Need a grow manager for a 30 light perpetual spot, NorCal

[Lazyman]

For You to 'do' all that and come up with only that is pitiable. #2 Are you including Your housing costs in all that, just askin'. Cause that is your cost to live like anyone else.

And, what exactly do You 'do'..?

No, it's a separate place that I am entirely financially responsible for. Long story and the details aren't necessary here. Even if I wasn't growing there I'd have to pay for it.

What do I do? All the shopping for 3 sites, staffing, scheduling, all the transportation and sales, paying all the bills (and taxes), maintaining security systems, property management, data entry, janitor, bookkeeper, and take care of my own 10 light grow. Basically I do every job nobody else can or will do, just like every other small biz owner.

 

[Ogtg2213]

Haha that's cute man! A mom, supplying 180 clones every 2 weeks. Takes a whole nother grow tent full of 2 generations of moms, 2 big cloning machines, and a couple hours a day of maintenance, and 18 hours a day of power. Cost to make clones is only a smidge less than buying them, and zero guarantees they'll all have feet in 14 days. Trust me, I spreadsheet this shit. What really fucking sucks is your cost to grow those clones is the same whether you get 300 rooted, or zero. Extra fun to then have to go BUY clones last second when you're a tray or two short

Between my 3 spots I have 1900 gallons of reservoirs changed every week. Nutrients add up fast.

I also have to pay my helpers 25 an hour (soon to be 30) to keep them from leaving for people who already pay that much. Costs of everything keep climbing, except the retail price of pot.

You can't be serious here? Your clone guy must love you!! The reasons clones cost so much is because of the crazy plant counts they keep.not because of power and supplies. I usto make more off clone factories than grow ops. You could definatly make you own clones for under 100 dollars worth of power per run. Start up costs would likely total 1500 for the room and a bunch of t-8's and it would double as a pre veg area. You should hire a guy like waxy taxi or a growing consultant that knows how to grow and clone, your profit margins would go up substantially.
Res changes every week is expensive , and totally unnecessary, you need an experiment room and res so you can figure out a balanced nute program.you can easily get through a grow with 1-2 res changes. You need to get expenses much lower if you plan to compete with only 30 lights.

 

[Lazyman]

Dosatrons are good for guys doing 2 or 3 part nutrients with no additives, we use the H&G line which is a minimum of 3 parts, and up to 8 or 9. There are also 3 different gardens in flower (perpetual) so I'd have to have up to 9 dosatrons per garden. It would be a plumbing nightmare. It's also not drain to waste, which would be hugely impractical as we are on a well and the water must all go through an RO first.

Regarding cloning expenses

I know to the penny how much it costs to grow clones, I already have all the equipment. You're forgetting the labor costs to pay people to not only tend the moms, but the time it takes to cut and stick a couple 144 site Turbokloners.

Trust me I've made clones, tens of thousands of them. The only variable left is performance, the guarantee that they will all root. Since you can't do that yourself, and there is zero flexibility in a perpetual grow, the only answer is to buy clones so you are guaranteed babies on the day you need them. There is no time to wait an extra few days or a week if they don't have feet.

 

[Ogtg2213]

Lazy man, with all due respect I havnt forgotten or missed anything. I've run many grows that size and much larger. That's exactly why you should be doing your own clones, the guarantee there clean and rooted on time.it shouldn't take you any more than 1 hour to cut 100 clones and 2 mins a day to check on them. Fuck the turbo clones, use rockwool trays for production cloning

As far as the nutrients go you seriously need to do some experiments on a smaller grow and figure something out. Your simply spending to much and creating to much work doing weekly change outs. It's such a hassle and waste.
You also have the option to buy meters that will tell you exact amounts of each nutrient in your system so your not blindly adding things.
If you wanna be competitive in this business your gonna need to cut corners , start with clones and food as they seem to be very large expenses on your grow.
When you hire a consultant or master grower he's gonna tell you these same things, and if he's worth his salt he will be able to save you a ton of money.

 

[PdxFarms]

Maybe nobody read the part where he mentioned he has spread sheet the comparative cost between buying clones and producing clones from mothers. Keeping mothers around that can produce enough clones to sustain perpetual cycles is ridiculous in a commercial market. Not only do they take up space which is money, they consume power, require maintenance and who wants to keep 5-10 mothers of each strain when the market needs/strains are constantly changing. I've ran the numbers myself and it simply doesn't make sense. I've done away with a veg/clone room all together on a small 15 light setup and have resided to buying ready to flower girls from a reputable client. Been running that way for a year now on one setup and after running the numbers I'm way ahead this time around and only put half the time in I used to. Considering it on my other setups as well. Nothing wrong with buying bulk clones from a reputable clonery vs keeping mothers around that are taking up real estate that could be making money. In a setup like that, every square inch it's important.


Best of luck with your setup and finding a manager who fits the bill your looking for.

 

[Ogtg2213]

Edit- good luck lazyman

 

[Lazyman]

Maybe nobody read the part where he mentioned he has spread sheet the comparative cost between buying clones and producing clones from mothers. Keeping mothers around that can produce enough clones to sustain perpetual cycles is ridiculous in a commercial market. Not only do they take up space which is money, they consume power, require maintenance and who wants to keep 5-10 mothers of each strain when the market needs/strains are constantly changing. I've ran the numbers myself and it simply doesn't make sense. I've done away with a veg/clone room all together on a small 15 light setup and have resided to buying ready to flower girls from a reputable client. Been running that way for a year now on one setup and after running the numbers I'm way ahead this time around and only put half the time in I used to. Considering it on my other setups as well. Nothing wrong with buying bulk clones from a reputable clonery vs keeping mothers around that are taking up real estate that could be making money. In a setup like that, every square inch it's important.


Best of luck with your setup and finding a manager who fits the bill your looking for.

Its actually tougher than that! I used to do lots of clones, sometimes a couple thousand at a time. Checking every tray, misting them, pulling duds, rotating them, adjusting vents and mixing watering solutions just for clones would take a couple hours every morning, and again every night. That was all me, and it meant I could never leave the house for more than 12 hours without coming home to several trays of dead kids.

Mom's are a pain, the longer you have them the worse they get. We would do 3 sets of cuts off each mom then toss em, so we always had to have at least 2 generations of moms (about 15 large mom's each) to be able to take at least 200 clones every 2 to 3 weeks. They needed to be reported twice, fed and watered daily, and yeah I spreadsheeted it calculating:

Exact power cost for lights for moms and clone trays (with heaters)
Labor to cut and stick clones (it takes a couple hours to cut, trim, dip and stick 200) @ $25/hr
Daily mom labor @ $25/hr
Daily clone labor @ $25/hr for 3 weeks
Nutrients
Clone plugs or collars
Rooting gel and scalpels
Percentage of annual light bulb replacement costs (3/52)

So in the end, it costs me $240 more per crop to buy them than to make them. However, this is also a guaranteed batch of clones, rooted on X date, and my guys are free to do better things. It also freed up physical room so I can now veg my bought clones a little longer, and reduced my overall power consumption by a few KW (just cloning and moms took 56x54w T5HO bulbs.) Much less stressful for me, more reliable, and I actually was able to let one ornery part-time employee go, as this was all he did.

No it's not the absolute cheapest solution, but to me the additional money is money well-spent. Not all costs are monetary.

 

[Lazyman]

1900 gl?!!! HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF A DOSATRON???

sorry for the caps but its how I feel right now...
http://www.dosatronusa.com/nds/

Im working now, but I will say this...

your overthinkin it Lazy, its all in the technique...

Well, they aren't all in one place. Veg has 2 x100g tanks for 4x8 flood and drain trays, and a 50g barrel for pre-veg and overflow. We pre-veg for two off-site locations there too under a couple T5s, so we can use the 2 off-site 10 lighters for mainly flower rooms. Takes 2 weeks off each crop, so we get an extra crop every 14.3 months per location.

Flower has 3 pairs of 105g vertical tanks, that we can divorce for different strains, or Siamese to use as one big tank. With the ebb n gro buckets we flood 80 at a time and let it drain back before firing the second half anyway, otherwise it would take way too long to flood 160 x 2g buckets.

Off-site each 10 lighter has 5x100g tanks, where we do 1 last week of veg then 9 weeks flower.

I can't see how a Dosatron would even help in a flood and drain environment. Outdoors, or even drain to waste, certainly, but recirculating? No way, especially with our shitty well water.

 

[highsteppa]

Clones

Clones

A little off topic, but if you don't mind, what are you paying for clones per piece and what price difference for smaller vs larger plants? Also curious about quantity price breaks and minimum order per variety. Thanks

 

[Lazyman]

I pay 8 to 10 bucks a clone, no price breaks. Larger clones are available for 15 or 16, but they aren't worth the extra week of veg time they save me since they add $800 to the price of an order, even cutting it from 180 clones (20 spares) to 160 (0 spares.)

 

[MJINC]

Thanks for the breakdown on your costs it was quite enlightening. Fortunately I live and grow where labor and electricity are a lot cheaper but I was wondering would investing in something like a Twister T2 or another automatic trimmer not help cut costs down significantly? I know it won't trim as well as hand trim but from everything I've seen it does a pretty good job for a first cut and then have a couple of guys after just to clean things up.

 

[Lazyman]

Thanks for the breakdown on your costs it was quite enlightening. Fortunately I live and grow where labor and electricity are a lot cheaper but I was wondering would investing in something like a Twister T2 or another automatic trimmer not help cut costs down significantly? I know it won't trim as well as hand trim but from everything I've seen it does a pretty good job for a first cut and then have a couple of guys after just to clean things up.

Sadly no, I've tried many trimming machines, wet and dry.

Wet trimming machines do a better job, but ruin the smell of the weed. Always smells like hay.

Dry trimming machines maintain smell, but grind about 20% of your weed into smalls, and still requires hand bucking and hand finishing, so it is actually more expensive than just having people hand trim it. Sour diesel in particular is just ripped to shreds in dry trim machines, OGs do better though.

 

[zoo]

Lazyman is a funny guy. I think his name speaks volumes

Definitely not running a tight ship. 7k on nutes haha.. Wanna buy some nutes off me bro?

 

[zoo]

You guys in America would be better putting your monies into breeding projects , you guys all ways over look the main thing with yield is genetics , IMO from where I am sitting you guys invest so much then grow low yielding plants even if you think they are high yielding they may be compared to the other plants but compared to real vigour high yielding plants IMO most of you have missed the boat , all you guys need to do is spend a few years breeding not pollen chucking og X og X Gods og X fire killer og and it poor man great taste killer resin but across the board poor attempts at breeding becuae yyes cup winning flavours all around but not actual breeding for all attributes ,
Also I hear this many pounds per light , but in how long massive plants because of numbers and the law they are vegged big only then do they yeild but the yields is still poor considering the amount of time it takes , of course I am generalising ,
But if I came to work in America I would be breeding new hybrids much like I do now and then I would double my yeild def if I had all the space you guys have ,
Your industry is fueled by money men that use growers stop real growers from progressing , most can't actually do what they want because the bosses have contracts with nute comps and light comps ,

I will say most of my brothers from here and other forums all say they to me they wish they kept there own small grow and wish they never got involved with the cash for crop dudes ., I enjoy hand water my 100 odd different phenos of different strains over my 400 plant room with drippers and all I have to do is press a button and ten minutes later it's done , this is not fun , I never touch the plants as its commercial all the same bloody same old amnesia just like my pals in America complain they have to grow the same strains over and over , they feel like grow room monkies all though they are making so much money .
No one is getting ripped off its just not what they imagined ,
Of course it's not like this for every one , a good grower is only as good as his plants , when I get employed I increase every thing including the stock plants yeild , I just bread a plant for some guys just a favour I took there main stock and ramped it up they have double the yeild from the first run , just making a few points here

Excellent post GB, I totally agree

If we Europeans had the laws, space and cheap property that are available across the pond we would be doing much better things than them with it.

 

[BakedBandit]

Across the pond is a pretty fucking big place. Nice generalizations. I bet you ain't paying anywhere near what Californians are paying. Grass is always greener on the other side until you cross the street bro

 

[zoo]

When I say across the pond I mean America buddy

Jungle boys seem to be leading the way and setting the standard in the US. They make pheno selections out of 1000's of seeds

I don't believe that they achieve the 3.75 pounds per light that they claim though.

 

[BakedBandit]

California is part of America. Pretty sure you know that. It's fucking expensive. If you wanna live in the middle part of America where it's mostly still illegal as hell to grow then yeah it can be cheap. Don't just say America is cheap. Those guys have it made. So far from the truth.

 

[Shcrews]

Excellent post GB, I totally agree

If we Europeans had the laws, space and cheap property that are available across the pond we would be doing much better things than them with it.

no you wouldnt.

 

[zoo]

no you wouldnt.

I think we would bro. Look at the breeding potential you have in the USA and all you can come up with is bagseed hermie crosses with no originality

Europe will lead the way in future. Spain is taking steps in that direction and I hope the UK follows soon

 

[Shcrews]

you wouldnt do shit