Season 2 | Episode 1: Insights from Spannabis & Beyond

Season 2 | Episode 1: Insights from Spannabis & Beyond

Podcast: Season 2 | Episode 1

Summary:

  • Spannabis Experience: Anders shared his personal experience at Spannabis, highlighting the vibrant social club scene in Barcelona and the excitement around cannabis culture and legalization. They particularly enjoyed the hash scene, with notable mention of Piatella Hash and its unique curing process.
  • International Travel and Awareness of Pipp Horticulture: Anders discussed his surprise at the international recognition of Pipp, indicating that many attendees were familiar with the brand. They also mentioned their upcoming presence at events in Europe, inviting cultivators to engage with them.
  • Concerns about Pathogen Spread Through Seeds: There was a discussion about the spread of pathogens and viruses through seeds, emphasizing the importance of responsible breeding practices and testing to prevent the transmission of diseases.
  • Quality of Exhibits at Spannabis: The conversation touched on the impressive quality of exhibits at Spannabis, noting the elaborate and stylish booths, which reflected the sophistication of the European cannabis industry.
  • Comparison with Other Cannabis Events: Anders and Michael compared Spannabis to other cannabis events like MJBizCon and Canna Fest, highlighting differences in atmosphere, attendee engagement, and the quality of conversations with growers.
  • Upcoming Events and Engaging with Pipp Horticulture: Michael and Anders discussed their plans to attend upcoming events in Europe and encouraged listeners to engage with them at these events, promising informative discussions about cannabis cultivation.

If you are a grower looking to optimize your cultivation facility or anyone looking to cultivate more in less space, then this is the show for you. Each week, join Host Michael Williamson as he travels across the country, to explore the world of vertical farming and the future of cannabis and food production through his conversations with leading industry operators, growers and executives who are demonstrating success and resilience as growers and cultivators. Each episode provides stories and key insights that will inspire and show you first-hand, how each of these companies have overcome challenges, and found their own path to success.

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Pipp Horticulture at Candre

[CHECKLIST] 10 Safety Tips in the Grow Room

[CHECKLIST] 10 Safety Tips in the Grow Room

Pipp Horticulture at Candre

Grow Room Safety Is Key

The indoor cannabis cultivation environment is an exciting place, one brimming with life and growth. You’ve no doubt hired a supremely talented team to run the operation, but general reminders about grow room safety are always welcome.  We’ve compiled 10 simple but essential tips for maintaining high safety standards in your grow rooms. These tips are meant to be regularly applied, as safety is an ongoing process. Encourage your team to consistently review and adhere to the safety protocols for your grow room.

1. Check Your PPE on a Monthly Basis

Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) may have garnered the spotlight during the pandemic, but workers familiar with food-grade manufacturing environments or horticulture spaces have long been aware of the importance of these products. PPE protects employees from exposure to hazardous substances, plant allergens, and other physical injuries. 

Monthly checks and immediate replacement of worn or damaged PPE are vital to maintain high safety standards. Doing so will ensure that workers are adequately protected against potential risks from fine plant matter. 

This not only complies with health and safety regulations but also fosters a culture of safety within the workplace. Culture is very important when it comes to safety.

▢ Conduct monthly PPE checks and replace any worn or damaged equipment immediately.

Cannabis Cultivators Using ELEVATE by Pipp to Access 2nd Level Multi-Tier Racks

2. Understand Stability with Mobile Racking

Mobile racks are an effective tool when laying out your indoor cultivation environment. Your team can really expand their use of space in the grow room, but they must also be mindful of safety protocols.

Staff training, even on something as routine as moving mobile racks within the grow room, is always important. This is especially true for new hires who may be coming from cultivation businesses that used different styles of vertical racks. Make sure that everyone in the grow room understands how to engage locking mechanisms on all mobile racking units when not in use to prevent unintended movement. Include those seemingly minor practices in SOPs: Lock the units in place after any adjustment. 

Mobile racks can be made available with an Anti-Tip Track, as well, which is required in seismic zones. Consider the reactions to the April 5 earthquake in New Jersey, which rattled workplaces along the coast. 

▢ Implement a checklist for periodic safety checks of your mobile racks’ wheels and tracks.

Two Level Grow Benches by Pipp Horticulture at Freedom Green

3. Understand Weight Distribution and Load Capacity

On a similar note, make sure your team knows what your racks can handle. Understanding and adhering to the weight limits of racking units is crucial to prevent collapses or structural failures that could result in injury or damage. 

Actionable steps include clearly labeling each racking unit with its maximum load capacity and training staff on how to distribute weight evenly across shelves. Regular inspections should be conducted to ensure that racks are not overloaded and that heavier items are stored on lower or middle shelves to maintain stability.

▢ Label your racking units with maximum load capacity.

4. Monitor Your Electrical Connections with Thermal Imaging

Given the extensive use of electrical equipment in cannabis cultivation, electrical safety is important to prevent fires, shocks, and equipment failures. Proactive inspections help identify potential hazards early. This protocol helps maintain electrical systems safely and efficiently. 

Lights can overheat if not properly installed, for instance, or if the electrical infrastructure is overloaded. Implementing monthly inspections allows for the early identification of potential hazards, such as frayed wires, loose connections, or overloaded circuits, which are common issues that can lead to serious accidents. 

During these inspections, use a thermal imaging camera to detect hot spots invisible to the naked eye, indicative of electrical overload or failing components. This proactive approach minimizes downtime and protects both the workforce and the investment in cultivation infrastructure.

Beyond your inspections, electrical safety in the grow room is similar to electrical safety in other environments: Don’t daisy-chain multiple power strips off of one another, for example. Be mindful of your circuit capacity, and don’t confuse your lighting equipment’s output equivalency for its actual power draw.

▢ Perform monthly inspections of all electrical equipment and wiring, looking for signs of wear or damage.

5. Develop a Chemical Storage Protocol

Proper chemical storage and handling are essential to prevent spills, contamination, and exposure to toxic substances. 

Establishing a clear protocol, including a spill response plan, and reviewing it quarterly with the team minimizes the risk of accidents. Make sure that all new hires are aware of this protocol from the jump, too.

Proper chemical storage safeguards both employee health and the grow room environment.

▢ Create a chemical storage and handling protocol, including a spill response plan, and review it with the team quarterly.

Cannabis Growers Using Pipp Horticulture at Culta

6. Stretch! (Seriously)

Consider a group stretch at the start of each shift. Ergonomic practices like that help prevent musculoskeletal injuries common in cultivation tasks that involve repetitive motion or prolonged standing. Your team is your most important asset; make sure they’re in top shape.

This simple yet effective routine can significantly reduce the incidence of work-related discomfort and injuries, enhancing productivity and employee satisfaction. This can be a simple way to add some fun team bonding to each day’s work.

Stretching can also elevate team morale. The high-demand nature of cannabis cultivation can place significant stress on employees, potentially impacting their mental health and productivity. Establishing a supportive workplace culture through simple activities that encourage a pause in the workday hustle can also prevent burnout in addition to  enhancing team morale.

▢ Implement a 15-minute group stretch for the team at the start of each shift to reduce the risk of musculoskeletal injuries.

Mobile Grow Racks by Pipp at Culta

7. Prepare for Emergencies

You never know what can happen in a dynamic environment like your grow rooms. 

Conducting emergency response drills, including fire evacuation and first-aid scenarios, is critical to ensure staff are prepared for potential emergencies. 

These drills, ideally held twice a year, help familiarize the team with emergency procedures, improving the speed and effectiveness of the response to actual incidents, thereby minimizing potential injuries and damage.

You can get more specific with this training, too, down to the individual level. Conducting regular first aid training and emergency response drills empowers employees to act quickly and effectively in case of accidents, injuries, or health emergencies. Having a well-trained team can make a critical difference in minimizing the impact of such events, making this an essential component of any safety program. Making first aid kits easily accessible throughout the cultivation facility and ensuring that all employees know how to use them is also crucial.

▢ Hold emergency response drills twice a year, and make sure your first aid kits are well stocked and easily accessible.

8. Place Sanitation at the Heart of Your SOPs

Daily end-of-shift cleaning routines for all tools and workspaces are essential for preventing the spread of pests and diseases within the grow facility. This might seem obvious, but it helps to put those routines on paper–and to communicate them clearly to all team members. This regular sanitation practice maintains a clean and safe environment for plants and people alike. It’s also good habit formation practice, which can encourage greater awareness of safety precautions throughout the rest of the facility. 

▢ Establish daily end-of-shift cleaning routines for all tools and workspaces to maintain a hygienic environment.

9. Ramp Up Security

Regular audits of access control systems ensure that only authorized personnel can enter sensitive cultivation areas. This practice will safeguard against theft, contamination, and unauthorized entry. 

Rigorous security measures maintain the integrity of the cultivation process and protect valuable genetic material.

▢ Audit access control systems quarterly to ensure only authorized personnel can enter cultivation areas.

Multi-Tier Grow Racks by Pipp Horticulture at Culta

10. Communicate With Your Team

Monthly safety and operations training sessions keep the team informed about the latest cultivation techniques, safety protocols, and regulatory compliance. Although those topics may not change monthly, each one involves a great deal of detail. Minor aspects of safety protocols or regulatory language can be overlooked as time goes on, so frequent communication is important to keep them top-of-mind.

Ongoing education empowers employees with the knowledge and skills to perform their tasks efficiently and safely. This fosters a proactive and safe workplace culture for all. 

▢ Organize monthly safety and operations training sessions to keep the team updated on best practices and safety protocols.

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Cultivating Cannabis at Culta with Pipp Horticulture Racks

4 Strategies for Even Light Distribution in Vertical Grows

4 Strategies for Even Light Distribution in Vertical Grows

Pipp Horticulture at Culta

The Right Lights for Your Grow

Any cultivation business’s expansion into vertical farming is a complex challenge. One of the main goals is to achieve optimal light distribution on each level of the grow. 

We  are here to address the interplay between light physics, plant physiology, and technological innovations. Those elements work together to deliver light to the tiers in your grow room, and it’s on your team to ensure that the light falls evenly and helps all plants grow as healthy as possible. 

Before we get going, is your business considering an expansion to a vertical environment within your facility? We’ve got helpful tips for building out a multi-tier grow. 

Light Physics in Plant Growth

Pipp Horticulture at CultaThe Inverse Square Law

At the heart of understanding light distribution lies the inverse square law, which says that light intensity decreases proportionally to the square of the distance from the light source. This means that light gets weaker the farther it travels from the source, and this weakening happens faster than you might expect.  This principle is important to understand in vertical grow environments. In vertical rooms, the variance in distance between light sources and plant canopies across tiers can lead to significant disparities in the actual amount of light received by plants. The measurement here is photosynthetic photon flux density (PPFD), which conveys how much light that’s actually used for photosynthesis is hitting a given square meter of space every second. You want an even PPFD across your room.  Growers can and should use mathematical modeling to predict intensity falloff and adjust light placement and intensity accordingly, ensuring more uniform PPFD across all tiers.

Light Intensity and Canopy Dynamics

Diving deeper, the Beer-Lambert Law provides a framework for understanding how light is absorbed and scattered within the plant canopy.  This absorption, influenced by the actual number of leaves on a plant, significantly affects the light available to lower canopy levels. By trimming and shaping the plants, you can make sure light reaches all levels, especially in tight, vertical growing spaces. Watch your plant’s leaf area especially up top, closer to the light source.

Lighting Technologies for Precision Cultivation

Pipp Horticulture at CultaTailoring Spectra with LEDs

The rise and advancement of LED technology has allowed growers to focus on precision in the garden. LEDs let growers manipulate light spectra to influence plant growth and development. 

By adjusting the spectral output, growers can elicit specific plant responses, optimizing growth rates, morphology, and secondary metabolite production (think THC, for instance, or a terpene like myrcene). Implementing LEDs with adjustable spectrum capabilities allows for dynamic light management tailored to different growth stages or specific plant strains.

Pulsed Lighting: How to Enhance Photosynthesis Without Adding Thermal Stress

Pulsed lighting has the potential to increase photosynthetic efficiency by delivering high-intensity light in short bursts, reducing thermal stress on plants. 

This technique, based on the understanding of photosynthetic saturation points and non-photochemical quenching, can be particularly beneficial in vertical setups where managing heat accumulation is a challenge. Consider running a trial on pulsed lighting with an R&D crop.

Architectural Design and Cultivation Techniques

Pipp Horticulture at CultaOptimizing Vertical Rack Design

The structural design of vertical racks should facilitate spatial efficiency and optimal light exposure. Both goals should be top-of-mind when implementing a new racking system.  Incorporating inter-reflective materials and strategic geometry can amplify light reach and uniformity. Choosing materials that scatter light instead of reflecting it directly can prevent bright spots and make sure light is spread out more evenly. Consider matte white paint, white plastic, or fabrics, and foils designed for grow rooms; these materials help bounce light around the grow space more evenly than shiny, mirror-like surfaces.

Advanced Canopy Management for Uniform Light Absorption

Techniques such as apical pruning, lateral spreading, and the implementation of rotational systems ensure that all plants, regardless of their position, receive adequate light.  Leveraging plant phototropism by periodically adjusting light source positions can promote more uniform growth across the canopy. By doing so, your team makes use of plants’ natural tendency to grow toward light sources, helping them grow evenly. Tune into Cultivation Elevated Episode 17, while host Michael Williamson sits down with Corinne Wilder, VP of Global Commercial Operations at Fluence, to discuss how LED technology has shaped vertical farming.

Integrating Supplemental Lighting and Precision Monitoring

Pipp Horticulture at CultaAddressing the Lower Canopy Challenge

The deployment of side and intracanopy lighting addresses one of the primary challenges in vertical cultivation—ensuring sufficient light reaches the lower tiers. These systems must be carefully calibrated to complement top lighting, avoiding over-saturation and ensuring that light intensity and quality mimic natural conditions as closely as possible.

Harnessing Data for Light Optimization

The implementation of advanced light sensors and environmental control systems enables real-time monitoring and adjustment of light conditions. Data analytics can be used to fine-tune lighting schedules, intensities, and spectra, based on the dynamic needs of the crop and the specific characteristics of the vertical environment.

Navigating the Future of Light Optimization in Vertical Cultivation

As the science of cannabis cultivation evolves, so do the strategies for optimizing light distribution in vertical farming systems. 

The integration of advanced lighting technologies, strategic architectural design, and precise cultivation practices offers a pathway to maximizing yield, efficiency, and product quality in these complex environments. 

Growers equipped with a deep understanding of the scientific principles governing light and plant interactions and a willingness to embrace technological innovations are well-positioned to lead the charge in this new era of cannabis cultivation.

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