The head grower at a 100,000-square-foot facility was getting hammered over flat yields.
Investors wanted “efficiency,” the CEO wanted a silver bullet, and everyone wanted a clean story to explain why the numbers would magically go up next quarter.
Under that pressure, leadership did what struggling operations often do: they switched nutrients and bought a new fertigation system.
Recirc pumps, dosing equipment, touchscreens, the works. It looked like progress, it photographed well, and it sounded like the kind of fix executives love to talk about on calls.
Six figures later, the irrigation room was a showroom. Pallets of the old fertilizer were shoved into a corner while the new system rhythmically clicked along.
On paper, they had “addressed” the yield problem. But in the grow rooms, nothing had changed.
I’ve watched this same decision pattern repeat inside enough commercial grow operations to know that equipment rarely fixes what execution broke.
The Wrong Upgrade
Six months in, yields hadn’t budged, and production costs had actually increased. The culprit wasn’t nutrients. It was neglect.
Stock plants were old and tired. Moms that should have been replaced at four months were still in service at 18, some pushing two years. Their woody branches and crispy fan leaves towered over the staff. The propagation crew called them “grandmas,” a joke that stopped being funny when cloning success only hit 40%.
When the cuttings didn’t root, the scramble began.
Immature plants got pushed into veg, or overages from previous lots were dragged forward to plug gaps. By the time the room flipped, plant height and structure were all over the place. Irrigation became a guessing game as workers struggled to avoid overwatering or underwatering the wildly uneven crop.
Drip lines weren’t flushed or maintained between runs, so salt buildup clogged the emitters, …
Read More
Author: Ryan Douglas / High Times
