What Plants Crave feat. Steve Squaglia: Guinea Pig Farms

This episode is part of our “What Plants Crave” series, where Dr. Sabeh speaks with growers, researchers, and other experts in controlled environment agriculture, to get their insights about the direction of the industry, and of course, what exactly it is that plants crave.

This week Nadia spoke with Steve Squaglia of Amplified Farms and Cultivated California. Steve Squaglia puts his 20 years of cannabis industry experience to use as the Co-founder of Amplified Farms, Cultivated California and most recently Friendo Flower. His daily tasks involve designing, building and generating operations for cultivation facilities and harvesting relationships with industry specialists. He has utilized his background as a general contractor to work with SMUD, a local utility company, on designing new facilities with LED lighting, embarking on the forefront of a revolutionary idea that will undoubtably change the future of cultivation.

Timestamp notes:

00:04:00 The history of cannabis licensing in Sacramento, CA

00:06:15 Boutique growing compared to commercial growing

00:08:45 The standard of cannabis is growing all the time

00:10:15 More collaboration of growers can help increase business success and have greater impact on the economic development and sustainability.

00:15:40 The importance and difficulty of managing the indoor plant environment, including HVAC tips and strategies

00:24:40 Gas Pedal Growing: The philosophy of 75%, 100% of the time.

00:29:30 “Guinea Pig Farms”: The value of experimentation in the farm.

00:36:20 Observations of growing under LED lights

00:37:20 Why grow cannabis indoors?

00:41:30 Why purchase legal cannabis, when it’s so much cheaper on the black market?

00:47:40 What is exciting about the future of the cannabis industry?

00:51:20 How can regional growers emulate Sacramento’s close cannabis grower network ?

00:55:10 What do you love about cannabis?

01:03:30 Feeling it: the value of failure

01:05:00 The challenge finding good and talented team members

01:07:00 Measuring success as a cannabis cultivator

01:13:40 What do plants crave?