Organic cannabis cultivation and living soil

We grow our mother plants in living soil, and every clone we sell is cut from them. It’s slower than the alternative, so it’s worth explaining what it actually means.

The idea

Conventional growing feeds the plant directly: nutrients mixed into water and delivered in a form the roots can take up immediately. The soil is mostly somewhere to stand.

Living soil turns that around. You feed the soil, and the life in the soil feeds the plant. Bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes and larger organisms break organic matter down into forms roots can use, at roughly the rate the plant asks for it. No bottled nutrients.

No-till is the other half. The soil structure is left intact between crops so the network of organisms isn’t destroyed and rebuilt every cycle.

Where it comes from

Not from cannabis, which surprises people. Sir Albert Howard, a British agricultural scientist working in India in the 1920s, built a system of organic agriculture on the principle that healthy soil produces healthy plants. J. I. Rodale carried the work into North America and founded the Rodale Institute in 1947.

More recently the soil microbiologist Elaine Ingham did much of the work describing the soil food web itself — which organisms are present in healthy soil, and how they interact with each other and with roots.

Mycorrhizal fungi

The relationship doing most of the heavy lifting. These fungi colonise plant roots and extend far beyond them, hugely increasing the volume of soil a plant can draw water and nutrients from. In exchange, the plant hands over sugars from photosynthesis.

It’s a genuine trade, and a plant with a well-established fungal network is better fed and tougher than one without.

Managing pests without spraying

Predatory insects instead of pesticides — ladybugs, lacewings and predatory mites eat the pests that would otherwise need spraying. It takes paying attention early, because the approach works by keeping populations in check rather than by clearing an infestation. Turn up late and you’re just running a very small nature documentary.

Compost teas — compost brewed in aerated water and applied to the soil — go in to reintroduce microbial life.

Why we do it

Because it makes a more robust plant with a higher terpene percentage, and terpenes are most of what separates one cultivar from another by the time it reaches you.

It takes longer and it takes more attention. That’s the trade, and we think it shows up in the jar.