Harvesting, Drying, & Curing Cannabis for Beginners

July 5, 2023

Harvesting, Drying, & Curing Cannabis for Beginners

Work Smarter, Not Harder!

After spending months growing a cannabis crop, you want to ensure your work pays off–both in terms of yield and quality. Properly harvesting, drying, and curing cannabis is essential for maximizing profit and successful outcomes. Following best practices can help you avoid losing your crop to mold and rot while preserving terpene and cannabinoid concentrations. Join us as we explore methods you can implement to optimize these processes.

When Is Cannabis Ready to Harvest?

Timing is critical in the cannabis industry. Harvesting too early inhibits cannabinoid development, while waiting too long can leave your crop non-compliant with regulatory restrictions.

So, how can you tell if your plants are ready to harvest?

Generally speaking, cannabis plants reach full maturity within 7-12 weeks. Nevertheless, every strain and crop looks different–recognizing the ideal harvest window can be an intricate process.

Below are two common signs your cannabis is ready to harvest:

Pistil color: In the early stages of growth, cannabis pistols are bright white. A darker pistol color can indicate a plant has reached maturity.

Trichomes: Trichomes can also help growers identify when to harvest crops. Trichomes start glass-like but become opaque with development. Plants are at peak potency when 80-90% of trichomes have achieved this cloudy appearance.

What Is the Difference Between Drying and Curing Cananbis?

Drying cannabis is the process of removing moisture from a cannabis crop to preserve quality and prevent mold. Conversely, curing refers to the purposeful development of taste, aroma, and potency via specialized environments. These methods are more intricate and time-consuming, as they involve facilitating chemical changes to improve and solidify quality.

Is Hang Drying or Rack Drying Better?

Rack drying can be viable for large-scale facilities with ample drying space. This process allows for easy handling and monitoring because each plant is laid out for complete visibility.

On the other hand, hanging cannabis is often the optimal method for facilities seeking a quicker dry. Suspension offers sufficient air flow, protecting crops against mold and mildew build-up. This approach also means using your space wisely, as laying plants on screens or racks can eat up much of your dry room footprint.

Of course, you’ll want to establish the drying method that best suits your unique business. What works for you may depend on space allotment, time constraints, budget, and other factors. Spend time exploring the parameters of your drying needs to develop an effective strategy.

How to Harvest Cannabis

Harvest is one of the most exciting times of the season for cannabis growers. Here, they can finally see the fruit of their labors–a healthy, robust yield. Still, prepping for this time is equally important.

Prepping for Harvest

During the last week of the flowering stage, growers should remove the majority of fan leaves and excess foliage while leaving the bud sites undisturbed. Doing so minimizes labor tasks and makes the process more manageable. Additionally, pruning promotes better airflow and a more consistent moisture removal rate in the drying room.

Another useful pre-harvest method is to dim the lights and cease irrigation events approximately 24-36 hours before cutting. By leveraging transpiration, growers can jumpstart the drying process and reduce the load on HVAC systems in the dry room during the initial stages.

This technique also lessens the wet weight of the plant and substrate, saving money and expediting the harvesting process (i.e. less physical weight for your staff to move from the upper tiers).

Additionally, Pipp’s Room Generator Tool can help you calculate the exact amount of space and ideal layout for your cannabis operation. This information can be a guide as you plan ahead for the harvest, drying, and curing processes.

Harvesting Your Cannabis

Every touch and transfer increases the risk of product damage, degradation, and contamination. Minimizing unnecessary handling and movement of plants is essential.

To maximize efficiency and preserve product quality, aim to complete the harvest and transfer to a designated drying room within a day. Modular dry carts can simplify the movement process, limit plant damage, and maintain organization within the facility.

Wet vs. Dry Trimming

After the initial harvest, trimming is essential for ensuring a quality yield. Larger facilities often rely on industrial trimmers for this process (cutting thousands of plants by hand is overly demanding), while smaller growers may favor a more hands-on approach.

Either way, trimming can occur in two different ways. Dry trimming occurs after the drying process but before curing. Cannabis branches are suspended upside down for roughly 10 to 14 weeks, depending on the strain and environment (we’ll delve into this deeper below). This trimming method is typically preferred by cannabis facilities, as it can better preserve terpene profiles, cleanliness, and quality.

Alternatively, wet trimming requires less time because growers separate the buds from the plant before initiating the drying process. Additionally, this method uses less space, which can be ideal for cultivators with smaller crops, fewer resources, or older equipment.

How to Dry Cannabis

After harvesting plants, growers must decide the drying method that best meets quality, quantity, and time requirements. As with growing cannabis, the drying process is complex, and making one mistake can jeopardize an entire yield.

A suitable environment can be achieved by monitoring airflow, managing humidity, and choosing the right equipment. Another important consideration is employee education–ensure your staff is trained on how to implement effective sanitation strategies and proper handling procedures.

Choose the Right Load-In Strategy

Evaluate the benefits of both single load-in and continual load-in strategies. While a single load-in approach (one harvest batch in a single drying room) provides better environmental control, continual load-in strategies (multiple harvest batches in the same drying room) can support continuous production. A single load-in approach is preferable, but choose what aligns best with your facility’s goals and available resources.

Prioritize Plant Spacing

Regardless of the drying method chosen–whole plant or “hook-and-hang”—plant spacing is vital for consistent drying. Initially, the drying space may appear crowded. However, sufficient spacing is created as moisture content decreases, allowing for efficient airflow. Whole plant hanging tends to yield a higher-quality product, reduce labor tasks on harvest day, and simplify track-and-trace compliance duties.

Maintain a Controlled Drying Environment

Invest in a properly sized HVAC system with sufficient latent load sizing to remove moisture effectively. The drying rate is influenced by factors such as the total wet weight of the harvest, room temperature, dehumidification capacity, airflow, and time.

If the drying rate is too slow, increase room temperatures slightly (HVAC systems and dehumidifiers remove more moisture at higher temperatures), but be cautious to avoid excessive heat that may lead to terpene loss.

To preserve product integrity, keep the dry room door closed and lights off as much as possible. Minimize unnecessary entries into the room to maintain a consistent and undisturbed drying environment.

Check Moisture Content and Water Activity

Tracking moisture content (MC%) and water activity (Aw) levels is a great way to standardize your drying process, minimize potential product loss, and maximize your revenue.

In the early stages of the drying process, the goal is to get water activity below 0.65 to reduce the risk of pathogen proliferation. Use these readings to fine-tune and optimize your HVAC set points, either increasing or decreasing your drying rate by modulating temperature.

For an optimal smoking experience, target a moisture content of 10-14%. This range ensures proper drying while preserving terpene profiles and cannabinoid potency.

MC is a delicate balance. Higher MC increases the total sellable weight of your harvest, while slightly lower MC raises cannabinoid potency on your lab results (less water weight per gram).

Minimize the Mess

Harvesting and drying cannabis can be messy, but taking certain precautions can help preserve cleanliness and sanitation. For example, “buck” or remove buds from stems directly in the dry room. By doing so, you confine the mess to a room already in need of cleaning, rather than creating a mess in another area. This approach simplifies cleanup and reduces the chance of cross-contamination between different cultivation spaces.

Educate your staff on the importance of cleanliness during the drying process. Provide training on proper handling techniques, emphasizing the need to work carefully and avoid unnecessary spills or messes.

How to Cure Cannabis

The curing process begins once the buds are thoroughly dried and trimmed. Like drying, curing is crucial for preserving flavor and quality. This process allows cultivators to store cannabis for extended periods with little risk of mold or cannabinoid degradation.

Create the Right Environment

Curing is similar to drying in that humidity and temperature are essential. Exact ranges vary depending on the facility location and cannabis strain, but a general rule of thumb is to keep at 55-70°F with a 50-65% humidity level. Buds must also be stored in a dark area, as too much light exposure can erode terpenes.

Choose an Airtight Container

Depending on the size of your facility, curing equipment can differ. Cultivators often opt for airtight jars or stainless steel containers to house buds during the curing process. These vessels ensure that environmental levels remain consistent, thus keeping quality intact.

Growers should remember only to fill containers ¾ full, as doing so allows buds to breathe and lessens the risk of mold. “Burping” is also a must during the first week of curing. Open each container once or twice daily, permitting extra moisture to exit and oxygen to replenish.

Working with the Experts

Now that you’ve read through our harvesting, drying, and curing for beginners guide, PIPP Horticulture is here to help you get started with the best equipment and expert advice. We are dedicated to providing your facility with mobile vertical grow racks and other solutions that optimize the entire cannabis cultivation process. Let the experts with over 40 years of experience in the industry get you ready to produce top-quality yields.

About Anders Peterson

Anders is a Cannabis Operations Specialist at Pipp and helps integrate mobile vertical racks and VAS airflow systems into facility designs. He is a leader in indoor CEA facility design and operation, with an academic background in cell and molecular biology and over 10 years of cannabis industry experience.

At 21 years old, Anders co-founded his first legal Prop 215 cannabis company, which manufactured solventless concentrates. He was also one of the first wholesalers of hash rosin in the California medical market and co-founded one of the first medical cannabis dispensaries in Arkansas.

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Multi-Tier Grow Room Design: Measure Once, Build Twice Webinar with Cannabis Business Times

June 29, 2023

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Multi-Tier Grow Room Design: Measure Once, Build Twice Webinar with Cannabis Business Times

Designing a Successful Multi-tier Grow Room

Designing a successful multi-tier indoor cannabis grow room requires careful planning and execution to ensure optimal plant growth and yield. Whether you are a seasoned grower or a beginner, there are several key factors to consider when designing your indoor grow space. Michael Williamson, Director of Cultivation, Anders Peterson, Cannabis Operations Specialist, and Del Rockwell, Product Manager, recently presented a webinar with Cannabis Business Times sharing helpful insights and best practices for designing a successful multi-tier indoor cannabis grow room. During this webinar, the team provided key insights into critical design criteria for consideration before you design and operate an indoor multi-tier cannabis cultivation facility. Topics included pre-design considerations, specifics on each growing system, and starting up your space for the first time.

“Each day of a cannabis life indoors is more than 1% of its total life span. So, every single hour of every single day has an impact. Compare that to a human’s life span, where every day in our lives is less than 0.4% of our life span.”

– Anders Peterson

1. Pre-Design Considerations

During the pre-design phase for your multi-tier indoor cannabis grow room, you’ll want to build a team of experts. When assembling your design team, you’ll want to consider the site selection, space planning, workflow, vendor selection, a comprehensive bid analysis, and how state and local regulations and budget impact your overall design.

Architecture & Engineering Teams, A&E:

It’s critical to select someone or a firm with a proven track record in multi-tiered cannabis cultivation, facility design, and engineering. Several architects and engineers have served the industry well for over ten years and learned many common pitfalls to avoid. As Michael explains, “What looks good on paper does not always translate well operationally and can lead to bottlenecks, poor workflow, increased labor, and operational expenses.”

Cannabis Consultant

One team member that is critical in the design process is a cannabis consultant. A cannabis consultant assists with equipment selection, helps provide inputs for financial modeling, describes workflows and SOPs, and answers general strategy questions for owners while also serving as the owner’s representative to help answer questions for the A&E team.

Selecting Vendors

Vendors are a valuable source of information when designing your grow room. Anders explains, “Vendors get to see hundreds of facilities, and many share great insights.” Anders mentions when preparing for an indoor vertical farm, “Choose a group of equipment vendors to work with that have experienced working together on projects, so you can feel confident that all the systems will integrate without custom construction or engineering.” Racking providers like Pipp Horticulture is often the first vendor you engage during the design process because benching layouts dictate the sizing of many systems down the road, such as your lighting, plant count, and even your HVAC capacity. Anders states, “It’s beneficial to establish your racking layout early on in the process and feel confident about it, just to limit the number of revisions and change orders down the road.”

Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing – MEP

Your MEP team is your core engineering team. Civil, structural, and environmental engineers may also be involved in your project. In a cannabis grow room design, MEP plays a vital role in ensuring the proper functioning of various equipment and systems required to cultivate cannabis plants.

Comprehensive Bid Analysis

Another important pre-design consideration is to complete a comprehensive bid analysis. A comprehensive bid analysis evaluates and compares bids from different vendors or contractors for a project or service on a “apples-to-apples” basis. A bid analysis aims to select the vendor or contractor that offers the best value for money based on the project’s requirements and budget.

2. Site Evaluation & Budget

Site Evaluation

You may not think it, but there is “an order to things when building a new grow facility, and ideally, you have assembled your design team and engaged some vendors before selecting a building site,” Anders states. Leveraging the experience of your design team and vendors during a site evaluation can help avoid costly building upgrades or delays on your project.

When choosing a location, always check what utilities you have on-site and, if you have to upgrade them, how long it will take and what it will cost. Anders explains, “More often than not, you’re going to have to run additional power to these facilities, sometimes gas. Most commercial buildings today don’t have the infrastructure that indoor growers need. It’s good to locate a building close to a dense urban area with an established and stable grid.”

Another consideration for your site is that the roofs of most commercial buildings do not support the heavy HVAC systems required for indoor cultivation. You will want to ensure “plenty of room to mount the equipment on-grade (on the ground) around the building while still leaving space for parking and access for delivery vehicles and such.”

The climate in the specific area that you are considering for your future grow facility can even impact the performance of your equipment and the operation of rooms. Often nuanced considerations such as these should be considered, which is why assembling a solid team of professionals is valuable.

Key Functional and Physical Considerations

There are specific areas when evaluating a building that you will want to consider when assessing a particular site:

1. Floor Conditions

Del explains that the floor condition is one of the most significant considerations you will want to consider when evaluating a building for multi-tier rooms. Builders will install the multi-level mobile racking systems on the floor, “you need to make sure that the foundation is good and level for this application and equipment.” Avoid cracks and poor-quality slabs.

2. Column Spacing

Column spacing can significantly influence the racking layout and room utilization. “Generally, 40-foot spans between columns is fairly normal, basically as big of a span as you can get and still have the structural integrity to support all the HVAC systems,” Del explains when describing the space between columns.

3. Ceiling Height

Considering the ceiling height and how “vertical” you want to go is something to remember during the site selection process. Not considering the ceiling height can “eliminate some cultivation tiers when looking at going multi-level.” You want to ensure you have the space to grow as tall and high as you want in your grow facility.

4. Location of Facility – Fire Code

Before starting your build, you must understand your area’s fire code. For example, firewalls and room sizes can play into fire code compliance. Contact your local fire marshall for local information or contact other local cultivars to see their experience from a fire code standpoint. The NFPA National Fire Protection Agency has been working on NFPA 420 Codes & Standards, specifically for cannabis cultivation. Del suggests, “Anybody looking at building a facility in the near future to get on the NFPA website and try to sign up for updates.”

Budget

Before endeavoring upon the buildout of any indoor grow facility, ensure you have raised the appropriate amount of capital to avoid cutting corners in your design that can impact your business’s performance. Often project costs add up quicker than expected, and tough sacrifices to your design must be made, which can limit a facility’s yield potential and productivity. As Michael would say, this is “Building a Bugatti on a Toyota budget.”

Having a realistic idea of how much you want to spend and staying within that budget will help immensely. Michael states, “Any delays on getting to first harvest have significant and dramatic impacts in the millions of dollars.” Working with a cannabis consultant or an accounting firm can help with financial modeling before designing your building.

3. Facility Planning

Now that you have identified your design team, secured a location, and have a general sense of the rules of engagement, it’s time to plan your grow facility’s macro and micro details. The first step in the space planning process is to create a list of all rooms in the building and put together a narrative about what procedure will be happening in each room. This list will help your architects and engineers understand your goals, the infrastructure requirements for each room, and the feasibility of your design.

“A strong facility design will typically go through multiple revisions,” Michael states. In contrast, “an efficient design team can develop full construction documents in 90 days or less, assuming that you can answer all their questions and provide them with all the information they need.”

Best Practices for Laying Out Live Plant Rooms Efficiently/Operations Plan

Most cannabis genetics today take, on average, nine weeks to complete the flowering phase. Due to this pre-determined genetic clock of cannabis, “it’s beneficial to have the number of your flower rooms be in multiples of three,” Anders states. Ideally, for example, you have about nine flower rooms, each with a nine-week cycle. In this case, your staff does the same weekly tasks, including a harvest, once a week. This order and timing helps keep your process orderly and smooth. This way, “you can efficiently rotate the veg plants from your veg room into your flower rooms without creating a bottleneck.”

Common Workflows

When planning your facility, you’re trying to create a flow, which Michael calls the “Path of the Plant.” You’re designing around the natural flow or path of the plant. In a cannabis facility, this path typically starts at the mother room, potentially with tissue culture, then to the veg room, flower room, and drying room.

Michael shares, “In a perfect world, if you have a rectangle building, you’re laying out your rooms in a linear line.” A linear layout line helps provide biosecurity strategies with a positive pressurization cascade from clean to dirty spaces. Also, consider the workflow through the facility and how many steps an employee must take to complete their job duties. Michael says, “Every step matters, and every step has a dollar amount associated with it.”

Best Practices When Planning for the Mobility of Racking Systems

A level, or flat, floor is ideal. This fundamental key will ensure the system can continue running and performing as expected. Drainage design is next. We highly recommend using an in-ground trench that is parallel to the track. There are two significant advantages, the ability to accommodate mobility and, ultimately, giving you more cultivation and vertical space for your plants to grow. Electrical and irrigation drops are the next piece to pay attention to where it is most of the time. The most common spot for this is at the front of the system for easy accessibility.

Next, you will want to keep an eye out for any kind of interference points that would require last-minute adjustments – for example, Del mentions, “low drop ceiling, plumbing coming down inside the walls, columns, or electrical panels can create some interference points that require last minute adjustments on-site during the installation process.” Multiple options are available to access the multi-tiers: Step Stools, Folding or Rolling ladders, Man Lifts, or the best option – ELEVATE® Platform System, built for our Pipp racks and is a safe, flexible, and efficient way to access those upper tiers.

4. Design Recommendations for Each Growth Phase

Mother Room

It is best to have separate rooms for your mother, clone, and veg plants to provide optimum growing conditions while reducing cross-contamination. If you must run a combined mixed-use nursery, Anders states, “We often see these being three tiers with the bottom tier taller to house mother plants and the top two tiers shorter to hold veg plants.” For dedicated mother rooms, we have seen growers shifting away from single-tier, six months to a-year-old mother plants to double stacking smaller to medium mother plants with a shorter lifespan. The smaller, shorter lifespan mother approach provides more supple cuttings than woody cuttings from old moms and reduces the risk of pest and pathogen accumulation.

Michael explains his process of double stacking mother plants, “generally, I’ll keep my younger mothers on the top elevation, and that elevation will be a shorter elevation, the bottom elevation, which will be a taller elevation so that I can hold my more mature mothers.” He explains that having younger mother plants in your cycle is nice to have fewer issues. Michael can get a significant increase in better “A-grade” cuttings versus the older mother plants. With the older plants, you would need to get cuttings from the inside or the outside where lighting levels aren’t the same. Mother rooms can vary in size depending on how many genetics the grower wants to have available to rotate through production. Double-stacked mother rooms help house additional genetics in a smaller space, allowing you to allocate square footage for flower production.

Clone Room

Clone Rooms are relatively straightforward, with most growers opting to propagate clones on triple-tier wire mesh shelving carts. This “clone cart” design allows growers to fit a lot of clones in a small space. Depending on your cloning SOP and tray inserts, you can fit between three to six hundred clones on one cart. If you do not have a dedicated clone room, Anders prefers to “house the clone carts on the side of the veg-room rather than in the mother room.” This allows you to enter the mother room less frequently and protect your valuable genetics from unnecessary risk.

Veg Room

Veg rooms are the most common rooms growing multi-tier, where we have seen growers getting most comfortable growing vertically. Anders mentions, “ In the early days of legalization, we understood less about indoor cultivation facility design than we do today. Often, veg rooms were undersized for a facility, creating a significant bottleneck and leaving flower rooms unpopulated for longer than needed.” The natural solution is to take advantage of the cubic footage of your commercial building and grow vertically. “Common best practice now when sizing your total veg canopy for a facility is to allocate between 20% to 30% of your total flowering canopy footprint for veg space.”

Flower Room

“A well-designed and engineered facility can produce, in some cases, up to two to three the amount of yield than of a poorly designed facility of the same size,” Michael states. Pipp has installed more than 2,500 vertically stacked grow rooms over the past six years, and some of the best insights and things we’ve learned are on the design of a vertically stacked flower room. Two-tiered flower rooms are more common than three-tiered flower rooms. However, three-tiers are getting increasingly popular due to the fixed cost absorption of producing more products per square foot. Two versus three tiers also really depend on the constraints of your building, your ceiling height, license type, and how much flowering canopy you need for your business plan.

For labor and harvesting efficiency and climate control reasons, we found that a good sweet spot for the overall size of a flower room is between 2,000-3,000 canopy square feet, regardless of that being two or three tiers. We recommend row lengths of 32-40′ or shorter for good airflow within the room. The longer the rows, the more likely microclimates are to form. Tip: “When it comes to operating a multi-tier flower room, transitioning the plants to flower and timing the stretch is everything. Before moving the plant from the veg room to the flower room, it is best to set the climate to VPD to match the VPD conditions in your veg room to limit the stress.” – Anders Peterson.

Pipp recognized early on that proper airflow is one of the most significant limiting factors to success within a multi-tier grow room. To prevent or reduce microclimates within the space and create a consistent environment, in-rack airflow systems are necessary. Del mentions, “The goal is the have the same environment throughout the room. Whether it’s the first tier or the fourth tier, we’re trying to make it as consistent as possible.”

Vertical Air Solutions, VAS, was developed to be a low-profile in-rack air circulation system that seamlessly integrates with the lighting and the racking to ensure that it is a smaller form factor and takes up as little space as possible. Anders mentions, “Often the most limiting factor to producing quality and good yields of a multi-tier flower room is an improperly designed mechanical system.” What we find to be successful is supplying the air in the front main aisle, letting the in-rack airflow fans capture the dehumidified, conditioned air, and pushing it down the length of the rows. Ideally, these rows are less than 32 to 40 feet to limit air travel distance. And then, the air is returned to the back wall at multiple elevations and completely recirculates along this path. Michael states, “Your in-rack air circulation is only as good as the HVAC system design.”

Drying/Curing Room

For many, the design and operation of a drying room can be challenging and, if not done correctly, can result in a significant bottleneck and degradation of product quality. It balances science, traditional methods, and “respect for the plant.” From a design standpoint, you typically see an undersized drying room and undersized HVAC and dehumidification capacities. Cultivators can grow a beautiful final product that is high quality, yet in a matter of days, it starts degrading from an underperforming dry/cure process.

There are a wide variety of options and solutions for each grower’s unique approach to drying. Our mobile carts help assist with room-to-room mobility; transferring the plants onto a cart and then into the dry room is a significant advantage. Something to keep in mind when using our dry carts is paying attention to door heights. Choosing door heights and widths that can accommodate the movement of all equipment throughout your facility to avoid issues during startup and operation is essential.

Tip: “As a best practice, we encourage cultivators to have minimal downtime between harvests—ideally, a next-day room reset. We define a next-day room reset as harvesting all the plants in one day or shift in that flowering room or zone, cleaning and sanitizing that room ideally the same day or the very first thing the next morning. Then you are resetting and repopulating that flower room the day after harvest. Each day that you are not flowering has significant ramifications on potential revenue loss.” – Michael Williamson.

We also provide complete mobile units in a variety of options. Light-duty rivet units are a robust and solid solution but a bit lighter than some bulk racks. Bulk racks for the dry room come with the ability to use the ELEVATE® Platform System, having access to the higher levels. Different options include hang bars, flat wire grids, or cantilever finger bars. The cantilever finger bars provide flexibility and easy access for hanging plants in the dry room.

Why You Would Choose One Process Versus Another

Some growers prefer to hang the entire plant; others like to break a plant down into individual branches at harvest. Anders mentions, “It’s best to size a dry room to fit a whole harvest from a single flower room at a time.” Most growers today prefer the single load-in strategy of one flower room into one right-sized dry room. Another best practice for a dry room is installing a timer for your overhead lights to help limit photo-oxidation of your product during drying. Install an auto closer on all doors in your dry room to keep the doors shut as often as possible to prevent uneven drying and loss of capacity from your HVAC system. “In summary, each plant stage, including harvesting and the strategies you deploy, can either have a beneficial or non-beneficial impact on the quality of your final product. Tuning your mindset to consider and evaluate not just what you do to plants, but why and how it positively or negatively impacts the end user is the ultimate goal.” – Michael Williamson.

In Conclusion

Designing a successful multi-tier indoor cannabis grow room requires careful consideration of several vital factors. With proper planning and execution, you can create a highly productive and efficient indoor grow room that yields high-quality cannabis. Reach out to the Pipp team with any questions regarding indoor vertical farming. You never know; you might be able to fit more into the existing space you already have. Now that you are prepared to design your multi-tier indoor grow facility, join us for our next webinar, where we will discuss best practices for the day-to-day operation of these facilities and share valuable tricks of the trade.

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Episode 12: Always on the Gas with Claybourne Co.

June 20, 2023

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Episode 12: Always on the Gas with Claybourne Co.

Summary:

Embark on an immersive exploration of the dynamic world of cannabis cultivation with host Michael Williamson and special guest Brent Barnes, co-founder and VP of cultivation at Claybourne Co. In this enlightening episode, they delve into the critical importance of prioritizing quality over quantity in the cannabis industry. Discover the fascinating realm of genetic engineering and its potential to enhance cannabis plant quality, as well as the significant impact of environmental factors on genetic expression. Gain exclusive insights into Claybourne's innovative facility design and their ongoing quest for breeding advancements, all while delving into the ever-evolving landscape of cannabis cultivation. This captivating conversation offers a glimpse into the intricacies of this thriving industry, leaving you inspired and informed about the future of cannabis cultivation.

Key Takeaways

Discover the importance of prioritizing quality over quantity in the competitive cannabis industry and how it sets Claybourne apart from the rest.
Uncover the potential of genetic engineering to enhance the quality and yield of cannabis plants, as shared by host Michael Williamson, an experienced plant breeder.
Explore the fascinating impact of environmental factors on genetic expression and the challenges of genetic drift in cannabis cultivation.
Gain insights into the innovative facility design of Claybourne, including a three-story racking system and a specialized airflow system for optimal growth conditions.
Learn about the long-term process of breeding and the dedication required for true innovation in cannabis cultivation.
Discover the significance of local partnerships and Claybourne’s widespread availability in over 60% of retail locations in California.
Gain a deeper appreciation for the intricacies of the cannabis industry and its ongoing evolution, with quality, innovation, and environmental factors at the forefront of success.

Shareable Quotes

“We started Claybourne with the idea of the industry needed help with customer service. They needed help pushing a product in a direction that said, hey, this is good quality product, but also we can have a real business that supports you in this aspect.”

“I find it so fascinating when people say, multi tier doesn't work, or triple tier doesn't work. I mean, we've seen five tiers. It is never a function of the racking or trays being the issue. It is always 100% the mechanical, engineering and design associated with the HVAC system.”

Resources

Claybourne Resources

YouTube

Instagram

Show Links

Pipp Horticulture Website

Pipp Horticulture YouTube

Pipp Horticulture - Facebook

Pipp Horticulture Instagram

Pipp Horticulture LinkedIn

Pipp Horticulture Pinterest

Pipp Horticulture Twitter

This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy

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Room Generator : Design Your Space!

June 8, 2023

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Room Generator : Design Your Space!

Is a Vertical Farm in Your Future?

We are excited to announce our NEW Room Generator Tool!

Pipp’s new Room Generator is a game-changer for the horticulture industry, allowing cultivators to see their indoor vertical farm in 3-D! The new technology offers a highly interactive experience that gives growers an in-depth understanding of the benefits of going vertical with Pipp Horticulture’s Mobile Vertical Racking Solutions.

With the Room Generator, cultivators can customize their indoor vertical farm by simply inputting the room dimensions, selecting the equipment specifications such as lights, airflow, and tray type, and entering grow information.

They can also adjust the size of their farm and experiment with different configurations to find the perfect setup for their needs. The room generator allows you to build up to 10 rooms and provides a detailed ROI report!

Want to Give It a Try?

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Episode 11: Desert Cultivation, Inspired by Mom with Dr. Robb Farms

May 17, 2023

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Episode 11: Desert Cultivation, Inspired by Mom with Dr. Robb Farms

Summary:

Join us as we take a fascinating journey into the world of cannabis cultivation with Zack Newman, Director of Operations at Dr. Robb Farms. In this episode, we explore the unique strains and rich history of the California cannabis market and how cultivators are shaping the industry's future. With insights from Zack, we learn about their attention to detail, positive work environments, and cross-training of employees, which all contribute to the production of high-quality cannabis products. Discover the challenges and opportunities in the industry and the crucial role that cultivators like Dr. Robb Farms play in shaping its future.