Chip Baker had the opportunity to speak with Jeff, the head grower at Denver’s Natural Remedies on The Real Dirt Podcast. Jeff’s story is as encouraging as it is inspiring. The road to becoming a head grower can be wrought with confusion, particularly for those new to the industry.
Getting into a Denver dispensary
So you’ve got your badge, a dream, and you’re ready to begin your adventures in cannabis. With cannabis legalization, particularly in Colorado, there was a wave of immigration of those looking to carve a path for themselves in field that for a century has been taboo. This has made getting your foot in the door particularly difficult. Entering the industry as a grower in a Denver dispensary is a challenging feat unless you have prior growing experience or you know the right people.
Taking a job behind the scenes in harvesting or trimming in a Denver dispensary is a great way to get started. These are really considered the entry level cannabis production jobs. Going from nothing to a trim team will be an exciting and at times overwhelming experience if you’ve never been around that much marijuana before. Learning the nuances of the harvesting and trimming process are fundamental in understanding the overall system of cannabis production.
The growing/learning curve is real
Moving into a grow position is a pretty eye opening experience. Hours a day spent watering, and even more hours spent cleaning, may take some of the glamour out of it. But rest assured, there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Once you spend a few months working through your fist few cycles, you really start to grasp the big picture and how important the fine details and the complexity behind them really are. You start to master balancing your pH, your EC, and really begin to understand the needs of the plant. Allow your cannabis pants to become an extension of yourself.
No matter how much you learn in the grow you need to balance it with book work. There a a number of great books on the science behind cannabis cultivation that will fill some of the gaps that form from a purely hands on education. As your cannabis education continues, ventures into IPM or Integrated Pest Management will become what seems like a full time job. Controlling pests and eliminating pathogens is a science unto itself, but is a necessary part of working your way toward head grower.
Listen to The Real Dirt podcast episode with Jeff from Natural Remedies
Head growers are the black belts of the cannabis world. It’s a long hard journey, but with learning cannabis, its the journey that matters, not the destination. Once you get there you won’t even care, because the knowledge that you will have accumulated is far more important than the title. To hear how Jeff from Natural Remedies achieved his cannabis goals and reached the position of head grower, check out his interview with Chip Baker on The Real Dirt podcast.
