There is a reason Tim Crowell built Faven Lighting's Sacramento R&D facility the way he did. A space to push tests, break things, and learn from it without putting a production grower's livelihood on the line, as he told us previously. This month, that philosophy got a real workout, as showed in their latest episode of Grow Room Weekly. "With Grow Room Weekly, our goal has always been to show the real side of cultivation. Not just the wins, but the challenges and tribulations that come with running trials and pushing new strategies. We believe transparency is important for the industry; by sharing both successes and setbacks, we can help move the community forward," Tim says.
Two of the facility's four grow rooms came down ten days early after a suspected fusarium outbreak moved through the canopy faster than the team could contain it. It stings commercially, but for Tim, it's also exactly the kind of hard-won data point that a dedicated R&D facility exists to generate. "It's a living plant. There's only so much you can control of nature, and she bucks back every once in a while. Every cultivator's been there."
© Faven Lighting
A silent killer
The first signs showed up roughly two weeks before harvest. Plants in rooms three and four started drinking less during bulk, a phase when water and nutrient consumption should be at its peak. "We came in, noticed the plants weren't drinking as much right during bulk, where they're supposed to be consuming a ton of resources," Tim says. "Plants were a little unhappy. They weren't as postured in the mornings when the lights were coming on."
The team flushed the substrate, sanitized it, and reinoculated in an attempt to reinvigorate the root zone, alas, to no avail. By day 45, with harvest still ten days out, the call had to be made: cut it.
The suspected culprit was fusarium wilt, a soilborne pathogen that attacks the root system and vascular tissue, cutting off water and nutrient uptake before visible symptoms give growers much warning. By the time canopy stress is visible, the infection is typically well established. "Fusarium is one of those... it's a silent killer," Tim says. "Once you see it, it's already too far gone."
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Managing the decline
Once the diagnosis was clear, the team's focus shifted from saving the crop to preserving as much of it as possible. Every controllable variable got dialed back, top lights dropped from 60% to 40%, UCLs were shut off entirely in the final days to reduce the demand being placed on already compromised root systems. Irrigation moved to small, frequent dribbles rather than standard saturation cycles. "You want to err on the side of having more oxygen in your soil rather than water content," Tim explains. "The wetter the substrate stays, the worse off the roots are going to be."
The damage mapped predictably onto where the plants were carrying the most load. Tops, exposed to the highest light intensity, deteriorated first, while middle sections held on longer. Under-canopy growth, with its own intensity load, also showed heavy necrosis. "The top is always going to show the issue first because you're placing the greatest demand on the top," Tim says. "And that demand is going to exacerbate any issue that's going on within your plant."
One hard constraint the team couldn't engineer around was dry room availability. The previous run was still processing, and harvest couldn't move until it cleared. "You're at the mercy of the constraints in your facility," Tim says. "This is just one of them."
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What the genetics showed
Not every variety responded the same way, and that divergence turned out to be one of the run's more instructive data points. The Versace strain took the worst of it, with rapid leaf dieback progressing into the buds. The Bull Rider pushed through with considerably less damage. Chanel and Bacio, running in room three, fell somewhere in between. "Same irrigation, same everything, same feed," Tim notes. "It's really just how strong your genetics are."
On the quality side, results were better than the circumstances might suggest. Wet weights on the Chanel came in reasonably well, bud structure held up, and terpene expression, on the healthier plants at least, remained intact. "Can't be too upset," Alex Gray, technical director at Faven, says. "Bud health looks still pretty good."
Post-harvest damage control
With dead leaves dying back into the bud, quality management shifted to the post-harvest side. The priority was removing as much dead leaf material as possible before bucking, to prevent it from crumbling into the product and stripping terpenes during the cure.
"If you do run into this issue where you're having very poor leaf health and quick decline, it is best to deleaf as much as possible post-harvest," Tim says. "These dead leaves sitting in a bin and even drying on the stem will kind of eliminate the smell that we could potentially save from the harvest."
© Faven Lighting
What comes next
With both rooms cleared, Faven will use the unplanned downtime productively. Fans will be added above the lights in both rooms to improve air movement and create a more homogeneous environment. Room three is also getting the checkerboard lighting layout the team has had on the roadmap. "We're going to add some fans up top to really create a more homogeneous environment so we can have a little bit easier time managing the environment overall," Tim says.
The perpendicular versus parallel canopy trial that this run was supposed to deliver data on will restart on the next flip. The facility's model, learn fast, document everything, run it again, is built for exactly this kind of setback. "We will do it again on the next flip," Tim says. "It's unfortunate, but I mean, everybody's been here."
Want to see yourself? Click here to check Faven's latest episode of Grow Room Weekly
For more information:
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