Linfa and the rise of micro-growing

Small spaces for great harvests

If you Google “Marijuana cultivation” for images, the result tells us the familiar stories of large outdoor plantations, perfectly arranged rows in huge greenhouses, industrial plants capable of producing kilograms of inflorescences destined to specialty stores, or… the black market.

These stories match the collective imaginary: the cannabis plant is tall, large, and has many leaves. It takes space to grow it. There are extensive outdoor cultivations, industrial indoor plants, and medium-large size grow boxes.

What if I don’t live in the countryside, what if my apartment is small, what if I only want to grow just what I need for my consumption?

Don’t worry, the era of home grow boxes the size of a closet is over. The new frontier for home growing is micro-growing.

What is the minimum space needed to grow cannabis?

An answer comes from the always well documented Royal Queen Seeds blog :

The minimum amount of space you’ll need to grow weed in a micro setup is 35 × 35 × 75cm.

Such a minimal space can accommodate a crop that can produce perfect yields for personal use: 30 to 50 grams per harvest!

Among the more experienced growers (and with a lot of time to waste), someone has managed to build a grow box from an old computer : an experiment proving that micro-growing is a reality.

Another well-informed blog by professional grower Robert Bergman also reminds us of another great advantage of micro-growing:

Using mini grow spaces can not only save you valuable space, but they can also help maintain a discreet grow. They’re easy to hide in a tiny space, and because you are growing fewer plants, the aroma is not as strong as what you’d find at larger grow sites. It’s easy to see why micro grows might be a good idea, but in the end, it is all about results.

It’s true: in the end, it’s all about results. After two months of patiently waiting and caring for our beloved plants, the only thing that interests us is the harvest quantity and quality.

So how is it possible to grow in such a small space and still get good results?

The tricks for the perfect micro-growing

To grow in limited spaces means paying more attention to all the variables that, regardless of the amount of space, affect results:

1. Soil quantity
2. Temperature and ventilation
3. Light
4. Seed choice
5. Cultivation care

Since we are used to growing indoors and with hydroponic grow boxes, we can ignore point 1. Also, for a few years now, thanks to Linfa, we can safely skip points 2 and 3.

Linfa growers, we are so lucky!

Just one note on point 3: the light. We asked Linfa’s producer for official information on the technology used: “we can’t tell you in detail the specific type of LED used but what counts is the algorithm we have developed for optimal plant growth. An algorithm optimized for blue light. (For the nerds we recommend reading this article on the importance of blue light in cannabis cultivation).

The ideal seeds for micro-growing

As we have seen in this article there are species and seeds for each taste and each size. It is best to choose seeds for plants that do not exceed one meter in height or, better, dwarf species to grow in small spaces.

The easiest choice with guaranteed results is to buy autoflowering seeds, but you can go further.

Go to your regular seed supplier’s website and look for seeds less than 70–100 cm tall.

Micro growing seeds:

• Autoflowering is always good! Among the most famous and loved by micro- growers are the 42 Fast Bud.
• For dwarf strains look at the selection made by the Way of Leaf magazine.
• For feminized species here is the Seedsman offer.
• For those who want quality and speed of harvest we recommend the Fast of Sweet Seed.

Don’t worry, there’s plenty to choose from for micro-growing, especially for growing cannabis with Linfa.

For an extensive and well-documented catalog, use the Strain Finder by CannaConnection: if you apply the filter in the Height parameter, you get 532 species!

Things to do in Micro-growing

Often friends and bloggers in the cannabis world tell me that “Linfa is too small.”

As we have seen you can grow in small spaces, and Linfa is the proof.

Moreover, in Linfa you can produce up to 50 grams per harvest because it is a grow box designed to take care of plants according to the basic principles of micro-cultivation.

Here are the fundamentals of plant care in micro cultivation:

• LST (Low-Stress techniques): the purpose is to “open” the plants as much as possible and thus increase light penetration.
• HST (High-stress techniques): different systems of pruning the plants favor the creation of more tops and of the same size
• ScrOG (Screen Of Green): thanks to a special net (available for free in Linfa) the cultivation will be forced to expand horizontally.
• Defoliation: in the wild cannabis plants use their leaves to accumulate nutrients in case of stressful events but when plants are grown indoors, this foliage becomes useless and must be removed.

You may be wondering: how do I learn these techniques?

We will explore these topics in depth in future articles, but for all Linfa Growers plant care will be a breeze thanks to the growing tips notified to growers just at the right time!

Long live micro growing! Better if with Linfa ;)

Originally published at https://www.harvestbrothers.ca on April 23, 2021.