1. Gard’nClean brings awareness to what a clean environment is… 

A lot of what Gard’nClean and our team of consultants do is help get your team thinking differently. Cleaning needs to be done on a microbial level. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there. Thinking microscopically is how we get ahead of the state’s regulations for testing. So that your business can operate at its fullest potential without any loss.

The lowest level of tech we can use is our skin and awareness of our surroundings as an indicator for pathogen pressure. When we implement a protocol, you or your cultivators will begin to use your skin to read the pressures within an environment. This will develop into second nature and becomes part of the norm.

What do I mean by using the skin as an indicator? Well, pathogen pressure is actual pressure. It’s in the room, and when high enough will translate into a physical feeling. This becomes more transparent when you are aware of your surroundings. A good cultivator can detect these pressures immediately.

After using Gard’nClean, cultivators learn very quickly what I’m talking about. It becomes clear to them when they can feel the difference. Starting with high pressure from before, then using Gard’nClean products and experiencing the lighter environment after use. Our products show you by letting you feel it for yourself.

To elaborate, the best example is someone with six cats. Or a dry room with pounds and pounds of product. When you walk into a house, and the person has six cats, or you walk into a dry room with wet pounds, you can feel that pressure. Physically it will add pressure to your skin and eyes. That pressure is the thickness of the air and the amount of pathogen load present. This is one great advantage of Gard’nClean and how we bring awareness to the team to produce a cleaner environment.

2. Create a culture focused on consumer health.

When you finally remove those pressures and everyone uses their skin/awareness as indicators, going into a thick and dirty situation directly starts being associated with health. When producing products for people (the consumer) is when consumer health must become a focus for all personnel. Create the best environment to create the best product so that when it reaches the consumer, you know that you have done all that can be done to make that product experience the best it can be. This will build a reputation and protect the integrity of the growers and the brand. While knowing the consumer is receiving the healthiest products for their personal consumption.

3. Gard’nClean helps Implement a full disinfection protocol customized to your facility’s workflow.

Understanding the constant pressures and contaminants within a garden, it becomes clear that we need to implement a disinfection protocol to minimize these pressures at all times, after heavy workdays, in between harvests on the room reset, and during the dry, trim, and cure cycles. All areas of the growth and really any part of the facility should have a protocol in place.

How do you create a protocol, you ask? Well, start by looking at every room as an individual. Make sure you understand the airflow and see if it Is shared with another room? Make sure it is safe to deploy gases when no plants or people are present. Then the next step is to find the cubic feet of each room. Do this by multiplying the length by the width by the height. (L*W*H) to reach the total cubic feet of each room.

For example, if you have a 10’ by 8’ by 12’ room, you would Multiply 10x8x12, Which equates to 960 total cubic feet for that room. Then go to each product and round to the closest size or sizes of products needed to achieve that volume. You would use a 1k for the fast release and the extended release for this size room. The 1k is capable of treating up to 1000 cubic feet.

The extended releases last for 30 days, so you will need two (2) for each harvest cycle. The Gard’nClean extended-release is safe for plants and people.

We will use one GC 1k Fast-Release after each harvest when plants, people, and all debris have been removed from the room, and the room has been cleaned. Because the room is empty, we will have the ability to increase the fast release dosage to deeply penetrate all the hard-to-reach areas and let the gas work in our favor.

So now that you know what sizes your going to use for the room. The protocol will look like this:

• Spray the liquid on all surfaces that can get wet. Things like floors, walls, trays, pots, and equipment. You can spray this liquid as much as your budget, workflow, and humidity will allow. You can even treat these surfaces during the grow cycle when plants are in the room, and when used at the standard 100ppm, the applicator does not need to wear personal protective equipment (PPE), and there is no REI needed. The Gard’nClean liquid leaves zero residual when generated with Reverse Osmosis (RO) water. So you can just spray and walk away without any wipe.

• While the surfaces from the liquid are still wet, you want to immediately activate the Gard’nClean Fast-Release. This will help penetrate deeper into all the hard-to-reach areas, including electrical boxes, outlets, unreachable voids, and the air between them. We will turn off all lights and charcoal filters but can leave HVAC and fans running to circulate the gas as best as possible. Chlorine dioxide (ClO2) is heavier than air, so we recommend placing the fast release up high to allow the gas to fall. Allowing the gas to penetrate and treat the space for a minimum of four (4) hours. But if possible, allowing it to sit overnight will be best. If only running for 4 hours, you will need to turn on the lights and exhaust the room before re-entry.

• Chlorine dioxide (ClO2) is photolytic, which means it gets broken down by UV light. Once safe to enter the environment, it should drastically feel different. Lighter, fresher, and cleaner. It will feel like a nice hotel lobby, spacious, and with a light scent of chlorine in the background.

• Now that the surfaces and the 3-dimensional environment have been treated, you want to preserve that feeling for as long as possible. You can do this by deploying a Gard’nClean Extended-Release. This humidity-activated sachet is even easier to use than the other two products. Simply open the package and remove the sachet. Because this is humidity activated, no water is needed to make it work. Place the whole sachet back inside the plastic clamshell and hang right above the lights or higher, allowing the gas to fall. This will last for 30 days and can easily be changed with a refill.

4. Reduce cross-contamination. 

The first action item to reduce cross-contamination is identifying the heavily trafficked areas. Treat those areas properly and consistently enough times to keep up with the pathogen load continually gets created. The best and easiest way to do this is to go back to number 3 and implement a full 3-dimensional protocol. Using the Liquid, Fast-release, and the Extended-Release. But there are alternatives. On a budget? Just spray the liquid after workdays. If and when sprayed at 100ppm in your heaviest trafficked areas, you will be able to reduce load and immediately notice a difference.

5. Create cleaner water.

Creating clean water is a long-time issue around the world. When a farmer’s pigs get cleaner water, the pigs are healthier, and more survive to become pork products, making the farmer more money. This same principle is true for plants, especially cannabis. Treating the water becomes an activity we can’t live without. Gard’nClean created a very simple system to treat the water and the lines that water travels through. We call it the “Gardian Aqua” to see a visual of this system, visit gardnclean.com/gardian-aqua.

The Gardian Aqua is an inline water purification system. That utilizes the Gard’nCleans GC Liquid. The concentrated solution of Gard’nClean’s liquid remains inside an opaque reservoir sealed with an airtight lift system. The Gard’nClean GC Liquid gets introduced into the main water line by a specified Dosatron unit designed for higher accuracy at a lower part per million. Allowing the liquid to completely eradicate pathogens before even knowing they existed. As well as removing bio-film and slime from the inside of the line/pipe. A must-have for every garden.

6. Reduce caustic chemicals that degrade infrastructure

Let’s get real for a second; stuff costs a lot of money. Most facilities have millions and millions of dollars invested when buildout is complete. Only to pay your employee to use a cheap caustic oxidizer. This action begins the process of eating away at all the components you just spent your hard-earned money on. When the cleanup crew starts cleaning on 2-month cycles, the degradation in infrastructure becomes apparent very quickly, and after five years, your plastics are brittle, Concrete is dry, and metal equipment is worn. Chlorine dioxide is a way better solution than most. The American Testing and Measures (ASTM) Recommends it over all other chemicals as the best solution for cleaning cannabis cultivation. We will cover more on this in later blog posts.

7. Properly reset your room back to zero. 

Crops high in terpenes and essential oils can create a very sticky substance when grown indoors. The residue after harvest can become thick and dense. Then over time will build up. Using Gard’nClean to treat the surfaces and the environment is the best way to completely eradicate any leftover pathogen-related issues (PRI). By removing the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from the environment and removing all surface contaminants, we are treating them in a 3-dimensional manner, eliminating all pressures to bring the room back down to zero or as close to it as possible.

8. Ongoing pathogen protection.

The best tool in the toolbox for ongoing pathogen protection is the Extended-release.

Due to the high loads inside cultivation facilities, the extended-release is a must-have to make life easier. This easy-to-use product works very similarly to an air freshener, except it’s not the same. Instead of masking the smell, we are removing the airborne organisms. We believe these extended releases to be superior to others because of the low level of maintenance. They do not use any electricity to power them up. There is no power involved. Gard’nClean’s extended-release are humidity-activated. The water vapor goes inside the sachet, mixes with the internal ingredients then generates a chlorine dioxide gas. The microreactor sachet only allows the Chlorine dioxide gas (clo2) to escape trapping all the byproducts inside. Creating ongoing protection within your room produces a very gentle yet effective gas for thirty days.

9. Deodorize and Remove unwanted and unpleasant smells. 

All of Gard’nClean products work at deodorizing and removing unpleasant smells. Gard’nClean does not work like Febreze. We don’t mask smells. When you use Gard’nClean, you kill the organism. It kills the source of the bad smell, Removing it completely. The fast release will act fast and deodorize a space in a minimum of 4 hours. While the extended will generate for 30 days keeping the airborne pathogens at bay. The mechanical kill mechanism of Gard’nClean and chlorine dioxide is how we achieve this.

10. Overall, Create a cleaner environment resulting in cleaner consumer health-focused cannabis. 

When you do some or all of the steps in the previous 1-9, you will undoubtedly end up with a cleaner environment than what you had to begin with. Implementing all of them will completely change the trajectory of your business. It’s hard to say what one you should implement if you were to only pick one. Because they work so well in unison together. But we do know that Implementing even one part of our Environmental disinfection protocol will better your situation.

But the environment only stays clean for so long. Taking this information and treating the facility with harsher or less effective chemicals is not recommended.  The products you choose to use are crucial to properly and safely achieving the clean mentioned in this blog post.

For instance, many people use alcohol-based cleaners or think they will cut corners by using other chlorine compounds. But do not confuse chlorine compounds with chlorine dioxide. They are very different; clo2 does not hydrolyze in water and is a true grass that is readily soluble in water. Clo2 is an oxidizer providing broad-spectrum control. The oxidation capacity is 2.5 times greater than most other oxidizers, so it has the lowest concentrations required for disinfection compared to other disinfectants.

So there you have it, the ten ways Gard’nClean will and can help your garden.

To recap:

• Gard’nClean brings awareness to what a clean environment is
• Gard’nClean creates a culture focused on consumer health
• Gard’nClean helps Implement a full disinfection protocol that can be customized to your facility’s workflow.
• Gard’nClean reduces cross-contamination
• Gard’nClean creates cleaner water
• Gard’nClean reduces caustic chemicals that degrade infrastructure.
• Gard’nClean properly resets your room back to zero.
• Gard’nClean assists in ongoing pathogen protection.
• Gard’nClean deodorizes and removes unwanted and unpleasant smells.
• Gard’nClean overall creates a cleaner environment resulting in cleaner consumer health-focused products.

If you would like to understand more or have a specific question, please don’t hesitate to reach out, and a Gard’nClean team member will gladly help. You can reach us at hello@gardnclean.com or call us at (888)