Matt LaScala
Botanist
Adakai
Phoenix, AZ
Input control and equipment selection are crucial, yet often overlooked aspects of cannabis cultivation. It is very easy to get caught up in the excitement of the buildout, helping choose cultivars or even selecting which nutrients are going to be utilized in your quest toward global domination, but do not take your eyes off the prize. Careful research and educated equipment selection will pay dividends down the line.
Cannabis, like all agricultural crops, presents a unique set of challenges that growers need to understand to make the best, most effective choices. Unfortunately for cannabis growers specifically, the longstanding black market, lack of federal regulation and rise of social media platforms has created an unprecedented sort of super community full of lots of useful information — and even more BAD information. It is the job of the grower to take in all that information and synthesize a usable plan of attack, to address the problem at hand.
I personally enjoy the control of dealing directly with vendors. There has been more than one occasion where I have discovered a price/packaging change or a batch variation directly from the manufacturer, and we were then able to make the appropriate accommodations. If that had not been the case, that product could have gotten into our system and we could have attributed a success or failure incorrectly. This would have skewed our program based on a single, non-representative batch (scary). Recently we had a vendor discontinue a favorite soil amendment, but because we had done our due diligence and had been actively shopping, we were able to source the amendment through a different supplier, and production was not affected.