the end product. If they can’t explain it to the level that Billo employees can, you might consider shopping elsewhere.