Inside the Groundbreaking Farm That Boasts Three Pounds of Cannabis per Grow Light

Growing
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I have found turning ideas on there head, And exploring new methods often give surprising results. For example glasshouse for years used a standard queuing calculation called a straight line queue, for production yield calculation. But, with the advent of computers we could use a matrix deferential queuing method to calculate production yield benefits. You could do in minutes what would take years using pen and paper. It proved that if a grow grew x percent less of poinsettia they could grow y percent more of a valentine day crop and improve overall cost efficiency via a higher yield.

This is just an example.

The question always both an intellectual and non intellectual argument.

If verity a gives you x amount of a desirable component and y gives you half of the component. But, y grow in half the time than x. Which gives the higher yield?

Using the method you illiterates earlier they are equal. But, what if you could also account for other veritable input characteristics? Labor requirements for two crops verses one. What if crop y was diseases resistant. That would mean lower inputs. What if crop y was more photo efficient? Could you have lower light requirements.

Wolf, See what I am leading too? We have more tools in are kit.

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All of those things you mention require an accurate yield figure as a base.

Yield/ft2/time is that basis.

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Just an FYI the Segal formula shows up under a different name in a publication by for Sweetpea production field notes by by L H Bailey in 1896

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yield/$labor/= $labor per gram.
None of it is accurate without an accurate yield figure which is VALID. This is why I’m an applied photo-biologist rather than a theoretical one. I must have real world figures for what I tell a consultee to be meaningful.

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Oh well, I guess I’ll give him his due and call it the “Bailey Effect.”

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I will look up the book, if I recall he was referencing an older publication. Could be from Atlee Burpee he was big a figure in early commercial production. Or from Geo Ball, they both wanted to make glasshouse production profitable through science and mathematics. The old Atlee Burpee writings are online.

All stuff I have on yield calculation are from a lit search from school days. Undergraduate project.

Look at this post Cost calculation for greenhouses it has two links to extension publications from Arkansas. The cost numbers are part of an ongoing study started in the 1950’s. What are your fixed overhead cost for running a greenhouse. I helped tablulate some of the data while in school and participated in the study each year I was in business.

The core number are very accurate.

Back to yield I am creating a document on ways to calculate yield for the sites library. It will be links to other documentation. And sources.
Plus links to Europeans companies that perform production analysis for growers.
Plus a bibliography to books. If you have a list of books or articles I should link to please let me know.

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On July 6th I got their newsletter bragging about 4.5lb/light!

"Our nine-part product line contains all micro and macro nutrients required to produce the most grams per square foot, while achieving the highest quality possible. In a recent cycle, we tested Success Nutrients in a side by side test with leading competitors under 36-light systems. The Success Nutrient side pulled down 164.4 pounds of dried, cured flower (METRC verified), equating to over 4.5 pounds per light.

This was achieved with a less than $1* cost of cultivation per gram of dried flower.

*Includes overhead costs for nutrients, testing, cultivation consumables, general consumables, pest management, utilities (power, water, sewer, gas, telecom, and waste disposal), harvest consumables, labor (cultivation, harvest, and maintenance including all related costs and benefits), other longer-lived consumables (lamps, HVAC filters, UV lamps, etc.), cultivation management (master grower and cultivation manager), and other miscellaneous costs related to state mandated compliance and reporting requirements."

I finally emailed them this morning and asked about g/sqft. I’ll let you know what they say.

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Please, Give me a paper or citation. Every fertilizer company in the history of horticulture has said there product is best.

Plants can not tell the difference between organic and inorganic sources of nutrition. They do react to different forms of nitrogen. But, this can be a function of temperature and soiless biology.

Warm water watering and a good consistent liquid feed will probably give you higher yields. Flash heaters have come down in price.

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I’ve read 3# per light. I don’t particularly care for it, indeed because they are so exact with what you do, which doesn’t account for A LOT of variables that you may not have control over. Let’s not even mention the price (for very average information)! I also don’t think 3# per light is that impressive of a yield, particularly since the advent of DE HPS lights. We got 3.4 per light and the grow didn’t even look that great. Gavitas say they run at 1150w on the highest setting, though I wouldn’t be surprised if it was actually a little more… Weight per $ per year is what matters. Square footage doesn’t matter, it’s just what you’re paying for it, but I can see how that would be good for comparison to other growers looking at maximizing yield PER square foot by itself. Anyhow, now we’re growing all organic (synthetic before), and we’re still pulling 3# per light with very sub-par health. Once we lock in a good rotation of amendments, I can see 4# easy peasy :slight_smile: please look up SOIL FOOD WEB for yourself and the rest of the world. Synthetic nutrients really are terrible for everyone involved…

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Gosh and now that I think about it, weight alone is a pretty foolish way to look at it, since growing nothing but the heaviest-yielding strain would be the best way to get there. You have to take into account that variety sells, and that you can get more $ for higher quality (to a degree). I think spending your time and effort trying to replicate books like 3 per light is a waste of time. Skim through it, sure, but don’t get hung up. I guarantee they don’t have every variable under control, just like anyone else…

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There is lots of ways to measure yield when dealing with a commodity.

Let me see if I can articulate some questions.

  1. As an industry how do we measure and articulate the cost benefit of organic versus inorganic production methods? “Plants don’t care but people do.”

  2. What methodologies should we use to measure yields? We need to have a standard methods like cotton, corn and wheat growers at each step in the production process.

  3. Where on the maturation curve do you see the industry? I see cannabis very early on a maturation curve.

  4. Specialty cultivars are important to growing the business. What can we do to improve performance of these cultivars? Has anyone tried grafting gifted cultivars to different root stocks like in hop production? This has helped hop producers improve yeilds in some highly desirable cultivars in hops?

  5. What production data do you monitor on a daily basis? As an old grower of specialty cut flowers, we tracked as many variables as we could to have the best IPM practice as possible and produce repeatable yields for our investors. We had to be very creative.

  6. What question have I not asked that I should?

Warm regards and from the voices in my head
Ethan

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I don’t assume that their exceptional yields are due to their “Success” brand nutrients. I’m sure they are simply adept at monitoring/controlling their EC, pH, environment. The secret sauce is the cultivar. We all know the highest yielders don’t have the best cannabinoid/terpenoid profile, but if they can make above average pre-rolls with it then they are nailing it.

In the WA rec market there’s a lot of people growing Blue Dream. In OR there’s a demand for more Dutch Treat. These are heavy yielding, pathogen resistant varieties. If a producer can move mid-grade production varieties in this competitive market they must be stoked.

I emailed Success Nutrients (aka Three A Light, aka Medicine Man Technologies) and they said "Our gardens pull between 140g - 160g/sqft. Those numbers are per crop and we have anywhere from 10-12sqft per light. "

Impressive, but I bet an organic program could produce comparable yields with a superior cannabinoid/terpenoid profile. Do you all think an organic/synthetic hybrid approach is ideal? Are you moving more toward organics or synthetics?

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I am a retired old fat! Not actively growing anything but fungus on my tuchas. But, historically cultivars have made all the difference across horticulture. This has played key difference in yield across all measurement. If we use hops as a suitably analog to cannabis no difference have been observed in the chemical profiles of organic vs inorganic production when using the exact same cultivars. Difference are obsesvered in the consistency of product produced in organic vs inorganic production models. You have to be a lot more skilled to be a master grower in a glasshouse to get good results as an organic grower.

Let me illustrate the main issues.

When it comes to organic vs inorganic growing methods I look at it in two distinct ways.
First socioeconomic of organic vs inorganic
Second from a production economic view.

The first is just a personal world view. And that has to be left up to the grower and the consumer to decide. Look at the marketing of organic produce and commodities to get an idea of the maturation curve for the cannabis industry. We are very early on the curve.

Second is from a nuts and bolts growers view. I love IPM, but I suspect without knowing for a fact, it is not being practiced well in the cannabis industry. We as growers in a startup, made a economic decision in 1989 that we could not afford the burdens of pesticides and fungicide in our operation. We could not afford the re-entry times or the labor in application. We implemented a very strict monerting policy for IPM. We charted daily counts from yellow and blue sticky cards. And made graphs of economic thresholds for the type of intervention required, biologicas were used 99% of the time. In six years of production we used a scheduled pesticides once and a fungicide two or three times. Anemones are a pain with a nasty fungal rots. The returns on investment where outstanding. We used bugs produced for the vegetable industry and some we grew or collected ourselves. We were ready to start production of a yeast, to prevent a fungal spot on Sweetpea’s and Botritis on renuculuas, when we sold out. And I was offered way more money to go full time into technology. We were young with a small child. We couldn’t afford a farmers life anymore.

When you look at fertilizers I take a different personal view. I am a big believer in chemical based fertilizers. A Plant roots can’t tell the difference between and organic sources and an inorganic sources. I wanted reproducibly in our nutritional regiment without having to spend large amounts of time every week doing complex chemistry calculation and assays to know what we were putting on our crops. I wanted bucket chemistry, I wanted only to spend a few hours each month doing complex chemistry, when the water assay came with the water bill. We had vary strict nitrogen source requirements to produce our crops reliably and repeatability, and this vary strongly dependent on temperatures inside the greenhouse. As the temperatures get warmer we could, use cheaper forms of nitrogen, but choose to use forms that more closely matched the crops preferred profile.

I worked with a large number of organic growers in glasshouse growing vegetables and was not happy with the poor results. More a result of inconsistencies in there teas, and the form the nitrogen took depending on temperature. We had a terrible time getting consistent commercial organic fertilizers as they are not required to list there nutritional profile if the call it plant food and not fertilizer. Calcium pure organic organic production is a nightmare. To have a plant available calcium is completely temperature dependent. The calcium has to be one of three organic forms, for a plant can even take it up. And then it depends on the species being grown. I do not know off the top of my head cannabis preferred calcium form. But looking at some pictures of crops I see marked signs of calcium not being as abundant as required for optimum growth. I see pictures where the buds are spectacular and I reasonably sure that high calcium is available during flower instanceation and development.

Much easier to be organic grower in a field setting.

P.S you grow what sells. No one wants a buggy whip.

From the voices in my head
Ethan

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Square footage is a critical part of deriving meaningful yield figures FOR COMPARISON PURPOSES. While this is particularly true when growing in a canopy-area regulated versus a plant-count state, it is also the only valid way to compare dissimilar techniques.
I can spend $330,000 and get a wide range of annual yields. How many feet I did it in, including the space utilized in each phase, makes a comparison of profitability meaningful.

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I would suggest that mixing organics with synthetics is generally a wasteful idea… I’ve heard claims (I chose that noun carefully) that some bacteria can survive being inundated with chemical salts, but I’ve seen plenty of scientific research which demonstrates the vast majority of beneficial microorganisms found in healthy soils are readily desiccated by the osmotic potential between living, permeable cells and salty water - meaning that you’ll be killing the biology (the main component of organic growing) every time you dump on chemicals. Some try to put living organisms straight into their water reservoir. I’d be perfectly willing to admit that a handful or bacteria might survive such an extreme situation, but the reason I think some growers are seeing a benefit is because all the dormant microbiology in the container inherently contains (is made of) a very well-balanced blend of nutrients, which are released upon the organisms’ death in an inorganic form (available for plant uptake), not because they are living in symbiosis with the plant roots…

As you may have guessed, I very readily suggest leaning towards organic, ecological growing! The benefits are many (we should start another thread here), but I think the most notable is environmentalism - that we should take a hint from food crop production and all the havoc its caused via synthetic nutrients and pesticides. It will only be so long before the general public catches on to how terrible marijuana production typically is for the environment, and I hope they do sooner than later personally. Why not start a progressive industry with a progressive mentality towards global well-being? Synthetic growing has its advantages. I’m not saying it doesn’t, and “organic” doesn’t equal good for the environment either. But I am saying that growing within a complex ecology is just so much cooler.

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Cool to hear of your experiences! I would agree that trying to grow organically, in containers, indoors, has proved more difficult than in a field setting. And you’re right about Ca being tricky too! But more and more information is being made available on creating a more complex soil for potting mixes. A well-done organic grow can produce pretty close to the same yield as a hydroponic grow. Yeah, it isn’t simple. Ecology isn’t simple at all! I like to think of it like cooking; as much an art as it is a science…

I’m sad to hear you’ve given in to the research sponsored by big agricultural companies making half-truth claims about how tissue analysis of nutrients are the same in organic vs conventional production. Many organic growers do in fact practice very poor stewardship of diversified microbiology, and what they grow is indeed no more nutritious than anything else. It also tends to be the type of practice made available for comparison in large studies… But when have you seen one of these research claims compare a farm who’s doing it right, so to speak, in their “materials and methods” section? -with a proven, healthy, diverse soil food web?

To think that a handful of man-made chemicals could replace in full an infinitely complex system built upon evolution for millions of years is an insane thought. Before long, we’ll all be growing with ecology because we’ll be backed against a wall from using such poor stewardship of resources.

I don’t mean to rant. I very much liked what you have to say! The outcome in ratios of various production models are like anything else (like you alluded to), chosen by people voting with dollars; and chosen by people wanting more dollars than they do morals.

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Today, we finally have good labeled organic water soluble fertilizers! They work! Plants on an ionic level do NOT know the difference in source. Standard plant physiology lab year one. That chemistry 1 and 2 are the prerequisite. I probably can find you the lab.

The ribosphere is all important in both organic and inorganic production. Any means that produce reproducible results are good. I have produced both organic certified and inorganic, both have many challenges that individual growers need to choose. A good ribosphere produces better results on all measures used. Lower pesticides usage, lower pathogenic problem, insect problems. Give me a measure where this is wrong.

Most growers are in the business for money. They are not doing this for fun. I want production with the lowest impact and inputs as possible across all of agra-business. But, I also recognize that we are feeding more than 6 billion people, today. Agricultural practices must change, but not at the expense of famine today. We need to foster more economic organic production. But, for many this today precludes fully organic operation.

I have lived and worked in places where the only nitrogen source available is night-soil. This just sucks. Every child in that community today, is at risk for 12 different human pathogens. These pathogens cause an increase in mortality of newborn to 6 years, because of night-soil. The mortality rates are almost 5 times as high as the developed work. What am I supposed to say to the parents in these communities? Composting night-soil does not help, it has shone to make the problems worse. Urine is composted, but alone is not enough nitrogen. Direct application of night-soil keeps most of these pathogen from breed resistance and coming up with new strains. Would you like the citations? The local farmers can not afford any additional fertilizers regardless of form. They are strict vegetarians, animal was may not be used to benefit people, but only nature. Slash and burn is often a requirement in these communities. They live on under $2 a day for a family of 3 or 4. Most of the families are multigenerational and extended. I struggled teaching soap making from wood ashes and water for lye, and rancid vegetable oil. Otherwise no soap. Salt was plentiful and at least allowed us to make chlorine stills for families.

We live on only one planet.

Pick your battles. Don’t call me a corporate shill, it’s not helpful.

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Let’s remember to keep this polite everyone. We can have disagreements without being disagreable!

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Yes dad! I will be a good boy.

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Thank you :slight_smile:

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