The perfect designs for the small guy

Funny, you should mention. You can compensate for each of these values. This is what Master Growers do across floriculture. Why should cannabis be different?
The good growers know costs per week by a level of detail that has always facilitated me. The biggest operation I worked in was 15 acre under cover 50% glass, 40% twin poly, 10% heated shade structure. 4 location 2 states. 10,000 distinct crop in a 52 week schedule.

How big was the biggest grow you have worked at? And how complex.

I have been doing this for 40 years. :scream: That scary. Read my bio. I am retired and unfortunately disable and dieing to slowly but to fast. One of the items on my bucket list is to make the average cannabis grower as good as there floricultue counter part. Today cannabis growers are not near as good at growing as the majority of Floricultural growers. And cannabis is one of the easiest crops I have ever grown.

Quality is at the complete control and responsibilities of the grower and the business goals. A boutique grower has a distinct and competitive advantages over the big box grower. We had two grades in my grow. We hit 80% of first quality. At the big grow they had three grade lines. Florist Prime, garden center, mass market. We had a 98% hitting of targets each week. We had 4% shrinkage. Shrinkage needed to be reduced just eats profit. Less than 1% shrinkage would be more normal.

The boutique grow can brand his products. Offer inexpensive high value adds to his line. And he can create the Absolute Vodka of the cannabis world. Rember the goal of vodka is a brandy with no taste. Potato is the best vodka. But, I can sit 100 people down in front of two vodkas, absolute and the cheepest potato vodka. Give the testing profile for Vodka. 85 out of 100 people picked the potato vodka. The point is Absolute is just an average vodka that gets top shelf price. What do you want to sell Absolute Vodka prices and potato vodka quality.

Small growers complain about quality of others generally because they haven’t figured out branding. The Big Lowsky brand of the highest quality cannabis. First we need to define quality.

I will post two tools from the USDA and the Department of Commerce. With, the CD data you can get full costs by zip code and a monthly Tempature numbers. When you add in the USDA farm district data. You can get the following information

  1. Commerce energy costs by local and available sources. By standard unit.
  2. Commerce has monthly by zip code, numbers for
  • Average temperature
  • Average high temperature
  • Average low temperature
  • Average high temperature
  • record high
  • record low
  • mean temperature
  • Average day time humidity
  • Average night time humidity
  • mean dew point.
  • Average dew point by day.
  • Average dew point by night.
  • maximum hours of available light
  • maximum hours of PAR light
  • precipitation in inches
  • precipitation by snow
  • precipitation by liquid
  • % of Average annual precipitation.
  • record liquid perception
  • lowest liquid precipitation.

You can refine the numbers with the USDA growth districts, by finding your district and comparing to the your zip code. This will give you numbers by day which can be converted to ISO8601 weeks. And tied to your grow.

Dustin, I hope I have answered your questions keep asking them. Some of this I am going to make public.

From the voices in my head
Ethan

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This a really good point what about genetics and how do we get to the ideal plant?

One is defining the perfect plant. Second my perfect plant is different than yours.

This is a whole topic on it own but let me sumerise what we know from public sources. We have outstanding public resources on cannabis genetics. I have posted some of the best. We have open genetics databases for the adventuresome. We have good vegetative cultivars. We have acceptable seed virities. Better, in fields Hemp than in drug cannabis, but not surprising. The old Finoli is great in Northern Europe.

For drug cannabis we need to be selecting for plant size to volume. I personally want a short straight variety, like a cut flower mum. Because this gives me the highest return on my space.

This mean we need to either find existing varieties that have the characters that I want or I need to select for those characters. From here stand plant breeding. There are tables for breeding line purification, we follow them. We look at poliploidisum as a way of increasing dry weight.

We have lots of know methods. The better question is how do me manage viral problems in our grows and vegetative stock? This has a big impact on performance.

From the voices in my head
Ethan

2 Likes