Critics often highlight odor nuisances associated with cannabis cultivation, but it is important to acknowledge that vineyards, too, emit strong smells due to the use of agricultural inputs like sulfur. Addressing odor concerns without considering the broader context of other agricultural activities may lead to unfair treatment. Similarly, noise and lighting impacts are often cited as potential drawbacks of cannabis cultivation, but vineyard operations involving heavy equipment and non-downcast lighting practices can also disrupt neighboring communities.
Let’s step off the cannabis farm for a minute and instead look to agriculture as a whole. The cannabis industry has picked up a lot of lessons from the farming world, and while taking a fallow year doesn’t yet appear to be a widely-adopted trend, this year may be different.
While winter brings some time for rest and recovery, for those involved in year-round cultivation, the new season brings added complexities for growing cannabis. The plant is thought to have evolved about 28 million years ago on the eastern Tibetan Plateau, which is home to extremely cold winters. While cannabis can grow in the winter, taking some extra steps to support your greenhouse cannabis cultivation can certainly help.
In a market that’s increasingly being taken over by large-scale production, lower quality, and cheaper prices, it’s important to look at the better alternative: craft cannabis. What makes Giving Tree Farms and other craft cannabis producers stand out? From seed-to-package, there’s a certain mindfulness involved. So, let’s take a look at what harvesting craft cannabis entails.
Fresh-frozen cannabis has taken the cannabis world by storm in recent years. As the name suggests, fresh-frozen cannabis entails freezing the harvest directly after it’s been picked. It’s been growing in popularity—especially as it’s one of the best methods we have to preserve terpenes and cannabinoids.
Join us for a behind-the-scenes look at how we go about producing fresh-frozen cannabis.
While winter brings some time for rest and recovery, for those involved in year-round cultivation, the new season brings added complexities for growing cannabis. The plant is thought to have evolved about 28 million years ago on the eastern Tibetan Plateau, which is home to extremely cold winters. While cannabis can grow in the winter, taking some extra steps to support your greenhouse cannabis cultivation can certainly help.
Part of our passion at Giving Tree Farms lies with finding creative ways to boost our sustainability and efficiency. And much like Lean Manufacturing, we work to achieve “Lean Cultivation,” an application that reduces our waste through our cultivation procedures without sacrificing efficiency and productivity. Every area of our operation ties in methods that reduce, reuse, or recycle our waste, from the garden to the processing room and all the way into the administration office. Lean Cultivation is a fully immersive approach to operating our business, one that is great for the environment and our achievement of such high-quality cannabis.
We live in a reality where technology has given us access to a wealth of knowledge and resources that can help us on our personal and professional journeys. The world around us is continually changing, and if we want to keep up with new opportunities and developing regulations, we have to evolve with it. Success in anything isn't found by staying stagnant; we have to overcome hurdles, adapt, and create solutions that we can apply to various areas of our life. We're acquiring wisdom as we move through each day, and it's these lessons that we use to grow our business, cultivate outstanding craft cannabis, and maintain long-term relationships with our clients and partners.
In an effort to raise efficiency standards for indoor cultivators in California, the California Energy Commission (CEC) has proposed a new mandate that would require all cultivators currently using supplemental lighting to switch to LED lights by 2023. This costly requirement has put many California cannabis cultivators on edge, knowing that this transition may not be possible in an industry that's heavily taxed and already expensive to operate compliantly in. Most cultivators who want to produce cannabis outside of the regular season, like within a greenhouse or indoor facility, don't have the monetary means to support such a costly transition so soon.
