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Cannavatar: Lighting the Fire

Santino Martinez • Jan 27, 2021

The Spark

There is no other abundant source of radiant life energy as near to us and as important as the Sun. It’s light is what nourishes the planet and the heat produced is responsible for our constantly changing weather. The sun brings the new day and is a daily reminder that after the dark there is, you guessed it, the light. I feel lucky to live on 3rd Rock 9, Milky Way. I would wager that living anywhere else would be somewhere between Star Trek and The Martian; super awesome with blasters and teleporting, or, “f*ck this”. That’s why the next section in our Cannavatar series will focus on light and what it means for our gardens. We will discuss different lighting technologies for cultivations large and small, and have a conversation with LED lighting company, Black Dog Grow Technologies, formerly Black Dog LED. I got a chance to know their CEO Noah Miller, top dog at Black Dog, and pick his brain on lighting in cannabis and his insight on the industry moving forward.


Colorado is one of the sunniest places in the country, with over 300 days of sunshine a year. For cannabis plants, there’s no better source for full spectrum light that a plant will need to produce the stankiest, dankiest flowers, than the sun. It’s for this reason that we try and imitate our local jumbo flame ball in our indoor grow facilities and in green houses that utilize supplemental lighting. A quick note for the audience; there are about 4 types of lights that the farming and cannabis industry utilizes most, and a newcomer to the game that I won’t discuss much other than to name it. These types are as follows: CFLs, which are your good old fluorescents, metal halide-MH, high-pressure sodium, or HPS, which are your hooded style bulbed lights, and light-emitting diode, those trusty LEDs. The new kid on the block has been a technology called LECs or CMH lights, which is a ceramic metal halide light technology utilizing a ceramic arc tube as opposed to the standard quartz. I asked Noah to give me a breakdown of the differences between the major light types and share his thoughts on pros and cons.


NM: HPS and Metal Halide (MH) have been around a long time for growing Cannabis and most were used in commercial agriculture before finding their way to the Cannabis world. The technology is sound but dated and the issues can be summed up as two major shortcomings.


I was curious what Noah might have to say on the issue, considering the hot buzz and the industry being bombarded with new light tech everyday.

 

NM: These technologies cannot produce a spectrum that would be considered even close to optimal for growing plants. Yes, they work and yes people have had success with them, but they are sorely lacking in the spectrum department and this cannot be fixed. The second is efficiency, when double-ended (DE) HPS came out, it was a huge jump in efficiency over single-ended HPS. This bought them some time. Years ago, it was close, now LED has a clear advantage on the efficiency side. It should be noted that LEDs can be used in many combinations to create different spectrums. It is up to each manufacturer to create a spectrum that maximizes a plants potential.  If you look at most HPS manufacturers, they are moving towards LED products, that alone should tell you something.


I would tend to agree with Noah. When growing indoors, our ability to maximize the photosynthetic activity in our plants is limited by space and infrastructure. Are we getting enough light penetrating the canopy? Are these HPS or MH lights close enough to burn the plants? Those questions are on the mind of growers constantly. Without good ventilation setups or proper room size, some lighting is just not an option; however, the diversity of lighting options is a positive for the grower. I am a fan of the developments in LED lighting, I wanted to know why Black Dog had gotten into the biz and why they preferred this method.


NM: We want to bring truly exceptional products to the Cannabis grower market. LED was a great place to start because no one was doing the right thing in terms of spectrum or power, from our perspective. LED is still emerging as a technology and working with it to help growers is more fun than I ever imagined.


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Fanning the Flames

It’s great when a CEO loves his product and knows what they’re talking about when it comes to light science. I wanted to see if Noah could teach me, and any warry customer looking at labels or light meters for the first time, something about the way we find the right light. There is plenty of information, some garbage,  about what these plants need to be healthy and for our gardens to be well lit. Explain to the lay person in weed what Lumens and PPFD are, what light penetration is, and how these might affect our cultivations.


NM: Lumens are a measure of the photons coming from a light source which are weighted for the sensitivity of the human eye. Lumens are used by professionals such as photographers and videographers and interior lighting designers, etc. The human eye is more sensitive to certain colors. Unfortunately, if you look at where plants are most sensitive to light, it is almost the exact opposite, for evolutionary reasons. This is why we have PPFD (Photosynthetic Photon Flux Density) which measures light over a region of colors that are known to be photosynthetically active (400nm - 800nm). Using this measurement of light is what gardeners should be focusing on. If you use Lumens, you are skewing your readings based on the human eye. It is why we have the saying “lumens are for humans”. PPFD can be used to determine the intensity of light in an area of your garden. Once you know that you can determine if you have the right levels of light. Having too low of light will cause lower yields of lighter, less dense buds and a true lack of any penetration creating flowers below the top canopy. Having high PPFD measurements in your garden, allows you to have higher yields and get deeper into your canopy. If that light is of high quality, you can also increase the quality of your flowers


It’s as simple as that folks. Noah gives us a solid foundation in understanding how light affects the quality of your product and how important it is to gauge properly the quality of the light. Since we are on the subject of quality, I thought it necessary to shift the focus of the conversation to the environmental impacts of high quality lighting.


Burn Baby Burn

The world is continuously struggling with the discrepancy in public interest and political expediency when it comes to tackling one of the most paramount challenges in human history. Climate change is on the mind of all agriculturalists, especially in cannabis, and its impacts are being felt globally. On CPR’s national cannabis podcast, On Something, Ann Marie Awad and Grace Hood talk sustainability in cannabis with Rob Trotter. The local farmer who heads Pot Zero, advocates that we bear a responsibility to protect the environment and land that we farm from. Our cultivations should seek to revitalize that land in my opinion. Our Industry is  I think that it is an indicator of the trajectory of our industry. I had a couple questions for Noah.


SM: Will LED lighting be able to push the clean/green/energy initiatives further, or are there ways that LED lights can be contributing in a negative way to climate change?


NM: Before we address the energy savings, we should also talk about the lack of heavy metals (in LEDs) which are abundant in every single HPS and Metal Halide bulb in the world. If one of those bulbs breaks in your garden, you are dealing with a hazardous material cleanup. The number of bulbs put into the system every year for growing Cannabis is insane. That is one of the major environmental advantages of going with LED. Of course, there are energy savings. Not only do you save at the plug for each light when going with LED over HPS or MH, but you also save on cooling, which can actually cost more than running the lights in a traditional HPS flowering room. The overall benefit to the environment is huge and when you combine that with an ROI of less than 1 year in most cases, and there is no reason not to go with LED for growing Cannabis.


SM:  Well then what are your goals in the cannabis industry? Does Black Dog have products in the works that could propel you into other technologies or are you keeping the efforts specific to cannabis?


NM: We recently changed our official company name to Black Dog Grow Technologies. As we evolve as a company we plan to bring other products to the Cannabis cultivation space which we have been working on for years in the background. Our philosophy is to add value where we feel we can and stay out of the areas where we can’t. With our teams’ diverse backgrounds, we believe the products we are working on will solve real problems and help generate additional real revenue.


SM:  Where do you think the industry will find its balance with lighting? Will there be more large-scale indoor operations requiring trustworthy tech at scale, or do you see farmers moving back to more natural light sources for their farms?


NM: I see both commercial and home grows expanding. As the stigma of growing pot starts to fade, I think you will see more home growers. We certainly work with a lot of them and they are amazing to work with since we are all excited to have the ability to grow Cannabis, which creates some common ground. But, while we all know that  a fresh garden-grown tomato is better than something bought in the store, we don’t all grow tomatoes at home. The same holds true in that there will be a market for those that just want to buy some amazing buds, concentrates, edibles, etc. and enjoy them. Not to mention the many different forms most of us could not produce at a home scale.

Lights Out

The point that everybody who loves garden fresh fruits and vegetables doesn’t have a backyard garden is a valid one. I agree that we will continue to see people experimenting in their spare rooms or back-yards, but reliable sources of high quality cannabis for people disinterested in the process of getting there will remain the majority of the market. I had a couple more questions for Noah and I started to close our conversation with an inquiry into the challenges facing this young brand.


SM: What has been the biggest challenge for your company, and what solutions are you looking at to address these challenges?


NM: Money. We are not a plant-touching business so we are not technically a Cannabis business, but being that 99.9% of our customers are, we cannot walk into a bank and get a loan. That just isn’t possible without some change at the federal level such as the Safe Banking Act. This has been and continues to be our major hindrance to growth. If we had access to capital as a regular business would, we would have been able to grow more quickly. Although, not having access to all the capital you would like does cause a company to be creative.


 And creative they’ll have to be, as the future of federal legalization is still cloudy; pun intended. I do see that all of the efforts of our industry’s grass roots have taken hold and moved us farther than ever, as 5 states like Mississippi and South Dakota have expanded  America’s weed country. As the light fades on an era of weed stigmas and misinformation, I thought it fitting to end our session on this Idea of struggle and resolution. I ask Noah for any recommendations on products or strains. I enjoyed our conversation and the chance I had to later ask him these questions.


NM: I am old school and have been consuming Cannabis for more years than you want to know, so I lean towards flower. That’s not saying I don’t like to make a batch of edibles from my own bud sometimes, but mostly I smoke flower. Being in lighting I have to grow my own with our lights so I have a great supply of clean and beautiful bud.


  The farmer is a scientist, always has been; a thought marking another successful journey into the world of weed. My spirit bully, Nefe, whipping her tale in suspense for our next adventure...

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