Written by: Charlie - October 12, 2026
Welcome to Tao Gardens!
Pronounced Dao, like the religion, and located in the same green little corner of Eugene as Kaprikorn, Focus North, and Gaia's Ganja Garden, the lovely folks here at Tao are leading the way when it comes to flora- and fauna-rich living soil, pushing the boundaries of cannabinoid contents, and pheno-hunting delicious new strains for the Oregon cannabis market. Bringing you beautiful classics like the heady Deadhead OG, the powerful sleeper cell Gas Cap, and truly the gluey-est of True Glues, these industry legends have been slinging out green since they were founded in 2018.
We were lead around the facilities by our wonderful and kind Tao rep, Max, who's been at the company for seven years. He started at the company as a trimmer, working his way up to trim lead, garden hand, lead grower and harvest manager, and now leading the sales department as one of two reps for the entire state. Their entire production is located inside one large warehouse, where they have a handful of different grow rooms, each filled to the brim with various strains we know and love, as well as new phenos they are hunting. The little lobby area we entered first had these awesome posters describing common terpenes, cannabinoids, and the endocannabinoid system.
The first grow room we were shown held the mothers for all the strains they grow. Every grow room after this was in full to the brim with plants in various stages of growth. The babies below were born only a few weeks prior and had the tiniest babiest of nugs barely starting to form.
What makes Tao's grow unique is their cultivation of a rich, healthy, living soil. When one of the growers pulled a handful of soil up from one of their active grow beds, it was nightmare fuel for a scoleciphobe. The dirt in his hands started to wriggle with giant worms poking their little heads out of the dirt. I thought it was adorable. Tim says it's the most alive soil they've ever seen with the naked eye. The single handful had at least ten worms in it. Not only that, but they intentionally supply predatory bugs to their grow beds to protect the plants against potential harm from unwanted bugs. These predatory bugs include rolllie-pollies (Armadillidium vulgare), Swirski mites (Typhlodromips swirskii), Mealybug Destroyers (Cryptolaemus montrouzieri), Cucumeris mites (Neoseiulus cucumeris), and Minute Pirate bugs (Orius insidiosus). They also have an established lacewing presence (non-specific, of the order Neuroptera). Besides bugs, they supply nematodes (or roundworms) of various species, including Heterorhabditis bacteriophora, Steinernema feltiae, and Steinernema carpocapsae. These bugs and worms are added to every new growth cycle, and then Neoseiulus californicus and Phytoseiulus persimilis are supplemented as needed for further pest control.
The rollie-pollies are great for soil health but like to munch on cannabis stems and leaves and therefore lower crop yield. To prevent this, the grow team wraps a small piece of HVAC insulation tape around the base of each individual cannabis plant; the tape's sticky exterior prevents the rollie-pollies from ever reaching the base of their stems. It takes a team of of two growers roughly 8 hours straight to wrap 648 cannabis plants (9 rows of 72 plants in a 4x18 array) with a piece of tape for each grow room. Max himself has had to kill so many rollie-pollies in his line of work that he got a tattoo of them to pay homage to his longtime friend and foe.
Alongside their predatory bugs, the growers at Tao also utilize a simultaneous cover crop of red clover (Trifolium pratense) with each grow to help enrich the soil. As cannabis plants grow, they require a large amount of nitrogen to grow that they absorb through their roots, which depletes the soil of this vital nutrient. Clover is excellent at nitrogen fixation, which is the process of increasing usable nitrogen compounds in the soil. The clover hosts beneficial microbes inside their roots that uptake unusable nitrogen compounds and convert them into usable nitrogen compounds.
Alright, enough science for now, look at the weed:
One strain they were pheno hunting, Koozie, they had multiple different phenos in single large pots at the front of the rows of other strains, and it was fascinating to see how different they all were! One had pale green leaves and buds and a sweet aroma like berries and honey, one had heavy purplage with orange pistils and an earthier aroma, and one was a rich dark green with a smell I cannot describe well, like sweet bread.
Remember those worms from earlier? They provide an essential service to the cannabis plants, refining unusable, bio unavailable fertilizer into usable fertilizer nutrients that the plants can uptake to grow optimally. When growers at Tao start a new round of plants, they add blood meal, feather meal, and fish powder (all rich in unusable nitrogen) to the soil as starting fertilizers. The worms and microbes process these into usable nitrogen over time, allowing the plants to have access to high quantities of nitrogen throughout their entire growth cycle, keeping them healthy and happy. Shout out worms!
Next up: the drying and curing stage! The amount of time each stalk hangs to dry and then cure depends upon the exact strain itself, but most are done in less than 4-5 weeks, ready to distribute out to dispensaries like us. The smell in this room was unbelievable. Below, enjoy some pictures of beautiful drying cannabis.
And this was the end of the tour of the facilities!
Max bought us lunch at a Mexican food truck just down the road (peep the nachos y burrito) and we got to meet Nick Ciufo, the owner and founder of Tao, who showed us their first ever batch of 6* full melt hash.
And that was it! Ta-ta for now! -Charlie
