Training techniques for professional farms

[TrippyDBA]

Just curious - do professional farms (those that grow hundreds of plants to feed the dispensaries) use LST or HST techniques or do they just put the plants in the soil and feed them boat loads of light and quality nutrients? It seems if you have hundreds of plants to take care of you wouldn't have time to training them without an army of people to monitor, but that's just my guess.

Has anyone ever talked to these professional growers of large scale operations?

 

[TheFertilizer]

The only farm I've been on was as subcontracting work for a consultant. The farm had 1000 plants all 5 months into veg and hadn't ever pruned at all. So they hired us to prune them up, took ten guys like a week of 8 hour days to do them all. Of course it all depends on skill too but yeah it's a labor intensive job, the more people you try to teach to do it the more chances someone doesn't get it. We were told to leave 12 to 24 chutes per plant and to clear out all but 4-6 budsites at the top of each. Some people were removing damn near every leaf on the plant, some were doing seemingly nothing. My guess is they went back througb later and just had us do most of the grunt work.

 

[Tead]

Just curious - do professional farms (those that grow hundreds of plants to feed the dispensaries) use LST or HST techniques or do they just put the plants in the soil and feed them boat loads of light and quality nutrients? It seems if you have hundreds of plants to take care of you wouldn't have time to training them without an army of people to monitor, but that's just my guess.

Has anyone ever talked to these professional growers of large scale operations?

It would seem highly labor intensive in a large scale operation. Plus, if you're a large scale operation, plant size is probably not so much a limiting factor. These techniques are generally designed to make the best use of smaller-than-large-scale grow rooms.
I see it more as a labor of love.

NOTE: Tead is NO WHERE NEAR a large-scale-operation and has no knowledge... just tossing out my 2cents.

 

[Major PITA]

From what little I've seen, a lot of the "big" guys do some version of hydro to get max yields as quick as possible. I doubt they take the time to play with each plant to that extent. They grow 'em quick and turn the space over ASAP.

 

[electro gypsy]

i've toured 9 rec farms here in Washington so far with more to come. the focus is mostly on speed auto flower for indoor. some are doing photo's or both. outdoors the focus is mostly on large producer sativas. some are topping and trimming, but i have yet to see anyone training. it's all about fast turn over for the indoor farms.. and bulk harvest for the outdoors imo.

 

[TheFertilizer]

i've toured 9 rec farms here in Washington so far with more to come. the focus is mostly on speed auto flower for indoor. some are doing photo's or both. outdoors the focus is mostly on large producer sativas. some are topping and trimming, but i have yet to see anyone training. it's all about fast turn over for the indoor farms.. and bulk harvest for the outdoors imo.

Probably why we have a surplus of bud. I noticed the indoor setups at the place I was at was doing something weird, they had like single colas planted. I am guessing those were actually auto flowers?

Only one farm I've been to (and I've only been to two) had any kind of training and it was more like like a bamboo cage they were trying buds onto but it wasn't a very big operation either, maybe a hundred plants.

 

[electro gypsy]

Probably why we have a surplus of bud. I noticed the indoor setups at the place I was at was doing something weird, they had like single colas planted. I am guessing those were actually auto flowers?

Only one farm I've been to (and I've only been to two) had any kind of training and it was more like like a bamboo cage they were trying buds onto but it wasn't a very big operation either, maybe a hundred plants.

yeah i've seen a mix of everything.. support systems, various lighting types from plasma arc. LED, to good ol' MH and HPS. all hydro except the outdoor.. or what is now being called 'sun grown'. the first indoor place i went to looked like my place LOL. every kind of light hanging everywhere. string and sticks even some stressed plants

what's funny is to see so many different things happening in identical rental units. yep. someone got smart and geared up a whole facility near the Shelton airport with multiple rental units. wired and plumbed for the farms

 

[TheFertilizer]

yeah i've seen a mix of everything.. support systems, various lighting types from plasma arc. LED, to good ol' MH and HPS. all hydro except the outdoor.. or what is now being called 'sun grown'. the first indoor place i went to looked like my place LOL. every kind of light hanging everywhere. string and sticks even some stressed plants

what's funny is to see so many different things happening in identical rental units. yep. someone got smart and geared up a whole facility near the Shelton airport with multiple rental units. wired and plumbed for the farms

The big one I went to was obviously just people with money and a license and no knowledge. They converted a junk yard into a lot and barely even put in new fill dirt. We were finding nuts and spark plugs in the soil. Guess they had an iron and zinc deficiency

 

[electro gypsy]

The big one I went to was obviously just people with money and a license and no knowledge. They converted a junk yard into a lot and barely even put in new fill dirt. We were finding nuts and spark plugs in the soil. Guess they had an iron and zinc deficiency

you'll notice my location is 1984.. there's a reason for that lol. i mean mullets and camaro's without a lot of more modernized knowledge. i wouldn't be surprised if miracle grow isn't the state of the art fertilizer. ok, enough negativity lol, but it is throwbackville usa. terms like LED and Auto-flower just bring on blank looks

 

[electro gypsy]

the thing that kills me the most is all the strain renaming gaaaaaaahhh. ok better now

 

[Tead]

the thing that kills me the most is all the strain renaming gaaaaaaahhh. ok better now

I JUST got a little gift from a friend... named "Dairy Queen"!
They're killin me. Acapulco Gold baby!

 

[TheFertilizer]

I JUST got a little gift from a friend... named "Dairy Queen"!
They're killin me. Acapulco Gold baby!

Is that what Dairy Queen is? Had some of that grown with an LED, was very sweet tasting.

 

[TrippyDBA]

So it sounds like volume for the big guys. I feel like if I was growing for anyone but myself it'd be smart to adopt that mentality. But as Tead said, I think maybe all the fuss we take over these home grows is for pride and pleasure...

I think it would be interesting if it went federally legal to see how the mega farms that are now growing corn or wheat would take on growing this. We might see acres of 50' tall plants

 

[Tead]

Is that what Dairy Queen is? Had some of that grown with an LED, was very sweet tasting.

No no.... not at all... sorry to mislead. I was just reminiscing about the days when names were like... 4 choices... and we bought 'lids' or '4 fingers".
It was a long time ago. Dirt was new. Water had been around for a while... but we didn't know what it was for.

 

[TheFertilizer]

No no.... not at all... sorry to mislead. I was just reminiscing about the days when names were like... 4 choices... and we bought 'lids' or '4 fingers".
It was a long time ago. Dirt was new. Water had been around for a while... but we didn't know what it was for.

Lol I remember one and two finger bags well up until 2006. We use to get "mersh", which was grown by the cartel guys but not South of the border. They bad HUGE guerilla grows all over my state. I think they grew some of the same genetics in most of the PNW. I still have seeds of it I wanna pop some day, it was a heavy indica.

So little time to mess around with unknown genetics when there is so many good genetics to choose!

Trippy, it would probably be very similar to hops farming.