How to Bring the Natural World to Indoor Cannabis Cultivation for Better Results

Nothing is better for cannabis plants than the natural world. Plants thrive in a natural environment, but for indoor growers, mimicking the natural world is challenging. Modern growing techniques have practically removed natural processes that cannabis plants need. 

Why? Because the business of cannabis today is focused on specific outcomes, such as higher yields, more THC content, and even plant colors. The natural world has fallen far down the list of priorities for many commercial indoor growers. 

But that creates a very big problem. Cannabis plants aren’t getting what they truly want and need. Businesses are spending a lot of money to achieve specific crop goals, but their plants aren’t reaching their full potential. 

As competition increases in the cannabis industry, particularly as we move closer to federal legalization and interstate commerce, the cannabis cultivators who will win are the ones who understand nature knows best and that it can be mimicked in clean ways within controlled environments. 

Biomimicry is the Solution for Controlled Environment Grows

How do you bring the natural world into controlled environment grows? Biomimicry is the answer. In simplest terms, biomimicry is the process of imitating and integrating the natural world (including its processes) into a controlled environment. Cannabis cultivators are already mimicking the natural environment through strategic lighting to imitate natural light cycles, but there are more ways to bring the natural world to indoor cultivation than LED lights. 

To better understand how biomimicry works and why it’s so important to get the best results from your indoor cannabis grow, let’s analyze biomimicry as it relates to your soil. 

Beneficial Microbes

In nature, plants communicate with the microbial life of the soil, which enables them to thrive. A controlled environment grow that lacks microbial diversity or has none of the complex biology of nature to enable proper plant signaling won’t get the best results. 

Ultimately, plants won’t be able to optimize nutrient uptake, which will negatively affect plant growth. Sterilized or partially sterilized environments disrupt the necessary natural interactions between plants and soil because they don’t provide diverse biology and microbial life. 

The key is using diverse beneficial biology in soil where the biomimic soloution takes inspiration from what works in nature and then, uses technological innovation to engineer out the bad parts (e.g., harmful pests and pathogens), leaving only the good parts that can be safely introduced into controlled environments. When you use this type of biomimic solution, it increases beneficial uptake, improves plant health, and delivers better results for your business. 

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Bioavailability of Organic Nutrients

Thanks to a process in nature called buffering, plants can access the nutrients they need when they need them from biological and chemical reservoirs. However, in controlled environment grows, cultivators typically force-feed nutrients directly to plants.

Unfortunately, this limits the ability to use high-quality organic nutrients and also overrides the natural plant / microbial signaling process designed through thousands of years of evolution to ensure that the proper nutrition and water that your plant needs are delivered when the plant needs it. Bottom-line, soil that can either deliver organic nutrients in the substrate or through clean beneficial biology can moderate the sometimes negative impact of feeding with chemical fertilizers  and is essential to helping your plants can grow to their full potential.

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• The Easiest Way to Know You’re Not Over- or Under-Feeding Your Cannabis Plants

Water Retention and Release

In nature, plants experience natural water stress that helps them reach their full potential and produce the highest yield with the highest cannabinoid content, but in controlled environment grows, plants are often overwatered. Rather than measuring water, growers need to measure water availability – how much water a plant can easily pull as needed. 

If watering is mismanaged, cultivators won’t get the results they want, but they can use tools, such as tensiometers, that mimic how each plant uptakes water.  As a result, they can mimic the way natural soils retain and release water to plants and plants can be adequately stressed to increase cannabinoids, yields, and quality.

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• The Easy and Inexpensive Trick that Gives You Better Cannabis Plant Health and Yields

The Solution to Bring the Natural World to Indoor Cannabis Cultivation for Better Results

The best way to bring biomimicry to your controlled environment cannabis grow operation so you can improve the full expression of each plant and your results is to use a soil that mimics the natural world. 

For example, bio365’s soil products use science and patented technology to mimic nature in a clean way. The soil manufactured by bio365 provides tens of thousands of indoor-cultured diverse beneficial microbes, uses specific materials to facilitate the exchange or organic nutrients, and allows for water retention and release across a range of tensions so plants can optimize their water needs. All of these benefits are available on demand when you use bio365 soil – just as they are in the natural world.

Nature got it right, so the best way to improve cannabis cultivation results is to mimic nature. You can do it using bio365 soil. Contact us to set up a free trial and see for yourself the difference biomimicry can make for your plants and your results.