This spring we were given a pre-harvest tour of the indoor grow at Northern Roots Nursery. Stepping into the grow facility, we were amazed by the vision of the intensely illuminated green canopies stretching from wall to wall. As our tour guide showed us their favorite phenotypes, we floated amongst a heady fragrance of Starburst candies, melon, and bubblegum top notes with deep, lemon cleaner and gasoline base notes. There is nothing quite like the experience of being in a grow room during the last few days of flower.
Growing Up Indoor
Northern Roots Nursery specializes in Vermont-grown boutique CBD hemp varieties. They provide feminized seeds and clones to small-scale gardeners and large-scale farms. This past year, Northern Roots Nursery has established indoor grows to bring their cultivars to the premium indoor CBD hemp flower market.
At Northern Roots Nursery, each plant starts life in the veg room, where the focus is on healthy, vegetative growth. From small clone trays they are transplanted into incrementally larger pots. When they reach their ideal size, about 3-6 weeks from cloning, the plants are moved into the flowering room. There, the light schedule is adjusted to short days and long nights to induce flowering. This triggers the plant to bloom and produce smokable buds. Typically the flowering stage can take 8-10 weeks.
Each pot is outfitted with drip irrigation, which disperses a nutrient and water solution from a massive reservoir tank. Nutrients are blended into the reservoir and fed in precise amounts multiple times a day. A high frequency, low intensity approach is used in many parts of the growing process at Northern Roots. The plants are arranged in large pots of soil mix on waist level trays for ergonomic maintenance. The environment is outfitted with numerous double-ended HPS lights and supplemented with CO2 for hearty plant growth.
Northern Roots Nursery’s approach is to replicate nature’s work as much as possible. From high quality nutrients to biological Omri certified pest and pathogen management, they demonstrate that growing cannabis can be a fine art. All these careful steps contribute to a premium experience that can be seen, smelled and tasted in the final product.
When the harvest is finished, the room will be thoroughly cleaned and the plants in the veg room will be moved into the flowering room. A new cycle begins.
Indoor Means Top-Shelf
Premium, indoor quality nugget takes more effort to grow, but the results are worth it. Indoor hemp buds are often denser than outdoor buds. Indoors, the conditions are precisely controlled, from the light source, to the soil, to the nutrients. Outdoors, the weather and pests are unpredictable and variable from year to year. An intense rain or windstorm can allow mold and mycotoxins to take hold and can break plants limbs and damage the sensitive trichomes, rendering the bud subpar. Indoor grows are more consistent with each harvest. The protected indoor environment yields resinous trichome covered buds, rich in native terpenes.
We are incredibly pleased with how these Suzy’s Gift turned out, and we hope you will be too. You can find the Indoor Suzy’s Gift for sale on our Bud Collection page.