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The Costs of Growing Organic Cannabis

The Costs of Growing Organic Cannabis

Everybody has their own personal definition of what “organic” means.

For a lot of growers, organic pertains to the nutrients you use to grow. To others, organic only means planting your plants straight into the ground and growing from there.

But what does it really mean to grow organic cannabis?

What is organic cannabis?

Contrary to what the lazy grower may wish to be true, you can’t just grow cannabis in the dirt in your backyard and call it organic. You have to feed organic too. But what can you feed cannabis that is actually organic?

An organic nutrient is anything that comes from biological life. This includes bone meal, feather meals, guanos, and the like. There’s also mined organics like gypsum, pumice and other natural resources. So just using any of those throughout your plants’ life cycle should be enough.

Not exactly.

Renewable Organic Inputs

To grow as organically as possible, you want to use organic inputs that are also renewable. The problem is that these inputs are few and far between. The reality is that a lot of organic inputs are strip mined, and cause irreversible damage to the ecosystems they impact.

Take guano for example. Bat and Seabird guano are two of the most popular organic nutrient products that growers love to use when growing organic cannabis. But have you considered how these products are obtained? Strip mining.

Surveyors look all over for bats flying in and out of caves, or bird flocking to a specific cliff face or perch. They then bring in excavators and dig in, ripping up the top layers of the cave or cliffs for the high nitrogen guano, and digging all the way down for the phosphorous and potassium-rich guano that has been sitting underneath. This displaces thousands of bats and birds, and destroys any other small life that could live in the area.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t any renewable organic inputs.

While it is still up for debate among growers and suppliers alike, many would say that peat moss is renewable. The debate is due to the time is takes for peat bogs — where peat moss comes from — to redevelop. Peat moss is the result of millions of years of decomposing biological life that piles on top of itself. After it is mined, it will not replenish for a million more years. So yes, peat technically renews over time, but not fast enough for us to constantly use forever.

One of the only truly renewable organic inputs is coco coir. It is a byproduct of the coconut and textile industries in Asia. Made from the short and long fibrous hairs that aren’t used from the shell of coconuts, coco coir does no damage to any ecosystem, it doesn’t impact the livelihood of textile workers, and coconuts fall off trees every single day. Coco coir is 100% renewable, and even reusable.

Should I even grow organic cannabis?

Of course you should. The reality is that most of us are wearing clothes right now that aren’t sourced or made ethically, and we just sort of ignore it. It isn’t the best approach, and I’m sure there’s some of you out there that try to avoid supporting these companies. But the same applies to organic inputs.

If you want to grow organic cannabis, you need organic inputs. To get organic inputs, they need to be gathered through different means, whether its a renewable byproduct like coco or a strip mined inputs like guanos, phosphates and others. Sure, you could just grow in some dirt in your backyard and feed nothing but water. That is organic cannabis. But don’t expect great results.

An important ethical question growers should start considering is the importance, and difference between their end consumer’s health and the health of the environment. Organic cannabis is rising in popularity, and will most likely end up becoming a major sector of the legal industry, which means demand is going to grow. Is the consumer’s health more important than the life that is potentially destroyed in the process of obtaining those organic inputs?

The reality is you can grow cannabis with no-organic, synthetic nutrients and still have a safe to consume end product. So the decision is really up to you as a grower; is organic cannabis just a marketing tactic, or a way of life?

Autoflowering Seeds: For the grower in a hurry

Autoflowering Seeds: For the grower in a hurry

Whether you need a quick turnaround or just want plants that take up as little space as possible, autoflowering seeds may be the choice for you.

Autoflowering seeds are vastly different from feminized seeds and traditional cannabis seeds. Instead of a simple hermaphrodite to female breeding process to create feminized seeds, or male to female breeding for traditional cannabis seeds, autoflowering seeds are created from a different breeding process.

Autoflowering seeds and cannabis ruderalis

Cannabis ruderalis isn’t like traditional Afghanicas (indica) or Thai-based strains (sativa). Ruderalis grew most prevalent in the northern hemispheres, like central and eastern Europe, as well as Russia. Growing more north, the light cycle is much shorter. Over time, ruderalis adapted to enter its flower cycle with age, as opposed to light.

Whereas traditional cannabis follows photosynthesis and the light cycle to determine when to start flowering, ruderalis does not depend on it so heavily. This gives ruderalis a unique advantage over its counterparts when it comes to growth cycles. Obviously this gave breeders some ideas.

A cross of cannabis ruderalis with traditional cannabis sativas and indicas resulted in shorter, more compact plants, that flowered twice as fast as traditional seeds.

A new kind of cannabis

As autoflowering seeds started to grow in popularity, more people started to recognize just how useful the new breed could be. The ruderalis traits are extremely prevalent, shown by autoflowering plants’ compact size. Add to that the biggest benefit, the shortened growth cycle, and lack of dependency on light.

While normal cannabis must be switched from a 16/8 light to dark cycle from a 12/12 to induce the flower stages, autoflowering seeds don’t need to be switched. They can stay in the 16/8 cycle, or the 12/12 cycle without it affecting the plant’s ability to flower. This means outdoor growers can grow later in the season, and fit in more harvests.

But not all of the ruderalis traits are positive. Ruderalis is easily the most “weedy” looking relative in the cannabis family. Due to its wild nature and lack of full-scale cultivation like it’s cousins, ruderalis has a much lower THC content than indica or sativa, which can result in autoflowering seeds producing less potent flowers.

Additionally, with the convenient, compact size of autoflower plants comes lower yields. So while autoflowering seeds may flower in half the time, they don’t produce the same yields, and what they do produce will almost always be weaker in terms of THC content compared to it’s traditional or feminized counterpart.

Not a sure thing

When it comes to autoflowering seeds, it is important to note that just because the seeds are guaranteed to “flower”, doesn’t mean they are female. A lot of seed companies will sell “autofem” seeds, which are feminized, autoflowering seeds. However, your average autoflower seeds may contain some males, which is why it is important to know your seed genetics!

This can cause some problems in the garden if you don’t know they’re male until they start producing pollen next your females. So, similarly to traditional cannabis seeds, make sure to keep a close eye on plants that start to show signs of being male. Luckily, with autoflowering plants, the plants will reveal their sex much more quickly than traditional seeds due to their shortened growth cycle.

Learn more about seeds from one of the most well-known breeders and seed experts in the world, Caleb, founder of CSI Humboldt and the Pirate of the Emerald Triangle. Hear him talk about breeding elite strains, feminized seeds and more on The Real Dirt Podcast! Listen to the full episode right here on the Real Dirt, or stream it on iTunes and Spotify!

High Times Cannabis Cup or Fyre Fest 2.0?

High Times Cannabis Cup or Fyre Fest 2.0?

It was the first high Times Cup in Oklahoma, and very likely the last.

The hype before the event wasn’t any bigger than past cannabis cups. Just your average instagram posts from local dispensaries and brands that were going to attend, telling customers and attendees to stop by their booth.

But what people anticipated, and what actually happened at the High Times Cannabis Cup in Oklahoma are two very different things. And not for the better.

The Background

High Times has always had a somewhat iffy reputation among the cannabis community, mainly for the company’s poor event planning year after year. Due to the nature of the event, hosting a cannabis cup in a medical only state can cause some problems on its own. Oklahoma happens to be a medical only state.

But that’s not all.

Oklahoma also has the most progressive and fastest growing medical cannabis industry in the country. The state’s medical laws allowed, and even encouraged, outside growers, processors and retailers to bring their experience and knowledge to the new state industry. And boy did they.

As it stands now, there are over 130,000 registered patients in Oklahoma, with over 1,300 dispensaries to service them. Oklahoma is the fastest-growing medical marijuana market in the average number of daily patient increases, and MMJ patients represent 4.1% of the state’s total population – one of the highest rates in the nation. Growth is bolstered by low barriers of entry, including the fact there’s no list of qualifying conditions for patients.

Unprepared, overwhelmed, and even dangerous

To say that the venue was under prepared for the first day of the Cannabis Cup would be a massive understatement. With a huge portion of attendees coming from out of state, and just as many in-state patients, Real Dirt sources on the ground estimated around 40,000 people in attendance.

Other than the fact that it was probably the largest cannabis cup attendance in history, it was also the largest shit show. VIP entrance began at noon, with hundreds of people waiting well past 2 PM to get in “early”. General admission began at 1 PM, which only added to the chaos. Thousands of people showed up at once, making parking a nightmare.

high times cannabis cup oklahoma

A photo from the line at the Cannabis Cup in Oklahoma, about 1/4 mile from the entrance. Photo by @OKCannaCo on Twitter.

After the parking lots filled up in the first hour, attendees began parking down the street, some well over a mile from the venue. On top of that there were insanely long lines, stretching over half a mile around the outside of the venue, through the parking lot and beyond. Keep in mind this is in 80+ degree weather with extremely high humidity.

With excessive wait times, high heat and no water, people became very unhappy, very quickly, with plenty of evidence on Twitter.

One person eventually got into the event, only to find that there was hardly enough food or water for everybody:

oklahoma cannabis cup problems

Others spent all day just waiting in line:

oklahoma cannabis cup 2019

But for a lot of people, the Oklahoma Cannabis Cup was reminiscent of the extremely hyped up, and extremely unsuccessful Fyre Festival:

high times cannabis cup in oklahoma was another fyre festival

While the High Times Cannabis Cup in Oklahoma may have been a huge success for the organizers and vendors that were able to make it, there were still hundreds if not thousands of people who paid for tickets and never even got into the venue. For those that got in however, the event was a blast and a great way to connect the local and national cannabis community in Oklahoma.

Day 2 of the Cup was inevitably less crowded due to many just avoiding it all together to save the hassle of another long day in line, and so it raises the question, will High Times be back to Oklahoma?

Probably. They vastly underestimated the Oklahoma cannabis community and the interest in cannabis in the state. If they High Times wants to return to Oklahoma, they will need to make some serious changes to the venue, entrance protocols and a lot more. If they do have another cup in Oklahoma, you can bet The Real Dirt will at least try to get in.

Do’s and Don’ts of Outdoor Cannabis Clones

Do’s and Don’ts of Outdoor Cannabis Clones

A listener had some questions about planting outdoor cannabis clones. So let’s dive in.

A recent episode of The Real Dirt Podcast went in depth about the best techniques for planting outdoor cannabis clones. Some listeners have never had any issues transitioning their clones outside, but others are doing it for the first time this season.

While the main focus of the episode is about preventing early flowering in clones, a listener from Oklahoma who is new to growing wanted to know why early flowering is such a bad thing in the first place, and some other questions about planting outdoor cannabis clones.

Outdoor Cannabis Clones and Early Flowering

A lot of new growers might plant some clones outside, come back a couple weeks later to find them already flowering, and think they struck gold. If you could grow a cannabis plant in half the time and still have it produce flowers, why wouldn’t you? But that’s not really how it works.

Here’s how it usually goes: You take the plant out in May. Two weeks later you notice those pretty flowers. Two weeks after that, you get small buds. But then the plant stalls for two weeks to a month and begins to grow weird shaped leaves out of the buds. The plant then reverts back to vegetative growth.

At this point however, it’s already the middle of July, so your plant only has two or three more weeks before it goes into flower again under the natural light of the sun. In the end, you end up with less cannabis that doesn’t look as good.

There are a few things you can do to ensure that your clones thrive outside, but there’s also plenty of things to avoid.

The Do’s of Outdoor Cannabis Clones

Know your clones – Certain clones just don’t perform well outdoors. If they come from a strain that was bred indoors and is mostly cultivated indoors, you’re more likely to encounter problems. Before you just buy an exotic strain clone from your local nursery, do some research into its growth patterns and traits, so you can be sure to avoid strains more prone to problems.

Know your light cycles – Different areas of the United States have short and longer light cycles throughout the year. You can easily look up the light cycles of where you live to determine when you should plant your outdoor cannabis clones. In Oklahoma for example, May 1 has 13 and a half hours of daylight. By June 1, there is 14 hours and 23 min of daylight. Then by June 21, the longest day of the year, Oklahoma gets over 14 and half hours of sunlight. Most clones will want to flower at this point, which you don’t want.

Keep some backups – It’s always good to keep some backup clones on hand that you don’t plant outside right away. Especially if it is your first time growing outdoor cannabis clones, start with planting half to two-thirds of your clones outdoors after ensuring they aren’t prone to problems. Should they flower early by chance, you’ll at least have some plants you can salvage and continue to grow.

Transition your clones – Use a shade cloth or a greenhouse to acclimate your plants to the sun. As they adjust to natural light you can wane them off of supplemental lights until they are ready to transplant. If you want to keep it as simple as possible, you can keep your plants under tree cover and shade and then move them out into the sun when they are ready. With this method you most likely won’t have any supplemental lighting.

Keep an eye on them Clones are extremely sensitive to transplants, and it’s common for outdoor cannabis clones to have issues when they are transplanted from a controlled indoor or greenhouse environment to an outdoor bed or pot. You need to check on your clones regularly to ensure none of them are suffering from transplant shock or other problems.

Seems simple enough, but there’s some things you need to avoid to increase your outdoor cannabis clones’ chances.

The Don’ts of Outdoor Cannabis Clones

Don’t put them out too early – Unless you are using supplemental lighting outdoors, you need to keep your clones in a greenhouse where you can control their light schedule to help them adjust to natural light over time. When the longest days in late May and early June only have 13-14 hours of light, your clones will begin flowering if not adjusted.

Don’t let your clones become root bound – The last thing you want is for your clones to become comfortable in their nursery pots, with roots wrapped around its base, only to strain those roots when you transplant them. If you transplant outdoors before your clones have rooted, it will be easier for them to adjust and root into their new medium.

Don’t stress your clones out – Clones are already delicate. They are raised in a controlled environment, with a specific temperature, humidity and lighting. If you’re keeping your clones at a steady temperature 72-74 degrees Fahrenheit indoors, you don’t want to transplant them on a 95 degree day. While it is important to keep your keep your clones wet for the first few days after transplanting, you don’t want to stress them by overwatering either.

This list of do’s and don’ts might seem long, but making sure your outdoor cannabis clones don’t flower early isn’t difficult to avoid. You can simply keep them in an indoor or greenhouse environment and slowly adjust the lights, so when you put them outside around solstice when the day is around 15 hours, your plants will be adjusted, and will transition to flower more naturally.

 

Listen to the original episode all about planting outdoor cannabis clones and let us know if you have any questions we didn’t answer!

Is That Botrytis? Catching Bud Rot

Is That Botrytis? Catching Bud Rot

The hobby grower or casual cannabis consumer might not even know where to look for bud rot. But you don’t want to find it on your buds.

Botrytis, commonly called “bud rot”, is a type of mold that develops on the dense cores of cannabis flowers. It starts in the stems and works its way into the base of your buds, eventually consuming and destroying the whole flower.

If caught early on, bud rot can be minimized to only a few infected plants, but the only way to get rid of it entirely is to destroy the infected plants and fix your environment.

The Cause of Bud Rot

Botrytis thrives in cooler temperatures with high humidity. If you have no proper airflow in your grow room, your plants can become a breeding ground for bud rot. One of the most common causes of bud rot is a double edged sword for a lot of growers.

As cannabis flowers develop and become more dense, more moisture can collect on the flowers especially in a more humid environment. While a lot of growers try to produce the heaviest buds possible for higher yields, doing so runs an increased risk of developing bud rot if extra care is not taken.

Bud rot is also much more common in drug cultivars of cannabis (improperly called Indica today), that grow stockier with denser buds due to their origins in the kush mountains where temperature were cooler. European hemp-derived cultivars (Sativas) grow taller and more airy compared to drug cultivars, which gives them superior mold resistance with proper air flow.

How to Catch It

If a grower doesn’t catch bud rot before they send it out to the dispensary, it’s unlikely a budtender or customer will pick it up either. An observant grower should be consistently checking their plants, looking under the canopy, and getting into the base of the buds with a loupe to check for bud rot.

Botrytis can be confused for amber trichomes to an amateur, as it can have a white or brownish color that resembles dark trichomes. But the distinguishing feature of bud rot is the wispy, web-like threads that spread across the bottom of the buds. A grower can catch botrytis before harvest or after harvest during trimming. It won’t always affect every plant in the grow, which is why it’s so important to check every plant, and during trimming check all the buds for bud rot.

For the average consumer picking up cannabis at the dispensary, there are a couple ways to catch bud rot. Bigger, denser buds are more likely to develop botrytis, so these buds need to be checked first. Simply rotate the bud around, checking the base for the white to dark brown, wispy threads. Squeezing the bud softly and listening for a crunch can also help. If the bud sort of mushes together in your fingers without crumbling or breaking, there’s a chance it still has moisture in it. If the bud feels a little too sticky, check for bud rot.

How to Deal with Bud Rot

The best way to deal with botrytis is to catch it early on, or preventing it all together with environmental controllers that maintain proper temperatures and humidity in the grow. If you do encounter bud rot on your plants, the earlier the better.

Unfortunately, bud rot is most likely to develop in the later flowering stages as buds get more dense. This means the infected buds need to be thrown out, and the remaining plants moved to a stable grow environment. For the cannabis consumer, if you spot bud rot on your cannabis, you might be out of luck.

Dispensaries don’t have return policies, and it would probably take some convincing to have your infected cannabis replaced free of charge. But if you have evidence like pictures, there’s a chance the dispensary will make it right. Overall, if you are sold bud rot-ridden cannabis from any dispensary, it’s time to go somewhere else.

The Truth About Living Soil

The Truth About Living Soil

I hear two really popular tag-lines about growing cannabis these days: living soil and no till.

In reality, these terms are really just old forms of magic poking their head into the new cannabis industry. Living soil is a term defined by Elaine Ingram, our godmother to biological understanding of the soil. The problem is, all soul is living.

The idea of living soil is that you nurture the environment within the soil and develop an ecological or biological ecosystem. Now, on the surface it sounds great. But how do we get there, and what does it really mean to have “living” soil?

Origins of Living Soil Ingredients

First off, living soil is no more environmentally friendly than rockwool.

Ok, 3/4 of the people reading this just threw their phone across the room or started cursing my name. But just think about where all those organic ingredients come from. Just because they are natural ingredients doesn’t mean they’re superior.

Almost every specialty organic ingredient is strip mined. Somebody rolls onto a piece of land, sets up conveyors and starts digging a hole. They get all the gypsum or bat guano or whatever else out and maybe they fill the hole back up. Maybe they just walk away. Not the most environmentally friendly.

For instance, bat guano is one of the most loved organic ingredients by living soil farmers. However they don’t just sweep up the fresh bat poop on the floor of caves. They find areas around the planet where bats are living, and tear them apart top to bottom.

High-nitrogen guano is the freshest bat poop. This is the first product that is swept up off the bottom of the cave using large excavators and front-end loaders. As soon as the fresh bat guano is depleted the hard soil at the bottom of the cave begins to be dug up. This is the high phosphorus bat guano.

The same destructive process is used for fossilized kelp, humus, gypsum and lime, creating eco-damaging strip mines everywhere. Kind of uncool if you ask me.

Real “Living Soil”

If you have a real commitment to organic farming you would use just compost and other waste products such as fish emulsion, bonemeal, harvested kelp, and composted agricultural waste. Compost has minimal nutrition in it and only biological life like weeds, seeds and other bugs.

I have made literally millions of yards of compost. Compost is usually made from green waste materials or sawdust. The whole point is to add nitrogen to the carbon-based waste product.

When you balance the carbon-nitrogen ratio, your compost is ready. This means all the nitrogen and most of the beneficial phosphorus and potassium has also been eaten up in the composting process. Therefore compost is mostly cheap filler. The only benefits you get from it is biological life, yet you have to deal with the bugs, pests, weeds and the seeds.

Living Soil and Cannabis

Besides the environmental impacts, living soil doesn’t really work that well inside. Living soil is often full of bugs, part of what makes it “alive”. Once a critter is introduced into an indoor environment there’s little chance that you’ll be able to restore your grow room back to its bug-less inception.

With modern cannabis growing, pesticides and pest control are of the upmost importance. Pest control is a heavily regulated area within the cannabis community. Pest control is so highly regulated that the introduction of pests into your room is the first line of defense.

Living soil doesn’t yield indoors and in most cases living soil does not yield much at all. It mostly serves as a magical term used by magical people to complete their Bro-science degree.

I’m not telling you it doesn’t work, I’m saying it’s like a hole-in-one. You can try as hard as you can, practice your swing all day. But a hole-in-one is determined as much by luck as it is determined by your skill. Living soil is the same way; it’s expensive, it’s never the same twice, you have to work hard at mixing it, and then only randomly does it actually work well.

At this point if you’re still reading you’re either intrigued or you totally hate me. Here’s the truth. I’m a sucker for organic, and if it says organic on the label I generally buy it. I’m a 25 year vegetarian, and even lived off the grid for numerous years. I am a tree hugger and a conservationist.

But if you want to grow the highest quality cannabis indoors, the above ideas don’t mash. If you want to grow consistently and not crap after crap, living soil will not work for you.

If you want to believe your bro science or your brother-in-law or your “Master” grower friend that’s always putting you down, go for it. But look at the quality of all of your buds without excuses and you’ll see living soil a little differently.