Zac has been involved in the cannabis industry since 2005. He has had experience with all kinds of growing environments. From outdoor plots in Northern California to warehouses throughout the United States, his journey has taken him to almost every corner of the country.
Zac worked at some of the most reputable supply companies and cultivations before landing his job at BioSafe Systems. He is the National Cannabis Specialist for the company, a position that did not exist before Zac was hired.
He has comprehensive knowledge of all aspects of cultivation but specializes in integrated pest management (IPM). He has even written the book “Clean Growing: Integrated Pest Management for Cannabis Growers: The Ultimate Guide to Clean Crops & Safe Cultivation Practices That Protect Growers & Consumers” that is available to growers on Amazon.
During our conversation we discuss:
How Zac got involved with IPM
What is IPM and why it’s important to cannabis growers
How cannabis growers can implement IPM into their operations
Common pests and pathogens that cannabis growers are battling
Common mistakes cannabis growers make when it comes to IPM
and more
Thanks to This Episode's Sponsor: Advanced Nutrients
Founded in 1999, Advanced Nutrients was the first to develop a complete nutrient system that unlocks the true genetic potential of the cannabis plant. Since its inception, the brand has introduced more than 50 innovations to the cultivation community, and continues to revolutionize the space through proprietary scientific discoveries.
Learn more at advancednutrients.com
Additional Resources
Clean Growing: Integrated Pest Management for Cannabis Growers: The Ultimate Guide to Clean Crops & Safe Cultivation Practices That Protect Growers & Consumers
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:14):
Welcome to the Can coffee Talk box cast.
But we talk with the leading minds and
cannabis science, medicine,
cultivation and safety testing.
I am your host, Ben, Am,
I'm the senior marketing manager at Medicinal Genomics,
and proud member of the team that puts
on the Cam meg conference.
So we are back from our summer break.
(00:34):
I hope you didn't miss us too much.
We are also working hard on finalizing the
details for our can med 25
event. Which will be announced very soon.
So if you haven't yet, please go to
can med events dot com now.
And sign up for email alerts so you
can get that announcement once it's made.
(00:57):
We are also putting the finishing touches on
the Can med 24 video
presentations,
and we'll be adding those to the Can
med archive very soon as well.
So if you're on the email list, you'll
get that notification as well.
My guest today is Zach Tachycardia.
He is a cannabis specialist working with bios
(01:18):
safe systems,
which is a company that produces environmentally
sustainable products,
to protect crops, water, and people.
Zach regularly puts out content on social media
under the name Zach the grow guy.
Where he shares his extensive knowledge of production
and plant health that he has accrued over
(01:41):
the years working with all types of growers.
Zach also offered the book clean growing,
integrated pest management for cannabis growers,
the ultimate guide to clean crops,
and safe cultivation practices
that protect growers and consumers.
During our conversation, we discuss
(02:02):
What is Ip and why is it important
to cannabis growers?
How Zach got involved with Ip for cannabis?
How cannabis growers can implement Ip into their
operations,
common pests and pathogens that cannabis growers are
battling,
Common mistakes, cannabis growers make when it comes
(02:22):
to Ip
and more.
Before we get to my conversation with Sack,
I'd like to thank this episode sponsor
advanced Nutrients.
Founded in 19 99,
advanced nutrients was the first to develop a
complete nutrient system that unlocks the true genetic
potential of the cannabis plant.
(02:44):
Since its inception, the brand has introduced more
than 50
innovations to the cultivation community and continues to
revolutionize the space
through proprietary scientific discoveries.
Learn more at advanced nutrients dot com.
Okay. And without any further ado, please enjoy
my conversation with Zach Ricardo.
(03:25):
Good morning, Zach. Thanks so much for joining
us on the podcast.
Thank you, Ben. I really appreciate you having
me on here and shout out to medical
genomics for putting us on.
Alright. Appreciate that. Yeah. I'm excited to talk
with you today about integrated pest management for
canvas cultivation. It's a topic that you've literally
wrote the book on.
We'll talk about that. I'm sure.
(03:46):
But how I became familiar with you is
I was actually sitting at the cultivation workshop
a Cam at 24, which was just
a few weeks ago or, in May.
And Ip came up during the panel conversation.
And 1 of the panel, I don't recall
who it was,
but mentioned you in your book,
clean growing integrated pest management for cannabis growers,
(04:09):
the ultimate guy to clean crops and save
cultivation practices that protect growers and consumers,
mentioned that specifically and said that, you know,
you are the person to talk to, and
you are you are the guy when it
comes to Ip. So I quickly jot that
name down and made sure to reach out
to you to get you on the Yes.
I'm so happy that you're here today.
(04:30):
So maybe just to
just to get us started, kinda set the
scene. Okay tell us a bit about your
background. How you got into cannabis Ip and
why it's important.
So I I kinda fell into cannabis Ip
almost out of necessity.
I've been in love with cannabis my entire
life and grew up in Colorado.
(04:50):
When I turned 18 I basically moved out
to California to kinda chase the, you know,
cannabis cult dream and
operated under
before 20 and Prop 02:15 in the state
of California for a while. I was able
to kinda get on with the gardening unlimited
crew, who were the guys at. You know,
we're basically selling the supplies. And that really
kinda came with my passion for the, you
(05:12):
know, why not just
you know, the what. There's a lot of
cannabis growers that follow charts, they never ask,
why are we doing this? And, you know,
I I just kinda wanted to take that
deeper delve,
originally being from Colorado in our industry here,
but they started to, you know, snowball and
blow up. I had a lot of people
telling me that I needed to come home.
And so I actually ran a smaller Hydro
(05:34):
store in Gold, Colorado for
I wanna say about 2 years. I ran
it from the day that it opened to
the day that it moved to Boulder.
When the owner decided that they were gonna
relocate, I, it was time for us to
just kinda separate paths. And so I actually
painted bikes for Harley Davidson for a little
while,
before I got on with a company called
Ac w supply. Here in Denver Colorado.
(05:54):
They are Goal... Or Colorado I oldest. Wholesale
grower supply. They've been around since 18 93.
And be an a counter guy there really
kind of jump started my
Ip
path, I guess we could say because I
I was just able to talk to many
different aspects of growers in a single day,
and this is when Cannabis was really starting
(06:14):
to Snowball in Colorado.
But be in the counter guy, I would
talk to a, you know, potato grower, a
point set of grower, Noble and a hemp
grower or and a cannabis grower all in
the same day, and they all had the
same issue. So I was kinda able to,
you know, conglomerate that knowledge and make suggestions
across different you know, fields
for the culture and say, well, you know,
this sector trying this, the sector trying this.
(06:37):
And
then
Colorado came out with what is called the
approved list,
which is basically a list of
pesticides, fungi sides,
sides that are
safe to put on a consumable crop like
cannabis.
And being in the very early days being
involved in seeing what that list was looking
like. I was able to put together a
very comprehensive
(06:59):
approach for cannabis growers in a commercial environment
to rotate their chemist effectively
so that they're able to
maximize their productivity
and man hours because there's a lot of
stuff on these lists that's kinda of misleading
or confusing.
And so being able to, you know, again,
am that knowledge from large scale growers and
it be able to break down an acre
(07:20):
to, you know, a 4 by 8 table.
Really help me out in terms of being
able to make some of this stuff understandable
for the industry.
And, you know, there was a
a long time ago, there was this mentality
in cannabis where if you got certain ailments,
you just chop down and start over. Well,
you know,
traditional growers don't have that luxury and being
able to see that and say, like, you
(07:40):
know, if cucumber come grower can't, clean out
their greenhouse because they got Powdery Mildew and
start from scratch, they would go bankrupt.
Have to have something that could eliminate this
powdery mildew you, especially if they're organic certified.
So there has to be a solution out
there. We just hadn't found it yet.
And, you know, being able to work with
some of the largest rows in the United
States at this point, I feel that the
bio safe Sop. It does have some ancillary
(08:03):
products on there because I always say, you
know, I'd never hire an electrician to put
in a toilet for me. We have the
foundation covered very, very well. Depending on the
unique scenario. There are some ancillary products from,
I don't necessarily wanna call them competitors. I
will say other producers of similar,
you know,
organic pesticides, fungi pesticides, and insecticides.
They fit into the program very well so
(08:24):
that the grower can be successful. Any 1
company that's telling you that they have all
the answers is just trying to take your
money.
I think 1 of the reasons I was
probably brought up on this panel is because
I want growers to be successful. I will
often recommend things to complement our program that
Bios safe doesn't manufacture. And that's because I
want you to be able to eliminate this
issue and also have that feather in your
cap so to speak,
(08:46):
because if this comes up again, you know
what to do. To come full circle those
growers that their mentality was to just chop
down and start over, well the next time
this happens, now you've lost 2 crops.
Right?
So now is your solution more of a
kind of reactive? I have a problem? I
need to address it? Is it or is
it preventative? Is it both?
I I always,
(09:07):
you know, preach preventative over curative, but there
are scenarios where, you know, things find their
way in. And so,
in the book clean growing, I do have
preventative measures as well as curative measures. And
the idea
is that growers just get used to the
idea of Ip.
Unfortunately, it's kind of been the red headed
step child of the industry, and it doesn't
really matter until it matters. And then it's
(09:29):
the only thing that matters because growers freak
out, and they start spending a bunch of
money trying to eliminate issues that will compromise
the quality of their end product
where, you know, the the best plan would
be to have something in place ahead of
time. Stuff finds its way through Ac fail,
lights go out, people quit. You know, there's
ancillary stuff that we always have to deal
with. Beyond what the plants are doing, but,
(09:50):
you know, just like we have to water
these plants. We also have to spray them
and be that intermediary because we've created a
perfect environment for these plants.
We've also created a perfect environment for pests
because there's no natural accreditation in these facilities.
And so a root fit, a spider mite
a t finds its way in that growth
curve is exponential unless we're spraying because they're
(10:10):
just gonna grow unchecked. So just like we
need to water these plants. We need to
make sure that we have a program in
place to where we are that intermediary to
go after anything that could find its way
into the garden. And again, you know, recommending
some other companies stuff with cannabis, I really
only like to spray up until about week
3 of flour unless it's absolutely necessary. At
that point, we can deploy Bc, which are
(10:31):
our biological control agents, such as our beneficial
insects, or ne,
basically using mother nature to combat, whatever else
we could find in that garden,
It allows growers to actually have a successful
approach in that aspect because they know what
they're targeting at that point. If you've been
spraying these plants from propagation all the way
up until about week 3 and you're in
(10:52):
that environment, you know what kind of pest
you're dealing with. So for example, if we're
dealing with 2 dotted spider mites, you know
that you need pre stimulus In California kiss
to be able to eliminate that issue, being
in that garden and spraying isn't just trying
to eliminate it it's also scouting. It's prepping,
It's note taking. It's allowing you to basically
set up that next week for the most
amount of success that you can possibly have.
(11:14):
And by
you know, basically spraying up until that week
3 cutoff,
week 3 roughly. It's when we transition from
stretching into setting. So there are some varieties
that might be a little later. There's some
varieties that might be a little sooner. But
basically, we wanna make sure that we are
addressing that wide array of stuff that could
find its way in.
Because while Bc work very, very well then,
(11:34):
they're specialized.
Again, plumbers put in toilets electrician put in
circuits not all beneficial insects are gonna go
after everything. So when you see people deploy
lady bugs and they said they have spider
mites. That's great that you introduced a bunch
of lady bugs and they made some of
those spider mites, but it's not a specialized
food source for that, you know, insect. And
so you're kinda wasting money at that point.
(11:55):
By being in the garden and having these
notes and knowing what happened last week, you
can tailor your approach next week so that
you are going to have the most success
you possibly can.
Excellent. Alright. Before we get too deep into
it, I'm hoping can you explain or define
what is integrated pest management?
Integrated pest management to me is
(12:16):
all things growing. It's not just a position
that 1 person is assigned at the garden,
It's literally on the entire team. While there's
1 person that's probably doing the sprays and
doing the logs and, you know, doing the
heavy lifting.
Ip is on everyone. If we've got a
lazy team of trimmer, and they go into
a dirty environment, and then they go into
veg. Then we just contaminated veg. So we
(12:39):
have to educate the entire
know, workforce that's at a facility at a
grow at garden. The Ip is on everybody.
We have to move consciously. We have to
think about what we're doing and we have
to try to
eliminate cross contamination wherever possible. You know, we
always go to our cleanest areas first. If
we have, you know, potential issues, I always
am a, you know, a proponent of using
(13:00):
irrigation marker flags so that you can tell
everybody on the team that there's an issue
that you spotted without having to verbally say
anything to anybody. You know, anybody that walks
into that room, if they see a red
flag sticking out of a pot. Whatever your
facility deem the red flag not mutate to...
They'll look at that and say, hey, I
need to avoid that area until I'm done
in this room. That way I'm not contaminating
everything. You know, Ip is is a cultural
(13:21):
practice.
Of cleanliness across the board, and it is
a preventative as well as curative approach to
eliminate issues that could, you know, possibly facilitate
themselves in a h environment.
And how does that differ from, like, traditional
pest control methods?
Really the only difference between cannabis Ip and
(13:41):
what we'll call traditional Ip is the types
of chemist that are used and the longevity
of said chemist.
Because cannabis is a consumable.
Most of the stuff is going to be
spray on cannabis is going to be,
what they call G ras or generally regarded
as safe.
You're not gonna see the long lived
(14:01):
systemic that's the pesticides that they'll use on
ornamental
because
they're poisonous.
I... I'm sure, you know, you've been around
for a long enough period of time. Everybody's
sort of Eagle 20.
Eagle 20 is a chemistry that is used
in traditional h,
and it's not necessarily the Boo man in
that aspect because people aren't comb combustion it.
(14:22):
Michael
or Eagle 20 really becomes dangerous once it's
lit on fire. You create benz and hydrocarbon
once it's comb combustion. And so for a
cannabis crop, it's not a good fit. But
if you were to spray it on
your leafy greens, your tomatoes, whatever
because those are on the label. It goes
through your digestive tract and it it's unchanged.
It doesn't have that carb group basically,
(14:44):
it's it's like, we have Thc and Delta
9. You know how many you like Thc
on fire, it becomes, you know, delta 9.
Same premise. So,
you know, having some of these chemist that
are in traditional port culture,
they're not necessarily as safe. And they don't
have the residual. So cannabis growers have to
be a little bit more diligent and educated
in terms of what the spray that they're
(15:05):
doing right now is going to do. And
how that next spray they're going to do
is going to either complement or contradict
what they just did. For example, you would
never wanna spray biological and oc and then
spray a sanitizer.
If you did it in the adverse and
you spray a sanitizer and then a biological
and,
git oc will actually perform better because you're
putting it onto a clean tissue environment. Where
it can colonize and spread much easier than
(15:27):
if you were to try to put it
onto to a dirty environment and then follow
up with a sanitizer a couple days later
and kill all those sports.
So a lot of it is just the
rotation of certain chemist and, you know, making
sure that you're using is different of mode
of action as we possibly can.
We don't necessarily have that same Ira rack
group
classification. That traditional h has where it says,
this the Ira rack group 3. It does
(15:48):
this this and this is Ira iraq group
4. Does this this and this. A lot
of the
pesticides and fungi decides that cannabis growers have
are going to be contact or a very
short lived.
And so knowing how to play those off
of 1 another so that the grower has
the most success allows them to basically stack
an Ip regimen
to wear again, every spray is complementing the
1 that preceded it.
(16:10):
Right? So now
integrated pest management
Now do you include, like, plant pathogens
within that sort of definition there? So, you
know, you're hu and thyroid and
Alopecia sharing, pit all those sort of things?
If pest can be anything from, you know,
a single celled organism, you know, vi are
very, very small, 25 50 nanometers in size
(16:32):
all the way up to, you know, bang
that are, you know, the size of a
baby almost. There's
a whole different slew of stuff that can
attack the plants. And basically, you know, pest
management is going to be
you being intermediary for everything from
you know, the stuff you see to the
stuff you can. Mh
And so
(16:53):
how how unique is sort of the the
program to each facility Kit... Is there sort
of a general
protocol that they should be following or is
it very specific?
So in the the book, I I have
what I kinda call the recipe for bread.
Which is just the basic outline of the
rotation of
a growth regular style chemistry, which is more
(17:15):
than likely going to be az a direct
in cannabis.
What I like to call the heavy hit,
which are going to be your micro insecticides
like your Ba
Guyana, your b der, you're sorry for Mo,
your meta,
type chemist.
And then on Fridays, just so we can
keep the pressure on the button, so to
speak. Depending on the scenario, that's when we
would use either, like a sulfur,
(17:37):
a citric acid or possibly in in insect
so.
And so each scenario is is a little
bit different, but it allows to grow to
basically tailor their approach to best fit what
they're dealing with at that point in time.
And because the base of the program really
doesn't change a whole lot. Allows them to
be able to make my new changes while
still staying on
you know, same basic premise so that, you
(17:58):
know, your your guys aren't saying, like, did
this this last week and an now we're
over here doing something completely different. You know,
there's there's few my new changes that occur,
but the nice thing about is that it's
broad enough that it can address most of
the issues that we're trying to do. And,
again, if we're doing this as a preventative,
then we don't have to get into that
necessarily specialized section of it, where it's like,
okay. We're dealing with Russ might specifically or
(18:19):
we're dealing with Root A. And that's when
we make little changes. But, you know, for
a general just overview Sop of just trying
to keep things clean. It... It's pretty universal.
Right. So, no. I'm glad you said that.
So... Because I know... Know I mean,
in in researching and kinda Ip, there's all
these articles that kinda talk about the the
different tenants. Of it, and it can be
for anywhere from 4 to 6 to whatever.
(18:41):
But I know that 1 of the the
main ones is the whole idea of
identification and monitoring and which is sort of
like, what you had talked about before. So
what are
some of the signs that
growers should be looking for to in order
to sort of identify a problem for it,
you know, snowball out of control.
You know,
(19:01):
1 thing that I always try to have
growers do is empower their staff.
Because a grower is only 1 person, and
they're in any given facility, there's thousands of
plants possibly.
But you have people that are looking at
those plants every single day.
Empower your staff to come to you, they
don't need to be an expert necessarily, but
they know when something's not right. If that
plant looks different than it did yesterday,
(19:23):
have them come tell you, and then you
can figure it out. You know, it's 1
of those things that
if
you
don't allow your step. Like, I don't want
you to have your staff think that they're
making a mistake. You know what I'm saying?
Like, a lot of times people will not
go tell the head grower that something's ami
missed because they don't want it to come
back on them, like, oh, then you did
this type of thing.
Empower your people to say, like, if there
(19:43):
is anything that's off, let's figure it out.
You know, if this plant looks different than
it did yesterday, if it's got purple stems,
if it's got s on the leaves. If
the, you know, t rigidity is gone and
the leaves are starting to curl down. If
they're starting to curl up. Like, anything that
just looks a miss,
allow your
how do I put it? Like, you don't
necessarily have to have a team of master
(20:05):
growers. You just gotta have a team of
diligent people.
And as long as there's 1 person on
staff that, you know, can say, like, okay,
there's an issue, Let me go see it,
Like, most facilities have 1 maintenance guy that
fixes Ac acs. It's not on everybody to
do it. So if you have 1 guy
that's responsible for plant health and pathogen mitigation
when somebody finds something, he can say, hey.
I gotta go tell Ben what I just
found, then, you know, it could be that
(20:26):
they top it funny. It could be that
it's H. It could be that there's an
actual issue going on beyond that. You know,
but at having the ability and that communication
between your team is paramount.
Because those are the guys that are in
the trenches, so to speak. And, you know,
you gotta empower your team to let you
know what's going on because, again, the head
growers is only in 1 spot at 1
time. And having the ability to have a
(20:47):
team that can relay real world information to
you you know, very quickly helps a lot.
That flag system that I was mentioning a
little bit, that really helps a lot because
a head grower can stick his head in
a room and count flags in 30 seconds.
That's a great way to, know, also track
progress. If we had 10 red flags last
week and this week we're down to 5
then what we're doing is working. You know,
we need to continue on that process that
(21:09):
we have implemented.
If we are at 15 red flags this
week and last week we only had 10,
then we need to switch it up because
it's getting worse. And so it's it... You
know, communication is I think the most important
part of you integrated pest to me.
And yeah. The communication
definitely seems important. And like you said, it's
it's a culture. Right? And
so
How common is that the culture in in
(21:31):
cannabis
cultivation? Like, is it is it becoming more
of a thing?
I see more and more operations becoming more
and more regiment in terms of how they
do things. And
whether it's state regulations that have kind of
facilitated that change or people just realizing that
they have the run leaner because the market
isn't what it was.
(21:51):
Having the ability to educate staff, and, you
know, get them all on the same page
and empower people, I think is the way
that the successful grows are going. If you
punish your employees for trying to do their
best, They're not gonna wanna work for you.
Right. Right. Alright. I wanna talk to you
about some of, like, what are some of
the common
pests or problems that cannabis growers just always
(22:13):
seem to be dealing with.
I would say the 4 most common things
that I run into travel in the country
are going to be trips.
Root A,
hop and thyroid and powdery mildew do.
T can be kind of a problem because
a lot of times, folks will only attack
1 life cycle stage of this
infestation. Trips actually have a point where they
(22:35):
live in the canopy, and they have a
point where they live in the strata of
your media And so if you're not treating
both, you're gonna see these ebb and flows
where they're gone for 2 weeks. They come
back. They're gone for 2 weeks. They come
back. And so, you know,
educating growers that doing a french application with
R really does allow them to get ahead
of it.
Root A are extremely hard to get rid
of just because they're incredibly adept. At what
(22:56):
people have been throwing at them. What I've
found to be the most effective method to
attack Root Is to actually do an irrigation
cycle before you do any trenches or sprays.
They run away from that moisture of the
first
irrigation cycle of the day. If we can
get those pots wet and get them complacent
to the fact that that moisture is there.
They're less apt to try to run away.
And so whatever we're putting out via a
(23:18):
dr sp or spray is gonna have much
better likelihood of actually coming in contact with
them because they're not trying to run from
it.
Pop and thyroid is something that
a lot of growers have it, but they
don't know they have it. Just until they
have it. And again, this comes back to
that cultural practices thing and, you know, it
kinda of falls on everybody and just the
(23:38):
communication.
That thyroid can be transferred via
dirty matter. Can be transferred mechanically. So it
grow goes from 1 plant to another doesn't
wash his hands. Can be spread by tools.
It can be spread by runoff. It can
be spread by insects. Is a very prevalent
pathogen and
a lot of folks don't can take it
as seriously as they should. There are some
growers that have completely realized that it can
(23:59):
decimate their business and they will test their
moms before they take cuts every single round
and they're they're doing everything they need to.
And then there are growers that still use
a single cup of Cl x and dip
every single cut in that same hormone.
And it's, like, if if there's any contamination
you guys just spread it across the board.
So, you know, honestly, I I feel like
the the viral and
(24:22):
and pathogens are going to be the hardest
thing for the cannabis industry to address because
you don't know that you have them until
you have them. And once you have them,
we can go into remission, so to speak,
we can, you know, get it to a
point where the plant can still finish, but
those genetics are contaminated at that point and
to keep them onboard would be to
you know, facilitate the downfall of everything else
(24:43):
that you have in your stable. Because, again,
that can transfer so many different ways and
so easily.
And the thing that a lot of growth...
The latent portion of this thyroid, if your
plants are healthy, you're not gonna see
what it can do right away. But over
time, the plant health starts to go down.
It's almost like cancer.
You know, the the patient isn't necessarily bedridden
written when they're first diagnosed, but the longer
(25:05):
they are alive.
That line goes like this and the sicker
they become. And, you know, to compromise an
entire business with H v is just... It's
very scary because
it will compromise your harvest. Your Thc percentage
plummet, your bag appeal goes down, and the
medicinal value of the plant is just not
there anymore. You know, you're you're basically growing
hemp at that point. You're compliant with the
(25:25):
farm bill almost.
The
I'm sorry. The... No. I I never thought
of it that way.
Like the the last, you know, most common
pathogen that I see is Powdery Mildew just
because it is
very prevalent. It's easy to pop up. It's
not the end of the world. A lot
of times growers won't
(25:45):
do everything they need to do to eliminate,
set issue. But,
it is something that can be gotten rid
of fairly easily. First thing I always tell
people to make sure your environment on point,
if you can't set your temp to 60
and your d to 10, and then hit
those numbers, your environment isn't where it needs
to be. You know, there are there are
folks that say oh, I can get it
to where it needs to be And if
(26:05):
if you can't hit those parameters, it's not.
And so the first thing growers have to
do is make sure that their Hvac is
up to point. They're, you know,
Eric's conditioning is up to point. Their D
is where it needs to be. And if
they're still experiencing powder mildew that's when we
say, okay. Let's look at what we can
spray it you know, basically,
kind of hinder this thing and its tracks.
And we've got some really cool options for
cannabis growers that have
(26:27):
you know, very safe
application
methods and, you know, 0 residual aspects in
terms of dangerous stuff,
and, you know, it just allows them to
basically get on that schedule of, like, okay.
It's it's flip. We got us spray and
x tall or, you know, it's Wednesday. We
gotta hit a a mic insect.
And, you know to touch on what you
(26:48):
kinda said earlier, In my program,
Monday, Wednesday, Friday for preventative is Spray,
Tuesday and Thursday is plant work and scouting.
And then once we get from,
you know, basically curative into preventative. I'm sorry.
I said that wrong. I said preventative, but
I meant curative.
Once we get into the preventative mode, we
actually flip it. In Monday, Wednesday, Friday, we're
(27:08):
doing scouting, Tuesday, Thursday, we're doing our sprays.
But the idea is that your
in there looking at the plants as much
as your spraying or def or doing anything
else because we have to evaluate our progress
and, you know, keep a lot of logs
if we don't write down what we're doing
in a month, we won't remember what we
did, we don't know if we did anything
right or not. You know, group girls are
very cyclical in terms of what happened last
(27:30):
June, if likely is gonna happen this June.
And so if you can go back to
your log last year and say, shit, We
had trips on the fourteenth when it I
got really hot, and then you look at
your calendar and you say, okay, It's gonna
get up to, you know, a hundred and
2 or whatever. I'm anticipating trips. You could
put out your am serious k, you know,
beneficial insects and later flower and then do
your sprays.
In your veg and your prop and your
(27:50):
early flower and combat the, you know, t
before they ever even get established.
Right?
No. I wanted to go back to when
you were talking about the pathogens, and, you
know, it sounded like 1 of the main
challenges with that is you don't really know
you have it until it's too late.
So in in that sense, do you sort
of advocate for, you know,
(28:10):
regular testing,
full disclosure?
Medicinal genomics. We we
develop Q assays for hop and bi,
pre pit, a lot of the the plant
pathogens that
folks use. And, you know, we're trying to
spread the word to growers that, you know,
should make that part of their program to
to do testing. Is that something that you
would agree with? Definitely.
Every other aspect of h culture that is
(28:33):
traditional does tissue testing. If you go to
it, tomato Grower greenhouse, they're doing it once
a week. They don't know how to adjust
their feeds if they don't know what the
plants up taking and what it's not. And,
you know, it... That's nutritional analysis, but being
able to have this pathogen testing is paramount.
If you have a dirty genetic and you
put, you know, 2000 clones into production, that's
a loss
(28:54):
because that 2000 clones with the where where
the market is now, you're gonna spend more
money labor and time then you're gonna be
able to recoup off of that crop at
that point. If you can even sell it
because it's not going to come out looking
like it should.
I... I'm an advocate of, you know, having
a test allows us to make educated decisions.
If we don't know what we're dealing with,
then we're just throwing stuff at the wall
(29:15):
to see what sticks. Every time you cut
clones, if you bring in something new, you
know, even quarterly,
test your you're stable just to make sure
everything is where it's supposed to. But anything
that comes in brand new should always be
quarantined and tested, and then those, you know,
plants should have clones cut off of them.
And as long as those clones off of
the plants you brought in look okay, then
we can put it into production. But I...
(29:36):
That's mistake. I've seen time and time again
where growers are excited to get some hype
genetic they put into production right away, and
then they're, like, you know, shit. I just
infected half of my stable with XYZ.
Right? No. And now going back to the
pest.
I know, another thing that I sort of
saw on my research too is this sort
of... This idea of setting thresholds.
So
(29:56):
is there, like, a certain amount of pests
that's sort of, like, okay as long as
we can manage it and, you know, keep
it down or
I mean, in in a perfect world brother,
the the perfect number would be 0, But
this is farming, and we're in a fluid
environment where
got people coming in and out of the
facility all day long, you know, depending on
the type of facility. If it's a greenhouse.
(30:17):
Every time you open your lube to vent
and the late the greenhouse, we've potentially introduced
contamination. And so the the m and Ip
stands for management.
You're never gonna completely be ahead of everything.
You will always have something to do the
next day because nature never quits. You know,
it will always try to find its way
in or, you know, do... It's best to
s what it is we're trying to do.
(30:39):
And so, you know, the
acceptable
level is low pressure, but, you know, don't
get complacent and say, oh, We've we've got
mites, but they're not that bad. You know...
We've got mites, but we're treating them as
the right approach. Once you get complacent with
something, that's when other issues start to snowball.
And so low pressure isn't unacceptable,
But, you know, make sure that you're doing
(31:00):
your best to get that to as close
to no pressure as you can. And
again, because it's farming, if we wipe 1
issue out then, something else is gonna pop
up tomorrow. Let's the nature of the beast.
Yeah. Yeah.
Alright. So winding down here, I'm I'm curious,
you know, are there some common mistake
that growers make when they're implementing Ip that
they could avoid.
(31:20):
The most common mistake that I see is
that growers don't necessarily look at active ingredients.
Just looking at brand names. And so,
you know, 1 time I went to a
facility here in Denver and the grower had,
clarified hydrophobic extract of ne oil,
as a direct in, and n oil. And
those are all basically the exact same thing
just different versions of the exact same product,
(31:42):
and he was wondering why he wasn't having
success with his issue. And it's like, well
brother you're using 3 versions of the same
stuff. You know, being able to differentiate between
active really allows growers to get those different
modes of action and, you know, making sure
that
they are ph
their sprays. At the end of it is
something that I've seen some growers neglect to
(32:03):
do, like, they'll ph their reservoirs
every time. But
won't ph their sprays for whatever reason. I
I feel like that sometimes is a an
00AC.
And the other thing that I I see
a lot of growers do, man, and this
is not knocking anybody, but, you know, water
quality isn't necessarily the best in some places
in the country. So growers will spray with
ro water.
(32:23):
And,
ro o, as you know is acidic. Comes
out of the machine at 7, but you
let it sit for 24 hours, it's gonna
be ph of something like 5 5.
Then they add something like citric acid to
it, It's gonna be a ph of something
like 3.
You spray a ph of 3 on your
plants, man. You're gonna see some F and
burn some stuff. And so
what I typically recommend to growers is if
(32:43):
you've got really dirty water and you cannot
spray with tap.
Take some of your base N,
spike it to about 0.3 E.
Get a little of the... Of that bicarbonate
content from that fertilizer back into that water
column. And that way, if you do have
to buffer it or add something else to
it, It's not going to have the drastic
swings that it would without that bicarbonate content.
(33:04):
Anytime growers are spraying 0 it's all. I
tell them if you're using an Ro, spike
it to 0.3 Ac,
and they add the 0 all, and 9
out of 10 times it'll fall between 5
5 and 6 2.
For a full year at.
So looking ahead,
are there any advancements or innovations that you're
excited about when it comes to Ip?
(33:27):
Definitely. You know, the the realm of
micro insecticides is continuing to expand.
The
Nature against nature really is my favorite approach.
Mother nature has been doing us a lot
longer than we have, And, know, she's got
checks and balances for everything. So being able
to utilize more
natural products and get further away from petrochemical
(33:49):
and, you know, stuff that harm poll and
hurts the environment really is going to...
I think allow pest management to be looked
at as not necessarily this big bogey man.
Anytime you hear the word and insect, pest,
people always think Monsanto, roundup, cancer,
and it's like, there's...
To form on scale, you have to be
able to be that intermediary, but we don't
necessarily have to use those chemist that poison
(34:11):
the planet, you know, Bios safe, are mantra
to try to leave the planet better than
we found it, man, and to you know,
we're able to address a lot of these
issues that these gnarly chemicals
address what we do it without hurting the
environment.
And so I in the future, I'm just
excited to see more of these
really cancer, you know, gnarly chemist be replaced
by stuff that works that is safer for
(34:33):
the planet and for people.
Excellent.
Alright. And before I let you go,
are there any other resources besides your book,
which I will put a link to in
the show notes, so people can, can find
that on Amazon. But are there other resources,
papers or anything like that that you could
recommend
that if people are interested in learning more
about, what it does you do?
(34:55):
We definitely have a, you know, a really
good
Instagram page. If you go into the Ig
Tv tab,
when the pandemic first started, I used to
do these things called Fireside chats, Where, I
would just talk about a different aspect of
cultivation. That has everything from
trimming to curing to, you know, russ mites
and Root If it's, anything and everything I
(35:15):
could think of talking about I did.
So anybody that wants to watch free videos.
All the stuff that's in the book is
also on those videos just sometimes you don't
have 8 hours to come through videos to
finance answer you're looking for.
And then I I really recommend that anybody
that's serious about the industry, get on a
website called M mma Daily.
There's a...
(35:36):
On the h side, It's called the H
daily. But M j daily is a cannabis
specific daily newsletter that gets sent to your
inbox, and it talks about cannabis news from
all over the world. You can see what
the Netherlands are doing, you can see what
Israel is doing. And see what South Africa
is doing. Can see what Germany is doing.
You can see what Canada is doing. You
can see what we're doing. And it just
(35:56):
it keeps you really abreast of, you know,
the... What's going on in cannabis as a
whole and, you know, it gives you that
kinda thousand yard view of the industry and,
you know, allows you to know what's coming
before it comes, You know, they... A lot
of times they'll talk about legislation that's potential
and you know, you'll know about something 6
months before it's talked about on Msnbc or
something.
(36:17):
Excellent. Excellent.
Alright. Zach. Well, thanks again for doing this.
I think it was great. And,
hopefully, we can see out to Cam med
once
once we announce the details for that. I'd
love to see you there. Becky you have
brother keeping posted. Thank you so much for
having us on and enjoy your weekend. Okay?
Alright. We'll do.
Welcome to the Can coffee Talk box cast.
But we talk with the leading minds and
cannabis science, medicine,
cultivation and safety testing.
I am your host, Ben, Am,
I'm the senior marketing manager at Medicinal Genomics,
and proud member of the team that puts
on the Cam meg conference.
So we are back from our summer break.
(00:34):
I hope you didn't miss us too much.
We are also working hard on finalizing the
details for our can med 25
event. Which will be announced very soon.
So if you haven't yet, please go to
can med events dot com now.
And sign up for email alerts so you
can get that announcement once it's made.
(00:57):
We are also putting the finishing touches on
the Can med 24 video
presentations,
and we'll be adding those to the Can
med archive very soon as well.
So if you're on the email list, you'll
get that notification as well.
My guest today is Zach Tachycardia.
He is a cannabis specialist working with bios
(01:18):
safe systems,
which is a company that produces environmentally
sustainable products,
to protect crops, water, and people.
Zach regularly puts out content on social media
under the name Zach the grow guy.
Where he shares his extensive knowledge of production
and plant health that he has accrued over
(01:41):
the years working with all types of growers.
Zach also offered the book clean growing,
integrated pest management for cannabis growers,
the ultimate guide to clean crops,
and safe cultivation practices
that protect growers and consumers.
During our conversation, we discuss
(02:02):
What is Ip and why is it important
to cannabis growers?
How Zach got involved with Ip for cannabis?
How cannabis growers can implement Ip into their
operations,
common pests and pathogens that cannabis growers are
battling,
Common mistakes, cannabis growers make when it comes
(02:22):
to Ip
and more.
Before we get to my conversation with Sack,
I'd like to thank this episode sponsor
advanced Nutrients.
Founded in 19 99,
advanced nutrients was the first to develop a
complete nutrient system that unlocks the true genetic
potential of the cannabis plant.
(02:44):
Since its inception, the brand has introduced more
than 50
innovations to the cultivation community and continues to
revolutionize the space
through proprietary scientific discoveries.
Learn more at advanced nutrients dot com.
Okay. And without any further ado, please enjoy
my conversation with Zach Ricardo.
(03:25):
Good morning, Zach. Thanks so much for joining
us on the podcast.
Thank you, Ben. I really appreciate you having
me on here and shout out to medical
genomics for putting us on.
Alright. Appreciate that. Yeah. I'm excited to talk
with you today about integrated pest management for
canvas cultivation. It's a topic that you've literally
wrote the book on.
We'll talk about that. I'm sure.
(03:46):
But how I became familiar with you is
I was actually sitting at the cultivation workshop
a Cam at 24, which was just
a few weeks ago or, in May.
And Ip came up during the panel conversation.
And 1 of the panel, I don't recall
who it was,
but mentioned you in your book,
clean growing integrated pest management for cannabis growers,
(04:09):
the ultimate guy to clean crops and save
cultivation practices that protect growers and consumers,
mentioned that specifically and said that, you know,
you are the person to talk to, and
you are you are the guy when it
comes to Ip. So I quickly jot that
name down and made sure to reach out
to you to get you on the Yes.
I'm so happy that you're here today.
(04:30):
So maybe just to
just to get us started, kinda set the
scene. Okay tell us a bit about your
background. How you got into cannabis Ip and
why it's important.
So I I kinda fell into cannabis Ip
almost out of necessity.
I've been in love with cannabis my entire
life and grew up in Colorado.
(04:50):
When I turned 18 I basically moved out
to California to kinda chase the, you know,
cannabis cult dream and
operated under
before 20 and Prop 02:15 in the state
of California for a while. I was able
to kinda get on with the gardening unlimited
crew, who were the guys at. You know,
we're basically selling the supplies. And that really
kinda came with my passion for the, you
(05:12):
know, why not just
you know, the what. There's a lot of
cannabis growers that follow charts, they never ask,
why are we doing this? And, you know,
I I just kinda wanted to take that
deeper delve,
originally being from Colorado in our industry here,
but they started to, you know, snowball and
blow up. I had a lot of people
telling me that I needed to come home.
And so I actually ran a smaller Hydro
(05:34):
store in Gold, Colorado for
I wanna say about 2 years. I ran
it from the day that it opened to
the day that it moved to Boulder.
When the owner decided that they were gonna
relocate, I, it was time for us to
just kinda separate paths. And so I actually
painted bikes for Harley Davidson for a little
while,
before I got on with a company called
Ac w supply. Here in Denver Colorado.
(05:54):
They are Goal... Or Colorado I oldest. Wholesale
grower supply. They've been around since 18 93.
And be an a counter guy there really
kind of jump started my
Ip
path, I guess we could say because I
I was just able to talk to many
different aspects of growers in a single day,
and this is when Cannabis was really starting
(06:14):
to Snowball in Colorado.
But be in the counter guy, I would
talk to a, you know, potato grower, a
point set of grower, Noble and a hemp
grower or and a cannabis grower all in
the same day, and they all had the
same issue. So I was kinda able to,
you know, conglomerate that knowledge and make suggestions
across different you know, fields
for the culture and say, well, you know,
this sector trying this, the sector trying this.
(06:37):
And
then
Colorado came out with what is called the
approved list,
which is basically a list of
pesticides, fungi sides,
sides that are
safe to put on a consumable crop like
cannabis.
And being in the very early days being
involved in seeing what that list was looking
like. I was able to put together a
very comprehensive
(06:59):
approach for cannabis growers in a commercial environment
to rotate their chemist effectively
so that they're able to
maximize their productivity
and man hours because there's a lot of
stuff on these lists that's kinda of misleading
or confusing.
And so being able to, you know, again,
am that knowledge from large scale growers and
it be able to break down an acre
(07:20):
to, you know, a 4 by 8 table.
Really help me out in terms of being
able to make some of this stuff understandable
for the industry.
And, you know, there was a
a long time ago, there was this mentality
in cannabis where if you got certain ailments,
you just chop down and start over. Well,
you know,
traditional growers don't have that luxury and being
able to see that and say, like, you
(07:40):
know, if cucumber come grower can't, clean out
their greenhouse because they got Powdery Mildew and
start from scratch, they would go bankrupt.
Have to have something that could eliminate this
powdery mildew you, especially if they're organic certified.
So there has to be a solution out
there. We just hadn't found it yet.
And, you know, being able to work with
some of the largest rows in the United
States at this point, I feel that the
bio safe Sop. It does have some ancillary
(08:03):
products on there because I always say, you
know, I'd never hire an electrician to put
in a toilet for me. We have the
foundation covered very, very well. Depending on the
unique scenario. There are some ancillary products from,
I don't necessarily wanna call them competitors. I
will say other producers of similar,
you know,
organic pesticides, fungi pesticides, and insecticides.
They fit into the program very well so
(08:24):
that the grower can be successful. Any 1
company that's telling you that they have all
the answers is just trying to take your
money.
I think 1 of the reasons I was
probably brought up on this panel is because
I want growers to be successful. I will
often recommend things to complement our program that
Bios safe doesn't manufacture. And that's because I
want you to be able to eliminate this
issue and also have that feather in your
cap so to speak,
(08:46):
because if this comes up again, you know
what to do. To come full circle those
growers that their mentality was to just chop
down and start over, well the next time
this happens, now you've lost 2 crops.
Right?
So now is your solution more of a
kind of reactive? I have a problem? I
need to address it? Is it or is
it preventative? Is it both?
I I always,
(09:07):
you know, preach preventative over curative, but there
are scenarios where, you know, things find their
way in. And so,
in the book clean growing, I do have
preventative measures as well as curative measures. And
the idea
is that growers just get used to the
idea of Ip.
Unfortunately, it's kind of been the red headed
step child of the industry, and it doesn't
really matter until it matters. And then it's
(09:29):
the only thing that matters because growers freak
out, and they start spending a bunch of
money trying to eliminate issues that will compromise
the quality of their end product
where, you know, the the best plan would
be to have something in place ahead of
time. Stuff finds its way through Ac fail,
lights go out, people quit. You know, there's
ancillary stuff that we always have to deal
with. Beyond what the plants are doing, but,
(09:50):
you know, just like we have to water
these plants. We also have to spray them
and be that intermediary because we've created a
perfect environment for these plants.
We've also created a perfect environment for pests
because there's no natural accreditation in these facilities.
And so a root fit, a spider mite
a t finds its way in that growth
curve is exponential unless we're spraying because they're
(10:10):
just gonna grow unchecked. So just like we
need to water these plants. We need to
make sure that we have a program in
place to where we are that intermediary to
go after anything that could find its way
into the garden. And again, you know, recommending
some other companies stuff with cannabis, I really
only like to spray up until about week
3 of flour unless it's absolutely necessary. At
that point, we can deploy Bc, which are
(10:31):
our biological control agents, such as our beneficial
insects, or ne,
basically using mother nature to combat, whatever else
we could find in that garden,
It allows growers to actually have a successful
approach in that aspect because they know what
they're targeting at that point. If you've been
spraying these plants from propagation all the way
up until about week 3 and you're in
(10:52):
that environment, you know what kind of pest
you're dealing with. So for example, if we're
dealing with 2 dotted spider mites, you know
that you need pre stimulus In California kiss
to be able to eliminate that issue, being
in that garden and spraying isn't just trying
to eliminate it it's also scouting. It's prepping,
It's note taking. It's allowing you to basically
set up that next week for the most
amount of success that you can possibly have.
(11:14):
And by
you know, basically spraying up until that week
3 cutoff,
week 3 roughly. It's when we transition from
stretching into setting. So there are some varieties
that might be a little later. There's some
varieties that might be a little sooner. But
basically, we wanna make sure that we are
addressing that wide array of stuff that could
find its way in.
Because while Bc work very, very well then,
(11:34):
they're specialized.
Again, plumbers put in toilets electrician put in
circuits not all beneficial insects are gonna go
after everything. So when you see people deploy
lady bugs and they said they have spider
mites. That's great that you introduced a bunch
of lady bugs and they made some of
those spider mites, but it's not a specialized
food source for that, you know, insect. And
so you're kinda wasting money at that point.
(11:55):
By being in the garden and having these
notes and knowing what happened last week, you
can tailor your approach next week so that
you are going to have the most success
you possibly can.
Excellent. Alright. Before we get too deep into
it, I'm hoping can you explain or define
what is integrated pest management?
Integrated pest management to me is
(12:16):
all things growing. It's not just a position
that 1 person is assigned at the garden,
It's literally on the entire team. While there's
1 person that's probably doing the sprays and
doing the logs and, you know, doing the
heavy lifting.
Ip is on everyone. If we've got a
lazy team of trimmer, and they go into
a dirty environment, and then they go into
veg. Then we just contaminated veg. So we
(12:39):
have to educate the entire
know, workforce that's at a facility at a
grow at garden. The Ip is on everybody.
We have to move consciously. We have to
think about what we're doing and we have
to try to
eliminate cross contamination wherever possible. You know, we
always go to our cleanest areas first. If
we have, you know, potential issues, I always
am a, you know, a proponent of using
(13:00):
irrigation marker flags so that you can tell
everybody on the team that there's an issue
that you spotted without having to verbally say
anything to anybody. You know, anybody that walks
into that room, if they see a red
flag sticking out of a pot. Whatever your
facility deem the red flag not mutate to...
They'll look at that and say, hey, I
need to avoid that area until I'm done
in this room. That way I'm not contaminating
everything. You know, Ip is is a cultural
(13:21):
practice.
Of cleanliness across the board, and it is
a preventative as well as curative approach to
eliminate issues that could, you know, possibly facilitate
themselves in a h environment.
And how does that differ from, like, traditional
pest control methods?
Really the only difference between cannabis Ip and
(13:41):
what we'll call traditional Ip is the types
of chemist that are used and the longevity
of said chemist.
Because cannabis is a consumable.
Most of the stuff is going to be
spray on cannabis is going to be,
what they call G ras or generally regarded
as safe.
You're not gonna see the long lived
(14:01):
systemic that's the pesticides that they'll use on
ornamental
because
they're poisonous.
I... I'm sure, you know, you've been around
for a long enough period of time. Everybody's
sort of Eagle 20.
Eagle 20 is a chemistry that is used
in traditional h,
and it's not necessarily the Boo man in
that aspect because people aren't comb combustion it.
(14:22):
Michael
or Eagle 20 really becomes dangerous once it's
lit on fire. You create benz and hydrocarbon
once it's comb combustion. And so for a
cannabis crop, it's not a good fit. But
if you were to spray it on
your leafy greens, your tomatoes, whatever
because those are on the label. It goes
through your digestive tract and it it's unchanged.
It doesn't have that carb group basically,
(14:44):
it's it's like, we have Thc and Delta
9. You know how many you like Thc
on fire, it becomes, you know, delta 9.
Same premise. So,
you know, having some of these chemist that
are in traditional port culture,
they're not necessarily as safe. And they don't
have the residual. So cannabis growers have to
be a little bit more diligent and educated
in terms of what the spray that they're
(15:05):
doing right now is going to do. And
how that next spray they're going to do
is going to either complement or contradict
what they just did. For example, you would
never wanna spray biological and oc and then
spray a sanitizer.
If you did it in the adverse and
you spray a sanitizer and then a biological
and,
git oc will actually perform better because you're
putting it onto a clean tissue environment. Where
it can colonize and spread much easier than
(15:27):
if you were to try to put it
onto to a dirty environment and then follow
up with a sanitizer a couple days later
and kill all those sports.
So a lot of it is just the
rotation of certain chemist and, you know, making
sure that you're using is different of mode
of action as we possibly can.
We don't necessarily have that same Ira rack
group
classification. That traditional h has where it says,
this the Ira rack group 3. It does
(15:48):
this this and this is Ira iraq group
4. Does this this and this. A lot
of the
pesticides and fungi decides that cannabis growers have
are going to be contact or a very
short lived.
And so knowing how to play those off
of 1 another so that the grower has
the most success allows them to basically stack
an Ip regimen
to wear again, every spray is complementing the
1 that preceded it.
(16:10):
Right? So now
integrated pest management
Now do you include, like, plant pathogens
within that sort of definition there? So, you
know, you're hu and thyroid and
Alopecia sharing, pit all those sort of things?
If pest can be anything from, you know,
a single celled organism, you know, vi are
very, very small, 25 50 nanometers in size
(16:32):
all the way up to, you know, bang
that are, you know, the size of a
baby almost. There's
a whole different slew of stuff that can
attack the plants. And basically, you know, pest
management is going to be
you being intermediary for everything from
you know, the stuff you see to the
stuff you can. Mh
And so
(16:53):
how how unique is sort of the the
program to each facility Kit... Is there sort
of a general
protocol that they should be following or is
it very specific?
So in the the book, I I have
what I kinda call the recipe for bread.
Which is just the basic outline of the
rotation of
a growth regular style chemistry, which is more
(17:15):
than likely going to be az a direct
in cannabis.
What I like to call the heavy hit,
which are going to be your micro insecticides
like your Ba
Guyana, your b der, you're sorry for Mo,
your meta,
type chemist.
And then on Fridays, just so we can
keep the pressure on the button, so to
speak. Depending on the scenario, that's when we
would use either, like a sulfur,
(17:37):
a citric acid or possibly in in insect
so.
And so each scenario is is a little
bit different, but it allows to grow to
basically tailor their approach to best fit what
they're dealing with at that point in time.
And because the base of the program really
doesn't change a whole lot. Allows them to
be able to make my new changes while
still staying on
you know, same basic premise so that, you
(17:58):
know, your your guys aren't saying, like, did
this this last week and an now we're
over here doing something completely different. You know,
there's there's few my new changes that occur,
but the nice thing about is that it's
broad enough that it can address most of
the issues that we're trying to do. And,
again, if we're doing this as a preventative,
then we don't have to get into that
necessarily specialized section of it, where it's like,
okay. We're dealing with Russ might specifically or
(18:19):
we're dealing with Root A. And that's when
we make little changes. But, you know, for
a general just overview Sop of just trying
to keep things clean. It... It's pretty universal.
Right. So, no. I'm glad you said that.
So... Because I know... Know I mean,
in in researching and kinda Ip, there's all
these articles that kinda talk about the the
different tenants. Of it, and it can be
for anywhere from 4 to 6 to whatever.
(18:41):
But I know that 1 of the the
main ones is the whole idea of
identification and monitoring and which is sort of
like, what you had talked about before. So
what are
some of the signs that
growers should be looking for to in order
to sort of identify a problem for it,
you know, snowball out of control.
You know,
(19:01):
1 thing that I always try to have
growers do is empower their staff.
Because a grower is only 1 person, and
they're in any given facility, there's thousands of
plants possibly.
But you have people that are looking at
those plants every single day.
Empower your staff to come to you, they
don't need to be an expert necessarily, but
they know when something's not right. If that
plant looks different than it did yesterday,
(19:23):
have them come tell you, and then you
can figure it out. You know, it's 1
of those things that
if
you
don't allow your step. Like, I don't want
you to have your staff think that they're
making a mistake. You know what I'm saying?
Like, a lot of times people will not
go tell the head grower that something's ami
missed because they don't want it to come
back on them, like, oh, then you did
this type of thing.
Empower your people to say, like, if there
(19:43):
is anything that's off, let's figure it out.
You know, if this plant looks different than
it did yesterday, if it's got purple stems,
if it's got s on the leaves. If
the, you know, t rigidity is gone and
the leaves are starting to curl down. If
they're starting to curl up. Like, anything that
just looks a miss,
allow your
how do I put it? Like, you don't
necessarily have to have a team of master
(20:05):
growers. You just gotta have a team of
diligent people.
And as long as there's 1 person on
staff that, you know, can say, like, okay,
there's an issue, Let me go see it,
Like, most facilities have 1 maintenance guy that
fixes Ac acs. It's not on everybody to
do it. So if you have 1 guy
that's responsible for plant health and pathogen mitigation
when somebody finds something, he can say, hey.
I gotta go tell Ben what I just
found, then, you know, it could be that
(20:26):
they top it funny. It could be that
it's H. It could be that there's an
actual issue going on beyond that. You know,
but at having the ability and that communication
between your team is paramount.
Because those are the guys that are in
the trenches, so to speak. And, you know,
you gotta empower your team to let you
know what's going on because, again, the head
growers is only in 1 spot at 1
time. And having the ability to have a
(20:47):
team that can relay real world information to
you you know, very quickly helps a lot.
That flag system that I was mentioning a
little bit, that really helps a lot because
a head grower can stick his head in
a room and count flags in 30 seconds.
That's a great way to, know, also track
progress. If we had 10 red flags last
week and this week we're down to 5
then what we're doing is working. You know,
we need to continue on that process that
(21:09):
we have implemented.
If we are at 15 red flags this
week and last week we only had 10,
then we need to switch it up because
it's getting worse. And so it's it... You
know, communication is I think the most important
part of you integrated pest to me.
And yeah. The communication
definitely seems important. And like you said, it's
it's a culture. Right? And
so
How common is that the culture in in
(21:31):
cannabis
cultivation? Like, is it is it becoming more
of a thing?
I see more and more operations becoming more
and more regiment in terms of how they
do things. And
whether it's state regulations that have kind of
facilitated that change or people just realizing that
they have the run leaner because the market
isn't what it was.
(21:51):
Having the ability to educate staff, and, you
know, get them all on the same page
and empower people, I think is the way
that the successful grows are going. If you
punish your employees for trying to do their
best, They're not gonna wanna work for you.
Right. Right. Alright. I wanna talk to you
about some of, like, what are some of
the common
pests or problems that cannabis growers just always
(22:13):
seem to be dealing with.
I would say the 4 most common things
that I run into travel in the country
are going to be trips.
Root A,
hop and thyroid and powdery mildew do.
T can be kind of a problem because
a lot of times, folks will only attack
1 life cycle stage of this
infestation. Trips actually have a point where they
(22:35):
live in the canopy, and they have a
point where they live in the strata of
your media And so if you're not treating
both, you're gonna see these ebb and flows
where they're gone for 2 weeks. They come
back. They're gone for 2 weeks. They come
back. And so, you know,
educating growers that doing a french application with
R really does allow them to get ahead
of it.
Root A are extremely hard to get rid
of just because they're incredibly adept. At what
(22:56):
people have been throwing at them. What I've
found to be the most effective method to
attack Root Is to actually do an irrigation
cycle before you do any trenches or sprays.
They run away from that moisture of the
first
irrigation cycle of the day. If we can
get those pots wet and get them complacent
to the fact that that moisture is there.
They're less apt to try to run away.
And so whatever we're putting out via a
(23:18):
dr sp or spray is gonna have much
better likelihood of actually coming in contact with
them because they're not trying to run from
it.
Pop and thyroid is something that
a lot of growers have it, but they
don't know they have it. Just until they
have it. And again, this comes back to
that cultural practices thing and, you know, it
kinda of falls on everybody and just the
(23:38):
communication.
That thyroid can be transferred via
dirty matter. Can be transferred mechanically. So it
grow goes from 1 plant to another doesn't
wash his hands. Can be spread by tools.
It can be spread by runoff. It can
be spread by insects. Is a very prevalent
pathogen and
a lot of folks don't can take it
as seriously as they should. There are some
growers that have completely realized that it can
(23:59):
decimate their business and they will test their
moms before they take cuts every single round
and they're they're doing everything they need to.
And then there are growers that still use
a single cup of Cl x and dip
every single cut in that same hormone.
And it's, like, if if there's any contamination
you guys just spread it across the board.
So, you know, honestly, I I feel like
the the viral and
(24:22):
and pathogens are going to be the hardest
thing for the cannabis industry to address because
you don't know that you have them until
you have them. And once you have them,
we can go into remission, so to speak,
we can, you know, get it to a
point where the plant can still finish, but
those genetics are contaminated at that point and
to keep them onboard would be to
you know, facilitate the downfall of everything else
(24:43):
that you have in your stable. Because, again,
that can transfer so many different ways and
so easily.
And the thing that a lot of growth...
The latent portion of this thyroid, if your
plants are healthy, you're not gonna see
what it can do right away. But over
time, the plant health starts to go down.
It's almost like cancer.
You know, the the patient isn't necessarily bedridden
written when they're first diagnosed, but the longer
(25:05):
they are alive.
That line goes like this and the sicker
they become. And, you know, to compromise an
entire business with H v is just... It's
very scary because
it will compromise your harvest. Your Thc percentage
plummet, your bag appeal goes down, and the
medicinal value of the plant is just not
there anymore. You know, you're you're basically growing
hemp at that point. You're compliant with the
(25:25):
farm bill almost.
The
I'm sorry. The... No. I I never thought
of it that way.
Like the the last, you know, most common
pathogen that I see is Powdery Mildew just
because it is
very prevalent. It's easy to pop up. It's
not the end of the world. A lot
of times growers won't
(25:45):
do everything they need to do to eliminate,
set issue. But,
it is something that can be gotten rid
of fairly easily. First thing I always tell
people to make sure your environment on point,
if you can't set your temp to 60
and your d to 10, and then hit
those numbers, your environment isn't where it needs
to be. You know, there are there are
folks that say oh, I can get it
to where it needs to be And if
(26:05):
if you can't hit those parameters, it's not.
And so the first thing growers have to
do is make sure that their Hvac is
up to point. They're, you know,
Eric's conditioning is up to point. Their D
is where it needs to be. And if
they're still experiencing powder mildew that's when we
say, okay. Let's look at what we can
spray it you know, basically,
kind of hinder this thing and its tracks.
And we've got some really cool options for
cannabis growers that have
(26:27):
you know, very safe
application
methods and, you know, 0 residual aspects in
terms of dangerous stuff,
and, you know, it just allows them to
basically get on that schedule of, like, okay.
It's it's flip. We got us spray and
x tall or, you know, it's Wednesday. We
gotta hit a a mic insect.
And, you know to touch on what you
(26:48):
kinda said earlier, In my program,
Monday, Wednesday, Friday for preventative is Spray,
Tuesday and Thursday is plant work and scouting.
And then once we get from,
you know, basically curative into preventative. I'm sorry.
I said that wrong. I said preventative, but
I meant curative.
Once we get into the preventative mode, we
actually flip it. In Monday, Wednesday, Friday, we're
(27:08):
doing scouting, Tuesday, Thursday, we're doing our sprays.
But the idea is that your
in there looking at the plants as much
as your spraying or def or doing anything
else because we have to evaluate our progress
and, you know, keep a lot of logs
if we don't write down what we're doing
in a month, we won't remember what we
did, we don't know if we did anything
right or not. You know, group girls are
very cyclical in terms of what happened last
(27:30):
June, if likely is gonna happen this June.
And so if you can go back to
your log last year and say, shit, We
had trips on the fourteenth when it I
got really hot, and then you look at
your calendar and you say, okay, It's gonna
get up to, you know, a hundred and
2 or whatever. I'm anticipating trips. You could
put out your am serious k, you know,
beneficial insects and later flower and then do
your sprays.
In your veg and your prop and your
(27:50):
early flower and combat the, you know, t
before they ever even get established.
Right?
No. I wanted to go back to when
you were talking about the pathogens, and, you
know, it sounded like 1 of the main
challenges with that is you don't really know
you have it until it's too late.
So in in that sense, do you sort
of advocate for, you know,
(28:10):
regular testing,
full disclosure?
Medicinal genomics. We we
develop Q assays for hop and bi,
pre pit, a lot of the the plant
pathogens that
folks use. And, you know, we're trying to
spread the word to growers that, you know,
should make that part of their program to
to do testing. Is that something that you
would agree with? Definitely.
Every other aspect of h culture that is
(28:33):
traditional does tissue testing. If you go to
it, tomato Grower greenhouse, they're doing it once
a week. They don't know how to adjust
their feeds if they don't know what the
plants up taking and what it's not. And,
you know, it... That's nutritional analysis, but being
able to have this pathogen testing is paramount.
If you have a dirty genetic and you
put, you know, 2000 clones into production, that's
a loss
(28:54):
because that 2000 clones with the where where
the market is now, you're gonna spend more
money labor and time then you're gonna be
able to recoup off of that crop at
that point. If you can even sell it
because it's not going to come out looking
like it should.
I... I'm an advocate of, you know, having
a test allows us to make educated decisions.
If we don't know what we're dealing with,
then we're just throwing stuff at the wall
(29:15):
to see what sticks. Every time you cut
clones, if you bring in something new, you
know, even quarterly,
test your you're stable just to make sure
everything is where it's supposed to. But anything
that comes in brand new should always be
quarantined and tested, and then those, you know,
plants should have clones cut off of them.
And as long as those clones off of
the plants you brought in look okay, then
we can put it into production. But I...
(29:36):
That's mistake. I've seen time and time again
where growers are excited to get some hype
genetic they put into production right away, and
then they're, like, you know, shit. I just
infected half of my stable with XYZ.
Right? No. And now going back to the
pest.
I know, another thing that I sort of
saw on my research too is this sort
of... This idea of setting thresholds.
So
(29:56):
is there, like, a certain amount of pests
that's sort of, like, okay as long as
we can manage it and, you know, keep
it down or
I mean, in in a perfect world brother,
the the perfect number would be 0, But
this is farming, and we're in a fluid
environment where
got people coming in and out of the
facility all day long, you know, depending on
the type of facility. If it's a greenhouse.
(30:17):
Every time you open your lube to vent
and the late the greenhouse, we've potentially introduced
contamination. And so the the m and Ip
stands for management.
You're never gonna completely be ahead of everything.
You will always have something to do the
next day because nature never quits. You know,
it will always try to find its way
in or, you know, do... It's best to
s what it is we're trying to do.
(30:39):
And so, you know, the
acceptable
level is low pressure, but, you know, don't
get complacent and say, oh, We've we've got
mites, but they're not that bad. You know...
We've got mites, but we're treating them as
the right approach. Once you get complacent with
something, that's when other issues start to snowball.
And so low pressure isn't unacceptable,
But, you know, make sure that you're doing
(31:00):
your best to get that to as close
to no pressure as you can. And
again, because it's farming, if we wipe 1
issue out then, something else is gonna pop
up tomorrow. Let's the nature of the beast.
Yeah. Yeah.
Alright. So winding down here, I'm I'm curious,
you know, are there some common mistake
that growers make when they're implementing Ip that
they could avoid.
(31:20):
The most common mistake that I see is
that growers don't necessarily look at active ingredients.
Just looking at brand names. And so,
you know, 1 time I went to a
facility here in Denver and the grower had,
clarified hydrophobic extract of ne oil,
as a direct in, and n oil. And
those are all basically the exact same thing
just different versions of the exact same product,
(31:42):
and he was wondering why he wasn't having
success with his issue. And it's like, well
brother you're using 3 versions of the same
stuff. You know, being able to differentiate between
active really allows growers to get those different
modes of action and, you know, making sure
that
they are ph
their sprays. At the end of it is
something that I've seen some growers neglect to
(32:03):
do, like, they'll ph their reservoirs
every time. But
won't ph their sprays for whatever reason. I
I feel like that sometimes is a an
00AC.
And the other thing that I I see
a lot of growers do, man, and this
is not knocking anybody, but, you know, water
quality isn't necessarily the best in some places
in the country. So growers will spray with
ro water.
(32:23):
And,
ro o, as you know is acidic. Comes
out of the machine at 7, but you
let it sit for 24 hours, it's gonna
be ph of something like 5 5.
Then they add something like citric acid to
it, It's gonna be a ph of something
like 3.
You spray a ph of 3 on your
plants, man. You're gonna see some F and
burn some stuff. And so
what I typically recommend to growers is if
(32:43):
you've got really dirty water and you cannot
spray with tap.
Take some of your base N,
spike it to about 0.3 E.
Get a little of the... Of that bicarbonate
content from that fertilizer back into that water
column. And that way, if you do have
to buffer it or add something else to
it, It's not going to have the drastic
swings that it would without that bicarbonate content.
(33:04):
Anytime growers are spraying 0 it's all. I
tell them if you're using an Ro, spike
it to 0.3 Ac,
and they add the 0 all, and 9
out of 10 times it'll fall between 5
5 and 6 2.
For a full year at.
So looking ahead,
are there any advancements or innovations that you're
excited about when it comes to Ip?
(33:27):
Definitely. You know, the the realm of
micro insecticides is continuing to expand.
The
Nature against nature really is my favorite approach.
Mother nature has been doing us a lot
longer than we have, And, know, she's got
checks and balances for everything. So being able
to utilize more
natural products and get further away from petrochemical
(33:49):
and, you know, stuff that harm poll and
hurts the environment really is going to...
I think allow pest management to be looked
at as not necessarily this big bogey man.
Anytime you hear the word and insect, pest,
people always think Monsanto, roundup, cancer,
and it's like, there's...
To form on scale, you have to be
able to be that intermediary, but we don't
necessarily have to use those chemist that poison
(34:11):
the planet, you know, Bios safe, are mantra
to try to leave the planet better than
we found it, man, and to you know,
we're able to address a lot of these
issues that these gnarly chemicals
address what we do it without hurting the
environment.
And so I in the future, I'm just
excited to see more of these
really cancer, you know, gnarly chemist be replaced
by stuff that works that is safer for
(34:33):
the planet and for people.
Excellent.
Alright. And before I let you go,
are there any other resources besides your book,
which I will put a link to in
the show notes, so people can, can find
that on Amazon. But are there other resources,
papers or anything like that that you could
recommend
that if people are interested in learning more
about, what it does you do?
(34:55):
We definitely have a, you know, a really
good
Instagram page. If you go into the Ig
Tv tab,
when the pandemic first started, I used to
do these things called Fireside chats, Where, I
would just talk about a different aspect of
cultivation. That has everything from
trimming to curing to, you know, russ mites
and Root If it's, anything and everything I
(35:15):
could think of talking about I did.
So anybody that wants to watch free videos.
All the stuff that's in the book is
also on those videos just sometimes you don't
have 8 hours to come through videos to
finance answer you're looking for.
And then I I really recommend that anybody
that's serious about the industry, get on a
website called M mma Daily.
There's a...
(35:36):
On the h side, It's called the H
daily. But M j daily is a cannabis
specific daily newsletter that gets sent to your
inbox, and it talks about cannabis news from
all over the world. You can see what
the Netherlands are doing, you can see what
Israel is doing. And see what South Africa
is doing. Can see what Germany is doing.
You can see what Canada is doing. You
can see what we're doing. And it just
(35:56):
it keeps you really abreast of, you know,
the... What's going on in cannabis as a
whole and, you know, it gives you that
kinda thousand yard view of the industry and,
you know, allows you to know what's coming
before it comes, You know, they... A lot
of times they'll talk about legislation that's potential
and you know, you'll know about something 6
months before it's talked about on Msnbc or
something.
(36:17):
Excellent. Excellent.
Alright. Zach. Well, thanks again for doing this.
I think it was great. And,
hopefully, we can see out to Cam med
once
once we announce the details for that. I'd
love to see you there. Becky you have
brother keeping posted. Thank you so much for
having us on and enjoy your weekend. Okay?
Alright. We'll do.
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