When Alex Mayhugh first started growing cannabis more than a decade ago in Colorado, he spent much of his time on monotonous tasks, such as hand-watering plants and changing and cleaning single-ended, high-pressure sodium fixtures. The crew of three climbed 8-foot ladders to clean 465 lights weekly, lights that also burnt out often. Wild temperature swings – not completely unheard of in Denver—would shatter glass bulbs, which fell on top of the plants.
“We would come in in the morning and you would just see glass all over the floor and go, ‘OK, which light is it that broke today?’” Mayhugh recalls.
Lights and other equipment to power indoor grows, including HVAC systems and automated fertigation, have come a long way, allowing Mayhugh and other growers to focus on more pressing cultivation tasks and optimize production. And companies like Story Cannabis, a vertically integrated multistate operator headquartered in Las Vegas and founded in 2021, have had the advantage of learning from the trials and tribulations of industry pioneers.
When it came to lighting, Mayhugh, cultivation manager for Story’s Maryland facility, said the company made sure its technology was top-notch from the start.
“They're not the typical cannabis cultivation company in that, [they say] we're just going to go with whatever is cheapest or whatever fits the budget or whatever is going to be workable until we get our legs underneath us and get going,” Mayhugh says. “They've had the foresight to say, ‘We know what the most important aspects of a super successful cultivation facility are,’ and they didn't skimp on any of those things.”
Story has 30,000 square feet of canopy in its Maryland facility, which includes triple-tier veg space and eight double-tier flower rooms entirely outfitted with LEDs. Utilizing Fluence’s SPYDR series fixtures that are programmable and connected to the company’s ERP system have allowed Mayhugh and the team to become more sophisticated and targeted, a necessity in the increasingly competitive cannabis markets.
As they embark on their first harvest in Maryland’s recently launched adult-use market, Mayhugh says he and the team have implemented lighting tips and lessons they’ve learned along the way to ensure their first crop is a success.
1. Start with the best technology from buildout. If retrofitting, consider lights that can accommodate the grow’s current systems.
Research and meet with vendors and invest in high-quality LEDs, HVAC systems and automated fertigation from the start if budgets permit, Mayhugh says.
“Changing your lights is not just changing your lights,” he says. It’s critical to consider the “type of spectrum you're going to get, how you should change your environmental controls and your irrigation strategy in order to match that.” Mayhugh points out that by working with an industry leader like Fluence, “you’re definitely [benefitting from] a knowledge base that’s going to get you to an operational excellence standard … they aren’t just trying to sell you lights.”
In the case of an LED retrofit, being able to tap into that expertise can help established cultivation companies understand how to make the rest of their equipment work in concert with the new lights. “That can be a really big hurdle, especially if your HVAC is not capable of handling [the] number of plants you have, [or] if your irrigation can’t adequately water on time,” he says.
“These lights can really complement any other underperforming aspects of your facility,” Mayhugh says. For example, “rooms [can start] running a little bit hot because I don’t have the right amount of [AC] tonnage. You can dial these lights back to any degree to match that.” The Fluence LEDs also have dimming capabilities from 0% to 100%, giving growers more control. “You get genetic performance from the lights that's complementary to whatever equipment situation you have because there's lots of grows out there that don't have adequate equipment.”
2. When selecting and phenohunting genetics, use the same lights in R&D.
When Mayhugh started working with LEDs, he noticed that plant performance improved. Trichome development was strong, colors were more vibrant, flowers were tighter and there was better intranodal spacing and structure. Getting the full expression of cannabis under LEDs required experimentation.
That’s why Story’s R&D area is also outfitted with Fluence LEDs to ensure their phenohunting is targeted for the type of response they get from plants under the fixtures. Plants that performed well under HPS fixtures will not necessarily be successful under LEDs.
Story Cannabis's Maryland facility has 30,000 square feet of cultivation space. The company recently completed its first harvest in the state's recently launched adult-use market. Photo courtesy of Story Cannabis
“It’s a new era of genetics because a lot of breeders in the past have done a lot of breeding under HPS lights,” Mayhugh says. “So now we're getting to an era where there's a lot of breeding and a lot of phenohunting being done under LEDs. Now we’re changing what cultivars we’re running because of the way that LEDs complement those cultivars. It's ushering in a new wave of genetics.”
3. Invest in lights that are flexible and can accommodate different heights and racking systems.
At previous gardens, Mayhugh remembers having to physically raise and lower lights above the plants to get the photosynthetic photon flux density (PPFD) they were targeting to optimize intensity and ultimately yield and quality.
That required loads of labor, as they were constantly adjusting the infrastructure to accommodate the lights. In Story’s new facility, Fluence’s SPYDRs are flexible in multiple types of spaces and can be dialed up or down depending on the range.
“It doesn't matter whether you have short benches or you have really tall rooms. They accommodate all the space in between,” he says. “There's some LED [companies] that say if you want your PPFD to be X, you're going to have to be at least within [a specific] distance. With these, the hanging height is whatever you want it to be.”
4. Monitor PAR daily to optimize growth.
Because there are fewer cultivation tasks like watering and cleaning, Mayhugh can spend more time fine-tuning the grow to achieve the company’s goals. For the first harvest, Story was hoping to produce 55 to 60 grams per square foot. But using Fluence lights, Mayhugh says he wouldn’t be surprised if they hit 80 because they are able to carefully track metrics like photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) to know exactly how much light plants are receiving and optimize that daily. Controlling light intensity is crucial in crop steering, and Mayhugh can adjust settings from his phone.
“As long as you're taking those measurements every day on what you want your PPFD to be, it's very, very easy to turn them up, turn them down and get exactly what you want,” he says. “If you're at say 550 PAR and you're really looking to be in 575 to 600 range, it's extremely easy to dial them up, and they'll hit whatever you want.”
The lights also include a sunrise and sunset function, allowing them to mimic a more natural lighting schedule that plants at Story have been responding well to.
Maintaining and adjusting the lights is also much easier than other fixtures, especially those Mayhugh encountered in the early days of the legal, licensed industry.
“It's super easy on the fly, especially when you have this large of a facility. We do morning, afternoon and evening walks and we bounce from room to room to room really fast. And we'll say, all right, this room's a little too low, adjust it, and move on,” he says. “It makes managing a facility this large extremely easy.”
5. Continue to question best practices in lighting—and all aspects of cultivation.
Although Mayhugh says experience is beneficial when launching a new grow and having consistent Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) is important to success, he says the Story leadership team approaches cultivation with a “beginner’s mind.”
“Story takes into consideration those lean manufacturing principals … those types of things that really elevate what cultivators do every day,” he says, adding that the company encourages growers to share ideas and experiment with new approaches. “A beginner's mind may see something you can’t, and you can find something really unique that no one's ever tried before.”
