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Growing Cannabis in a Greenhouse With Wildflower Farms

By Jacqueline Collins

Wednesday, August 5, 2020 at 1:15 p.m.

Jacqueline Collins Wildfower Farms grows cannabis for recreational dispensaries around Colorado. 1/21

Jacqueline Collins The company began operations one year ago, with two greenhouses in Ordway, Colorado. 2/21

Jacqueline Collins A greenhouse allows plants to get their fill of Colorado’s 300-plus days of sunshine without being limited to one harvest per year, like outdoor farms. 3/21

Jacqueline Collins But for that sunshine to be effective, the panels of a greenhouse have little insulation in comparison to standard construction materials. 4/21

Jacqueline Collins So it's on the growers to create protections against the elements while still taking advantage of nature, like equipping their greenhouses with supplemental lighting and natural gas heaters to ensure that ideal temperatures and lighting are maintained in winter months. 5/21

Jacqueline Collins Supplemental electrical lighting is a necessary protection to maintain the photoperiod for the initial vegetative state of the plant, especially during the shorter days of winter. 6/21

Jacqueline Collins Wildflower Farms starts clones in the head house with LED fixtures during the vegetative state. The spectrum of LED lighting most closely matches the sun, allowing for a smooth transition when the clones are transplanted into the greenhouse. 7/21

Jacqueline Collins Growers also use supplemental lighting on short or cloudy days. 8/21

Jacqueline Collins Cannabis is photoperiod-sensitive, which means that plants must receive approximately twelve hours of darkness to flower. 9/21

Jacqueline Collins To ensure that no light reaches the canopy during the dark period, blackout curtains are installed in year-round greenhouses. 10/21

Jacqueline Collins The blackout curtain reflects light and heat on hot days and provides insulation on cold days. 11/21

Jacqueline Collins Growers manipulate sunlight coming into the greenhouse to maintain a healthy light cycle throughout the flowering stage, ensuring bigger, more potent yields. 12/21

Jacqueline Collins Many of Colorado's cannabis greenhouses are located in rural parts of the state, which can pose challenges to acquiring utilities, such as natural gas, electricity and water. 13/21

Jacqueline Collins Clean water is critical for the cultivation of healthy cannabis, so Wildflower Farms filters its water before feeding the plants. 14/21

Jacqueline Collins Watering levels vary throughout days and seasons as sunlight levels change, to ensure optimal growth. 15/21

Jacqueline Collins For further temperature regulation, almost all commercial greenhouses in Colorado are cooled with a pad and fan system. This system essentially operates like a swamp cooler and is suited to Colorado’s dry climate. 16/21

Jacqueline Collins On one end of the greenhouse, a pad wall is installed. A pump moves water across the pad wall, and across the greenhouse, exhaust fans turn on to draw the cooler, humid air across the greenhouse. Fresh air is drawn from the roof via vents that will open and close according to the environment inside and outside the structure. 17/21

Jacqueline Collins This controller constantly reads signals from sensors inside and outside of the greenhouse, powering the fans, pumps and blackout curtains to ensure that ideal temperature, humidity and lighting are achieved when employees are gone. 18/21

Jacqueline Collins A greenhouse is not a sealed environment, like most indoor cultivations. While many pests are caught in screens or other filters, some make it through. 19/21

Jacqueline Collins Most greenhouses rely on a combination of pesticides and biocontrols to reduce their risk of infestations. Regular pest inspection is also an important step to take. 20/21

Jacqueline Collins A greenhouse can achieve five to six harvests under a given lighting area per year, but growers have multiple plant cycles going at once to produce much more than that. 21/21

Growing Cannabis in a Greenhouse With Wildflower Farms

Growing cannabis is largely an indoor ordeal, though there are outdoor farmers harvesting buds once a year before the winter. But some Colorado growers are utilizing sunshine all year inside of greenhouses, cultivating without the vast amount of electricity required for indoor operations. To learn how natural sunlight and elements produce top-shelf cannabis while presenting their own challenges, we went on a tour with Wildfower Farms inside the wholesale cannabis supplier's Ordway greenhouse.

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