Commercial Greenhouse

We find that find that there are two main factors which influence the type of greenhouse system that a group may consider for cannabis production.

The unavoidable is upon us; heating season! As unpleasant as it may be for all growers, winter is a fact of life and it must be considered. Heating costs during the cold winter months are of prime concern - here is a quick checklist to maximize the efficiency of your greenhouse heating system:

There is a current trend that has caused more and more commercial greenhouse growers to switch their oil and propane powered boilers to biomass systems. The factors that are leading to such changes are simple: in areas where natural gas is not accessible, the options of oil, propane or electricity to heat a commercial greenhouse are becoming far too expensive, in some cases there is a biomass supply close to the greenhouse location, and there has been growing government incentive toward sustainability.

Although we have generally experienced a milder winter so far, in the new year we can expect the weather to turn much colder and field crop farmers are likely to be looking for solutions to help protect their yields.

High Tunnels like the GGS Crop Protector are used by growers for this very reason. Though not a load bearing house ( ie. It is not designed to hold snow or support a crop ), these crop protectors are designed to cover crops in shoulder seasons when frost damage can dramatically affect a farmer’s bottom line.

When it comes to energy issues, these little items can really add up! Energy conservation has been a popular topic of conversation, but there are many aspects that are often overlooked by today’s growers.

Maximizing lighting efficiency is a major concern for many growers who rely on supplemental lighting in their greenhouse. Here are some criteria to take into account when choosing and maintaining your lamps. The lighting you choose depends on many things like what developmental stage your plants will be grown to, whether the plants receive light from other radiation sources, and the photoperiod length per day for your plant.

How many greenhouse operations are concerned with energy savings? I will bet almost every one of them at one time or another! Energy costs are at the top of the grower’s expenses and yet there are many operations that do not spend enough time investigating how to lower their energy use.

If you could go back and re-design your existing greenhouse, how many changes would you make? How many of those changes would be minor ones and how many would involve major structural, heating or other mechanical changes? Avoiding this in your future expansion is easy; have a checklist of things you should have in your greenhouse now and incorporate them into the next build.