Dialing-in your grow environment is essential to produce the highest quality cannabis. What does the environment have to do with flower quality? Cannabis produces over 500 chemical compounds in different ratios and proportions and it is the aggregate effect of those compounds that give a strain its “effect.” The chemical compounds potentially produced are determined by a strain’s DNA, but the environment impacts how much of each chemical compound is produced; sometimes even producing compounds that aren’t produced under sub-optimal conditions.
That means that once you’ve dialed in a strain’s environment to maximize its genetic potential, you will need to be able to recreate that environment so you can produce flower of that quality repeatedly, and with minimal variation from one harvest to the next.
Pressurized Grow Rooms: (Most growers opt for one of 4 styles of air environments.)
Positive pressure: This condition is created when you introduce greater volumes of air into your room than you exhaust. The pressure of the incoming air will force air out of the room through gaps in doors, windows, walls (outlet covers,) etc.
- Pro: Better for pathogen exclusion; the pressurized air leaving the room will effectively create a barrier against entry.
- Con: Difficult/costly to introduce CO2 & odors will escape.
Negative pressure: This condition is created when you exhaust more air than you introduce. The pressure gradient in this case will suck air in from gaps in doors, windows, walls (outlet covers) etc. Negative pressure is often seen when growers that use Carbon Filtration and Exhaust the air from the room without actively replacing it.
- Pro: Better for odor remediation.
- Con: Difficult/costly to introduce CO2 & can introduce past and pathogens via untreated air.
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