One thing that the new year means for
most of us is an opportunity to renew
and relaunch.
It's the time to make plans real, make
smart decisions,
and reach for things that may seem unattainable.
If you've been wanting to try something new
in your cultivation recipe, now might be a
great time to give it a try.
For those of you following along on the
ShapingFire Instagram account, you know that I'm experimenting
with my first sea of green style grow
in a 4 by 4 tent in the
ShapingFire
offices.
Now I got in fired watching Caleb from
CSI Humboldt run Sea of Green for many
years
and finally found the time myself.
So far so great.
Stop by the Shaping Fire Instagram to check
it out for yourself.
While talking about Instagram though, I wanna make
sure that you know how sketchy it has
gotten for cannabis businesses on Instagram.
If you haven't already noticed, Instagram is intentionally
pushing cannabis businesses off the platform
to support their new teen safety program.
Up until now, cannabis accounts were primarily flagged
by folks in the community reporting each other.
Now though, Insta is using keywords and image
recognition to automatically
flag cannabis plants,
and words like cannabis and cultivation and clone,
causing creators to be shadow banned or deleted
automatically
often with no way to appeal.
Instagram
very truly does not want us there.
And yet Instagram is where we all connect
with each other as a cannabis community.
It doesn't seem right. And it is going
to knock many cannabis businesses and podcasts out
of existence.
There is talk of moving to Twitter or
Blue Sky or threads or Nostr, but none
of these have the participation of a significant
percentage of our cannabis community.
Nothing beats Instagram in that regard. We're all
here.
When we all leave Instagram, the community will
be splintered as we go different places.
So if you are interested in continuing to
follow your favorite cannabis content creators or businesses,
be sure to connect with them in a
secondary way that is more direct.
Something like signing up for their newsletter.
In fact, I encourage you to subscribe to
our newsletter too. The Shaping Fire IG could
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Today's episode begins year 9 of Shaping Fire
podcast. We've been doing this for you since
2016.
Thanks to the folks that sent the Christmas
tips. That was appreciated.
If you like what we do and want
to put something in the tip jar, you
can always, Venmo
us at shango lows.
You are listening to Shaping Fire, and I
am your host, Shango lows.
Happy New Year. Welcome to episode 119.
Today, Eric Branstad returns to Shaping Fire to
talk about small greenhouses for home cultivation.
Eric has been a greenhouse and farming adviser
for over 30 years now. He started out
in the Northern Carol, California heritage market, helping
cultivators optimize their greenhouses,
learn light deprivation techniques, and avoid many of
the common errors that impact cannabis crops.
His reach widened with the adoption of Proposition
215 Medical in California,
which started Eric working across the state both
selling commercial sized greenhouses
as well as offering top tier consulting.
Since normalization began creeping across the country, Eric
has become one of the most respected names
in cannabis and a thought leader in cannabis
greenhouses.
He helps multi state operators and smaller family
businesses across the country. And he works with
indoor cultivators too.
Eric has been on Shaping Fire as a
guest before. On Shaping Fire episode 41, Eric
was here to talk about cannabis greenhouse rescues
when the worst scenario happens and you gotta
save your crop, a specialty of Eric's. And
again, gosh, all the way back 100 episodes
and 8 years ago to Shaping Fire number
13
titled Maximizing Yield with Light Deprivation Techniques. Both
great episodes.
Today we'll be discussing greenhouses for home cultivation.
While our insights today are applicable to most
greenhouses that are 20 by 20 and smaller,
we are especially focused on the green or
white greenhouse kits that are sold on Amazon
and elsewhere
that are used by folks all over the
world and are an easy greenhouse solution.
If you've never seen one of these green
horticulture plastic greenhouses or if you want one
specifically that I use, there's a direct link
on the shapingfire.com
page for this
episode. Easy peasy.
So during the first set, we will discuss
the advantages of using a greenhouse no matter
where you are in the country, recommended sizes
for your needs, placement on the property,
anchoring, venting, flooring and bracing of your greenhouse.
During the 2nd set, we will look at
dealing with heat and cold issues of greenhouses
and how to keep your growing parameters dialed
in, as well as pests from insects and
rodents up to deer. And we finished the
episode looking to upgrade your small home greenhouse
with light depth, adding lights, heating coils for
the soil, and how to properly store the
plastic over winter. All in all, a jam
packed episode of useful ideas for the home
cultivator.
Hey, Eric. Welcome back to Shaping Fire.
Hey, Shango. Thanks for having me. So glad
to have you back.
So,
let's get right into it. You know,
the biggest question
probably at the top is is why bother
with greenhouse
Because we can talk a lot about the
details of greenhouses.
But for many people, they're like, you know,
I don't really want the money and the
expense. I'm just fine growing outdoors. It worked
for me, and it worked for my pappy.
And, like, this is the way, like, it
goes.
And,
you know, when I used my first greenhouse,
I was really caught off guard by how
much better my plants thrived.
So, you make this pitch to people all
the time about why they should upgrade to
a greenhouse. So so why don't you start
us off with that?
Sure. I mean,
you know, most people when they grow cannabis,
you know, have trouble especially in the fall,
you know, towards harvest season or harvest time,
let's say. You know, the weather can
start to turn bad. It starts to get
colder. It starts to, you know, possibly even
rain.
And then, you know, throughout the growing cycle,
depending on where you are, there can be
a reason for greenhouses. I mean, people in
New York deal with rain throughout the summer.
You know, we're pretty lucky here in California
through a lot of the cannabis growing where
outdoor has been,
pretty pretty easy for the most part except
for, you know, some of the years we've
had some some late early rains that, you
know, cause problems. But generally speaking,
the greenhouses provide
a benefit of protecting the plants. It's a
great way to hide your plants if you
don't want the neighbors to see anything.
It also provides a great structure to be
able to pull a light depth cover over
if you wanna do the light depth technique
as well. So
there's a bunch of reasons to use a
greenhouse for cannabis, but it can be a
little bit of a double edged sword using
a greenhouse in the summertime. But as you
noticed,
out on the islands where you are in
Washington, it became a great benefit rather than
just going straight outdoors. So,
I think that, you know, with cannabis
being the Michael Jordan or the super plant
that it is compared to all other plants,
it just seems to do really well in
greenhouses.
I think that's really well put. It it
really just gives us options. You know? It
it it gives you an opportunity
to,
you know,
boost your warmth if that's what you need,
to cut down on your wind if that's
what you need, and to make it more
discreet if that's what you need. It just
it just makes options.
And
and and, really, these these kinds of greenhouses
that we're focusing on today, you know,
you you you started in, you know, NorCal
doing all the all the gorilla and kinda
like OG hidden stuff and then grew into
medical. And then now you're consulting
at least all over the country, if not
all over the world, on these big, you
know, multimillion dollar sh ticks. But but what
we're talking about today are these these small
$200
greenhouses, which if you get them on sale,
like, this time of year now, like, December
for the following year, you can get things
that'll be, like, $350
in May for, like, $200.
And, that that buys you a lot of
options comes the summer.
For sure. I mean, my business and previously
when I was in, you know, selling greenhouses,
I definitely was shooting for the big stuff,
but we did spend a lot of time.
And even when I started out with the
greenhouse company,
in 2006 and 7,
we we were carrying smaller greenhouses. I mean,
granted they were automated and expensive and way
more expensive than any would wanna spend even
now,
but we were really hyper focused on, you
know, the home grower and the medical grower.
And so we had a 10 by 10
and a 20 by 20. Later on, we
created a hoop house that was
16 by 12. It was so it was
still kinda big, but at the same time,
you know, our our our thoughts were always
with the home grower,
outside of, you know, targeting the the commercial
growers, which was really, you know, what the
business
had to do. But, you know, the home
grower was really where where it all starts.
And and,
you know, with the medical side of things,
we had a lot of home growers
early in the days. And then with the
new legalization in various states, you know, home
growing is still allowed in most cases. And
so it never really went away, but, you
know, I think that it it's a great
opportunity for people to give it a try
with, you know, especially these more affordable options
that are out there now.
Yeah. Absolutely.
So so let's let's talk about, the footprint.
So there are,
you know,
you can buy these green greenhouses,
lots of places.
A lot of people buy them on Amazon,
but you can also buy them at,
you know, different types of agricultural stores if
you're not not into Amazon. But, I mean,
I have to mention Amazon because so many
people
write to me saying I just picked one
up on Amazon and. Right? So I'm I'm
guessing that if 90% of the people who
are writing to me asking questions about are
buying them on Amazon, that that is is
kind of the default for most people,
for better or for worse. I
have bought maybe 5 or 6 different brands
on the website,
and and while, none of them are particularly
sponsoring
Shapingfire right now,
I just wanna clue folks in that I
have liked the Quictent brand,
q u I c t e n t,
for their new upgraded stuff. But but really,
I I have not gotten a bad brand
yet.
So so,
you you know, take a look and and
and see which one's on sale and which
one looks good to you. But specifically, let's
talk about, footprints, Eric.
The the the ones that seem to be
predominant
are, you know, 15 by 7,
10 by 10, 20 by 10, and there's
a lot of 25 by tens all of
a sudden.
I'm not sure why there's so many of
the different,
sellers are using the same footprint, but it
it wouldn't surprise me if they were all
buying their their framework from the same company
in China, and then they're all just, you
know, rebranding what they put on this skeleton.
What are your thoughts in trying to, you
know, figure out the size that you want?
It it wouldn't surprise me if most people
just go for, I'm going to get the
biggest,
that I have got room for in on
my property. Right?
But but some people are like myself, I
needed to make get one that I knew
would be 2 rows wide at least because
I I wanted to be able to walk
down the middle and and have plants on
either side.
When you were selling these, greenhouses,
not the cheap ones I'm talking about, what
you were selling was much nicer, but it
had a similar footprint.
What kind of guidance did you give people
when they were trying to determine what size
they wanted?
You know, that's a great question because everybody
is a little different in what they
expect or what they want. And so with
the greenhouses that I was dealing with, you
know, sometimes it came down to price. People
had a budget and this is all I
could really spend. So we're gonna okay. We're
gonna get what we can get out of
this budget, basically.
Other times, people just felt like, hey, this
is
and people have,
a thought in their minds, I guess, of
what is safe to them and what is
not maybe,
or what is reasonable, let's say, and what
is maybe out of reason to an extent.
And so, you know, a lot of people
would call with, hey. This is the size
that seems reasonable to me. And so a
lot of times with the you know, they're
not terribly bigger hoops than the ones you're
talking about, but they are, bigger in width
and height. And so the most common sized
greenhouse that we sold back then,
especially in the early days, was a 16
by 48 or a 20 by 48.
And I'm not a 100% sure why, but
the majority of
customers that would call would always stick with
this 48 foot long greenhouse.
And, you know, that wasn't because that's the
size of their backyard. That just seemed to
be the reasonable size in everybody's minds at
the time. And so when you look at
the greenhouses that you're
talking about in the backyard setting or the
homegrower setting, it really comes down to that.
Like, what fits in somebody's backyard
maybe without being too much of an eyesore?
Maybe it fits in the backyard and it
still leaves room for the animals and the
kids to play. Maybe it's something that isn't
gonna
look
and the kids to play. You know, maybe
it's something that isn't gonna look too big
to the neighbors and cause them to call
and complain or something like that. So, I
mean, there's a a plenty of reasons of,
you know, why people pick these different sized
greenhouses. And I think the one that you
picked or the company that you're, you know,
talking about
has really, you know, found,
the sweet spot, let's say, because a lot
of the hobby greenhouses that have been on
the market and currently
on the market, you know,
are typically
square or rectangle.
They're usually the clear polycarbonate
that,
is, you know, similar to glass in its
transparency.
And a lot of them
are kind of difficult to put together.
Some of them are fairly flimsy in some
regards, and so it's really hard to find
the right hobby greenhouse. And that's why you
haven't seen a lot of the hobbies be
very popular,
until this one came along. And
know, kinda like you're saying, there's been a
a lot of people
liking and buying this greenhouse off Amazon or
similar to it, and that's just because it
seems
to fit that reasonable aspect of shipping, putting
together
longevity, and then, you know, the sizes they
have seem to be reasonable with where people
wanna stick those in the backyard or at
the home grow.
Yeah. All all true. And
4 year 5 years ago now,
there was a big upgrade in the industry.
They used to be all that, like, really
cheap, kind of, like, white, really bendy, aluminum
y kind of metal
that, like, you get one bad storm, and
they would mess up. And And then all
of a sudden at once, all of the
companies tended to, said upgraded, and they all
moved to galvanized steel.
And, that seems to be when they took
off because suddenly they were they were one
step closer to kind of like the adult
greenhouses that you're that you're more familiar with.
Right? Like, suddenly, they're like, oh, if you
get a little bit if you get a
little bit of weather, you're gonna be okay.
And,
and so people started going with them.
Well, I I think that's really important to
note because a lot of the greenhouses and
even the greenhouses that I've put together over
the years that are, you know, a little
bit more, you know, a little bit more
commercial grade, I guess you could say. I
don't know. But it doesn't take much for
a wind to pick up a greenhouse and
move it, whether it's the hobby ones or
even the bigger,
more commercial ones. And so
weather and and, you know, wind and things
can really put a hammering on a greenhouse.
And so I think with the amount of
little, you know, greenhouses like yours that took
sail
in a windstorm and blew off the property
or maybe got damaged from some severe rains,
you know, was enough,
you know, complaints or notes to the company
for them to go, oh, you know, here's
what we need to do, and then they
made that change. But I think collectively,
you know, they had to have enough
people complain or have problems with them for
them to see that
change needed.
But it doesn't take much. I mean, honestly,
you know, I think sometimes you can see
the writing on the wall, and people just
wanna try out the flimsy stuff first and
see how far it gets them.
Let's talk about hyghsome because,
most of these these,
consumer backyard greenhouses top out at 6.6
feet.
And, of course, this does not set one
up for monster California's
outdoor sized plants.
And so we have to, you know, be
aware of that
and probably,
you know, topping your plants at least once
and getting, you know, getting good at that.
But, it's frustrating because with these these hobby
greenhouses,
they have the,
they have the
what's the word? Like, the curved roof. Right?
Mhmm. And so you really only get the
6 point 6 apex
at the middle of the roof.
And so if you put your walking space
along the middle,
you've got the head space, but then your
plants are gonna be topping out at, like,
6 or 5 and a half feet. And
so so there's an argument you made to,
like, put the plants in the middle and
walk yourself around the side, but then when
you're in the middle, it makes it when
they're in the middle, it makes it harder
to tend to every side of the plant
because you've got them doubled up in the
middle. What kind of,
What kind of,
you know,
advice or thoughts might you have about,
you know, an abbreviated height greenhouse that cuts
off at 66
versus to, you know, somebody who's got a
commercial greenhouse, and they can go as as
tall as they want? Somebody
who's got a commercial greenhouse, and they can
go as as tall as they want? Well,
I mean, I think that we need to
look at it as, you know, there could
be worse problems in the world than 2
big of plants and not being able to
get around sometimes. And so I would say
that maybe that could be a good thing
even though it can be tedious and a
little bit annoying or whatever. Like, I mean,
but to your point, you know, I always
advocate of trying to put plants in the
middle or towards the center if we can.
When you look at wintertime growing, and I
know we're focused more on the summertime, but
there is the season extension and things like
that. When you start to have your plants
closer to the walls of the greenhouse,
they are closer to the cold, basically. And
so being away from the walls
gives you a chance to keep things warmer
for free, basically. But,
at the end of the day, I think
like what you're talking about, topping and training
is really important.
Unfortunately,
a lot of states
and if I talk about California in particular,
the home growers are only allowed to grow
6 plants legally. And so, of course, you
want those 6 plants to be as big
as possible. But, you know, if you really
dig dig in or look back, and maybe
there's nothing to look back at
literature wise or podcast wise.
But when I look back or think back,
I start to think about some of the
growers in between, you know, really before the
2 15 days and into the 2 15
days. There were some growers up in the
Humboldt County.
A friend of mine, Joey Berger, the Humboldt
local,
one of the unique things what they used
to do is they used to start their
plants outside, you know, and this could be
done in a greenhouse too, but they would
actually lay chicken wire on the ground over
these plants. I mean, they could grow a
6 pound plant and it would never be
taller than 3 feet just because of the
way that they
trellised it down with this chicken wire and
did this crazy
ground technique. And so there's only a few
people I've heard over the years that are
recognized that method or have seen it or
heard about it or anything like that.
But it's amazing what you can do with
some of these plants. I mean, some people
have seen how there's growers and, you know,
artists that'll do bonsai to these plants and
these crazy root systems that come out of
these nice,
features that they create with the pots and
and the bedding. But, you know, the cannabis
plant can do incredible things. And so it's
surprising of how much trellising and bending and
keeping a plant spread out low to the
ground,
that's possible.
So I would say that, you know, on
the on the easy side, yeah, topping them,
but secondly, you know, how far can you
spread your plants and how much can you
bend them and bring them around. And it
does take a lot of
I wouldn't say a lot of, but it
takes some extra work and and tending to
to do some of this stuff. But it
isn't out of the question
to be able to train your plants to
grow low and still stack on,
good weight.
I know from when you've been on Shaping
Fire before, and we've talked about large scale
greenhouses,
that you put a lot of blood, sweat,
and tears into
studying
the placement
of big greenhouses
on the property
and studying microclimates
and then,
you know,
lovingly encouraging the owners to put the greenhouse
to smart place instead of necessarily the convenient
place.
And,
you know, when it comes to backyard greenhouses,
I would say the same is true,
and yet you have even more pressure. Like,
oh, but that's where the garage goes, or,
oh, that's where the dog run is, or,
oh, that's where the that's where every summer
we put up the pool or, you know,
whatever.
There are lots of demands
on, you know, somebody's backyard.
Now assuming that they have options
instead of just it's the only place in
the yard for it,
can you give us some, like,
you know, thumbnail suggestions for where we might
want to place the greenhouse on the property?
Sure. I mean,
you know, back in the day, one of
the things that we'd look to is that,
you know, whenever people call for
and this technology is changing over time. I
think there's apps and more things now on
our phones to
sort this stuff out than ever. But, you
know, originally, when a solar person would come
out to give you an estimate for solar
on your house, they would have this device,
handheld device, that would basically tell them where
the sun was and the shadows are for
the 12 hours of the day. And so
they would come out with this handheld device,
stand in a few spots, and look and
see where the trajectory of the sun and
the shade is gonna be. And they would
say, ah, this is the sunniest spot on
your property. This is where you want your
solar panels.
So we kinda started
adopting that same idea with, you know, where
do I put my greenhouse? We wanna put
it in the sunniest spot possible. And so
we would use, you know, some of the
same techniques.
Now, you know, like I said with the
apps and
and,
other things that we
might use as far as instruments or tools,
we can
still do the same thing and maybe do
it a little bit more affordable or a
little easier.
But I would say that one of the
things that I like to look to is
that to make sure that the fall sun
or the the late summer sun,
is really
intense or,
really good. So what I mean by that
is that,
I lived in,
5 acres of pasture land
for 20 years, and so sun really wasn't
that big of a problem.
But recently, I moved 20 minutes up the
road and I'm in the forest and it's
literally barely get it gets any sun here.
And so it's not the great
greatest place for growing cannabis. But I did
find a really sunny spot, and I thought
I'd give it a whirl this year and
put out just 3 plants. I didn't even
use a greenhouse because I just wanted to
test out this new spot after we cleared
some trees. And so
while the spot was really sunny throughout the
summer and the plants grew fairly tall,
as we started getting into the fall, the
sun started changing.
And basically, I got a lot of shade
when I needed a lot of sun for
the ripening and the flower production.
And so that's where it suffered the most.
And I would say that, you know, a
lot of plants will veg and grow pretty
well even in a little bit of shade
or some shade in the afternoon,
mixed shade, let's say.
But when you start to have the seasons
change and that sun becomes diminished during the
flowering time, that's where you're gonna be the
most bummed. And so I wouldn't
I would what I would recommend is trying
to make sure that that sunny spot you
pick is sunny all the way through the
finish. And so if you happen to be
in the forest and you say, oh, this
is a sunny spot, that might be true,
but is it gonna stay sunny the entire
time? And if it's not, I would find
a place or cut a tree or do
something to make sure that you get
that late,
summer sun for the flower development and the
ripening.
That is so true, especially if you live
a place that isn't as gifted with, cultivation
weather as California. Right? Like Mhmm. Up here
in Washington,
my, my son disappears,
there in September.
And so,
my first couple years here,
I was positioned where the sun was in
July
because I was all excited to bring the
plants outdoors.
But by,
by, you know, 3rd week of September,
it it was cutting across the sky differently.
And we already have such a hard time
finishing plants where I live
that you really need to put that tent
where where you're gonna get the most bang
for your buck in September
and, you know, other places, October too, but
we can't we can't grow in October here
where I live at all. So Right.
Yeah. So, alright. So,
let's talk about now that we have figured
out where they're gonna be in our property,
let's talk about anchoring them down.
I think that a lot of people are
just all like, well, it's a big greenhouse.
It's not gonna fly away.
Yes. Yes. It's gonna fly away if you
don't tie it down.
I I I I don't know what professionals
use, but all I've done is I I
I've picked up a really nice,
tent. What do you call those? Tent stakes?
Mhmm. And, I wrap a,
industrial
size zip,
zip tie around the bottom
metal bar
and and then I create a loop with
it and then I put the,
I put the stake through it and I
do, you know, on my 20 foot by
tens, I will I'll put, like, you know,
6 of those on each side holding it
really down
and you know
occasionally during the summer I might I might
lose a zip tie but not not all
the time what do what what do adults
use
like
correct way to do it. But,
sometimes things resonate with 1 person better than
or one idea resonates with somebody better than
the other idea. And so I think the
bigger, fancy,
stronger tent stakes like you're talking about are
a great option.
The other thing that I've used is concrete
stakes.
Concrete stakes
are
basically heavy metal bars with a pointy end
on it, and they also have holes drilled
into it. And so for me, it was
a lot of the greenhouses that we did.
Some of them we did, as you know,
as dim as booths for trade shows and
lounges. And, you know, there was other people
that wanted to do a similar greenhouse, but
they knew they were gonna move it. So
they didn't wanna
auger the holes and cement them in like
you're supposed to, like the plan say. And
so when some of the greenhouses maybe have
a baseboard at the bottom, it could be
a small 2 by 4 or something like
that around the base perimeter of the greenhouse,
even if there's not one. But the tent
the concrete stakes
work really well because you can get them
in a 8 inch, 12 inch, 24 inch,
36 inch concrete stakes. So you can really
drive them down pretty good. And if you
have it right up next to the greenhouse,
you can use those holes that are pre
drilled into that concrete stake close to the
top once it's all the way tapped in
and run some wire through it, run a
zip tie through it, or even
take a screw and screw it right into
the baseboard and it stays pretty well attached.
And so
concrete stakes have been popular,
rebar cut up into various lengths and section
has been popular, kinda doing the similar thing.
There's other people that have taken rebar and
bent it in half so it makes kinda
a horseshoe
or a a u shape. So you're basically
driving it into the ground,
maybe straddling something of the greenhouse, maybe a
bottom,
sideboard or purlin or something that
maybe you can attach to and and do
that with.
Another thing that people have done is similar
to what you maybe see when people put
up those
party tents or circus type tents for
get togethers and things is where they
actually throw the strap over you know, a
ratchet strap over the entire
greenhouse
and attach it to something that's fixed into
the ground. And in some cases, there's been
places where we've put things up that we're
not allowed to drive stakes into the ground.
So we fill up,
a bucket with,
cement. So you'll take a 5 gallon bucket,
dump a cement bag into it, and fill
it with water, and you basically have this
hardened
cement bucket, for a lack of better words.
And some people will even put a fancy
hook maybe inside that concrete so then it
dries.
You actually have something to hook
to that concrete inside the bucket. And so
people will put the buckets around the perimeter
of the greenhouse, throw these straps over the
greenhouse,
and then attach them to these buckets. And
so it's not to be ratcheted down so
tight that it's actually pulling your greenhouse down,
but it avoids it from being able to
take off or lift off.
Listening to
you, kinda
name off all these different solutions,
I just felt so
proud of of stoner ingenuity.
You know? Like like, you you take these
plus all the ones that we're not even
gonna mention. Like, people are always figuring stuff
out in new and novel ways in our
scene.
Oh, for sure. I think, you know, you
could take whatever we just explained and and
hybridize it or do it a little bit
differently with the same parts, and then you
and I learn something. Totally. It doesn't surprise
me that we've already mentioned
Joey Burger
as an innovative
cannabis person because he's always
posting about, oh, I'm trying this new thing,
you know, and I and I really appreciate
people who are, you know, thought leaders like
that. Right?
Yeah. Necessity is the mother of invention, and
when you're, you know,
when you've smoked a couple, it really can
go you can really go out there with
it. Yeah. Alright. So let let's talk about,
the skin when the plastic is is put
on.
The the only and and biggest issue that
I have run into with,
a season of plastic
is when there is rain,
it is often,
it it often creates,
like, divots in the plastic
where,
water will collect.
Now people who have got more professional greenhouses
will immediately say, oh, it's not it's, you
know, it's it's not pulled tight enough.
You have to, you know, you have to
have, like, channel locks on either side of
the greenhouse
to to really, you know,
lock that in. But
these these greenhouses are are much too small
for that. I forget what those things are
called. That little the little wiggle wire. What's
that sound? Yep. That's what it's called. Wiggle
wire. Oh, is it called wiggle wire? Alright.
Great. So it's like these these greenhouses are
just too small for that. And, like, you
know, you could, but you should probably double
the price of the greenhouse by adding wiggle
wire minimum.
So
so so really what we're talking about is
ways to support the roof differently.
And this year was the 1st year that
I tried just simply to run rope
back and forth between the ribs
that would create,
additional
support in between the ribs.
And it worked out it worked out okay.
I definitely took it all apart, and I'm
gonna try it again next year with with
a a,
a a thinner rope wrapped more times.
But is is there anything at the professional
level that you recommend to people to to
help fill in those gaps between the ribs
so that the water doesn't create, like, little
buckets?
Yeah. I mean, that happens even on big
greenhouses or or, you know, traditional greenhouses or
commercial gray, whatever. But, I mean, it it
does come down to sometimes the way these
things are manufactured
and how the plastic goes on. And,
you know,
9 times out of 10, not everything's a
100% ideal, but it's close enough.
And, you know,
I do suggest to make sure that when
people do put their plastics on, they try
to do it on a sunny day. You
know, it's good to pull out the plastic
and maybe lay it on top of the
greenhouse or on the ground right next to
the greenhouse and let it get hot.
And that way, it a lot of times,
as as most people know, when things are
warm, they're a little bit more pliable or
malleable. And and when things are cold, they're
a little bit more stiff and
harder to deal with. And
and most, if not all, greenhouse plastics are
the same way. And so it's good to
lay it out, let it get warm, and
really try to stretch it on as tight
as possible so that when it does cool
down, that contraction,
you know, is what creates that tighter,
fit.
So
to to basically hold things on a little
bit better, it it's tricky. I've seen people
use, you know, the the really sticky, fancy
Velcro from Home Depot to try to rig
things up.
Using lath or PVC
in conjunction with the ropes like you talked
about to create purlins and things that go
between each rib to try to create the
rigid
make the structure more rigid. So it doesn't
always help the plastic, but sometimes when you're
messing around with things like you're talking about,
you go in and you do something
and maybe it works pretty good. And a
lot of times, we have this moment going,
well, if I was to do this again,
I'd do it this way. And it sounds
like that's kinda where you are with your,
you know,
possibility of doing this. That's exactly where I,
the the the, like, the first year I
did this, I tried packing tape, and that
was great, but it broke over the course
of the year just from the weather. And
then and then this year was rope,
but but I need I need to come
up with a different pattern so that it
gets more coverage.
Yeah. No. And and, you know, in some
cases, you know, if you thumb through some
of the greenhouse catalogs, you know, I mean,
there's the catalogs that get sent to you
in the mail.
There's the
online ones, you know, like Greenhouse Megastore,
for instance. There's some others out there on
the East Coast, like Griffin Greenhouse. And
I would say that, you know, sometimes when
you're going through these catalogs and these online
things, you run into new things that,
could be applicable to a home grow greenhouse.
And so they do sell a lot of
do it yourself parts for creating
backyard and maybe home grow or do it
yourself greenhouses. But at the same time,
there are certain parts and things that we
run into that could be
useful in whatever greenhouse you're using or the
one that you're talking about in particular. And
so
sometimes there's stuff out there that's been around
for a long time, we just haven't noticed
it because we're flipping through the pages so
fast looking for something else.
And so surprisingly enough that I mean, there's
even a place here in Grass Valley called
Peaceful Valley Farm Supply
that ships a lot of stuff. And over
the years, they've had greenhouse parts too. So
it's just a matter of kinda looking around
and
and, you know,
really trying to engage in what you're what
you're doing
for your plastic and seeing if any of
these other things might fit or work
or or help in any ways. But I
would say that generally speaking, getting greenhouse plastic
tight so that it doesn't hold water
is pretty common for everybody in the hoop
house and and greenhouse game because
you know, weather mother nature is pretty powerful,
and she typically always wins in one way
or the other. And so
I would say that it it it's kind
of a ongoing,
situation to be worked on.
Yeah. I I agree.
It's it's hard. A lot of these, a
lot of these at the greenhouse is at
this grade. The plastic is just held on
with Velcro hoops, and so they they can
slide all over this the galvanized steel.
So anything that you that we can do
to to,
anchor them to the ground is gonna be
a win. So the last the last thing
I wanna talk about is actually the ground,
on this topic before we go to the
first break, and that is whether or not
to put flooring. And, you know, I've really
been torn on this over the years. On
one hand,
I have,
liked leaving my greenhouses
just bare dirt,
because, you know, I'm a grower of the
soil food web mindedness,
and and the idea of having the floor
be natural,
there so that there are, you know, voluntary
pest predators that are growing
there
that are growing there naturally, and and, you
know, the water has somewhere to soak down
into. It just seems like it makes sense
to me. However,
you know, if we've got uneven
ground where there are all these, like, little
divots that you can twist your ankle in,
or if you live like where I live
where we've got a lot of, varmints, you
know, you've suddenly got them,
growing,
like little holes underneath your pot so they
can drink the water during the drought of
the summer. Right?
It's it really goes both ways about whether
just to leave the ground,
natural with grass or whether or not it
makes sense to put down a couple pieces
of plywood. How do you weigh in on
this?
Yeah. That's a that's a good question. I
mean, for the home grower, I think that,
you know, it's it's really up to,
you know, what their perspective is on all
this stuff. And you brought up a a
lot of good points. I mean, there there's
definitely beneficials, and there's definitely some things
that aren't beneficial that could show up in
some cases. And so I would say that
if it's just plain dirt without grass, it's
good to put something down because when you're
irrigating
or if some rains come or whatever,
that dirt does get wet and it tracks
up mud. And next thing you know, you're
starting to get stuff everywhere and it becomes
quite messy.
I've even had people on
on just plain dirt put down the ground
cover that's been recommended over the years. And
when that stuff gets wet from irrigating or
leaving a hose on or just dribbling around
when you're moving from place to place with
a hose,
the mud will start to seep through the
ground cover even. So it's I think the
idea of having the grass is pretty cool.
You know, people can be fearful of the
pests because the grass can
be a nice little habitat for things that
you maybe don't want.
When it comes to the rodents,
the rodents are definitely a little bit of
a problem, and so putting down some wire
mesh underneath
maybe could help keep the rodents from coming
up and getting through.
The plywood isn't a bad idea. Some people
are a little bit iffy on plywood or
wood in general because
there's the chance in the regulated market, what
we learned is that wood and cardboard and
a lot of these things can have this
aspergillus
and
maybe even cause some post harvest molds, but
a lot of that is a whole another
podcast to deal with. But
at the same time,
wood can get moldy just by nature in
general, and so that can be a little
bit of a thing for people. If you
use pressure treated wood, it has chemicals in
it. And in some cases, some of those
chemicals could
bioaccumulate in your cannabis. And so it's really
kinda tricky. I know that, you know, another
popular solution people like to go find those
plastic pallets. I mean, I don't know if
they're plastic or polycarbonate
or what they're really made of, but the
pallets that,
are not made of wood, they can be
fairly expensive. Sometimes you can find people toss
on those and use those.
You know, at the end of the day,
I think that
anything
reasonable would work. And so
a pallet could be used, but that's wood
also, a regular wooden pallet. But there's people
that will paint those with a low VOC
paint, maybe even,
a hemp deck stain for that matter.
There's also you know, just putting some gravel
down isn't a bad idea over the dirt
in some cases. So, I mean, a little
bit of gravel goes a long ways.
You know, if you do use the ground
cover, I would, you know, recommend putting something
underneath it, maybe even some straw down before
you cap it with the ground cover just
so you don't have the mud that comes
through.
But, you know,
when using the containers that you're using, some
of the containers can take up a lot
of space as well, and so those cover
the ground when people are doing these beds
or raised beds.
A lot of times, they will
even use bark around the beds as a
mulch layer. And and, you know, bark is
pretty pretty safe in most regards for the
fact that,
the weeds don't like to grow through it
as easy.
It doesn't get muddy.
And some of the bark doesn't seem to
have the same moldy effects,
or negative effects that, you know, wood does,
like plywood or things. A lot of times,
the mulch from wood chips can
have a lot of beneficial qualities to it
with,
the fungi
growing into it and having that mycelial
mat growing and it keeps the weeds from
growing through and
it makes for a nice
cooler atmosphere. It doesn't get too hot like
some of the other things do. I would
just be on the cautious side knowing that
maybe if someone was to use certain ground
covers like black,
black can get really hot in the summertime
and it can heat up the greenhouse more
than you want it to and maybe have
adverse reactions to the environment in the greenhouse
just because
it stores and collects so much energy.
You know, it could be a benefit to
some people, though, that are in places maybe
like the islands or areas where it stays
fairly cooler, and they're trying to get some
of that free heat into the greenhouse and
warm some things up.
On the other side of that would be
using, you know, something that's a lighter color,
a white ground cover. It's kinda the other
side of that is why
over the years, we've recommended people use a
tan grow bag versus a black grow bag,
and that's because they just get way
more hot than a you know, black gets
way more hot than a tan grow bag.
But again, that can be a benefit in
some areas. I just went to a farm
recently that,
does put down the black this time of
the year because it is colder and they're
trying to get as much free energy as
they can, and so they do switch the
colors up for their
fall run.
But,
and and the other part of that is
that if you're gonna be using your greenhouse
in the wintertime or the summertime, so you
really kinda wanna be strategic. If it's only
the summertime, then you might be able to
get away with
just
a lot less or a thinner layer
of something. And,
and if you're going through the winter, then
I would recommend probably going into some type
of a gravel base
to start with. You might cap the gravel
with the ground cover,
you know, a pallet or wood or something
else, but the gravel is really helpful in
the wintertime
to keep from sinking into the mud.
Wow.
Alright. So first of all, I love
having you on the show, Eric, because you
have such a depth of experience. As as
you gave that elaborate answer, I was going
through every one of the situations,
and and it brought to mind 2 things.
Number 1, how you always teach that there's
no right way to do it. There's the
best way to do it for where you
are in the country, what your weather is
like, what your growing goals, and what your
budget is.
Right? And and so you gave us a
bunch of options depending on what our goals
are, and I dig that. And also listening
hearing you go through the list, I can
almost see you go, like, oh, man. That
guy did this, and we had to fix
it, and this guy did this, and we
had to fix it. And, like, you're you're
really kinda going through
a greatest hits of problems and solutions that
you've had to deal with with different clients.
Yeah. I mean, unfortunately
maybe fortunately for me, unfortunately for some of
the growers that I've showed up. You know,
a lot of the work that I've done
is to help people in the
kind of a rescue situation or showing up
to work on one thing, and I see
another problem going on. And and
and it just you know, it's been a
lot of years of being able to see
what works and what doesn't work. And it's
not to say, like you're saying, you know,
there's not one thing that is better than
the other. It just every farm is different.
There's not one cannabis farm that is exactly
the same, and that's even here in California.
I mean, every greenhouse I go to has
a different way of setting it up or
doing it or heating it or the flooring
for it, you know? So I mean and
it's the same way across the country.
And, you know, the bigger, the fancier the
greenhouse, the less similar it is to any
other greenhouse. And then when you get to
the very basic
simple, you know, home jobs, you get to
actually see a lot of cool stuff. But
in cannabis and in growing in general, whether
you're doing vegetables or cannabis, but it seems
like with cannabis especially,
there's always, you know, 2 steps forward and
one step back. Yeah. And that's not necessarily
a bad thing, but it's really, you know,
not something that is a perfect
situation all the time. Yeah. Especially when you're,
burning money.
So Yeah. Yeah. Right?
So, alright. Cool. Well, we're gonna go ahead
and take a short break and be right
back. You are listening to Shaping Fire, and
my guest today is OG Greenhouse consultant, Eric
Branstad.
Now without these advertisers, Shaping Fire would not
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Welcome back. You are listening to Shaping Fire.
I am your host, Shango Los. And my
guest today is greenhouse consultant, Eric Branstad.
So during the first set, we we figured
out where our greenhouse is gonna be on
the property, and we got it all set
up. Let's start talking about how to deal
with some of the common challenges
that are involved with having a greenhouse.
And let's start with heat.
You talk
regularly
about the difficulties
of abating
heat
in our greenhouse.
And,
this is something that we attract, right, because
we want the warmth and we want the
heat,
because the plants want it, but we also
don't want to cook the plants or make
them too thirsty or dry out our pots,
and so we're trying to get,
you know, we're just trying to hit this
sweet spot.
So,
I'm assuming that our number one
helper, ally, for for keeping our heat low
is going to be fans.
But,
but I know that you have got a
bunch of strategies. So so so why don't
I just kinda hand you the mic and
say, what are things that we should be
thinking about,
for abating the heat when we're setting up
our small, you know, 20 by 10 foot
greenhouse?
Sure. I mean, you know, primarily, the greenhouse
itself hopefully has some ventilation. And I know
the one that you're talking about actually does
with the big door in the front and
then down the side, it has all these
windows that roll up or open.
And so similarly to other greenhouses
or
well, let's back up here. A lot of
the other hobby greenhouses
also
did not have are not equipped with enough
ventilation. So a lot of times they have
just a little louver that opens by hand
and
maybe there's one on the roof or whatever.
And so, historically speaking,
most of the hobby greenhouses that have been
on the market turn into little storage sheds
in the summertime, and then they don't get
used in the winter because people
are happy with storing stuff in them.
And it's because they get incredibly hot. And
the other thing people forget is that
greenhouses were invented for the winter or when
it's really shitty out, not when it's you
know, a perfect hot sunny day. But when
cannabis came along, we all,
you know, grow the best time to grow
is when it's hot summer and the sun's
out. And so, boom, we put these greenhouses
out there that are not really for that
time of the year, and we have all
these
problems or heat buildup. And so, you know,
like I said, the vents are really crucial.
You know, looking at these greenhouse covers is
also,
an important factor.
And so the clearer the cover or the
the polycarbonate,
the more exposure to the plants that we
have. And so one of the things
that people talk about is,
you know, the word heat, but we're not
just talking about the air temp, we're talking
about the heat that is associated to the
plant. And so there's 2 different
things that I look at in a greenhouse.
And so one might be the air temp,
obviously, but the other is gonna be the
plant temperature itself. And
and, you know, we look at that by
simply even using a handheld laser thermometer where
you point and the little laser comes out
and
it you point it to where you want
and it tells you the temperature of these
surfaces. And so it's really handy to take
one of those
devices and aim it at the flower of
your plant or even a leaf, and you
can actually see that the plant
see that the plant temp is typically different
than the air temperature.
And so,
monitoring that really helps a lot more than
just looking at the air temp because in
some cases, if you have enough ventilation and
maybe
a good greenhouse cover,
that isn't totally
clear like glass, you might see that there
could be a reduction in leaf surface or
plant temp compared to the air temp. And
if that's the case, you're on the right
track or things will probably be okay.
But if it's the opposite where the greenhouse
is warm inside and the plant temp is
actually warmer than the than the air temp,
you're bound to run into problems with powdery
mildew, mold, you know, botrytis type mold, and
things like that. It's just it's it's not
gonna end well.
So
what we try to look at is that,
you know, like you brought up, fans are
definitely a popular thing to move some air
around. But if it's still sealed up and
there's not enough fresh air coming in,
it's it the fans are just gonna move
that air around.
And so the one thing that I always
like to tell people and and the phrase
that I like to, you know, live by
a little bit is that if you trap
air,
it will heat up. And so the key
for a greenhouse in the summertime, especially a
home grower
and even, you know, maybe a commercial grower
that has not such a fancy setup, you
know, kind of a basic hoop house, is
that,
we wanna not trap that air so that
it heats up. And And how do we
do that is we try to take away
this greenhouse effect. And so it's okay to
have the greenhouse, but it's not always okay
to have the greenhouse effect where it's getting
warmer and warmer inside all the time.
We can break that by opening up the
greenhouse and avoiding
trapping all that air. And so, you know,
on a greenhouse like the one you've showed
pictures of, you know, in a place that
maybe gets really hot,
I would say that the benefit would be
to put doors at both ends of that
type of a greenhouse.
And that way, it really
slows down the ability for that air to
be trapped. And so when we have these
openings, let's say we just have one door,
the windows are open, you still might have
a little bit of solar gain. It might
not have the same amount of solar gain
if everything was sealed up,
but, you know, it still has a little
bit of solar gain. It's a little bit
warmer inside than it is outside. But if
we put that other door at the other
end,
you know, we might have now alleviated the
ability for it to act like a total
greenhouse, and we're gonna actually see the same
temperatures inside the greenhouse
as we do outside.
And so some people might say, well, it's
a 100 degrees outside.
That's okay. If it's a 100 degrees inside
the greenhouse,
we know that we've avoided the solar gain.
We're not gonna get it cooler by any
means, but the goal is to not let
it get more hot inside than it is
outside.
And so if we've,
if we've gotten to that point, then
we start monitoring the leaf surface or the
flower temperature of the plant with our little
laser thermometer.
And what we're gonna start to notice is
that, you know, maybe those temperatures are similar
to each other
or, in fact, maybe a little bit lower.
And so we're definitely on the right track.
And this is where some circulation fans might
actually
help a little bit because now once we've
avoided the solar gain, we move a little
air across the plants and it might be
in a racetrack pattern. It might just be
one fan at one end blowing across this
small greenhouse so that it creates a slight
breeze
or mimics a slight breeze. And what ends
up happening is the plants actually become a
little bit cooler than what they originally were.
And so when I have leaves kinda dancing
in the circulation of the of the fans,
we can see a 3 to 5 degree
temperature difference
than we would if the plants weren't
experiencing any air movement. And so, you know,
plants and people are similar in the sense
that plants have all this water moving through
their system just like we have blood, and
our blood's like, I don't know, 70 or
90% water anyway. And so we have
the circulation going on between ourselves and plants
with this water moving through
everything. And so,
on a hot day, if you
go and stand in front of a fan,
it'll have a cooling effect on our body
because our sweat,
our perspiration
basically is starting to get cooled off and
eventually, we might even stop perspiring
even though we're still out
in the hot weather. This fan has created
a little bit of relief for us.
And
so plants are the same way, and so
a plant doesn't perspire like a person does.
It transpires.
Right? And so as a plant is transpiring
and we start to blow some air across
it, it will eventually start to cool down
a little bit, and that transpiration
process doesn't go away, but it,
slows down quite a bit. And anybody that's
had a plant that is transpiring, it's hard
to see because it's not like sweat on
our forehead. You can't just see it dripping
down. But what we see is we see
condensation
forming on the roof of the greenhouse
and trying to drip back down onto our
plants. And so condensation
typically is a result of plant transpiration.
And so if we try to work on
getting our plant temps in check, we'll be
able to avoid that condensation that everybody is
trying to avoid or get rid of and
not deal with. And that kinda coincides with
the light dep technique when you put your
plants in a light dep, cover them in
this bubble with a blackout cover,
there's no air coming in or out a
lot of times,
especially traditional ways of growing.
And if your plant temps are or your
plant temps are up when you go to
seal it up, you're instantly gonna see this
condensation
form. And so people that are able to
keep their plant temps down
compared to the air temp, and that's why
I'm saying, there's not a perfect number that
we're looking for. We're just looking for plant
temp to be lower than the air temp.
You typically don't see that condensation form throughout
the day and you don't see it
show up as much when you pull your
light depth cover. And so another thing that
helps with that is the greenhouse cover itself.
And, you know, knowing that you have that
green cover
on your greenhouse,
it does provide a little bit of diffusion.
It has the
reinforcing
strings that go through there that makes that
cover, you know, more durable than it would
be if it was just a plain piece
of plastic,
does
provide some diffusion.
And so basically,
the diffusion is also
maybe another way of looking at shading, you
know, or
or,
another aspect of diffusion is scattering infrared. And
so infrared is what brings the heat. And
so we're basically trying to disrupt the infrared,
but we're still trying to get as much
light as possible,
and to the plant. And so a lot
of times with the clear glass covers,
you don't have that protection. They actually can
magnify the light at times and it'll make
the plant temp even warmer than it should
be or warmer than you want it to
be
just because that's how these plastics work. And
so,
originally, when I first started selling greenhouses, that's
what we originally thought. We want the clearest
cover possible like glass
because outdoor plants are in the full sun.
You know, when we're growing with
lights indoors back in the day before LEDs
and all these, people wanted as many lights
as possible, and they wanted them turned up
as high as possible. And so we automatically
thought the same thing for going into a
greenhouse, but what we learned is the sun
is
intense.
You know, it's the most intense light bulb
we have around. And so,
a lot of times,
the overexposure
to plants can be too much throughout the
growing cycle. And so having the right greenhouse
cover, and I believe the green one
in the picture
is a great option for doing that. And
then I know that the upgraded version is
a white,
and I've
seen a white,
I forget the product name of it, but
it's a white, you can't see through it.
And I almost didn't think it was a
greenhouse cover. It's a Sunmaster. They have a
bunch of different
versions. And this white one actually does let
light through, and it worked incredibly well in
Arizona.
So I'm assuming
that the white upgraded version
that they have offering for your greenhouse,
would be suitable in some of these areas
like Arizona, New Mexico, and even California where
it can
be extremely hot sometimes, where that white will
actually diffuse,
and calm down that infrared or that heat
that's being brought on to the plants, but
still provide enough light for a great growing
cycle.
So
in some cases, somebody might just use
the openness of the greenhouse for ventilation to
take away the greenhouse effect.
On top of that, they might use the
greenhouse cover to make sure that that, you
know, helps or works even better. And then
the other thing would be adding that circulation
fan. Now somebody might wanna do all of
these things into one aspect of a greenhouse
to have the most, you know, support or
protection. And then in some areas of the
country,
one of those things might do the job.
As far as
the
one one more question about the fans before
we go on to cold.
So it's
from what you just said, it sounds like
a,
positive strategy
would be
a, for example, a box fan
set up as an intake
at one end of the,
greenhouse.
And I've got I've got mine hung just
simply with Velcro
not Velcro. Zip tie,
to the rib.
And then at the other end, you have
an exhalation
end, and so it creates this
comes one end in one end, and it's
being pulled out at the exhaust end at
the other side. And then maybe,
for the leaf temperature,
maybe a couple oscillating
fans in the middle. So I've got an
intake on one end and exhaust on the
other end, and then a couple of exhaust
fans in the middle just kinda like moving
the air around on the inside.
Is is that kinda what you were describing?
Yeah. I I
yes. Yes and no. And the reason that
I say the no part of it is
is because here's a couple things, and I'm
not necessarily directing this towards your setup, but
this is kind of a generalized
aspect or or outlook on this topic is
that people can put too many fans.
And what ends up happening, let's just say,
in the idea of fans at both ends,
like, sometimes people will have fans,
you know, at both ends
pointing inwards,
and we have only air coming in and
no air coming out. So it's almost like
this positive pressure idea.
And what ends up happening is the air
comes in
at a high volume, but it has nowhere
to go. And so, inevitably, it heats up
and it becomes hot inside. And so like
what you're talking about with a more negative
pressure idea, you have a fan bringing the
air in, and maybe there's a fan at
the other end helping it shuttle its way
out. One of the things that can happen,
though, is that
some fans and and and this could be
even using the same exact fans. Not all
motors and manufacturers
are perfect, and so there can be flaws
in some of these ideas or setups. And
so what I mean by that is that
you could have
more air coming in than you have coming
out.
And
so in some cases, what I've seen in
even commercial, the big fancy greenhouses, is that
they have so much air coming in that
it actually heats up before it's able to
travel out. And then and in some cases,
what I've seen is there's too many circulation
fans on the inside. So what that what
that does is it draws
more air into the greenhouse than it would
just using the exhaust fan.
So the exhaust fans are designed to bring
in this air and shoot it out the
other side. But if you have circulation fans
inside that are bringing in more air, it's
almost like if you were trying to, you
know, put a hose in your mouth and
drink all the water, you know, you you
you can. It's you you end up having
water blowing out your mouth and your cheeks
are full, and it doesn't work. And so
the same kinda I don't know if that
makes sense, but the same kinda thing happens
with the fans is that your
the circulation and maybe the exhaust draw in
more than the exit exit fan can handle.
And so you're basically having air that's sitting
around in the greenhouse waiting for its chance
to escape. And in the meantime, it's heated
up.
And so we wanna make sure and in
some cases, maybe that's the idea for some
farms is just to have that exhaust fan
at one end that's blowing the air out.
But what it's doing is it's it's
capturing air at the other end and naturally
bringing it through the canopy
and out the other side. And so I
would just say that, you know, more air
movement isn't always better just because we're in
these structures
and there has to be a way an
even in and an even out for all
that air. And if we kinda
go in between that with too many maybe
circulation fans or other things in some of
these setups,
we could cause the opposite reaction. And so
it's always just good to be mindful. And
one thing that I always say to people
is that it's easier to add more fans
if you think that you need more. If
you buy a bunch of fans and all
of a sudden you're like, well, maybe I
didn't need this fan or or this is
too many fans. I listened to the podcast,
and now I realize I've got too many
fans.
It's really easier to go to the store
and buy another fan and add 1 than
it is to sit around with a bunch
of fans and go, okay. Now they're going
on Facebook Marketplace or the next garage sale
or Yeah. Or whatever. And so,
you know,
starting out with a little bit and adding
more is the best way to go. Right
on.
So let's talk about about too much cool,
too much cold, not enough heat. Now for
most of us, this isn't something that we're
gonna experience
during our the main part of our growing
season. It's probably something that is
happening towards the end.
Certainly, there are people who are gonna have
cold nights that they need to insulate from,
in in the country. But but for most
people, it seems to be the end of
flowering when they're trying to squeeze out another
week or 2,
but the e the nights are have dropped
below or near 50. And so so they're
just trying to keep their their plants awake
and the soil awake.
At the same time, we don't want to
close-up the greenhouse totally
because this is also mold time of year,
and we don't want them to to
the plants that are molding to get other
plants also molding.
So,
what suggestions do you make for
preserving that air exchange
so that you can keep the fresh air
coming in,
without,
making the plants too cold there at the
end of the season?
Yeah. That that's definitely a tricky
or slippery slope in some cases. Depending on
where you are, it's different for everybody.
One of the things that I would also
look at, you know, going into those times
of years is is how I'm irrigating my
water schedule.
You know, I might actually start to cut
back on the water a little bit as
I know it's starting to cool down because
the plants aren't gonna use as much water
as they start to cool down. If they're
starting to finish, it's not a bad idea.
You know, even though maybe there's the idea
of flushing,
that doesn't go away, but it uses less
water, less amounts of water in order to
do that.
You know,
bringing in cold air isn't the worst thing
in the world, but it takes a little
bit of work in these do it yourself
greenhouses because, you know, we try to put
things on a timer or something like that.
But a lot of times,
you know, we're we're the sensor. You know,
us as humans are the main sensor, and
we go, hey. It feels warm. Or, hey.
It feels cold. We should do this.
And so, again, it I think it's really
important to have that
infrared thermometer so you can point and shoot
and see what your plant temps are, especially
your buds. And so I would say that,
you know, as you're getting closer to the
finishing of the plants,
knowing what those flower temperatures are and making
sure they don't get too hot in the
daytime,
and then that temperature swing in the night
gets too crazy where they get terribly cold.
And so,
you know, what ends up happening sometimes is
it's almost like a air conditioning condenser. You
know, it starts to get that
On a hot day, that pipe starts to
get frost built up on it.
Plants are kind of a condenser in the
same regard. They don't necessarily get frost and
freeze around them or whatever, but they get
hot and cold. And And when they get
hot and cold, they
expire moisture,
or not in some cases. And so being
able to monitor,
where the shift or where that change is
and kind of knowing because here's the thing,
you don't necessarily have to carry this thing
around all the time and monitor things. It's
not a bad idea. It's not hard to
do. But, eventually, you start to get a
little bit of a a groove going. You
know, you kinda get that
Jedi mindset with the plants and going, okay.
I know it's gonna happen on a day
like today, so I need to be prepared
and maybe close the greenhouse up a little
earlier than I normally would. And that goes
for the opening of the greenhouse. Maybe I
need to actually open the greenhouse a little
bit more
on these days. And so really understanding and
looking ahead at the weather patterns and then
realizing what the cause and effect is with
some of that weather on those plants in
that greenhouse.
And, really, you know, the temp and humidity
sensors are great. You know, even the basic
pool ones that, you know, you hang outside
and you don't have to hook it up
to any electricity at all are really good
for telling us the temp and the humidity
of things. And then we look at the
plant temp with the laser, and we go,
oh,
This is where I'm at. So, you know,
if things get warmer or colder,
this could be what happens. And so in
some cases, it might be just turning off
the fan, or it might be just turning
on the fan, or it might be closing
the greenhouse, like I said earlier, opening it
up. But I would say that
it's best to always do one little thing
at a time rather than several things because
it's really easy for us to get caught
up in how we feel also,
and how we feel isn't how the plants
feel. And so, you know, when we're walking
around in socks and shoes and hats and
gloves and pants and all these things,
what we're feeling isn't really how the plants
feel. There's not an apples to apples
situation going on. And so I always kinda
laugh when people go into a grow room
or a greenhouse and go, oh, it's really
hot in here. Oh, it's really this or
that. And that's true. It is. But are
the plants experiencing
that same,
you know, feeling or reaction that you're getting
out of the room?
A lot of times, it's not. And so
that's why I say, like, monitor what the
plants is really doing. Soil temp is really
important, the substrate temp, and knowing what that
is and being able to make sure that
you're not
using freezing cold water towards the end of
that cycle and and shocking the roots even
more for the development of things. It might
just be that we need to heat up
the water when we irrigate at that time
of the year, and maybe nothing else matters.
But, again, you have to monitor all that
stuff so that you can really
process everything to help
make that decision of what
direction you're gonna go.
Again, just because we read that some guy
does it on the Internet does not mean
that it makes it appropriate for where we
live and our goals and and and how
our gear is set up. So always good
always good to interpret these things for ourselves.
Instagram has not helped the commercial farmer one
bit, I feel like. All I've seen is
people go, I saw this online, and I'm
like, well,
that wasn't in your state, your town, in
your climate, or any of these things. And
so, you know, Instagram or social media is
a great place to see.
You know, a lot of times people are
only showing the good stuff, you know, for
the most part. But at the same time,
there's more to it than the picture that
we're seeing. There's usually more to it than
even some of the statements that we read
about some of these techniques.
And while they're important to learn and and
to know about,
people are really quick to apply or jump,
you know, knee jerk reaction to, hey, this
is what I wanna do, or, hey, this
is where we wanna go, this direction or
whatever.
And in the commercial setting at scale, it's
taken people down the wrong road. And so
luckily, with the home growers,
I think that there's a little bit more
of a you know, a little bit more
forgiveness here, but still, it's it's money out
of our pocket when we're trying to grow
and do these things, whether we're at scale
or we're at home. And so,
you know, like I said, the more things
that we can kinda monitor and keep an
eye on, the better we have chances of
making the right pivot
at the right time.
But, again, you know, I would take what
you learn on social media sometimes, especially when
it's just a picture and a quick statement
with a grain of salt because
there's way more to those stories than
what's being told.
Totally.
Alright. So the last area I wanna ping
on here before we wrap up set 2
is,
is insect pests.
Because we're you know, once you have a
greenhouse, you kinda have you're kind of a
host
for a war. Right? Mhmm. We we've got
all of the naturally occurring
beneficial
insects that are just in nature. And if
we've got a grassy floor, certainly, they are
in,
the greenhouse. And we've got a bunch of
plants.
So they are attracting,
beneficial,
predators as well.
And then if we are,
you know, choosing to also do order beneficial
insects online from somebody like, you know, natural
enemies or something. We're adding those to it,
and so now we've got,
whatever pest pressure that we have in the
natural environment, plus all the good guys in
the natural environment
and anything that we've added.
And now they're all within,
you know, these walls,
and it's like a cage match.
So,
what has your experience been as far as
pest pressure being worse in a greenhouse
and also
pest solutions
being potentially easier in a greenhouse? I mean,
how how does this play out differently in
a greenhouse, and what are your recommendations?
Well, it's it's funny. Like, you you brought
up a couple funny points of the yeah.
I mean, it's it can be an ongoing
battle,
and it's definitely something to be noteworthy of.
And so
I would say that, you know, one of
the best environments
for a pest is in a greenhouse. I
mean, pests will really take off in a
greenhouse just because it's the warmer spot than
anywhere else on the property a lot of
times. And so it's another reason that
Well, let me say this too, is that
a lot of people come from the idea
of controlled environment agriculture
or controlled environment period. They just say that
word all the time. Oh, a greenhouse is
a little more controlled environment. And we hear
that term a lot. And so to be
honest, I mean, even some of the most
sophisticated greenhouses out there, state of the art,
are really hard to control.
On one hand, it's just because some of
the bell there's too many bells and whistles,
and some in some cases, there's not enough
talent or people that know how to dial
all this stuff in. I mean, cannabis has
taken greenhouses further than any, you know, ag
greenhouse has ever gone. And so are there
people out there that know how to dial
these things in and make them work right?
There's far and few between. It's really difficult
out there. And so it's
really better if people, you know, look at
things at a more practical aspect, but
that's a different story.
With with my way of looking at things,
I wanna create support. And so instead of
controlled environment, I wanna have a supportive environment.
And so a lot of the stuff that
we talked about
is already
in that alignment of supporting things.
Naturally, how can we,
help the plants and benefit,
growing them easier
and
without all these problems
and without all these bells and whistles. So
that's why I always say, you know, use
the word support as much as possible. And
so when it comes to,
the greenhouses and this pest issue that comes
up,
it definitely really can be an issue because
I've been to a lot of greenhouses that
do get really hot and have,
you know, adverse effects, and the pests really
proliferate and do well in some of these
greenhouses and especially these hot zones. And so
the the first order of business would be,
you know, knowing where your plants come from.
So, I mean, if you're starting them from
seed at your own house, that's great.
You have a lot more control over it
than
than,
if you were maybe bringing in clones from
somewhere else. If you are bringing in clones
from somewhere else,
you really need to make sure that they're
clean. And how do you do that? Well,
you can take the jeweler's loop, the microscopes,
and
really look the plants over from the leaves
and the underside and things like that to
determine if there's anything on them or wrong
with them.
And then the other thing would be to,
you know, work on a a program of
keeping them clean.
Maybe if you did buy clones and they're
not clean, then that program of of dipping
them before you plant them or making sure
that you're using some type of pest management
right off the bat so that, you know,
you don't wait until the they they,
become, you know, more infested.
So get trying to nip it in the
bud as soon as possible is really the
key, and that goes for the mom plants.
If you're making your own cuttings off your
own moms, you wanna make sure that your
moms are as clean as possible so that
you start out as clean as possible.
And then as you go into the greenhouse,
yeah, like you said, if you have a
grass floor or we're in these greenhouses with
these open doors
and sidewalls and things like that, sure, bugs
can fly come flying in. I hear that
a lot of times when I've talked over
the years about opening the door or rolling
up a sidewall on a greenhouse. It's like,
well, the bugs can come in. And that's
definitely true. They can.
I mean,
from what we've learned and seen over the
years,
the bugs really, you know, try to find
the weakest plant in in the in the
population. And so, you know, plants that are
not as healthy as other plants typically will
get the bugs
first. Some people will even say, oh, you
know, I grow these 3 different cultivars in
my greenhouse, but they only wanna go to
the,
you know, the gelato or something. They they
like the terps of the gelato more than
they like the OG or
the the lemon cherry gelato or something. Whatever.
You know? And so
that might seem like the case, but it's
not totally the case. Most of the time,
it has to do with and and, again,
plants can seem and look really healthy, but
when they have this bug infestation, that's the
first sign that there is something wrong
with the health of the plant. And why
aren't they going to the other plants? Well,
the other plants are a little bit stronger
and more resistant to those bugs,
and they found that this strain or this
particular plant in the greenhouse
is weaker than the rest. And that maybe
is because of the nutritional demands and the
way that the substrate
and things were made up. Maybe we
mixed up a pot and it
it was the last of our bag of
soil and our amendments, and we kinda just
didn't give
that last little
plant everything that everybody else got. And so
we now know that it's getting all the
bugs because it just didn't meet the health
demands of the nutrition and everything that it
was put up against.
The other thing is that inside the greenhouses,
we always wanna start scouting in the corners
because the corners are typically warmer than the
center of the greenhouse. When the sun comes
up in the morning, it's usually directed to
one end of the greenhouse or side. And
then as the sun goes down, the same
thing. And so,
typically, you always wanna look on the outskirts
or the ends of the greenhouses for the
first infestations,
and and that will tell you a lot
as well. And so, again, we're trying to
avoid an infestation. And so the program that
you set up from the early
time is really important to have. And then
the main part of that program, I would
say, is scouting.
I know that a lot of people's first
line of defense is just, hey. I just
spray my plants every couple days no matter
if I have bugs or not.
And, you know, that method is okay, but
it it's not the best for the plants
and the expressions of the flowers,
and it can be hard on the plants
to spray them all the time with even
organic pesticides. They don't love it, but they
also don't necessarily
hate it a tremendous amount. But if we're
trying to grow quality medicine
and trying to keep the plant moving forward,
every time we spray the plants with those
oils, it is a little bit of a
setback,
for the plant itself.
And so scouting with the jeweler's loop and
just really being able to identify where the
pests are, how bad it is,
maybe gives you the ability to spot spray
rather than entirely covering
every plant and soaking everything down. And so
identifying,
the hot spots or where these things are,
which pests they are, and knowing the life
cycle of these pests. There are times where
we don't spray enough. Maybe we're spraying every
7 days or something like that. Maybe that's
just the idea that someone has. Hey. I
spray every 7 days. Well, in between that
time, how many eggs have hatched and how
many aphids even maybe have proliferated in that
amount of time?
It can be quite a bit. And so
you're actually just kicking the can down the
road. And so I I think that you
brought up a good company, Natural Enemies and
Covert. They really have a lot of cool
stuff as far as pocket guides and jeweler's
loops and books on these pests and and,
you know, posters that you can hang in
your garage or in your grow room that
help, you know, kinda keep you on your
toes for all this pest stuff. And so,
if you're not scouting
and using a jeweler's loupe and picking off
leaves and looking at the underside of them
quite often,
I would say that, you know, when an
infestation
does pick up, I wouldn't be surprised because
you can actually find this stuff
pretty easy before things start to get out
of hand. And so
going in and, you know, deleafing the plants
a little bit before you spray so that
you get rid of some of those pests.
And I would say that when you deleaf
your plants, you always wanna have a plastic
garbage bag or a a a some type
of a garbage
bag with you so you're not just throwing
those leaves on the ground.
I know that it's been common practice even
for me, and I've seen it in the
commercial level where when they go deleaf, everybody
just deleafs as fast as they can and
all the the leaves are hitting the floor
and on the pots. And then we come
back later and we, you know, maybe sweep
it all up or rake it all up
and then throw it into the garbage bag.
And what happens is the pests start to
move around quite a bit, and you're not
actually getting rid of them. And so
by de leafing the plants that maybe have
some bugs on them, we're getting rid of
quite a few bugs because that's where they
reside is the underside of the leaf. So
you can imagine yourself throwing away hundreds of
pests by just de leafing
and then going in and doing the the
spray that needs to be done.
And some of the products I like to
use is AZAGuard, which is an Azadiractin.
I'm not a bit as much of a
fan of the Aza Max as I am
the AzaGuard,
but the Azadiractin,
another product that I like to use is
called SuffOil X, and there's a similar product
to SuffOil X called TriTec.
They're both 80% mineral oil. One's more expensive
than the other. I happen to just think
and notice that SUFYIL X seems to be
a, a better product at the end of
the day. But if you need to save
a couple bucks and go with the TriTec,
that's okay.
And I would say that mixing the TriTek
and the Azigard together can be a powerful
combo
in fighting spider mites and, aphids.
When it comes to things like thrips,
like I was saying earlier, understanding the life
cycle is really important because the thrips also,
have one of the stages of life down
in the soil or the substrate. And so
we
can spray all the thrips we want, but
if we don't treat the soil, they're never
gonna go away. And so
getting, nematodes like the steinerima
fatalee, if I said that right, sorry if
I botched it,
is a good
nematode to put into the soil to help
get rid of the thrips or even maybe
avoid getting some of those thrips,
in the long run. And so,
you know, being a home grower, sometimes people
don't wanna know all these different ins and
outs and details and things, but, unfortunately, it's
a really important aspect to to learn and
to understand. And once you get the hang
of it and read about it a little
bit and know the common pests that you
have and what to do about them, it
isn't that hard to deal with. But, again,
if you don't know,
things can creep up. And by the time
they creep up and start to do their
thing, it could be way later in flower
too. And that's just a tough time to
have to spray and to begin
battling pests. And so the more we can
do to the moms, the clones, and while
they're in veg and even the earliest,
weeks of flowering
will help ensure that we have a great
finish to the to the end of the
cycle.
Damn. That's so well put. So many everybody's
interested
in,
crisis management for their pests when really the
easy solution is on the prevention side, so
it doesn't happen in the first place.
So, alright. So let's go ahead and take
our second commercial and be right back. You
are listening to Shaping Fire, and my guest
today is OG greenhouse consultant, Eric Branstad.
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Sometimes the topics I wanna share with you
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and always gorgeous flower photos. On both profiles,
the emphasis is on sharing what I've learned
in a way that you can replicate it
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encourage you to follow at shaping fire and
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After you've caught up on the latest Shaping
Fire episodes, do you sometimes wish there was
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got you. Shaping Fire has a fabulous YouTube
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breeding cannabis for the best terpene profile.
Frenchy cannoli's lost art of the hashician presentation.
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newsletter.
Welcome back. You are listening to shaping fire.
I am your host, Shango lows. And my
guest today is OG greenhouse consultant, Eric Branstad.
So here's our big finish. During the first
set, we figured out where we were gonna
put the greenhouse and how we were gonna
put the greenhouse. During set 2, we figured
out how the hell we're gonna deal with
heat and cold and pests. And here in
set 3, we're gonna talk a little bit
about tricking out our greenhouse and proper care.
So,
Eric, you know, you've been on this show
before, and,
we have talked at length about,
light deprivation, light dep.
And, I should probably know the episode number.
But but for anybody who wants to listen
to that episode, you can look for it
on, and I'll put the link on the
on the page for this episode.
But why don't you explain just just real
quick what light dep is for folks who
are not familiar with it for their home
greenhouse,
and they can go to that episode if
they wanna learn more.
Yeah. Sure. I mean, cannabis is a photoperiod
plant,
and and what we mean by that is
that it uses these light cycles in order
to grow or to flower.
And so most people are familiar with indoor
growing and the fact
that 18 hours of light makes the plants
veg or grow.
And then when you cut that light back
to just 12 hours of light, they will
start to produce the flowers.
And so, when we wanna do that same
technique outside, we can't turn on and off
the sun, but we can
put a tarp over the greenhouse
that makes
it, that puts that
greenhouse in the dark.
So basically, we're using,
a greenhouse with light depth curtains or tarps
that create that photoperiod.
So we have full control of when they
flower and when they veg,
using the sunlight.
That is great, dude. You know what I
just realized? I just looked up while you
were saying that, the episode that you were
on talking about lept light
depth. You and I are recording episode a
119
right now.
We did that episode, episode 13.
Holy mackerel. That was a bit ago. That's
awesome. 13. Wow. That was 8 years ago.
Wow.
Wow. Well, it's still a good one. It's
just still a good one. So so, yeah,
thank you for that definition.
And, dear listener, if you wanna hear
a really good hour and a half about
how to do this in detail, go on
back to episode 13
and, listen to Eric and I as youngins.
Alright.
So so so that's that's a quick little
plug for light dep. Because if if if
you are trying to be self sufficient,
with your cannabis
and and you wanna be able to maybe
get in 2 cycles during your summer, light
dep is a great way to do it.
Yep. So that gives light dep a short
shrift, but that's it. We're moving on. So,
so, one of the things that I personally
really enjoyed was,
adding some Wi Fi environmental,
gauges
to the tent outside,
and it just is close enough to the
house Wi Fi to pick it up, which
means that it can then throw it to
my phone. So I can be anywhere in
the world
and know what's going on in my greenhouse,
because, you know, mostly I grow food here.
And,
you know, food and cannabis are all very
temperature and moisture dependent. And and if I'm
if I can set my alarms and and
they can, like, bring me bring me on
in,
to, you know, to tell me that I
need to check on the greenhouse.
Granted at the at the home grower level,
outdoors, there's not usually a lot of integration
of these sorts of products, but, my gosh,
they're really helpful if you bother to, you
know, spend a little coin and get them.
Totally. I mean, it's not out of the
question, and there's a lot more out there
than there used to be. I mean,
there's
there's little companies that people barely know exist
that have, you know, some of this technology
going on. And so getting a couple sensors
in the greenhouse that can be hooked up
to your phone
just to know what's going on sometimes. And,
you know, the pivotal parts of the year
might be in the spring and the fall
when the seasons are starting to change, and
you really wanna know what's going on so
that you can prepare,
to make some changes or prepare to go
home and do something about this. And so,
you know, while it's like you were saying,
it's not a 100% needed and it's not
gonna always do everything that maybe an automated
greenhouse is gonna do, it does give you
an edge. And having that slight edge is
always, you know, a step forward in the
right direction
to be able to, you know, rescue your
own crop or enhance the quality of that
crop. You know, the a lot of times,
with the way the weather is these days,
things can change pretty quick. And it might
be where you're away from home and you
need someone to go back and close it
up because all of a sudden, it got
cold. I mean, we've had
crazy weather where it's sunny one day, and
the next day, all of a sudden we
get a snowstorm or something. You know?
And nobody knows and sees this stuff coming
even though we look at the weather and,
you know, the weatherman says it's gonna be
great.
They're not always right. And so
it's really good to be able to notice
some of these things and and stay ahead
of the curve a little bit.
Another thing that can be, you know, cool
and important to have is that, you know,
some of these things can be hooked up
to even a solenoid that turns on and
off your irrigation. So there might be just
a simple, hey. I wanna be able
to turn on and off my water when
I'm gone from home. And that's not out
of the question because,
you know, a lot of the landscaping stuff
that we use nowadays for our homes,
can be
outfitted to do that. And so, you know,
Rain Bird is a common
company or term that have all sorts of
landscaping,
devices that can
be remote or, you know, controlled just, you
know, right at your house type of thing
with with a couple buttons or, even a
timer on there that, you know, allows you
to be able to control when stuff gets
water or maybe when a fan turns on
or not.
You know, simply hooking stuff up to a
timer because you know when you want something
to come on or turn off,
can be an important way to do things.
But it never hurts to, you know, if
you can, throw in a little technology in
there and and see if it helps you.
I like your point too about, you know,
you can only need to go into this
as far as you need to.
I grow different types of plants. Right? I've
got my I've got my my food plants,
which are mostly
ungreenhoused.
But the but the ones that are greenhouse,
I just need something really simple to know
what the temperature and the humidity is. And
I've got, like, just a simple, like, little
govy smart temperature thing. Right? It cost me,
like, $25. Nothing to it. But, like, but
with my cannabis,
I'm I take it very much more serious
for obvious reasons. Right?
I I wanna I wanna know, you know,
I wanna know, you know, heat and humidity
and vapor and like all this more detailed
stuff, and I wanna be able to
look at charts and graphs of it. And
so for my cannabis,
greenhouse, well, I I've upload I've upgraded to
like a pulse system right and so so
now I've got all the details plus as
you were saying I haven't gone so far
as to like connect it to my drip
irrigation which would be dope but like whenever
I want to I could like expand my
pulse meter
into controlling all of my stuff. You know?
And and it's great. You can just take
these steps one at a time from season
to season depending on what you can afford.
I agree. Like I said earlier, and you're
kinda hitting that same nail on the head,
is that you start out simple and with
what you can afford and what seems reasonable
and always have that ability to expand.
And the expanding can
be adding another light, adding another fan, or
adding something to that control system which might
be, okay,
I've been reading and collecting all this data.
Now I'm gonna add something where I can
turn it on and off myself or something
like that. So, I mean, there are especially
with that pulse and,
a couple other systems, the ability to phase
this. So phase 1's simple. Phase 2 might
be, getting you know, once you get your
feet wet in the growing season, you wanna
you know, you can take more on. We
have more bandwidth
even for stuff. And so,
I always try to, like I said, recommend
starting out slow, do what you can within
your own bandwidth, and then after that season,
look at what the upgrades might look like.
Yep.
Alright. So we were talking about upgrades and
upgrades of of around tech.
Let's talk about adding lights to extend the
growing season.
Now I think that adding lights to,
an indoor space is an obvious thing, and
to to a greenhouse
is generally a good idea, though I'm not
a big fan of of, the light pollution
that comes from people who run their lights
all night, but, you know, that's a personal
thing.
But,
I have more concern when we're talking about
these small hobby greenhouses
of hanging lights in them primarily for two
reasons. Number 1, lights are heavy,
and the the internal frames of these greenhouses,
even the galvanized steel ones,
they they wiggle. And I'm
kinda not so sure about that. And then
second, the lights themselves can generate heat and
potentially,
melt the plastic just because, again, we're we're
not working with a lot of space here.
So,
you know, I I I have seen people
do it. I've seen them do it well.
It takes their height from, like, 66
to more like 510, which is light space
I wouldn't really wanna give up. But what
are your thoughts on adding lights to to
a, you know, a greenhouse that's this small?
Yeah. It can be tricky. All those things
that you said are definitely noteworthy,
and each, you know, hobby house is a
little different. And so you can't just, you
know I mean, I we can imagine we're
gonna hang lights and something, and then we
put it up and we run into some
of these, you know, one step backwards type
of thing. Yeah. Yeah. And so,
I've seen
where people have taken and
basically taken a 4 by 4 post and
augured or put that into the ground
at at 4 corners or even just one
at both ends, and they actually run,
a cable or a pole of some kind,
and they actually hang the lights from that
so it's not attached to the greenhouse.
This came up years ago because when they
started
doing Proposition 64 in California
and rolling out the ordinances for
how people could grow,
they were
kinda weird with the hoop houses. They you
know, you either were a permitted greenhouse
and, commercially grown or you know, because in
ag, you can grow with a nonexempt
or, you know, a non permitted greenhouse. And
so,
cannabis farmers wanted to have that same opportunity,
but the ordinances were, hey, you gotta have
a permit or or nothing. And what they
did is they said, well, if you okay.
If you wanna have a exempt greenhouse that
isn't permitted,
it can't have any electricity or lighting
fastened to it, fans or any of that.
So then what people started doing was rigging
up with, you know, 4 by 4 posts
and internal framing
so that they could hang their fans and
hang their lights, but it wasn't attached to
the greenhouse.
Yeah. Yeah.
To totally outside the spirit of the rules,
but exactly how we cannabis people interpret rules.
Exactly. We find a way. We will find
a way.
And and, you know, when you go to
Home Depot these days and so
when we're talking about lights, you know,
a deeper dive would be what kinda light,
what color, what intensity, and all these other
things. And so the short side of that
or the easier way to look at it
might be that, hey, I'm just trying to
veg my plants a little longer or, hey,
I'm trying to, you know, flower them sooner
or whatever the case is. And so, you
know, you can get away with fairly low
powered lights in order to keep a plant
in one stage or another.
It doesn't necessarily mean that they're gonna grow
bigger and faster and produce bigger buds, but
it's definitely gonna help keep the cycle that
you're intending
streamlined for a certain amount of time, and
that's where the lights could come in handy.
And so
you might say you know, and and people
have done this even on the commercial side
where they go to Home Depot, and they
sell the
decorative,
outdoor patio lights. So it's basically like a
long extension cord with some light bulbs hanging
on it, and most people would put that
in their patio or their backyard for,
you know, barbecuing and and hanging out and
making more of an ambiance or whatever. And
so these same, you know, 40 foot string
of lights that they have in a box
at Home Depot
can be strung up inside these greenhouses,
maybe even without any framing because they're fairly
can be lightweight. Now I'm not saying that
they're light enough for all these frames, but
they're lighter than hanging an LED or a
HPS light that you might go get at
the grocery store. Right. Right.
Totally.
And, and also, they're they run a lot
less hot too.
Correct. They do run a lot less hot.
And so something like those string lights can
be a great way to say, okay. I'm
gonna bring my plants out whatever time of
the year, and I wanna encourage this veg
cycle, and and I don't want them to
trigger into flowering by accident.
Or the opposite might be that, you know,
you want them to trigger into flowering, and
you're just
not getting enough sunlight in some cases or
whatever that case may be.
This supplemental light is exactly what it is.
It's supplementing some light in order to keep
those plants
in the stage that you're intending,
without trying to rely on them for ultimately
all the growth and production that's required. Yeah.
Right on.
There's one more topic I wanna,
mention here. We don't need to discuss it,
but I just wanna throw this out there
for the the the one person who needs
it.
If you happen to live in a place
with a very short cultivation season, like where
I am in Washington state,
you can also consider something that I learned
from an OG,
black market grower in, Port Townsend.
If you're listening, man, I would love to
see you again.
He made raised beds,
and he put in heaters in the soil
because one of the problems that we run
into is that after the evenings start to
get under 50 degrees, the the containers go
to sleep. Right? All of your all your
microbe life falls asleep
from from the consistent cold, and so that
tells the roots we're done, and so the
plants finish up and start to mold.
But he would keep,
he he would trick out his tents with
the lights, and then he would also put
them in warmed beds.
And, like, he was growing outdoors and harvesting,
like, 1st week in January and stuff. And,
like, in Washington, that's ridiculous.
He said that he was able to, go
until the snow started to be too heavy
on his on his,
hoop, and then he had to be done.
So so if you happen to be in
one of those places
where,
the the season is cold and you are
in containers,
there's an idea for you.
A 100%. I was gonna bring that up
earlier, and I kinda just moved through things
and forgot. But the the radiant heat is
really important for production
going into those colder months or parts of
the areas of the country.
Anytime that you have your substrate start to
go below even 60 degrees, like you're saying,
everything starts to hibernate and slows down progress.
And so we want our soil temps to
be 69 to 70 degrees.
And so that also means we don't wanna
use freezing cold water to irrigate with when
we do go irrigate. Yeah. And so I'm
not advocating hot water, but I am advocating,
you know, something that's temperate and not straight
out of the ground at, you know, 40
or 50 degrees. So if you can get
your water
closer to 70, it doesn't have to be
hot because hot water will actually start to
grow bad things
and cause problems as well. But we wanna
avoid the freezing cold. And the other thing
that people have done is they've, you know,
maybe wrapped their beds or even their grow
pots in some type of insulation.
The the
the most low cost effective might be straw
mulch even that they
wrap around them. There's other people you know,
you're familiar with hash makers. They'll wrap their
washing machine with that,
mylar looking bubble wrap stuff that is insulative,
and it can get wet. It doesn't fall
apart. You know? And so that kind of
stuff chopped up and wrapped around your pots
or your beds
in conjunction with the idea of adding some
heat. And so there are some radiant heat
ideas and companies out there.
You and I always throw these selfless plugs.
We're not connected to any of these companies
usually. Yeah. But we plug them anyway.
There's a company, I think, in the Midwest
called Radiant Tech,
and it's radiant, TEC at the end. Radiant
Tech has a lot of do it yourself
supplies for creating
a radiant heating system.
And then there's another company that's more commercial,
but I think they do have some hobby
kits now, and they're good people called BioTherm
in California. And BioTherm
also provides radiant heat systems for commercial greenhouses.
But, again, I think they have something on
the hobby side.
But if you're considering
extending the seasons, if you're considering growing in
the winter, or if you're growing in a
place like where you guys have the short
really short seasons,
some of these things can be beneficial, if
not all of them, at least one of
them, and the and that would be not
irrigating with the freezing cold water.
Don't pull it up from your well and
put it right on the plants. Yeah. Exactly.
You're not gonna wanna bathe in that, so
neither do they. Right on. Alright. So the
last topic I want us to touch on,
Eric,
you have told me so many times
to make sure that I put to get
put away
my greenhouse skin properly
because
they are expensive. And if I don't clean
it before I put it away, it's gonna
get crappy over the winter. And then I
did not listen to you,
and I screwed up all my stuff, and
so I had to replace the plastics the
next year. So
going forward, I now listen to you, and
I make sure I I wash down the
greenhouse, let it dry, and fold it up
before, you know, before the weather gets too
bad.
But I I I can imagine that there
is some, like, general upkeep that should probably
be done on these greenhouse skins over the
year. Like, I don't know if there's a
plastic conditioner or anything,
and then they should be put away correctly.
So will you give us your little your
little best thoughts on taking care of the
greenhouse and how to properly put it away
for the season?
Sure. I mean, the a little soap and
water goes a long ways. I mean, I
think if you were to look online of
somebody like Greenhouse Megastore or Griffin Greenhouse and
maybe even a company that in Santa Barbara
called Total Energy Group.
Total Energy Group sells a lot of,
whitewash materials so that you can, you know,
add,
a lot of greenhouses in the wintertime that
are commercial that might be glass I'm sorry,
in the summertime
that don't have a automated shade cloth or
something like that,
will spray a whitewash type of a paint
on the glass. And so it basically calms
down the sun's intensity because it takes away
some of that transparency.
And then it washes off in the wintertime
or when it rains. And so
companies like that might sell a conditioner of
some kind, but I would say that, you
know,
in a lot of areas of cannabis growing,
I've gone out and seen that, you know,
there is,
quite a
bit of
particulate
that settles on these greenhouse frames, whether it's
dust or environmental stuff, pine needles or whatever.
It's not out of the question to go
out there once a week, once a month,
and just hose the greenhouse down with a
hose
so that you get some of that particulate
off. And then when it comes to wintertime,
like you were saying, is taking it completely
off. And it not only protects the skin,
it protects the frame because,
as you were saying earlier, if we get
a tremendous amount of rain, it can build
up into the greenhouse in these little pockets
and saggy spots.
If it snows, that snow load will take
down the greenhouse frame, and so will the
rain if it gets enough water trapped on
top of it in weird places.
And so by taking the greenhouse cover off,
we're avoiding the frame collapsing or bending or
creating any stress on it.
And then it's also gonna make that cover
last a lot longer. One of the things
or mistakes people do is they'll just fold
it up and stick it in the garage.
And what ends up happening is, for some
reason, I don't know what it is, but
mice just seem to be attracted to plastic
and weird things like this, and they bore
a hole in the side of it when
it's folded up. And then when you go
unfold it, it's like a piece of Swiss
cheese.
And so, you know,
having that piece of plastic rolled up and
maybe put into a cardboard box
simply is enough.
I've for some reason, the mice don't always
bore through them. They can,
but for some reason, they tend to leave
stuff alone.
If you can get a black and yellow
tote and fit it inside of that, that
might even be a better solution for
really keeping anything out and bugs
and and rodents that that way.
I would never recommend using any kind of
rodent,
killer or
spray or anything because a lot of the
products or chemicals in those products,
can be bioaccumulated
by cannabis and cause a test fail. And
so,
trying to keep like I said, soap and
water,
letting it dry, folding it up, putting it
in a box or a black and yellow
tote of some kind, and stick it in
the garage maybe,
somewhere
up high or
or,
easy to keep away from the kids and
the animals and things like that, and your
greenhouse cover is gonna last way longer than
probably even the manufacturer
specifications
state.
Right on. Now that's the kind of experience
I was looking for. You know, the the
idea of throwing it in a black and
yellow tote is so obvious, and I missed
it. I've actually run into the the the
rat problems that you've got with them eating
through it, And so mine are actually
suspended from rope from the ceiling.
Okay. And, but I actually like your idea
of putting it in the black and white
a lot better because,
well, it doesn't look as weird.
But also, it it won't go through all
the temperature changes as the the the ambient
air in the garage.
Mhmm. Yeah. So that's good. So alright. Cool.
Well, Eric, let's wrap up, man. Thank you
so much for joining me again on shaping
fire.
You know, I have always enjoyed your professionalism
and your depth of knowledge,
but I also really enjoy because you're a
good conversationalist, and you're just fun to hang
out with. And so I'm I'm glad we
got an opportunity to hang out for a
couple hours today with everybody hanging out with
us so we could just, like, you know,
chat and hang.
Yeah. No. It's always good chatting with you,
and I miss hanging with you. We're gonna
have to get you out of we're gonna
have to dust you off and get you
out here to want something one of these
days so we can hang out again, but
it's gotta be the right thing. So when
that comes up, I'll be calling you. Yeah.
The the the the man, I I miss
because it used to be, like, it at
the very least, you and I saw each
other at Emerald Cup. And and and, like,
you know, I don't I don't wanna, diss
Emerald Cup because I know you're still heavy
there as a judge, but Emerald Cup has
changed, you know, and and it just doesn't
bring all the people that it used to,
and and I I miss that old family.
It's changed a lot, and it yeah. I
miss a lot of that too. It's it's
definitely not the same, and there's some other
events out there that are kinda like that.
But,
yeah, it's it's all changed, and the events
are all different. But one of these days,
something's gonna,
you know, happen, and we're gonna be like,
hey. We'll be at that I'll never see
you there. Yeah. I mean, the wonderland days
were great too for meeting up. I mean,
I miss the wonderland. Land days were great
too for meeting up. I mean, I miss
the wonderland days and, you know, some of
those
spring kickoffs and things that Kevin used to
throw up there. Yep.
You know, people just don't wanna travel like
they used to, especially,
you know, a lot of the growers.
I think the most popular event or one
of the more popular NorCal events nowadays that
just happen is the ego clash.
I've never been, but,
it seems to be, you know, the new
community event.
Yeah. I agree. I do think that,
the these these,
specialty,
very small,
ultra
high quality events is where it is right
now. I'd love to see the return of
a big event, but it would have to
take a very particular promoter to pull it
off so that it doesn't get usurped as
much by the the commodity advertising and turn
it into what everything else is. But,
Totally. I would definitely support such an event
if it happened.
Right on, man. Well, it's always good catching
up with you. Good catching up with you,
man.
So let's let's plug some of your some
of your stuff. So my dear listening friend,
if you are interested
in hiring,
Eric Branstad
to consult for you on your greenhouse, whatever
its size,
by all means, you should reach out to
him because he does that full time all
over the country, and he's great at it.
So,
for that kind of information, you can go
to his website at
greenhouse
advisory
group
dotcom.
And get all that information and reach out
to Eric through there.
If you are interested in following
him on the media socials,
you've got 2 options. The first one is
the, the the Instagram for the business, which
is
gh_advisorygroupunders
no. Nope. Nope. Sorry. Let me try that
again. Gh_advisory_group.
That's the business Instagram.
And the one that I would recommend everybody
follow because it's a good time and Eric
really kinda like you can get to know
Eric as a person through it, is his
personal IG, which is light_
dep_greenhouse.
So those 2 are on IG and then
his, website.
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