Subscriptions - Maximum Yield Cannabis USA November/December 2020 | Page 76

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“Fungus plays a big part in offering plants like cannabis sugars
and carbohydrates. You can distribute spores into your soil.
When mushrooms pop up in the root zone of cannabis, those
tend to be the happiest plants in your garden,” says Laughter.
Dixon has thought of using other cannabis plants as
companion plants.
“Maybe take a strain like ACDC and trellis it not more than
a foot above the soil. Then put a bunch of clones of ACDC
around the base of the main canopy. That way you can
generate a ton of CBD for a cannabinoid extract,” Dixon says.
“ With companion plants, you might
see cannabis plants’ overall health
increase. Companion plants tend to
help build your soil’s structure and
microbiology, reducing the amount
of organic input needed.”
Companion Plants Help Cut Out Chemical Use
For many growers, companion plants are the first step on the
path away from using chemicals. Those who are starting out
may take a while to see results.
“With companion plants, you might see cannabis plants’
overall health increase. Companion plants tend to help
build your soil’s structure and microbiology, reducing the
amount of organic input needed. We still don’t have enough
side by side comparisons on different companion plants and
what they do. One way I have seen companion plants help
is by keeping cannabis plants healthy
and preserving a plot of soil for future
grows,” says Frigone.
Dixon sees it as unnatural for
growers to “cart in all these hundreds
of yards of soil and spray chemicals
on cannabis that have a skull and
crossbones on the bottle.” For him,
farming is work.
“It’s showing up and doing the same
thing every day. The more you really
dive deep into companion planting, the
more it starts to make you a real farmer.
It helps you team up with all these other
superhero plants. Real farming isn’t
harvesting a monocrop and then letting
the land die. Cultivation takes work
and investment in many plants, not just
cannabis, and putting all of that back
into the land,” says Dixon.
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