Tune in to this episode to learn more about Black Dog LED with Kevin Frender who serves as Chief Technology Officer and Chief Science Officer. Kevin has been growing indoors under artificial lights in Colorado for over 25 years, using every commercially-available lighting technology available along the way. Over the years, he has grown thousands of different kinds of plants, from lettuce, peppers, and tomatoes to mangoes, orchids, and water lilies – all without the sun. Over four years ago Kevin turned his hobby into a full-time job when he joined Black Dog LED.

We know Kevin is in the business of lighting, which the cannabis industry uses HEAVILY. Particularly because many facilities grow in controlled indoor environments. For those of us who don’t work in the grow, we just know that you turn the lights on and off when you need them, but we talk more about how the light spectrum is used and what other ways it helps plants grow healthy. The lighting certainly gives off heat which is an important component of growing cannabis, temperature management, and regulation, so the plants get too hot perhaps. Then you have to cool things down with an HVAC system. We dive into how we can use lights while still keeping that energy conservation issue in mind as we continue to talk about sustainability in our industry.

Black Dog LED was founded in early 2010 when the founder spent over a year looking for legitimate LED grow lights to fill his and his friends’ growing needs. Black Dog LED is indoor gardening enthusiasts, and their passion for their work comes from the desire to create a quality product they want to use in their own gardens and their friends want to use in theirs. To accomplish this, they are pushing the limits of what is currently known about using artificial light to grow plants. Some of the research they are doing in BDL Labs, their research and development department, is being conducted for the first time ever. BDL is creating lights that, because of their combination of spectrum and power, are better for growing plants than anything produced before.