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Helping your soil re-“cover”: Soil cover to promote soil health
Imagine it’s a cold winter morning. The sun hasn’t been seen for a week and the clouds are heavy and gray. You wake up in your warm bed, deep in the covers and the last thing you want to do is get up and face the elements. You know how much you love that cover?…
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Grow soils not plants: Make this the year of soil health
Everyone thinks they have the secret to growing the best Cannabis. But we know the real secret. It’s not about growing healthy plants folk, its about growing healthy soils! We sometimes think of agriculture and farming as just growing plants. We prepare beds or fields using tillage, we add fertilizers and pesticides, and we marvel…
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Integrated pest management: How IPM and ecology can help control insect pests
Integrated pest management is a multipronged approach. IPM combines various mechanical, cultural, biological, and chemical treatments to help control pests and reduce crop loss. To effectively control pests, we need to understand their lifecycle. Western flower thrips as an example pest The western flower thrips begin their life as eggs embedded in plant tissue. Once…
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Balthazar et. al., 2022. Biocontrol of Cannabis bud rot pathogens.
Balthazar, C., Novinscak, A., Cantin, C., Joly, D. L., Filion, M. (2022). Biocontrol activity of Bacillus spp. and Pseudomonas spp. against Botrytis cinerea and other Cannabis fungal pathogens. Phytopathology. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1094/PHYTO-03-21-0128-R Pathogens kind of suck Bud rot. Wilt. Grey mold. These words strike fear into the hearts of Cannabis growers everywhere. Very few commercial sprays…
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Cover crops: a quick primer on their benefits
The improvement to soil health is one of the more attractive benefits of cover crops. The use of cover crops can lead to greater soil biological activity, greater soil aggregation, and increased organic matter. Increases in these metrics are consistently associated with increased yields How do cover crops accomplish this? Like their name implies, cover…
