Why do commercial growers NOT use hydro??!

G

Grower4God

Member
So I was reading Cannabis Culture, reading about CGE commercial grow operations, and I'm wondering why commercial growers tend to use soilless mixes rather than hydroponics. From everything I've read, hydroponics is the fastest way to get what you want, and going with any other medium (besides of course aero) is just a way to get a more natural and better-tasting product. So... What's the deal here? Why are commercial growers using soil or (moreso) soilless mixes rather than hydroponic grow mediums? It doesn't make sense to me.
 
SCARHOLE

SCARHOLE

Well-Known Member
Soil is more forgiving, less expensive.
Most believe organic soil makes the best tasting bud.
Not to mention they are probaly oldschool an fear change. (LOL Ive never even tried hydroponic growing & prolly wont.)
 
The Serpent

The Serpent

Active Member
I'm not so sure this is the case? I was reading "urban Garden," (not sure which issue) and there was a good read about hydro growing with commercial guys in it. I think it's like a lof stuff in this "hobby / culture," your going to get split opinion and a lot of differing methods. I think it might also be dependant on where you stay geographically wise, whether your climate can allow you to grow outdoor as well. Hydro for me is just a cleaner method, I grow indoor and soil etc doesn't appeal on that front.

I personally really like the fact there are numerous methods and variations to growing. Keeps it interesting and always means you have something to read about which is new to you. I doubt I'll ever do a soil grow but that doesn't mean to say I'm not interested in it, same with DWC systems and dripper systems etc, I use NFT but at the same time seeing those systems work really engages me. As a first time grower, there's nothing better than seeing how everyone else does it! I also really like reading the DIY stuff and trying to come up with your own ideas, not matter how simple the problem is.

RIU has become a favourite site of mine now obviously, and I'm forever reading away on the various boards, seeing guys harvests, reading what people thought about strain xyz etc. Tis good stuff!

:)
 
Gamberro

Gamberro

Well-Known Member
I have to say, it does seem odd that growers like BC Hardcore go to the lengths of multi-ton AC units and sealed buildings with CO2 added, but DON'T use hydro, which does grow a lot faster. I can't imagine the thought process there, unless he's really just that dedicated to taste.
Serpent, could you share a link? I'm interested in carefully expanding my grow in the future. I, too, endlessly imagine, jotting down different blueprints etc. on a constant basis. So commercial grows are of special interest to me. I have a pretty experimental 360º*grow planned for my grow room, so keep eyes pinned to me for when that starts happening in the next couple of months.
 
tip top toker

tip top toker

Well-Known Member
All just depoends on what is wanted. Some people just like better, there is a market for more expensive but tastier. That just goes for everything in life, hence for example there are restaurants that are not mcdonalds.
 
VICTORYGARDENSHYDRO

VICTORYGARDENSHYDRO

New Member
so hydro grows faster? you mean you can cut your 8 week flowering times down to 6 or even 4??
don't think so. maybe veg out faster. but by what? a day,week?
 
F

fred flintstoned

Well-Known Member
I'm a commercial farmer of row crops, corn, soybeans, etc. and I think it's a matter of labor costs.
Consider the amount of time you spend tending to a 10x10 hydro garden. Your harvests are certainly larger and somewhat faster, but man hours per pound are astronomically higher too.
Now translate this to a 36x96 greenhouse and you get a taste of the time involved. Imagine how many employees you would need for 6-8 greenhouses, the minimum amount to really be profitable on a large scale. You'd need a whole army of Mexicans to pull that off. Weed might bring a high enough price on the black market to justify the cost but very few other crops would be profitable.
Just as an example, over the last 10 years or so I've changed all our fields over to strictly organic production. While we're producing more and selling at a higher price point, we went from 12 employees to 47. A major upswing in labor costs.
Just my .02
Fred
 
Gamberro

Gamberro

Well-Known Member
Wow, I think flintstoned hit the nail on the head, as they say. Another part to this is that this requires more people being aware of your grow site which just raises the danger of getting caught, or having a break-in by former employees or people the employees happen to gab to.

VICTORY, I disagree; I believe that hydro results in MUCH denser buds in the same amount of time than soil/mix results. And veg time for me is massively different, so perhaps that wouldn't matter much in a SOG but in just about any other growing method I can think of, that veg time can be precious. From what I'm told hydro also adds to the vitality of the plants, however I am not personally certain of that, but I can tell you it's a hell of a lot less messy. And on top of all that, in my personal experience, everybody wants the 'dro.
 
TruenoAE86coupe

TruenoAE86coupe

Moderator
One word, Employees.
Dirt is super easy, hydro needs immediate attention to any issues, or it can be a compete fail. So if you don't want to be there every damn day, then you need to make it so employees can run it.
 
Gogowitz

Gogowitz

Active Member
check out the wegrow plan for commercial growing. Everything is hydro, and enviormental control for each strain. It's supposed to produce 20 pounds a week or something!!
 
sgt d

sgt d

Well-Known Member
Correct, y'all, and I'd like to add a coupla things...

Victory, i've run crops a few ways, and in every case but one, the same plants were finished sooner when run hydro. Less veg time, more vigorous plants overall, and yeah, a few days to a week faster in flowering. Over the course of a year or more, that's major time savings that add up to possibly another whole crop or more per year than you would have gotten otherwise.

G4G, lately folks in my neck of the woods have been referring to anything NOT soil as "hydro." In MY world, "hydro" means a flood and drain system on timers, but I guess that's not how everybody sees it. It's confusing. I'm top feeding a soilless mix atm, and folks round here would call it hydro, tho I would not...so now, whenever this comes up, I have to explain what I mean when I say "hydro" so that we're on the same page.

I have my plants in 2 gal pots of a coco based soilless mix, sitting on flood and drain tables. Soon, they'll be hooked up to pumps and the tables will be flooded and there'll be no more top feeding. So this will be a soilless/hydro setup. The soilless mix I'm using has very good drainage and needs to be watered at least once a day; I think of it as an organic rockwool cube. The reason I'm using soilless and not rockwool is that I HATE taking carloads of rockwool to the dump, wrapped in plastic, where they will sit, completely unaltered, until judgement day. It's a damn environmental catastrophe. My soilless mix, however, when I'm done with it, will be tilled into the garden where it will continue to be useful. Even if you don't have a garden to put it in, you can feel mostly OK about simply dumping it into a hole in the yard and covering it up. Check that hole on J-day: it will have long since broken down into dirt; sweet, useful, natural dirt. So perhaps in some cases the lack of commercial hydro growers can be chalked up to at least a minimum level environmental consciousness.
 
The Serpent

The Serpent

Active Member
Gogowitz said:
check out the wegrow plan for commercial growing. Everything is hydro, and enviormental control for each strain. It's supposed to produce 20 pounds a week or something!!
Click to expand...
this was my point earlier, lots of differing opinion. Simple as this, just depends on who is growing. A company may have the employees required for a commercial grow in hydro, or it may just be well managed. Another company may prefer soil. It's all six and half a dozen at end of day in terms of relevace for this thread.
 
VICTORYGARDENSHYDRO

VICTORYGARDENSHYDRO

New Member
sgt d said:
Correct, y'all, and I'd like to add a coupla things...

Victory, i've run crops a few ways, and in every case but one, the same plants were finished sooner when run hydro. Less veg time, more vigorous plants overall, and yeah, a few days to a week faster in flowering. Over the course of a year or more, that's major time savings that add up to possibly another whole crop or more per year than you would have gotten otherwise.

G4G, lately folks in my neck of the woods have been referring to anything NOT soil as "hydro." In MY world, "hydro" means a flood and drain system on timers, but I guess that's not how everybody sees it. It's confusing. I'm top feeding a soilless mix atm, and folks round here would call it hydro, tho I would not...so now, whenever this comes up, I have to explain what I mean when I say "hydro" so that we're on the same page.

I have my plants in 2 gal pots of a coco based soilless mix, sitting on flood and drain tables. Soon, they'll be hooked up to pumps and the tables will be flooded and there'll be no more top feeding. So this will be a soilless/hydro setup. The soilless mix I'm using has very good drainage and needs to be watered at least once a day; I think of it as an organic rockwool cube. The reason I'm using soilless and not rockwool is that I HATE taking carloads of rockwool to the dump, wrapped in plastic, where they will sit, completely unaltered, until judgement day. It's a damn environmental catastrophe. My soilless mix, however, when I'm done with it, will be tilled into the garden where it will continue to be useful. Even if you don't have a garden to put it in, you can feel mostly OK about simply dumping it into a hole in the yard and covering it up. Check that hole on J-day: it will have long since broken down into dirt; sweet, useful, natural dirt. So perhaps in some cases the lack of commercial hydro growers can be chalked up to at least a minimum level environmental consciousness.
Click to expand...
so an 8 week strain ran in hydro can be finished in 7? or, because they were pumped full of nutes, they are bigger and so they are pulled earlier? are they really "finished"?
 
sgt d

sgt d

Well-Known Member
VICTORYGARDENSHYDRO said:
so an 8 week strain ran in hydro can be finished in 7? or, because they were pumped full of nutes, they are bigger and so they are pulled earlier? are they really "finished"?
Click to expand...
I'm not saying an 8 weeker can be done in 7, though it might be true...I haven't tested it. But the reason that most strains are listed as finishing within a certain range (e.g. 7-9 weeks) is that some methods (e.g. hydro/flood and drain/rockwool) tend to finish plants faster than others (e.g. 5 gallon pots of dirt.) Given the vast number of methods available, it's impossible, or at least disengenuous, to state that a strain is an 8 weeker, flat out, no variation possible, unless maybe it's one of those crazy autoflowering strains that I've never dealt with.

So yeah, maybe my 8 weeker WILL finish in 7 weeks in your room, who knows. Maybe it'll finish in 9. I think the "pumped full of nutes" part accounts for the nugs-on-steroids appearance and smell of hydro, but personally, I think that what makes em finish faster is the fact that they're fed/watered so much more, so much more often, than top fed plants in big pots. I don't know why, I'm not a frickin scientist, but that's what I think...'cause the methods that seem to finish even faster than hydro, aero and maybe deep water culture, are in turn fed more, more often, than hydro. That is, they are fed/watered continuously.

Isn't NFT like that too, or is NFT watered periodically, not continuously?

Um...so my point is that it seems safe to say that given the right environment, light, no unnecessary stresses, etc. a 7-9 week strain will finish closer to the 7 week mark than the 9 when run hydro. Though there's no guarantees in this life, either...
 
DrFever

DrFever

New Member
figure it out peeps try growing 200 -300 plants in hydro all i can say is good luck and what if you had a major fck up say good buy to a monster yield

in soil its more foregiving all you need is lights and watering cha ching if anything the root system will mature in hydro faster
doesn't yield faster only thing IMO that will make a plant finish faster is wattage and changing out lights to new ones on a regular basis or more i would love to see a 6 foot or seven foot plant in a hydro system :))
Remember some comercial growers are useing 50 gallon pots on wheels the trees are monsters what ever there doin they prob got 2 veg rooms, and 2 flower rooms there clones come out not as clones but as plants :))
its easy for anyone to guess being a comercial grower i am far from it but can tell you first hand holy fck its not easy i my self have 800 clones at all times over 250 plants in different stages of growing watering is a fckin nightmare 70 - 80 plants takes like 6 - 12 hrs
 
Gamberro

Gamberro

Well-Known Member
DrFever said:
in soil its more foregiving all you need is lights and watering cha ching if anything the root system will mature in hydro faster
doesn't yield faster only thing IMO that will make a plant finish faster is wattage and changing out lights to new ones on a regular basis or more i would love to see a 6 foot or seven foot plant in a hydro system :))
Click to expand...
Again, I disagree. I think the information is out there, and in my personal experience, even growing under the beauty of the true Sun has difficulty matching up to indoor hydro. The buds are denser, veg is much, much faster... the list really does go on. Just my opinion, but I'm certainly standing by it.
DrFever said:
check this out [video=youtube;xMKhnMc4wmQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMKhnMc4wmQ&feature=related[/video]
Click to expand...
Doctor, I think you just gave me a fever. I'm thinkin, you and me have got to talk.
 
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