As a cultivator, your focus is always on the current grow. You’re worried about today’s environment, this week’s feeding schedule, and next month’s harvest. It’s easy to forget about the harvests you finished six months or a year ago.
But all that old harvest data sitting in your METRC account is one of the most valuable assets you have. It tells the story of what worked, what didn’t, and where you can improve. You just have to know how to look at it.
Here’s a simple way to use your past cannabis harvest data to make smarter decisions today.
Step 1: Gather Your Harvest History
The first step is to get all your harvest data in one place. You can do this by exporting your “Inactive Harvests” from METRC into a spreadsheet. The most important columns you’ll need are the Harvest Date, Strain Name, and the final Total Weight. Make sure all your weights are in the same unit (like grams) so you can compare them accurately.
Step 2: Look for Simple Trends
You don’t need a fancy analytics degree to spot trends. Once you have your data in a spreadsheet, sort it by Strain Name and then by Harvest Date. Now, just look at the numbers.
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Is a “winner” strain starting to decline? Look at your best strain. Has its average yield per harvest slowly dipped over the last six months? A slight, consistent drop is a quiet warning sign that something in your process or environment might have changed.
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Is one room underperforming? If your METRC export includes the harvest location, look at all the harvests from “Flower Room A” compared to “Flower Room B.” Does one room consistently produce less than the other, even with the same strains? This could point to an environmental issue you need to investigate.
Step 3: Ask “Why?”
This is the most important step. The data doesn’t give you the answer, it gives you the right question to ask.
If you see a dip in yields for all your strains in May, you can ask, “What happened in May?” The answer might be, “Oh, right. That’s when we had that HVAC issue for a week.” The data simply points you to the problem so you can use your own knowledge to connect the dots and prevent it from happening again. This is how you get real cannabis data insights.
The Problem with Doing This Manually
Let’s be honest: digging through spreadsheets is time-consuming and tedious. It’s the kind of task that gets pushed to the bottom of the to-do list and never gets done. You’re busy running your business, not being a data analyst.
That’s what the Mello Pocket Advisor is for. It connects to your METRC account and does this analysis for you, automatically. It visualizes your historical harvest trends and alerts you if it detects a negative pattern, like a consistent drop in yield for one of your top strains.
Instead of spending hours in a spreadsheet, you get the important questions delivered right to your dashboard. It’s the simplest way to improve your cannabis yield by learning from your own history.