When marijuana started to be legalized, a lot of people saw it as an opportunity to either expand their already existing business or to enter the market as a newcomer. These people all thought that they could apply their specific skill set to produce a top-quality product that could be sold at an appropriate price.
As these same people started the rather complicated process of cultivating marijuana, they found that it was not as simple as they once thought. More specifically, they found that the marijuana plant is quite delicate and to produce the best possible buds, the environment in which it is grown needs to be carefully monitored.
Regardless of the expertise level of the grower, there are a couple of problems that will be faced by experts and amateurs alike.
Cleanliness is close to godliness
In any agricultural cultivation, it is almost impossible to produce a completely sterile environment. Essentially, this is not a huge problem as this is agriculture and not medicine.
Completely sterile environments are not entirely necessary. But, in the case of marijuana cultivation, there is a level of cleanliness with ought to be achieved. With the majority of growers, cultivation environments may appear to be clean, but this does not include the microscopic level.
The systems that are used to deliver nutrients to the plants need to be incredibly clean. Even microscopic impurities could result in a pH imbalance that could severely affect the quality of the produce.
An increase in food does not mean an increase in output
Plants cannot survive on water alone. They also need food which is generally provided in the form of fertilizer. The concentration of nutrients in this fertilizer is very closely monitored and produced in a factory.
As such, products such as these are certainly not cheap. When it comes to overfeeding plants, growers often mistakenly believe that if they feed their plants more than they will delightfully find that these same plants produce more buds.
This is unfortunately not the case meaning that not only do the growers lose money on fertilizer, but they also lose money when their plants do not produce the results that there were expecting.
The issue with overfeeding when it comes to marijuana is that the pores in the plant can get blocked. If this is the case, then the plant does not get the nutrients that it needs to produce the best possible buds.
Not monitoring the variables closely
Very early in the cultivation process, growers realize that growing marijuana is by no means a simple process that can be left to nature and nature alone.
If they are to produce a market-competitive product, then there needs to be an awful amount of human intervention. At its most basic level, this intervention comes in the form of monitoring variables such as electrical conductivity, pH and microbial loads.
These variables must be constantly monitored. To get the most out of their plants, a marijuana grower will need to know the exact values of all three of these variables, along with a couple of others, at every single point.
They cannot leave these values to fluctuate at will. Even the smallest deviation from the optimal value could result in a product that is less than satisfactory.
Microbial counts
These are things that you do not want in your marijuana plants, but they are also things you cannot completely avoid.
Unfortunately, there will always be a certain amount of them that end up in your final product. But, it is your responsibility to not only know how high the microbial count is in your final product, but you should also know how to change it.
There are multiple different ways in which microbes can get into your plants. These can either be due to nature or human error. If any grower is to run the risk of either contaminating their entire harvest or worse, trying to sell a subpar product, they can never let the microbial count go by unattended or unmonitored.
The importance of runoff
How do you tell if your plants are healthy? You could wait until it is time to harvest and only then test the quality of the product that is being produced. This may seem like a logical and simple way to check, but it is a method that is loaded with risk.
If you are looking to produce the best possible product, then it is only logical to assume that it would be important to know how healthy the plant is at every point in the growing process. But then we get back to the question of how.
There are visual cues which could be used, but these can be subject to change as well as human error. It is then best to look at the chemistry of things. If one were to monitor the runoff of their crops, then they could find out what their plants are not using.
The logic here is that if the plant is not using it, then it already has as much as it needs. If these values are then used to alter the combination of nutrients that are then fed to the plants, then you could hopefully avoid the situation where you are not only wasting nutrients but also overloading the plant.
The overriding environmental conditions
Marijuana cultivators do not only need to worry about what they are feeding their plants, but they also need to be concerned with the environment in which they are growing.
These factors would include the humidity and temperature of the growing environment. These values have an optimal range that should be adhered to at all times for optimal results. But, not every plant is the same.
The correct environment of each plant can only be figured out once the grower is aware of the genetic profile of each plant. These factors are essential for marijuana growth and should not be taken lightly.
