How to Grow Organic Cannabis to Achieve Maximum Potential

Organically grown cannabis fits into the realm of aged scotch and fine wines. The savoury flavours, floral aromas, and smooth perfection at consumption set their distinctive qualities apart. As stand-outs in their industry, each delicacy has unique processes required to reach that distinguished, high-quality status.

One of the best ways to achieve a high-level rank in cannabis cultivation is by growing your plants organically. By utilizing Mother Nature’s gifts outdoors, marijuana plants embrace the elements to develop most perfectly throughout their lifecycle. That is unless a hail storm comes along and wipes out the crop.

Indoor marijuana growers, on the other hand, have their own set of challenges trying to mimic outdoor environments with natural inputs. Growing organically indoors or out has trials to overcome, but harvest rewards are well worth it. Understanding how to grow organic cannabis will help achieve the maximum potential of your marijuana plant.

Why is Growing Organic Cannabis Better?

Heighten Medical Marijuana Benefits with Organically Grown Strains

As science continues to unfold this miraculous plant’s hidden treasures, we are finding new ways to combat disease and illnesses in the medical field. The study of cannabinoids, terpenes, and the synergistic manner in which they combine, reveals new approaches in combating many medical disorders.

Growing organic marijuana for medical purposes ensures a clean, natural product free from synthetic chemicals. A medical cannabis strain grown in healthy organic soil with abundant microbial activity produces a healthy, chemical-free flower. It only makes sense to grow the plant organically, especially for medical purposes.

Costs are Much Less When Growing Organic

Upfront budgets for creating a biology-happy medium may include initial organic soil and other natural amendments. But ingredients such as kitchen waste, grass clippings, manure, and dry leaves are easy to acquire with little to no cost.

When growing organic cannabis outdoors, electricity, heating, cooling, and ventilation costs are zero. The great outdoors has that one covered. On the other hand, indoor growers bear the brunt of all those expenses and others.

Costs for bottled nutrient formulas become quite pricey, depending on the growing medium. There are recipes for the vegetative stage, bud boosters for flower development. PH adjusting products, pest management…the list goes on and on.

Indoor marijuana cultivators have environmental costs in their grow room, but organic growers save money by feeding the soil naturally occurring amendments instead of bottled nutrients. It doesn’t cost much to whip up a batch of compost tea or fermented plant juice (FPM). However, organic nutrients take some time to build the soil food web.

An Organically Grown Cannabis Plant Produces Amazing Results

The delectable effects of naturally grown marijuana linger sweetly as cannabinoids react with human senses. Aromas and flavours of organically grown cannabis produce intoxicating fragrances and enticing tastes, sure to please the cannabis connoisseur.  As the entourage effect synergistically combines THC, CBD, and terpenes found in trichomes, the body’s endocannabinoid system reacts holistically, offering relief for many ailments.

In an eco-friendly outdoor garden, cannabis plants embrace Mother Nature’s gifts, producing healthy, vibrant growth. Indoor organic growers can obtain similar results if environmental controls are favourable. Either way, organically grown cannabis plants become quite large, yielding a massive crop. To maximize the potential of a particular cannabis strain, Grow Organic.

How to Grow Organic Cannabis

Organic soils improve the overall quality of a marijuana strain by creating a healthy root system and encouraging beneficial microbial activity. Using natural ingredients to fortify microorganism populations builds a unified fortress, providing a cannabis plant with everything it needs to flourish.

To better understand how this process plays out, let’s first look at nature’s contributions. Bustling microbial activity is abundant in an organic-rich environment. As root systems develop in marijuana plants, a complex communication system begins between the plant and the microorganisms that live within the soil.

Root exudates signal beneficial bacteria, fungi, and other microbes within the rhizosphere. These microscopic allies coordinate plant development through photosynthesis, enzymatic bonding, nutrient uptake, and so much more. Soils rich in organic matter create an ideal environment for this busy ecosystem to prosper.

How Organic Matter Breaks Down – The Soil Food Web

Many species play unique roles in breaking down organic compounds into more readily available molecules taken up by the plant. Decomposition starts with earthworms and other soil-dwelling insects. They consume organic matter and soil particles, excreting castings rich in nutrients taken in by other organisms.

Nematodes, protozoa, and other secondary decomposers cruise around the rhizosphere, helping to further break down organic matter. Smaller fungi and bacteria then jump into the action, advancing the process. Bacteria populations get busy in the early stages of decomposition, especially in environments with ample moisture. They rely on enzymatic contributions to redesign element composition, breaking down organic materials into soluble nutrients for plant uptake.

Fungi work in a symbiotic manner with the plant’s root system, calling in enzymes to help break down molecules. This unison provides mineral nutrients and water to the plant, which in turn, supply sugars to hungry fungi through photosynthesis. These highly active microbiome colonies contribute to the decaying process of organic material.

How to Build a Living Soil

Depending on the growing environment, there are a couple of different growing methods that cannabis growers can use to grow marijuana organically. If local native soil conditions are favourable, this is a great base to start. Adding organic material to an established microbial environment feeds the hungry system providing a head start building a soil food web.

While building biology in any soil takes time, starting from scratch is a process. With a good base of light potting soil, perlite, a few other natural amendments, and time, organic super soil will come to life.

Natural Amendments

Organically sourced materials are pretty easy to come by. Fallen leaves, unused plant material, and grass clippings provide a good base for starting microbial action. Save your eggshells, they are a great natural source of calcium. Add other green kitchen waste, dead plant material, and other natural resources. As bacteria and fungi populations begin decaying rotten food particles, mix in leaves, sticks, and grass clippings.

A diverse array of organic materials provide an abundant selection for microbes to devour. Green compost, which is more attractive to bacterial interaction, includes kitchen scraps, plant material, seaweed, and aged manures. For more fungal activity, look for these tiny beneficial creatures to disassemble thicker leaves, wood chips, and straw.

Mixing both green and brown materials with the starter soil will begin the process of building a microbiome. As larger particles start disappearing in the mix, microbial activity is churning. Continue feeding the hungry soil with fresh resources to encourage microbial development.

As a bonus, adding worms into the compost pile will expedite the decomposition process. Red Wigglers and good old earthworms shred large particles as they forage through the soil. Their presence in soil is a good indicator of microbial life.

Feed the Soil, Feed the Plant

Make up a Brew of Compost Tea

Compost teas increase microbial activity with an injection of this nourishing food. Oxygenated water expands populations of bacteria and fungi, decomposing natural materials prolifically. While no two brews will ever be the same, their addition to a cannabis garden is beneficial.

The organic fertilizer is a variety of inputs easily administered as a soil drench or foliar spray. Combining compost, worm casting juice, humic or fulvic acid, and micronutrients into a slow cook brew releases a flurry of microbe motion. Throw in some seaweed, kelp, or hydrolyzed fish to enhance the tea further during the vegetative stage. Additives in the flowering stage include molasses, bat guano, and bone meal to increase levels of potassium, phosphorus, and sugars.

Fresh oxygen is a fundamental aspect of brewing compost tea. Air pumps pull fresh airflow into the mixture, encouraging aerobic activity where microorganisms easily flow. Anaerobic conditions, on the other hand, cause more harm than good. These low oxygen environments are a hot spot for damaging pathogens which negatively affect overall plant health.

Brewing times depend on several factors, including compost materials and temperature. To find out exactly what is manifesting in the bubbly brew, look at activity through a microscope. Typically, bacterial replication occurs prolifically in earlier stages, whereas fungi activity amplifies later in the process. While it depends on the ingredients used to make the tea, generally 12-24 hours is a good measure.

Capitalize on Growing Organic With Top-Shelf Cannabis Strains

Whether growing a high THC sativa or a CBD-rich medical marijuana strain, get ready to be pleasantly surprised with the outcome of growing the fine cultivar organically. The smells, tastes, and effects from a naturally grown cannabis plant will elevate your status as a grower among your peers in the cannabis industry. To get optimal performance out of a cannabis strain, grow it organically.