What type of irrigation to use for my cannabis crops?

Many times, we get the question from growers or investors what the best irrigation technique for cannabis crops is. For most growers, we believe that the following techniques are the the best choice for the most growers.

Cuttings
Fresh cuttings are usually placed in a tray under a dome and hand watered with a hand sprayer. To make life easier, we recommend to use a tray which can be used in an ebb & flood system, or with capillary matting. This not only saves time and labour, the crop will also get a more even amount of water and nutrients, and it prevents plant stress by not spraying water on the plant itself.

What type of irrigation to use for my cannabis crops?

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Mother plants
As mother plants will stay in the same pot for a longer period, and the water will be mixed with a high concentrate of fertilizers. A common problem for mother plants is that a high EC value is built up in the substrate. This can be washed away by using drip irrigation. With drip irrigation, each pot gets 1 or more “drippers”, which are in fact little sticks who are stuck into the substrate and are connected to a small hose from where the irrigation water is fed to the crop from the top. As the water rinses from the top of the substrate to the bottom, most of nitrates are washed down with it. Making the EC values easier to control.

Vegetative and Flowering stages
Many times, crops in a vegetative and flowering stage have a very short life cycle of approximately 8 weeks. And during that period, the crops regularly get spaced out, or moved to another department to receive a different climate and/or light strategy. If you use drippers, this will costs alot of labour to remove and place back the drippers every time. Also drippers are hard to clean, thus making it a risk for diseases and pests. Due to the short life cycle of the crop, the EC is also much easier to maintain as there is less build up. Therefore an ebb & flood system is very suitable for these stages. With ebb & flood systems, the crop stands on a water tight bottom, which is filled with a layer of 1-4cm water with fertilizers a couple of times per day. This way, each crop received and consumes the exact same amount of water and fertilizers it requires. It saves alot of labour, and there is no risk of forgotten or clogged drippers. A large part of the water is drained and can be re-used.

The past years we see a large increasy in use of Nutrient Film Technique (NFT) at large scale cannabis facilities, which we consider also to be a very good alternative for ebb & flood.

For proper advice for your situation, we are happy to listen to your story and share our experience and knowledge. 

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