From Seed to Sale: How to Automate Your Cannabis Grow

Integration of Automation

Today, automated systems and sophisticated machinery are available to improve performance in cultivation, harvesting, processing, manufacturing, packaging and distribution. These systems are becoming increasingly common as investment in cannabis industry technologies continues to grow.

Many factors need to be monitored and controlled in order to ensure the highest quality and quantity yields possible. From watering schedules and nutrient cycles to lighting, temperature, carbon dioxide (CO2) and fresh air exchange, being in charge of all of these factors every day can be quite time consuming and labor intensive.

Time is Money

A staple within automated indoor grow operations, timers are one of the first systems any grower can implement to automate aspects of their operation. Used to facilitate different aspects of climate control, both analog and digital timers can significantly lower overall labor and the repetition of tasks.

One of the most common applications of timers is lighting. During the vegetative phase of the grow cycle, a daily light cycle of 18–24 hours is employed, but when the plants begin flowering,  a 12 hours on, 12 hours off approach is applied. Timers connected to the lighting system can fully automate this task at different points throughout the grow cycle. Much like lighting, fans, pumps, CO2 systems and other climate control elements can all be connected to timers to minimize labor and reduce time spent on basic repetitive tasks. Timers ultimately allow various grow systems to run on intervals over multiple schedules without the need for any manual input.

Environmental Control

As mentioned, many aspects of your grow environment’s climate can be controlled using automation technologies. In cannabis grows, the ability to monitor and control CO2, temperature and humidity is vital to the quantity and quality of your crop, and automated climate control devices allow growers to fully optimize their climate to suit the needs of their plants.

Indoor grow environments are all different, and they all see disparate levels of humidity and varying temperatures depending on the season and location of the garden. From misters and humidifiers to simple heating and air conditioning units, the automation of climate control systems keeps plants within optimal conditions. 

This level of control saves a lot of time and allows gardeners to know exactly where their climate levels are without even having to do any manual labor. Even better, these monitoring systems can also log and store data on your garden, empowering you with the information you need to optimize your operation. 

Watering and Feeding

Slightly tougher to automate than lighting and climate control, the watering and feeding of your plants can be automated as well. Because different plants within the same grow might require different quantities of water and nutrients based on microclimate patterns, genetics and a number of other variables, fully automating feeding and irrigation systems can become quite complicated rather quickly.

From drip irrigation to “fertigation,” a practice which streamlines every aspect of a feeding schedule by calculating and mixing nutrients directly through an irrigation system, automation systems designed to auto-feed and irrigate effectively can offer several advantages, including improved nutrient efficiency and precision, reduced nutrient leaching and water consumption as well as minimized labor. 

Data Entry

Keeping track of inventory and weights, growth stages and any movement the plants have done within a garden is a hassle. By automating the data entry of compliance information, costly mistakes are eliminated and a considerable amount of labor is reduced. Streamlining the monitoring and compliance process ensures greater accuracy in reporting, and like other smart-enabled systems, automated compliance technology stores all relevant information to the cloud, saving significant time and money while providing additional transparency for cultivators.

If you’re new to automation, try replacing just one system at a time with an automated technology, and see how it works in your grow environment. The time, money and energy savings create an enormous number of advantages and you may opt to expand the automation.