Craft Cannabis is the outcome of many years of hard work and significant hands-on experience growing cannabis with precision and a lot of heart.
Maximizing the capabilities of a cannabis strain to enhance its effects or medical attributes are the primary goals of any true cannabis enthusiast. Craft cannabis is grown with this mind. The pungent smells and varying tastes are just a few of the things cultivators attempt to perfect with this ongoing challenge.
Growers have been using their own tricks and traditions for years to improve the outcome of their craft strains. These tactics include everything from estimating the highest levels of terpenes, judging plants by appearance only, or even playing music to crops during feedings.
How Much Harder Is It to Make Craft Cannabis?
The dedication that goes into growing craft cannabis is immense. Before growing even commences, the perfect strain needs to be found. In most cases, this search for premium genetics can result in a new strain needing to be created which can be even more of a challenge.
Breeding new strains for craft cannabis use can be very complex. Managing to perfectly combine the positive traits of each strain while avoiding the negative aspects is a fine art. With this in mind, multiple phenotypes of the new strain are created while seeking out the best taste and effectiveness. These are not the only crucial determining factors either. While a phenotype that combines both of these aspects is desirable, a high yield is also essential due to all the hard work this process can be for independent and small growers.
Independent laboratory testing is also required throughout each phase to help find the most desirable phenotypes. Once the phenotype that has the best qualities has been discovered, all others are removed. This is also the reason you sometimes see a number after the name of the strain. It typically denotes the number of the phenotype chosen.
Craft cannabis growers also go the extra mile curing each crop after it is harvested. A slow-and-steady drying process is used to improve potency and quality similar to how a fine wine is matured over time.
Consequently, craft cannabis is not necessarily harder to grow but finding the best strain and improving its capabilities is one of the biggest challenges. Generally speaking, most enthusiasts that grow craft cannabis have years of experience in developing superior ways of preservation and use advanced growing techniques.
History of Craft Cannabis
Guadalest is a small village in Spain famous for its prodigious valleys of loquats but is also well known for growing craft cannabis. Old-school farming methods have been passed on through multiple generations. The methods of cultivation are almost considered to be family heirlooms, and these techniques are used all over the small region of Castell de Castells to grow eco-friendly marijuana using only natural resources from the area.
Similar to how Champagne is only made in a specific region of France due to its perfect climate and soil for growing grapes, Guadalest was famed for creating their own strain of craft cannabis. They managed to improve the well-known strain of Critical, and it became so acclimatized that the new phenotype almost grew freely. Critical was already a prevalent strain amongst the locals, but cannabis enthusiasts from all over Spain claimed that Guadalest produced the best phenotype and it was considered a craft cannabis strain.
Hippies from the Carpathian states of Europe that immigrated to the Iberian peninsula learned about these traditional growing techniques and started implementing them again deep in the Spanish valleys. The potent smell of Critical returned and the flower continued to flourish every summer just like it did before.
Ladybugs were used as biological pest control, and they would collect nutrient-rich water from the natural waterfalls that formed along the river Algar. Recycled bottles were used to make homemade drip irrigation systems, and the cannabis plants were surrounded with bells on a string to alert the growers of any wild animals or trespassers.
This is a perfect example of how cannabis enthusiasts used to grow craft cannabis. Currently, craft cannabis is still mostly grown with this traditional mentality by only using natural resources and without the overuse of complicated high-end machinery.
Furthermore, the legalization of cannabis in many US states has also facilitated new ways of improving how this terpene rich cannabis is grown and tested, making North America one of the best producers of craft cannabis today.