How large is your cultivation’s yield gap? If you’re struggling to close the space between your current yields and maximum yields, you’re not alone. According to the 2021 State of Cannabis Cultivation Report, 30% of study respondents claimed that increasing cannabis yields is their biggest challenge.

To realize the many benefits of boosting your yields, such as increasing facility ROI and encouraging a more well-oiled grow operation, there’s no one-size-fits-all strategy, but there are a handful of key questions every cultivator should ask themselves.

Are you controlling temperature (and humidity) levels?

The smallest change in your grow space’s environment can be the difference between higher yields and a damaged canopy. To ensure you get the former, you should be prioritizing your grow room’s temperature, humidity, and air circulation.

Ideally, your grow rooms’ temperatures sit between 78°F-86°F degrees during flowering stages and a bit warmer, between 82°F-88°F, in vegetative stages. When cannabis plants don’t grow under their preferred temperature, you won’t necessarily kill your crop (though you certainly could). However, you won’t get the maximum yields you’re aiming for.

From preventing bud rot and optimizing plant growth to boosting the potency of your buds, relative humidity (at the right level) can do wonders for your plant quality and yields. Unfortunately, this critical climate factor is often overlooked. To avoid the consequences of incorrect humidity levels, such as slowed growth and nutrient problems, remember to decrease the humidity as your plants grow. In general, ideal humidity levels are 75% for cloning, 70%-80% for vegetative, 60%-75% for flowering, and 45%-55% for final flowering stages.

Despite your best efforts, it can be difficult to keep humidity and temperature levels totally even throughout your grow space. That’s where air circulation comes in. While fans and other airflow systems don’t necessarily lower temperature and humidity, they are critical for maintaining proper environmental conditions. Well-designed air circulation systems produce an even flow of air throughout the canopy, effectively eliminating any hot or humid spots. Plus, a gentle breeze helps minimize any pests, mold, or mildew that could damage your plants and, in turn, your yields.

Do you have the right lighting conditions?

The fact that plants need light to photosynthesize and grow is a biology basic. But what many growers don’t realize is that lighting doesn’t just feed your plants, it guides them. In other words, light spectrum and intensity tell your plants how to grow.

If you want your plants to grow to their full potential, you need a light source that produces specific light spectrums for each stage of growth. For example, higher levels of blue and white light during vegetative stages signals to your plants to grow outwards instead of upwards. This gives your plants greater access to the red light that encourages photosynthesis during the flowering stage.

To create these ideal lighting conditions, more and more commercial growers are switching HID lights for LED systems, which deliver the precise light spectrum cannabis plants need at different stages of growth with lower risk of burning your canopy, which is especially critical for vertical growers.

Are you maximizing your square footage?

Environmental and lighting controls help growers maximize the yield of each plant. Now, how do you maximize the number of plants you can produce? The key is to start growing vertically. In a traditional single-tier racking setup, vertical space goes unused, and cultivators need to expand into new rooms or entire new facilities to grow more plants. In these cases, you’ll see an increase in yield, but your ROI won’t look as good.

Stacking two, three, four, and even five layers allows you to significantly increase the amount of plants per square foot. To further boost their yields, cultivators are shifting to not just vertical but mobile racking systems. As opposed to a static system, which takes up valuable floor space due to the need for multiple fixed aisles, a mobile system allows growers to create a single aisle wherever and whenever they need it. The rest of the space goes towards, you guessed it, growing more plants.

Elevate your plants and your business with Grow Glide.

From our industry-leading grow racks to our innovative air circulation solution, AirGlide, Grow Glide has what you need to solve the real problems that stand between you and maximum yields. Connect with us to learn more about our cannabis-specific products, or get started designing your setup with our proprietary Room Generator technology.