Planning a new greenhouse structure takes a lot of homework. Here, Cannabis Business Times Managing Editor Kyle Brown talks with Brad Hull, horticulture applications manager for greenhouse manufacturer Rough Bros. Inc., about ways to help take the guesswork out of preparation.
Kyle Brown: What grow specs will a grower/owner need to know before starting on a project?
Brad Hull: If we … really focus on the grow specifications, we need to know the canopy size in all the production areas. Everyone has their own formula of what ratio they need for square footage, so really just a solid, full overhead plan of where you plan to produce and what those areas are used for.
Within that, it’s always helpful to have a plant site count or layout to complement that plan. This will assist us in doing any kind of throughput analysis that we would need to for the facility and allow us to jump right into irrigation calculations if that’s required.
Once we have the plant site layout and we’re trying to work toward an irrigation concept, we need the customer to come up with a plan. Usually they have “the best way” [to grow] or they get really excited about a particular methodology of how they cultivate. It’s fine if they’re adamant about going in any one direction. They just need to present a thorough plan of how they want to accomplish their goals, and not expect to come to industry professionals to refine their theoretical concept, if that makes sense.
So have a cultivation plan with known injection ratios for the fertilizers and the irrigation you’re going to be applying, and the water-quality standards of your head grower. If you have a head grower to work with or if the company has engaged a consulting group, we usually do OK.
Then, we really want to know any attachment to any existing technology. Lighting is always a big buzz, but there’s always grow methods that certain cultivators prefer. We really just need to know, do you want LEDs? Is there a certain brand you want us to incorporate? Would you be going with bench-style?
If they could let us know those preferences, we can work with it. Otherwise, we’re very immersed in that realm, so we’re comfortable making recommendations and proposing options.
And then the budget. We need to know relatively where we need to come in so we can make decisions that fit the economic model that the entrepreneur is really trying to come up with. So a lower-budget grower, in say, California, may be able to get away with just doing a cold-frame [structure] and minimal investment maybe looking at $10 a square foot for a grow facility. Someone who really wants to create a quality, long-term, sustaining, competitive facility in Illinois or New York, they may be shelling out over $100 a square foot to put a facility on the ground. So it really depends on the budget the customer is thinking of working with.
I think it’s implied, but also “location, location, location.” We have customers based in Colorado who are starting to get into other markets, so it’s always important to know exactly where the cultivation facility is being built. We need to know the site conditions, the utilities that are available, whether it’s gas, water, electric. We need to know the solar radiation to design some of the systems, and we need to know the environment climate data or the environmental conditions.
Also, interpreting the local regulations can really make going through the process very challenging. It’s really the customer’s responsibility to either engage someone like an architect who’s going to help them through the building and planning process, or be responsible for the permits and everything that goes into building these facilities out.
Brown: How do you determine what you’re going to need for your grow?
Hull: With the climate, we usually pull the local climate data, so we look at a source like NASA or local data logging, where we can get average climate information. And then we usually simulate the crop temperatures, the worst cases, winter and summer, to decide the heating and cooling loads, respectively.
We have some pretty strong partners, so we work with them to assist us with validating our design concepts. It’s really important for us to be tight with them and go back and forth to make sure their equipment is going to work with the customer’s requirements.
Then there’s cultivation plans for the water-management side. The way to get the correct systems in place is really to come to the table with a cultivation plan. That sounds great, but it never really exists. So it usually needs to be created or refined. I usually have one of three scenarios. If it’s created, that’s great, we can work efficiently and define what’s refined for the water-treatment side. If it’s not created, we try to recommend customers to a consulting group to refine their plan. If they’re really unable to get a consultant and they don’t have a cultivation plan, we try to extract the concepts that are rigid to the customer and, from that, create the most flexible plan using traditional horticultural practices. So the chances are, if they don’t know what they’re doing, it’s going to change. We just try to put a platform in place so they can accommodate those changes.
And one other thing, I need to know [their] comfort level with technology. Some people are just really not inclined to automation, and this is mostly because it requires a technical aptitude that’s far beyond what I’m seeing on a regular basis. I have to look at automation and determine if a system is going to be too complex for who’s running it.
Brown: In working with this industry, do you often have something that’s really different from what you usually do in other industries?
Hull: With this industry, yes, quite a bit. It’s mostly because a lot of growers are very adamant about a certain methodology. But if they’re willing to pay the price to move outside of the industry norms, we’re more than willing to accommodate whether it’s a unique water-management design or a unique hybrid facility. It really just comes down to, “Is it going to be the best for everyone to have our professionals working on it?” They’ve got to be willing to pay for the additional design time required, because the paths that seem trivial are often longer than the customers think.
Brown: How often do you talk about practicality when you’re working with particular methodologies?
Hull: The way I personally approach it is I usually hear the customer out, and then try to extract their objectives, scientific reasons why they’re doing X, Y or Z in their operations. So if I can identify a flawed logic based on my experience, then I try to eliminate that for them.
We try to apply what I call traditional horticultural practices. Again, we can’t force them to make a decision, but I can give them examples. So the most pronounced example I can imagine is the inclination to grow larger plants for a longer time. But it doesn’t make sense from a number of different perspectives. I try to eliminate that, for instance, or [refer] them to an existing production range, like orchid production, for instance, that might be a future vision for them. Then we just try to find out incrementally where they’re comfortable taking those steps.
Everything seems to be pretty unique that comes through here. So it’s really a lot of listening, and then once you have gotten most of the picture, we try to steer customers down the path that looks the most successful, or where our customers have been the most successful in the past.
