Dear Custy, that “top shelf” indoor you just bought was grown in a greenhouse.
So, technically, it was “indoors”, I suppose.
The old trifecta of Indoor, Greenhouse, and Outdoor cannabis has been blurred by advancements in both light deprivation knowledge and tech as well as light-assisted greenhouse cultivation methods, both of which can produce multiple crops a year of buds that many self-proclaimed cannabis connoisseurs cannot tell apart from top shelf indoor.
Here’s the deal, though. If you can’t tell the difference, is there one?
We’re really just talking about cannabinoids, terps, flavonoids, and the rest of the full spectrum of the cannabis experience, right?
I mean… bag appeal matters but that’s where a lot of you are making the assumption that what you are smoking on was cultivated indoors.
Have you seen the size of the greenhouses cropping up in Carpenteria and across Santa Barbara County?
Have you read any of the articles about the incredible amounts of unregulated cannabis being cultivated just over the Cali border in southern Oregon?
Or have you ever driven through that area at night when you can literally see the “Glo-Worms” – greenhouses lit up at night – dotting the hills?
Where do you think all of that is going?
Is a majority of it mids? Highly likely.
But trust me when I say that plenty of it lands on the expensive end of a dispensary menu.
And let’s face it… lots of you treat cannabis like a glory hole – you are happy to remain blind to what’s on the other side as long as it makes you feel good.
Far be it from me to judge how you get your kicks, but there is definitely a better way to buy weed.
As we have written about many times here at Beard Bros Pharms, you should always try to know your source.
Does that mean making friends with the dude actually growing the weed? Well, hell, that’s always nice but not always realistic. What we mean is asking questions, doing research, and figuring out a brand’s backstory before routinely handing them your hard-earned money.
GREENHOUSE & INDOOR CANNABIS & EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN
The fact is that we are sure to see a lot more light dep and light-assisted weed in the years to come.
So, what is it?
Simply speaking, light dep is a form of “greenhouse” growing that (generally) makes use of heavy tarps to limit (or deprive) the crop’s exposure to sunlight, allowing the farmer to set the light-dark schedule and trigger the flowering phase of the plant much faster than under natural light cycles alone.
So, you can think of it as another form of cultivation between greenhouse and indoor, but there is a full spectrum of growing techniques between light dep and indoor that, for now, are most commonly lumped into the category of light-assisted.
These once-simple greenhouse grow ops can now feature full artificial lighting, fans, dehumidifiers, and other climate control technology that really begins to tighten the gap that indoor weed traditionally maintained when it came to bag appeal.
So, if the strength, aroma, flavor, and effects are on point, should light dep or light-assisted greenhouse cannabis be priced lower or sit on a different shelf than indoor?
Not necessarily. Not if nobody can tell a difference.
How it was grown, however, should be accurately labeled or explained by whoever is selling it then let the marketplace decide the value.
At the end of the day, when it comes to the retail price of cannabis, all we will ever advocate for here at Beard Bros Pharms is that cannabis farmers should not only be able to make a living, but they should be able to make a damn good living since they took so much risk for so many years to blaze the trail for legal markets.
They are not making a damn good living in the legal markets now and that is not because retail prices are too low… but that is an article for another day, I have deps to smoke!
