Forever Flowering light dep greenhouse planning

[MrTwister]

I'm looking at the forever flowering automated light dep greenhouses. It's not that i can't pull a tarp, but rather I am commissioning a grow through a couple of other principles- so i want the dep plain and simple :)

i'm just trying to toy with numbers here and i doubt i can afford much over a 42.5"x60" which is like 50 bucks per square foot, 2550 sq ft total. Yah like $127,000. I can double that size for $178,000 ($35 per sq ft). Seems like a "good deal"

I can potentially flower 5x per year- I would have to very carefully plan the dates and strains out ahead of time based on weather, flowering time, etc. I'm not the type who has that kind of cash to burn.

My issue is getting a general idea for how many plants i can get in there realistically. There is 14' to the dep curtain. I was told that 75lb bags are about as big as you would want to go for some reason but i'm not too sure why. I'd trust that logic based on who told me. Seen some fancy pots at the store, not sure if that's going to make a difference but i'd like to figure out how to get max yield out of an investment of this size.

So i get about 10 sqft per plant minus 15% for moving around and side walls. That's a guess, and i'd like some opinions on all of this. At the very best, i'm looking at $350 per plant in space plus the dead space cost gives me like $400 per sq ft. add the costs of well.. everything and it may break even on a spring run. that's like 400 plants. .75 pounds per plant yields 300 pounds in a single dep. that's pretty massive.

Can anyone check which assumptions are totally off?

 

[MrTwister]

how long to veg, too? any ideas? i'm thinking 4 months veg 2 months flower so at all times i have two veg greenhouses and one flowering greenhouse. what size am i looking at? mostly kush stuff like OG Kush for instance

 

[raphen_ilweed]

Dreaming about one of these too, however you seem to be in a better position then I to actually make it reality. I got the FFGH stickers all over stuff in my house.
Is a perpetual grow more realistic here? Instead of 4-5 harvests a year at 2-3 hundy #'s a harvest you might be able to get 20-30 pounds week (not sure about actual numbers just throwing something out). Are you getting the light option or is 100% sun?
It sounds like you will need at least 2 veg rooms with a 4 month veg time. if you are doing it in greenhouses how are you going to keep them veg when its around this time of year? Sounds like the cost of vegging could really tap into your overall profits, unless you had that as a nursery and it could pay for itself.
If you are growing the Kush's you are already hurting yourself with lower yield potential. With my MK outside experience I think I wouldn't do it again, PM, mold, low yield.

I wouldnt do bags or pots or anything like that (maybe UC or the MPB.. wow in a FFGH that shit would be off the hook). I would have raised beds or recessed beds. Easier to work on and transition from grow to grow.

 

[clay]

Honestly I'm not impressed with this company after spending 50k on there house and 25 for instal. There great when selling it to you but our experience was really bad, lost parts, bad contractors that they recommended and worst of all they do not help you with programming the system. There selling so many of these but the don't and won't help you program it. I'm really wishing we would have gone with another company. Do your research before spending up to 100k total for a 50'x25'. Wish we would have gone old school

 

[MendoGiantZ]

I've heard the same things from my friends. They are all about selling it then they told my friend it's gonna be a year before they can build it for him after he bought it. Wtf is that. He finally had it built and he likes it but he says he can just pull tarps the old fashion way and get the same result. I would always round down your numbers when your talking about expected yield. Always. Unless you have ran your set up a couple times and have a good idea of what it looks like compare it to your last run. Also you are going to have massive supplemental light costs as well as heating and vegging especially if you want to do 75 gallon pots. It's gonna get pricey.

 

[sanvanalona]

Yeah I have never seen a good winter/early spring crop so I'd be reluctant on planning 5 harvests. Realistically I would think that 3 would be great

 

[shemshemet]

There is a lot of good information on google about greenhouse management. Look into greenhouse spacing, heating, etc.

There are formulas for just about every scenario you can think of.

Here is a heating calculator for your reference:
http://www.littlegreenhouse.com/heat-calc.shtml

Here is a spacing calculator:
http://www.gpnmag.com/grower-101-calculations-part-iv-spacing-containers

Don't know these are best for your situation, but know greenhouses are a big industry, and lots of information is out there for you

 

[Blaze]

Forever Flowering is a huge rip off, I wouldn't recommend them. Take a look at what Farktek, Conleys or Rimol offer. All three companies offer better greenhouses for half the price that FF charges.

The number of plants you can fit depends on how big you want to veg them so there is no set answer for that. A 25 gal pot can easily produce a 3/4 lb. Something as large as a 70gal for light dep is over-kill, all you will be doing is wasting time and money to veg something that big in a dep. As someone else already recommended though, raised beds will work far better than pots and give you much better flexibility with spacing, size and plant numbers

Veg time should be fast, if it's taking you 4 months to veg a plant to size for a light dep, you have a serious problem with your system. Even for larger dep plants it should not take more than 3-8 weeks, depending on the final size you are going for. I usually figure on 3 weeks veg time inside under t5s once my cuts are rooted and then 3 weeks in the dep house before flowering for 6 weeks total. With 1k lights to veg and better heat (I had none in my old set up) you could cut that time in half easily.

Winter crops tend to suck, I would stick to 3 harvests a year. The amount of extra heat and light needed to pull off a crop in Dec/Jan, combined with the vastly lower yield for plant and generally poor quality really does not make the return very worthwhile.

 

[sanvanalona]

Forever Flowering is a huge rip off, I wouldn't recommend them. Take a look at what Farktek, Conleys or Rimol offer. All three companies offer better greenhouses for half the price that FF charges.

The number of plants you can fit depends on how big you want to veg them so there is no set answer for that. A 25 gal pot can easily produce a 3/4 lb. Something as large as a 70gal for light dep is over-kill, all you will be doing is wasting time and money to veg something that big in a dep. As someone else already recommended though, raised beds will work far better than pots and give you much better flexibility with spacing, size and plant numbers

Veg time should be fast, if it's taking you 4 months to veg a plant to size for a light dep, you have a serious problem with your system. Even for larger dep plants it should not take more than 3-8 weeks, depending on the final size you are going for. I usually figure on 3 weeks veg time inside under t5s once my cuts are rooted and then 3 weeks in the dep house before flowering for 6 weeks total. With 1k lights to veg and better heat (I had none in my old set up) you could cut that time in half easily.

Winter crops tend to suck, I would stick to 3 harvests a year. The amount of extra heat and light needed to pull off a crop in Dec/Jan, combined with the vastly lower yield for plant and generally poor quality really does not make the return very worthwhile.

Yep this man knows what he's talking about!

 

[cc503]

with supplemental lighting in a green house you think the winter crop is not worth it ?

 

[Blaze]

I would be skeptical, I have yet to see anyone pull of a decent one. Though it does depend a lot on your climate, further south it would be a lot more practical.

To clarify: You CAN get a winter crop for sure. The question is, whats the ROI (return on investment)? If it costs you 2 times as much with heating and lights to produce it as a spring/summer/fall crop does, and you get half the yield, is that really worth your time?

 

[MendoGiantZ]

Blaze is definetly on the right train of thought. I know up near the emerald triangle it's to cold and in many other states as well. But I bet Santa Barbara all the way down to San Diego would be a great place to do it if you had some decent farm land in the hills.

 

[500lbs Guerilla]

5 harvests a year is unrealistic. Winter harvests are doable but plan on spending a lot more for heating and/or lighting. Best is radiant heating. I have a large modine heater in mine and I wish I'd spent the money on heating the soil instead. Unless you're somewhere with warm winters.
Factor in the time and cost to build the greenhouse as well. The cost of buying the greenhouse is not the cost of building one. Grading, augering, concrete, wood, etc is not included in the price. Hiring someone to do it is also expensive. The automatic setups aren't quick to build if you don't have a little experience.
I was doing 4 harvests a year and Ive matched the yield with 3 with the extra veg time. Next year I might even do two. So much less work it's worth sacrificing a few units. But I'm also working solo. If you have a crew it might be a different story.
The size pot depends on what you want to do. More harvests = smaller containers, unless you want to be transplanting 6-8 foot plants, which is no fun. Trust me. You can also build raised beds or trenches. A 75 gallon pot will grow a plant much larger than 10 square feet. then there's people on this forum who are growing in 300g pots in their greenhouses, and others who are growing monsters in raised beds and boxes. All depends on how much you want to work, how much risk you want to take with plant numbers, and what you're satisfied with yielding.

 

[shemshemet]

I haven't looked into the figures at all, but knowing greenhouses all over the world run through winter, wouldnt cannabis being such a high value crop, be worth it?

 

[sanvanalona]

The problem with winter crops primarily is the proximity of the sun. Like blaze said the further south you go it might help, but I've seen plenty of attempts and the majority of the buds never get fully connected and the flavor and high is not nearly as strong as they should be. The only successful winter crops I've seen are the ones that basically turn their greenhouse into an indoor and maybe use a few hours of natural light a day. The earliest crops that I've seen here are at the end of May and usually grown at super low elevations.

 

[cc503]

kindof off topic but how do some guys make there greenhouse buds not look like outdoor? is that a matter of not having enough light at the end to finish right or ? We've been pulling down up here in northern oregon last 2 weeks and i was pretty stoked because the plants looked super healthy at the end still and the nugs were super frosty, but as they've been drying they've started losing some of that super vibrant green and look like alot of gthe full term outdoor I've done, which I don't understand why indoor stays that same color as it cures and out door turns a little brown/ loses that super green color

 

[shemshemet]

Indoors is just chlorophyll deficient!

#lovemakingshitupthatsoundsgood

 

[Blaze]

kindof off topic but how do some guys make there greenhouse buds not look like outdoor? is that a matter of not having enough light at the end to finish right or ? We've been pulling down up here in northern oregon last 2 weeks and i was pretty stoked because the plants looked super healthy at the end still and the nugs were super frosty, but as they've been drying they've started losing some of that super vibrant green and look like alot of gthe full term outdoor I've done, which I don't understand why indoor stays that same color as it cures and out door turns a little brown/ loses that super green color

It's a combination of factors. Mostly due to genetics, environment, and time of year from what I have observed. Some strains just get that indoor look when you light dep them, some don't. For example my Mendo Pineapple cut always ends up looking like outdoor when I've grown it in my light dep or full season greenhouse, but the Urkle Wreck and Arhvice OG cuts I have come out looking like hydro when you dep them. Outside the UW and AOG still look nice, but they don't quite have the same appearance as they do when they are grown in light dep

Also anything that is flowered around the summer solstice when solar exposure is at it's max tends to have a lot more crystal, denser buds, and generally looks a lot better and earlier or later season harvests or full season greenhouse runs. Something about that intense summer sun produces amazing results. A good fall harvest can come pretty close though.

Browning out in my experience usually has a lot to do with the curing and drying rather than the growing environment. If you do not have air exchange in your drying space, or if you leave your buds too wet before storing them (a very common mistake) they will brown out on you. A proper dry and cure will prevent a color shift. However if you are growing the same strains and drying and curing int he same manner and still seeing a color shift there may be more to it than that. Again, genetics play a big factor - s0me strains brown out more easily than others, some will stay nice and green for a year after harvest.