8 Hidden Ways You’re Contaminating Your Cannabis Grow (And How to Fix Them)

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Most cannabis cultivators think they’re running a clean facility, but many facilities are actually not clean, which adds significant unnecessary risk to the entire operation. The truth is there are sneaky ways that grows get contaminated. In fact, you may have problems in your grow and wide open opportunities for contaminants to get in right now and not even realize it.

Following are some of the ways contamination happens and how you can prevent it from happening at your facility in order to protect your plants, crops, revenue, profits, and reputation.

1. People and Animals

If you don’t have a good decontamination protocol and a system in place that monitors who you let into your grow rooms from the outside every day, including employees, then you could be contaminating your cannabis grow without realizing it.

Lax systems create opportunities for contamination. Here are a few examples of how this type of contamination sneaks into your facility through your employees:

  • Employees Who Have Their Own Personal Grows: Employees who have their own personal grows outside your facility could bring contaminants from their own grows into your facility.

  • Employees Who Have Pets or Work with Farm Animals: Most animals, even pets, are unclean, meaning they don’t meet the strict requirements that your grow facility should have in place to keep contaminants out. When your employees spend time with animals – from playing with their dog to mucking out their horse stable – and then come to work, they can bring contaminants in with them.

  • Employees Who Smoke Cigarettes: Employees who smoke cigarettes and then come to work in the morning or return after a break can bring contaminants in with them, including the Tobacco Mosaic Virus (TMV).

  • Employees Who Spend Time at Grow Stores: If your team hangs out at grow stores after hours, they likely come into contact with a lot of other cultivators who go in and out of those stores. It’s a recipe for cross-contamination when the employees return to your facility.

  • Vendors and Visitors: If you allow vendors and visitors to walk around your facility or your grow rooms, you’re putting your plants at risk of contamination. This is especially risky if vendors have already visited other cultivation facilities before they come to yours.

  • Animals: Bringing animals, including dogs or other pets, to your facility and allowing them to walk around your grow is an easy way to contaminate your plants.

Bottom-line, there are so many ways that people can contaminate your facility, and contamination of this kind is unlikely to be contained to a single room. To make matters worse, people can easily track contaminants throughout your facility as they move around from room to room.

Solution to People and Animals Risk

Every time an employee or anyone else leaves and returns to your facility, they bring back enormous risk. You need to have a strict cleaning protocol in place for all people. Employees and visitors must follow thorough decontamination procedures, or don’t let them in your facility.

For example, cleaning protocols should include having a specific set of clothes and shoes that are only worn in the facility. These clothes and shoes should not be worn to do anything else. Anyone who is sick (especially with diarrhea) should be sent home before they step foot into your cultivation space.

2. Tools and Equipment

Tools and equipment can be the source of contamination when you move them around from one room to another. It may seem safe to use the same tools and equipment – everything from hand tools to forklifts – in your veg room, flower room, and more, but if you don’t have a solid decontamination protocol that is closely followed before tools and equipment are moved, they could lead to contamination.

Solution to Tools and Equipment Risk

If one room is contaminated, you could easily spread that contamination to another room if you’re not tracking all movements in your facility, and that includes the movement of tools and equipment.

To avoid the contamination risk that tools and equipment bring to your cannabis crops, make sure you have a separate set of tools for each room in your facility. Sharing tools and equipment between different rooms should not be allowed – ever.

3. Substrates, Inoculants, Amendments, and Other Consumables

The materials and products you bring into your grow can introduce contaminants. This includes your substrates, inoculants, amendments, and other consumables. You should make sure that any materials and products you use are clean before you bring them into your facility.

Don’t just trust the manufacturer or vendor’s word for it. Do your research, look at the science, and only use clean materials and products.

Solution to Substrates, Inoculants, Amendments, and Other Consumables Risk

When you bring a truly clean product into your facility, you can be confident no contaminants will be introduced to your grow. For example, you should use a clean substrate that is manufactured in a controlled environment for controlled environments, like bio365 substrate.

The inputs used to manufacture bio365 never leave our controlled environment. All movement within the facility is controlled. No one can get into the facility without completing our scrub down protocol checklist and decontamination bath. Everyone is required to wear special shoes, clothes, and protective equipment. No outsiders are allowed in the controlled manufacturing space without decontamination, and no one can go in our bioCHARGE™ room unless they’re a cleared employee.

Furthermore, the bio365 HVAC system was designed so air cannot be cross-contaminated from one room to the next (see #5 below), and we sample the field around us to ensure any threats from the exterior environment outside our facility are mitigated (see #6 below).

The result of our strict protocols means all bio365 substrate is truly clean and will not introduce contaminants to your grow facility – guaranteed. That’s something no other substrate manufacturer can say.

4. HVAC and Fans

Do you really know what’s blowing around in the air at your grow facility? Are you 100% certain any contaminants that may be brought into your facility aren’t being blown from one room to another? The air is a powerful invisible carrier of contaminants, so it’s critical that you take steps to limit the risk of air-transferred cross-contamination throughout your facility.

Solution to HVAC and Fans Risk

Your HVAC system and fans should not be linked from one room to the next allowing air to circulate through all or multiple rooms. Instead, they should be tied off so each room is isolated and there is no chance for cross contamination between rooms, including the room where you quarantine germplasm, your nursery room, veg room, flower room, and so on.

5. Exterior Environment

What’s in the exterior environment around your grow facility? Are there any dangers outside that are brushing up against your facility? If so, do you have a plan and procedures to solve the problem and mitigate the threat of contamination to your plants?

Solution to Exterior Environment Risk

You should monitor the exterior environment around your facility for potential threats on an ongoing basis. When you identify problems, you should have processes in place to remove or reduce the threats those problems cause as quickly as possible.

For example, at bio365’s manufacturing facilities, we triple seal walls when we identify an exterior threat. We also take measures to control pests if they’re detected around the exterior of our facility. It’s so easy to bring contaminants from just outside your door into your facility, so this is a hidden danger you need to prepare for and address before it becomes a big problem.

6. Pots and Containers

If you grow in pots and containers, you need to be 100% sure that those pots are thoroughly scrubbed and sanitized before you use them again. If you don’t have the world’s best sanitizing process, then you shouldn’t use those pots again.

Solution to Pots and Containers Risk

The #1 way to eliminate the risk of contamination that pots and containers bring to your grow is to stop using them entirely. Instead, use single-use grow bags, such as bio365 grow bags.

The reality is that great pot sanitizing isn’t guaranteed to remove contamination risks. This is especially true based on where you store your pots or if you leave them outside your facility between uses where they can be exposed to exterior environmental risks (see #8 below).

7. Disposed Materials

If you leave uncleaned pots outside or dispose of plant material outside your facility, you could put your grow at risk of contamination. For example, if you take the root ball, which is known to attract pests and pathogens, and put it in a dumpster outside your facility or in a field next to your facility, you’ll create a new hot bed for pests and pathogens to thrive.

From there, it’s not hard for these pests and pathogens to find their way inside your facility where they can quickly cause contamination. It just takes one person, one gust of wind, or one pot brought back inside for re-use to introduce those pests and pathogens to your facility.

Solution to Disposed Materials Risk

There is a simple solution to disposed materials risk. Do not leave pots outside your facility, and do not dispose of plant material outside your facility.

8. Planting Materials

The #1 source of contamination in cannabis cultivation facilities is germplasm, seeds, tissue cultures – anything used to grow your cannabis plants – that comes from the outside into your facility. No other potential contamination risk is even close, so you have to be obsessive about ensuring all plant materials brought into your grow facility are clean and contaminant-free.

Solution to Planting Materials Risk

Every planting material you bring into your facility should be quarantined for at least 30 days before you bring it into your grow area. If you’re transplanting, sample and test first to make sure your plants stay clean!

Key Takeaways about Hidden Ways You’re Contaminating Your Cannabis Grow

Maintaining a clean controlled environment for your cannabis grow is challenging. However, if you start with a clean substrate and follow the tips in this article, you’ll eliminate many of the hidden ways your cannabis grow could be contaminated.

Think of it this way – if bio365 can do it for our substrate, you can do it for your grow. Contact us and we can help you ensure your substrate is never a source of contamination!