How to Drive Smarter Growth in Your Cannabis Garden

Just because a cannabis grow is open and operational doesn’t always mean that they’re making the best decisions as it relates to genetics, facility management, or overall business strategy. Rx Green Technologies’ Boots & Suits YouTube series dives into how to drive smarter growth by making calculated decisions that set ego aside and focus on revenue drivers instead. Led by CEO Gary Santo and Head of Product, Sean Cute, Boots and Suits offers actionable insights from both the C-suite and the garden for operators who want to optimize their businesses. 

It’s no longer a given that consumers will buy cannabis flower no matter what strain it is or at any cost. In mature markets it is especially difficult to find the right mix of strains that will deliver on expected price points. Another layer of difficulty is the potency side of the equation; despite a general internal industry consensus that THC percentage isn’t important, at the end of the day, consumers still view it as a critical metric. 

A flowering cannabis plant nearing maturity at Host’s garden in Colorado

Intentionality With Strain Selections

What makes a strain worthwhile to grow? This key question should sit at the heart of every genetic selection that operators make. The usual answers range from “it’s really popular” all the way to “well, we got a good cut of it, so why not” without much, if any, other strategic input. All of the following factors and more can play a role in selecting the right cultivars to work with:

• How easy or difficult is it to grow? 
• If it’s truly an exotic, is the higher price per pound worth the additional effort?
• Is it a heavy feeder?
• Does it have specific environmental needs the existing facility can accommodate?
• How much will it stretch during flowering?
• How many weeks of flowering does it require?
• Does it yield well? 
• Is it going to reach a marketable potency?
• How hard is it to trim?
• Is it going to be good for extraction purposes?

It can be easy to skip over these essential considerations before committing to running a particular strain, especially if there is a legitimate hype factor to contend with. Cannabis cultivation business owners need to ask all of these questions and be closely in sync with their genetic selection process (if they aren’t already). 

One way to get a better idea of what the garden team might be in for in advance is to implement a basic research requirement surrounding the parent lineages of any given cut or phenotype that’s on the grow plan. For example, if both parents have heavy indica backgrounds, it could indicate shorter flowering times and more squat space requirements, although that’s never a guarantee. Doing homework in this regard is an important part of the process and should be undertaken with all selections. 

Another key point that should be preemptively evaluated is how the facility can intelligently group complementary strains with similar growing needs in each room. If one strain tends to feed heavily, it’s easier to pair it with another strain or strains that are the same, so reservoirs can generally be batch-mixed the same way. The same concept goes for height; plants that stretch aggressively during flowering are not normally great roommates with those that don’t. Trying to pair like with like in terms of feeding, flowering duration, height, and so on is an easy way to make the team’s job more streamlined across all aspects of the growing cycle.

Finally, it’s advisable to have dedicated meetings with the cultivation team on all of these factors with the introduction of any new genetic profile to ensure alignment and to avoid downstream issues as much as possible. A little bit of additional planning can go a very long way, even if what is being brought into the garden is brand new.

Flowering cannabis plants trellised in a grow room

The Yield vs. Quality Paradox

A commonly under appreciated aspect of the strain selection process is yield – meaning in many markets, especially mature ones, there is often no shortage of cannabis for sale. Just because a strain is a particularly heavy yielder does not always mean it should make it into the garden or become a regular rotational centerpiece. This is where the yield vs. quality paradox comes into play: does the market just want weight? Or is a cannabis grow going to find more success by striving for a higher quality product instead?

These are difficult questions whose answers depend on very market-specific conditions.  Generally speaking, though, there has to be a balance with cultivar considerations between yield and quality. This is especially true if the intention with a given room or rooms is to take them straight to the lab for extraction. In that case, yield might matter more than quality even in a heavily saturated market, but usually the opposite is the case when the goal is dried flower sales that actually stand out on crowded dispensary shelves instead.

To cultivate fresh frozen pounds for solventless processing in particular, however, it’s another set of calculations all over again. Growing plants that are poised to wash well and setting up the rooms as oil fields is an entirely different mentality. Whichever way the grow team plans to go, carefully analyzing market pricing factors should underpin the entire genetics selection strategy. Just pumping out pounds of high-yielding but boring strains is not going to win the hearts and minds of budtenders or consumers unless your entire operation is exclusively focused on economy pricing. 

In most markets, the garden needs to deliver something special to be truly competitive, so targeting unique terpene profiles and special cannabinoids is typically a much better bet than just raw yields. When operations have everything dialed in, the yields tend to follow regardless. 

Coco coir in Rx Green Technologies’ RTU grow bags

Consistent Garden Inputs = Consistent Outputs

Every grow operation should strive to optimize its actual inputs as much as possible, but when growing teams are experimenting with a new substrate or nutrient line every other harvest, it’s extremely difficult to create consistency. With so many options to choose from, it’s not easy to land on what will be the most productive for your garden, but first and foremost, working with suppliers that actually pick up the phone when you need them is a good place to start. That’s where we come in.

Having reliable, high-quality growing media and fertilizers is essential to delivering cannabis that dispensaries want to sell, no matter what strain it happens to be. Coco coir is the king of substrates in today’s commercial cannabis market, and Rx Green Technologies strives to deliver dependable options. From our Ready-To-Use grow bags to loose and even compressed varieties of coco, every product we sell is made to exacting specifications to ensure your team gets exactly what they need every time. We offer product trials of all of our science-backed growing supplies, so if you’re ready to start driving smarter growth at your facility, contact one of our cultivation experts today.

Editor’s note: this blog is derived from our second Boots and Suits video, “Driving Smarter Growth: How to Optimize Your Garden” which is available on YouTube.