Indoor Grow Construction and Set Up (Freaux Pt. 2)
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Building out an indoor grow is about numbers and design.
The amount of square footage in the space, the number of lights needed for full coverage, how many plants will fit and how it all needs to be placed to fit your needs; these are just a few factors that need to be figured out when building an indoor grow facility.
Designing and building an indoor grow room is no easy task. From room temperature to air flow, every little variable impacts how plants will grow in the space. Planning is key, but executing the vision isn’t always as simple as just following the blueprint.
Building Out an Indoor Grow
In Freaux’s case, when he was building his indoor grows for Jive Cannabis Co in Oklahoma he had limited space and wanted to take advantage. This meant packing more light into smaller rooms, which had to be adjusted over time.
Some extra duct work and ventilation helped solved the issue of too much heat caused by the lights, and there’s still new add-ons that Freaux is considering. Rolling tables and trellising are two that he mentions.
Chip on the other hand brought in an electrician to help set up his mom room. However the electrician was not experienced with indoor grow facilities for cannabis, and so the design was flawed.
After going back and fixing the problems himself, there are still some issues that Chip wants to address to make the room better.
In the Grow with Freaux
This week’s episode of The Real Dirt with Chip Baker takes place in Chip’s Mom House on the Oklahoma farm. For the confused, it’s not Chip’s actual mom‘s house, but the room where he keeps the mothers plants for cutting clones.
The two talk about their different construction techniques, the planning, implementation and adjustments that have to be made. From sourcing materials to setting up lighting, HVAC and more, Chip and Freaux dive into it all in this episode of The Real Dirt!
Transcript
Chip: That’s right. You hear that sound, and you are in another growroom episode with Chip: Baker. This is The Real Dirt with Chip: Baker. And on today’s dirt, I once again have Freaux: from Jive Cannabis. And we’re just kind of like, hanging out in my new mother room, talking about cannabis construction techniques. We’re talking about HVAC and fans, and lighting, and how he built his room, and how I built my room and how maybe we might do it a little differently in the future. So, hey, if you’re interested in growing construction, I want you to just to sit back, roll up the largest joints you can and join us for another episode of The Real Dirt.
Chip: Alright, man. Here we are.
Freaux: What’s going on, Chip? Thanks for having me on once again, man.
Chip: Oh, I know man. It seems like forever since we had you here at the studios. I know the last time we were here, we just laughed and laughed.
Freaux: Yeah, it’s always a good time with you, man. Can’t help but to laugh sometimes, yeah.
Chip: Oh absolutely, man. We, I remember we sampled like, so much different weed. It was great. But here, we’re over here in my newly constructed multipurpose grow room. Right now, this is a big mother room. What do you think?
Freaux: I think it looks awesome. How many lights you set in here?
Chip: Man, I got 66 lights in here. You know, 66 is my lucky number. And we’ve overclocked this room a little bit, it’s about 110, 15% more light than we should be running in here. But we’re just dimming it down with the Trollmaster, you know the Trollmaster?
Freaux: Yeah, Trollmaster’s a great product, we use that over at Jive.
Chip: Yeah, I got mine at Cultivate OKC and you can get yours at cultivateokc.com, as a matter of fact. That’s what, I got mine there. Did you get yours there?
Freaux: We sure did.
Chip: You might have got yours from Cultivate Colorado, even.
Freaux: Ah, no I think once, mine originally you might have got the ones…
Chip: Cultivate OKC, that’s right. Alright, cool. Well, I love my Trollmaster and we’ve got these dimmed down to 50%. And that’s one of the cool things about it. These are their 1000 Watt phantom double-endeds, and we have them all linked up daisy chain with a data cable that all goes to the control unit, the Trollmaster control unit. And we have it dimmed down to 50%.
Freaux: It looks great. What you got, that’s what, the unit structure looks like you’re looking to kind of, put it out there, is that what that is?
Chip: Yeah, this is the, this is the way we like to build grow rooms. You know, with my Cultivate OKC and Cultivate Colorado, we do supply for all this equipment. But our other company, Greener Group, we build grow rooms or advise people on building grow rooms and this is the way I like to tell people to do it, right? It’s efficient, it’s effective. You do the math of the lights and you just mount the lights at one point on the ceiling. We basically build a unistrut frame, and on that unistrut frame we run some conduit, some electrical, but we also hang our lights from it too, right? And it makes it a real sturdy system, it adds a little bit of weight to the ruse, but and it is a little costly, but you can see how easy it is that just mounts right up to the unit’s drive.
Freaux: No, it looks great. I mean, super pretty room here, Chip. I like the way you guys set up a lot. And you said what, these are going to be moms that are going to take clones off to go outside this year?
Chip: Yeah it is. It’s early May, we’re taking clones of all of these right now. We have a bunch of clones already. And we also have a clone nursery in OKC, or my wife has a clone nursery there. So, these are all for the Oklahoma medical cannabis commercial market and for here at our farm.
Freaux: Yeah, nice big healthy moms in here. The little you know, setup and schematics you got in through, the plant seem to really like it with the lights, fans, well-ducted AC. You got it nice and insulated. Electric work is really uniform and clean.
Chip: I had the AC just kicked on.
Freaux: It’s all quiet in there now, huh?
Chip: Oh it is, man. Yeah, we turned all the fans off so we could have this episode here. But it, you can feel the light intensity, but the room’s holding temperature pretty good.
Freaux: Yeah, I told him temperature great.
Chip: We struggled with some of the AC, man. We got an AC guy, he came in here. I would never recommend him. He put all of this equipment in for us. It looked pretty, all the angles were almost right and straight, and then it just didn’t work.
Freaux: Why was that?
Chip: You know, they didn’t do the math properly on the ducting size. They had one of the units wired on heat when it should be on cool. So one unit was coming on heat, when everything was coming on cool, right?
Freaux: This is redone now?
Chip: Yeah. And then I got some other guys that actually worked with us over at Greener Group. They kind of redesigned the system they had here. They pulled in this main plenum right here, they pulled off these vents like, directly off the side, right? They calculated all of the airflow that was supposed to go through here, and the previous guy didn’t do any of that. Fortunately, I got the right HVACs and all of that was specked out. But my guy came in, he’s an engineer, he engineers HVAC stuff and you know, he just kind of did it for a favor, and retuned all this stuff in, retuned all my HVACs. And, man, it’s been, it’s been working flawlessly ever since then.
Freaux: No, it looks beautiful. When you’re saying earlier, I was kind of like, “Well, it looks great here.” But you said the other guy came in and did this. But yeah, he did a, he did a great job.
Chip: Yeah, we added in all of this soft ducting on here, right? Where we had to, and some back here and back here, where the other guy didn’t quite calculate for the steel ducting. But yeah man, testament in like getting a poor quality contractor, even though they can like talk a big game, they look good, and their truck looks clean, and they got a pin in their shirt does not mean that they really know what they’re doing.
Freaux: Oh, I know. You know, unfortunately, that’s definitely not the case. But you do get a good one, though. You know, you got to, you got to hold on to him., because in a lot of those cases, you know, especially people who aren’t familiar, like you’d have experienced actually doing, you know, setting up a room, it’s just like a regular HVAC guy kind of winging it or whatnot. There is a specific, you know, equation as far as like, you know, your square footage, how many lights you know, all that that goes into it. So somebody who’s like, familiar with that, and can, you know, have the correct format and build out a grow room to where it needs to be and keep the environmental controls, you know, sound, that’s, you know, somebody you definitely want to hold on to. And there’s a lot of people out there that think they know, but, you know, their work proves otherwise.
Chip: Yeah, absolutely. And many, many people that just knows, no experience and can cannabis and you know, they, they, they don’t really look at this for what it is, right? They either think they know better, or they want to observe the situation. Because, you know, oftentimes I find these people that come with this arrogance or entitlement of not being involved with cannabis.
Freaux: Yeah. It seems like a lot of those type of guys too, always got a better way, you know, they can do this to prove that, but uh…
Chip: Let’s jack this thing up, man. I’m gonna pull the catalytic converter off so we get a little bit more flow, you know what I’m saying?
Freaux: Straight up.
Chip: ,No man, my cousin here pass your smog no problem.
Freaux: That’s hilarious, man.
Chip: True story. True story.
Freaux: And that’s why I would say being, you know, the, sometimes experience and stuff like that, and just, you know, knowing it, you know, you know how it weighs, what somebody would think, I mean, it’s, you’re actually, you know, doing it yourself and have R&D to know what works and not. And it’s, you know, there’s always different ways to improve, but you know, you know, it’s all through trial and error, and, you know, yeah, to actually do it. So there’s a lot of good ideas out there people have, but, you know, to try it, you never know, and a lot of times people try new stuff, and it doesn’t work, you know?
Chip: Yeah, right. And you know, we’re paying for it. So, I don’t want to have an experiment if I can, and, you know. Oh hey, speak about something that’s held the testament of time. Georgia Pine right here, aka Gilz Nilz, or Gilz Nilz, aka Georgia Pine. Man, this is from The Swamp Boys. I love this weed. It is just incredible growing, I love to smoke it. It’s got zero name. It doesn’t look like much of anything.
Freaux: Makes great water hash, feels good too.
Chip: I mean it’s just, it’s just greasy as I move my hands over it like oh, man, this stuff is great. I really love it.
Freaux: It’s a happy girl right here, too.
Chip: Yeah, we were talking about the fans earlier, man. And so I don’t have any horizontal fans here. I don’t have any wall mount fans, right? You pointed this out. And you asked me how what I thought about the way I had my fans going, and what’s going on here is we have all of our fans are blowing horizontally, right under the lights on the ceiling. You can check this video out or our Instagram out, on YouTube or on Instagram, you can see what we’re talking about. And it circulates the ai, right? And that’s the principle we’re going. We’re trying to circulate all the cool air coming down from the HVAC. We’re trying to blow the hot air from the lights around the room and cause the air in a circular motion to start to move in. And there’s no direct fans on any of these buds, right?
Freaux: No, I know. That’s the first thing I noticed when I was asking you about you know, a lot of people are kind of starting to move the fans up to the ceiling and move in there like that. I was wondering what you thought, but I can really see the difference from when it turned on to not. I mean it’s [inaudible 10:12] with it I actually haven’t like isolated fan on the wall, they’re kind of hitting the plants and stuff. You know, –
Chip: Those oscillators take up so much room, man.
Freaux: Yeah, they do. And then they blow directly on your plants, which, you know, cause some you know, burns or you know, stuff like that on your plants. But uh, I really liked the way you got it set up like that. And I mean, I could definitely feel the airflow, all the plants were moving. It seemed like pretty much all the room was like, circulating everywhere it was to emulate just like that without having to like you sai, take up space or you know, have a you know, fan blowing directly on your plants, especially those plants close to the wall and –
Chip: It’s still loud.
Freaux: Yeah. It’s definitely loud. You liking the way that’s working so far?
Chip: Yeah, man. Oh, man, it works great. When you do the math though, itt only says it should have like, 12 fans in here, maybe even nine. But like, the reality is we have like, 18 or maybe 20.
Freaux: Leave some of that, at least 15.
Chip: Yeah, yeah, let’s count them. 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, I think there’s 26.
Freaux: Yeah, that’s a lot. But it’s a –
Chip: 1, 2, 1, 2, 3 I can’t count man. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 30, 40, 50, 60. Okay, well, that time I got 19.
Freaux: How much you got?
Chip: I got 19, man.
Freaux: That looks about right. I’ll take your word on that right there.
Chip: Yeah, well, we threw a couple random ones in here, so the math doesn’t quite work out. We got six over here., we got three in the middle, and then we’ve got eight over here. There, there it is. 19.
Freaux: I like that set up a lot. I was kind of looking into you know, it seems like I was saying earlier a lot of people switch into the low end air with the fans up you know, up top. I’m gonna probably give it a whirl myself, see how I work it out and you know, trying in our room see how it does, but it seems top be working great for you, Chip.
Chip: Yeah, man. We’ve been doing it for years, we build rooms this way for Greener Group all the time and for other people. And you know, if you’re, if you’re building out a new room, it really does help in your square footage. I really don’t like the oscillating fans, just one more thing that’s gonna move that’s gonna break, or you just got to pay a million bucks for the oscillating playing fans there’s just no easy way around it. But you know, in the hydroponic industry you know, I mean, I’m guilty of this. Cultivate Colorado, Cultivate OKC like and you know, our distributors have been selling us these fans we you know, have been promoting them. They’re inexpensive fans but they’re just not that great. And people come in and demand an inexpensive fan and that’s what they’re going to get is a wall fan that might not have the best performance, right? You pay a little bit more for these you know, steel 18-inch you know, hanging fans and you know – I won’t replace these.
Freaux: Yeah. It seems like it pushes more air you know, especially up top like that. Definitely more powerful. Yeah,
Chip: Absolutely. So when you were building your recent room here, like, what were some of the things that surprised you? That like, ideas you had about the way you were going to build it and in the way that it ended out.
Freaux: Some stuff that was like, surprising? Um, you know, honestly when we first set up the new rooms that we built out in the back building, the one that you came over and toured that one time, you know, we had it set up to try to like work towards the room. Because we had like, limited space so we wanted to try to make as many rooms as we could or whatnot. So in a sense, we kind of had an overlit room, but the way it was like set out. But then we tried to put some you know science behind it check in you know, the lumens or whatnot, and we kind of had to go back and you know, set up the rows a little bit better. Have, it doesn’t look as like, crisp but it’s like, better for the room as far as like, square footage and having a good light spread over the canopy. I would say also to which I had to position some you know ductwork and some of our, our original rooms that we started with or whatnot. You know, added a quite a bit of ductwork to try to help with some like, hotspots were occurring and some like microclimates. You know, when we, you know, added that type of airflow to it, it was able to kind of mitigate a lot of those issues, but I think it’s one of the things really any grower, you know, different techniques come out, they see a buddy that’s doing something different. I think it’s always good to try to improve on whatever you can or whatnot. I know some stuff that we’re kind of looking into at Jive, we’re looking into, you know, going into maybe doing some like table and trellises instead of doing some stake-end and maybe even looking into –
Chip: Oh yeah man, I’m, wait, I’ve got all the, all the tables just came in for this room. This room is may – is gonna well, we got some construction and I got some stuff to clean up after our bill and we’ll go into that in a minute, but we’re gonna put tables throughout this whole thing.
Freaux: That’s gonna look super crisp when you get those tables.
Chip: Yeah, you know, one of the things I talked to people about putting the grow room together and you, we just talked about the things that didn’t quite work out, is you need to plan for that in your construction, right? You can get competent people, people can think about things but like, you know, unless like, every room is a package and they never are. People want to use different controllers, electricians use different equipment, I only use Square D, right? Like, you know, like stuff like that. And I actually I do, I only Square D. People use different controllers like, it all ends up being different. So this room specifically, you can see all of my thermostats, the electrician thought it was it was good to put them all in one spot, right? Right. So all my, all my thermostats for the room, the dehumidifier, the Dehumidistat, all of them they’re, all five thermostats –
Freaux: It’s all of your sensor here?
Chip: Yeah, that’s for all sensor.
Freaux: Oh, my god.
Chip: Right. Right. So, uh, you know, I’m gonna have to pull all those out. And I’m gonna place them on each one of the corners, basically. And then just one in the middle.
Freaux: Yeah.
Chip: I’ll put them in on two stages, at least then. Right? So that way, two of them will come on, and three of them will come on, right?
Freaux: That sounds like a good setup right there.
Chip: Right, right. But that’s not the way it’s set up right now. But if I had come in here, go, go, go, go, go put the tables in. Go, go, go, go, go go. You know, I would have. But because the HVAC didn’t work right?
Freaux: Yeah.
Chip: Right off the bat.
Freaux: Yeah.
Chip: Right? And then, and then, and now I’ve been growing in here for a little bit because this is just a mom room. And now I’m like, “Okay, I need to change,” and this didn’t work out that well for me and I’m able to like dial it in.
Freaux: Yeah, I mean, that’s the thing about always kind of improving your techniques and dialling it in and you know, any way you can, any, any way you can improve in that you want to you know, try to improve from harvest to harvest, you know. You definitely put a you know, a lot of time and effort in you know, to grow in it and you want to be able to have the right tools to make you succeed. If there’s no better stuff you can do, you always want to improve it, you know, the best you can you know?
Chip: Hey guys, just a quick break to tell you about Cultivate OKC, Cultivate Colorado. You know, I got into the hydroponic supply business in 2009. I had wanted to open up a retail hydroponic store for years and I was already making potting soil at that point, maybe some fertilizers and some other stuff I was into. You know, I hadn’t opened up a retail shop and I got this opportunity to open one up in California. Right as I was fixing open up down in Riverside, Colorado came along. Ended up being better, bigger opportunity, opened up our Colorado stores and you know, man it’s just, we’ve been off to the races ever since. Now we’re in Colorado and in Oklahoma, we ship all over the country and even the world, man. It’s amazing. The people that call us contact us that needs, that need some, some, some equipment to grow their fine cannabis with. So if you need any help, any equipment, if you want to come to a great grow store where people don’t judge you, we’re not clique-oriented, we’re just there to help you grow. Man, come see us at Cultivate. Cultivate Colorado, we’re on exit 206 I-25. We’re also on the Stapleton Monaco exit there on I-70. And down in Oklahoma City, our newest store and man, probably our nicest showroom right now, is we’re right on the corner of 10th in Meridian. So come check us out 1101 North Meridian. Yeah, man. Got any questions about growing, no matter if you’re big or small. Just come on in. We’ll be glad to chat with you. Hey, guys, I know everyone who’s listening, we all love The Real Dirt. I mean, I love The Real Dirt. But you know what I love even more than The Real Dirt is actually growing in dirt. That’s right, Growers High Porosity Coco Formula, that’s my potting soil. Man. I’ve gone through so much trouble and research to build the cleanest, most effective potting soil for growing cannabis. Man, we built all this stuff inside. I break all the pallets, all the raw materials down on, on the morning. I push it through our machine, we use a series of conveyor belts, there’s no cross contamination, everything’s machine-mixed. It’s all made and mixed by volume. It goes directly into the bag. By the end of the day, everything that we started at the start of the day, all the raw materials, they’ve turned into bagged product that’s all stored inside. Now that the importance of this is many, many other, every other potting soil company, they don’t do it like that. Here’s how they do it. They take their raw materials, whether it’s coco, peat, perlite, forest, pumice, compost, sand, whatever they got, and they make a huge pile of it outside with big industrial equipment. They use tons of diesel to do this, tons of diesel fuel on the grinders, on the screeners, on the loaders. And they lead these huge piles out that’s just like a petri dish for cross contamination from weeds, seeds, bugs, whatever, whatever is capable of living in it. And it does and it will, and then they take these piles and they bring them into another facility that’s probably also not indoors, very few of them are, they’re usually covered tin sheds or something like that. And they bag up the potting soil, they wrap it up, pile it up, clean it off nice and pretty. And then when it gets shipped to you, you think it’s this great product, but in reality, it’s just like some dirt on the ground that people have shoveled up and put it in a nice plastic bag. And the potential for it to be full with everything from root aphids, to fungus gnats, to contaminants. It’s just, it’s mind boggling actually, at how bad it could be, and it’s really not that bad, comparatively. But our product is so clean, we go through so much trouble from the RO water to the clean cement, to the way that we move all this product around with conveyor belts instead of using big loaders. I mean, I’ve been making potting soil most of my adult life and I’m now using 1/10 of the petroleum products to make this potting soil. 1/10. And that’s almost all in diesel fuel, all in propane with forklifts, because of the way that we’ve situated our plan and you know, made this really great, environmentally friendly weed-bug-seed-free product. So, check it out man. growerscoco.com. Hop on your computer right now. Go to growerscoco.com. Check out our website. If we’re not in your community, ask your local grow store, he can get it in. If you’re in Colorado or in Oklahoma man, come to some Cultivates and we definitely got it. Thanks guys. And let’s get back to the episode.
Chip: You know, I was really going for function over fashion in this room. It’s a little, there’s a little, there’s a little ugly spots here or there to it, but it’s going to be a see of bud in here soon enough when we turn this to like, an indoor room in the future. Where you know, the math I believe is we’ll put tables in here and you know, then like, a thousand plants or something. And should get two and a half ounces of plant is kind of I think the goal with still like, not packed in or still be able to walk around.
Freaux: That sounds good. I mean, you could set up right there. What uh, what kind of tables you going with?
Chip: You know, I believe I ended up with the the hawthornes slash botanic care tray tables. Yep. The rolling benches.
Freaux: Nice. Have you used those before?
Chip: Yeah, we’ve got those. And we have the hydro farms. I actually liked the hydro farms better. But there was a supply issue, because right now we’re in an international supply issue for all products, right? And cannabis products are not you know, any different.
Freaux: Yeah, you’re really starting to feel that now. A lot of people are out of stuff, price is up. Yeah, man, it’s been kind of hard to get like, raw supplies, especially if you are either building out or if you need, you know, just normal stuff, you know? They’re, you know, fertilizer, all that stuff seems to be, you know, kinda on, I guess, high demand and also too, the supply chain’s kind of been, you know, down a little bit or whatnot.
Chip: Man, it’s a, no, there’s an international shortage, man. All of India has a bunch of containers and they’ve been shut down over COVID. China, Hong Kong, they’ve been shut down a bunch, man. They’ve got less containers on the market for all the rest of the product, right? All of our manufacturers were in a slight downturn slightly before COVID. And everybody started smoking tons a week, because they were unemployed and staying home, and they could smoke more weed. Right,? Right? So our industry all went and now like, more people want bags of soil. More people want, right? More people, more people. So yeah, that’s good though. It’s all moving. forward so fast, but like, you know, we all want to expand, but we can’t because we can’t get unistrut or we can’t get – this literally just happened to me – I couldn’t get to 2 by 6 steel framing or you know, ACs are 16 weeks out if you want to do construction right now.
Freaux: That’s crazy.
Chip: So it’s hard all over if you’re building the grow room currently, you know, you should really plan everything way ahead of time, it’s not going to work any way like it, it normally should.
Freaux: Yeah, you got to plan in proper because, you know, stuff is so you know, behind now and going up in price and just not, you know, not readily available. But you are right, definitely if you are planning something you know, in the near future, you know, definitely at least get your material list. And, you know, make sure it can get sourced or whatnot, because it is definitely hard to find, you know, raw materials right now.
Chip: Yeah, man. The, my biggest complaint about building this room, though, was that I couldn’t build a bigger one.
Freaux: Man, that’s always, that’s always the number one problem, huh?
Chip: So man, what would you, what do you want to do on your next room? What are you gonna do next time?
Freaux: You know, honestly, if you know, on the next room or next setup, I would say I would probably, you know, start fresh with tables, you know, move over to trellis. I would probably like to do some sort of fan setup, like you got. Like, kind of, you know, go away from the oscillating you know, the oscillating fans kind of do the fans set up like you got going on right now. And then, I know I’d probably say you know, do some duct work kind of similar this. You know, something that’s going to have it where, you know, the, where it can, you know, not have a bunch of like, microclimates and hotspots. And then I don’t know, I you know, look at like different products that are out there now. Like, could be you know, like DPS panels, does that have advantages, you know? Any kind of, you know, like, you know, foam in an installation that could help out with keeping the climates you know, dialed in. And then any kind of like, you know, stuff like Trollmasters, like maybe going to a pro or getting set up on, you know, water automation, doing stuff like that, you know, probably different stuff like that. If you’re gonna do something else like that.
Chip: Yeah, the Trollmaster Pro’s definitely something I’d like, but no, man, the internet’s not great out here.
Freaux: Yeah, that is something you got to, if your internet’s not working, that’s not working, you know?
Chip: What about LED vertical?
Freaux: Yeah, that’s something you know, LED’s something I would like to, you know, try out a room or something like that, at some point. I’ve been hearing even of recently, a lot of people are starting to switch over. People who are, you know, been [inaudible 27:48] or whatnot. And, you know, always regretted the switch. I feel like a lot of people are making it and having like, good results would be good to try to, you know, give that a run ,see how that goes. And then you’re talking about one vertical like, stacking up or whatnot?
Chip: Yeah, yeah, yeah, vertical stacks.
Freaux: I know. That’s something that we’re kind of, you know, doing that at Jive right now. One of our veg rooms, we have a vertical stacked LEDs at the bottom and CMH is up top. You know, it definitely makes more room. You can have more, you know, put more plants on there. Even if it’s just for your one gallons or whatnot, free up some space. I know there’s a lot of facilities out, there’s a facility I’ve heard about out here where they have I want to say like, 100 lights at the top and the bottom. I would just like to see it myself, how like, a workflow a day of that would go because you know, setting that up in like, you know –
Chip: It’s high labor. It’s absolutely high labor. You know, there’s advantages to it. There’s disadvantages to it, that’s for sure. You’re going to grow twice as much or three times as much weed but it’s going to take that much more effort to do that as well, right? It’s not just like growing three times more weed horizontally. It’s like that much more difficult because now it’s on ladders.
Freaux: Yeah, that’s understandable.
Chip: Right, right. But it can be done and the LEDs grow great weed, and it’s just the expense. And I look forward, my next, my next bill.
Freaux: There’s always a next one, huh?
Chip: My next bill.
Freaux: Straight up, huh. That’s funny.
Chip: Yeah, man. So let’s check out this MAC, man. Check out this Mac 1, this Mac 1. Grows funky, huh? Do you know this plant?
Freaux: I don’t. I’ve never actually grown it. I know it’s been really popular. The weed I see its from, it’s been amazing.
Chip: It can be pretty good. It didn’t fill out so much, but it’s really stony and it smells incredible.
Freaux: No, definitely. It’s got a nice look to it, too. I’ve never actually seen it like, in garden, in person, but a definitely beautiful looking plant. Looks super happy right there too.
Chip: Yeah, it’s got a weird growth pattern, man. It’s real slow, it’s real slow until, until it’s not.
Freaux: Does it, does it seem to catch up with everything else or is it kind of –
Chip: Okay, hey, check it out. Those are, those are Cookies and Cream, right? Those plants over there. And these are the Mac 1s, these were started you know the same time as those.
Freaux: Were those smaller when they –
Chip: No, it was all the same size, all the same cutting, all the same cutting day, right? All of this came out on the same cut. Well okay actually, that’s not true. This stuff in the middle, this all came out on a week later cutting day. But everything else, all these taller plants all on this side, that was all the same day, right? So but the Mac, it grew so slow initially.
Freaux: It really exploded then, because this –
Chip: Now it’s bigger.
Freaux: It’s like probably one of the taller plants in the room, honestly. Besides this one in the corner over here on the left.
Chip: Yeah. You just got to baby it, you got to, you got to watch the water, you got to, you got to really work on that initial transplant, and root bound it out. And then transplant it again, and root bound it out. And like, and now it’s happy.
Freaux: Definitely look good. How’d she, how’d she do outdoor?
Chip: It did great, man. I’m really, we’re gonna make a bunch of crosses of it this year. You know, we’ve got 28 different flavors so far we’ve planted. And then we’ve got about seven returning, seven returning ones. Seven or five. We’ve got, we’ve got Granddaddy Dawg, we’ve got Purple Punch, don’t hate on me. We got Train Wreck. I’ve got Georgia Pine, we’ve got Mac 1. And then we’ve got Cookies and Cream.
Freaux: Nice little lineup right there.
Chip: Yeah, I got a couple other Melonades in here someplace and –
Freaux: You’re gonna rerun like, Sherb Dosis or any of that?
Chip: Yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely. We’re going to run a bunch of Sherbadosidos. We’re going to run a bunch of Lemon G 13 Dosidos. I’m going to do some, oh man, the list is epic. I got a ton of Hawaiian strains. I figured like, “Hey, where is it humid but they grow dank weed? Oh, Hawaii!” So I call up my Hawaiian homies. And they were like, “Oh, hey, I live in Oklahoma now.”
Freaux: Straight up. Seemed like everybody’s out here now, huh?
Chip: Yeah, totally.
Freaux: Hawaii had some good strains. I’ve always had some pretty good Hawaiian weed, man.
Chip: Oh man. I got, I got, I traded like, all of the originals, man. The Molokai Frost, the Puna, the Tar, the [inaudible 32:19]. I got a bunch of originals and then those crossed, right? And then I’ve got also like some other modern like, Dutch strains crossed with local strains as well.
Freaux: That is badass.
Chip: Yeah, yeah, we got about 12 or 13 of those. We went heavy on R&D on that.
Freaux: So that’s awesome. I’m interested to see what those look like when they’re done.
Chip: And then I think we have every something out, some amount out of the whole Archive flat, Archive catalog, probably like 80 or 100 of almost everything that he’s produced the past. I’ve been collecting them for the past couple of years and we’re putting all that out.
Freaux: That’s awesome.
Chip: Yeah, yeah.
Freaux: Can’t wait to see those.
Chip: And then man, my buddy Shaw up at 707 Seeds, we got, we’ve got his whole collection of seeds going to probably you know, I said 28, that number’s nowhere right. Because I’m calculating like, 42 or something inside my head now. We’ve got like all of the NorCal clones, all of the flavors all crossed with this really hardy Kush cleaner that’s a proven outdoor strain, a great indoor strain. Wash is great, we’ve got it crossed with with pretty much everything.
Freaux: Sounds like y’all have been busy, huh?
Chip: We’re gonna be. We just popped all these, you have to come back later on. But mass pheno hunt, we’re like, I got a cell culture lab we’re building over here in the other building this year. And so by the fall time, that’s all going to be ready and we’re gonna have our online lab here where we’ll be able to like, test like, nuggets as we go, plants as we go. And we’re like, “Okay, that’s the one, that’s the one.”
Freaux: Hey, that’s badass. Can’t wait to see that in action.
Chip: Yeah. No doubt, man. I’ll tell you, you know my biggest problem with it all here, man, I really need some good solid people to work.
Freaux: I hear you on that.
Chip: We should start an employment agency. Oh hey, if you want a job in the cannabis industry but you got to like, be able to like one, be work well with others. Two, work hard all day. Three, have like, zero ego and only admiration for the plant. Man, I think you could probably get a job with either one of us right now, right?
Freaux: Easily.
Chip: Easily. Or other people here in Oklahoma. Call us first.
Freaux: Yeah, definitely call us first. But if you have all those attributes, definitely.
Chip: Yeah, absolutely man. Like, you know, you got to be able to pick up 50 pounds and do it all day in the sun, right? You got to be able to like stand under like 60,000 watts., 100,000 watts of light.
Freaux: And also too you know, no to, you can’t really have like, just kind of a normal workday. You got to be on the garden time, you know? Like, it’s not not your traditional work day and it kind of got to work around the plants, you know?
Chip: Yes, sometimes it’s like, oh, middle of the day, we had to shut down for this reason. If you want the hours, you can come back later.
Freaux: Yeah, definitely, huh?
Chip: Right, right. Or for me, outdoor like, we do a lot of work here. But you know, greenhouses, we grow up until December and process up until March this year. But there were some weeks we’re like, “Oh, what are we going to do?” And, you know, we had to find some stuff. But now this time of year, I told the guys, “Work as late as you want.”
Freaux: Nice, yeah, straight up. But it seems like you said, there’s those times where there’s the down period. You can always find stuff to do. I mean, any one of us could find some for somebody to do, there’s always work to do. But uh, yeah, I mean, it’s definitely the busy season. I’m the same way. I mean, we got you know, we’ll have our, you know, slow week or so here and there. And then it just seems like you don’t have enough people some weeks, you know? Just depending on where you’re at in the cycle, you know?
Chip: Well, you know, I saw just last week on one of the major news networks that 300,000 people are now employed in the cannabis industry throughout the US. Can you believe that, man?
Freaux: That’s incredible. I love hearing those type of numbers, you know?
Chip: 300,000 people.
Freaux: I hope it just continues to rise on top of that, you know?
Chip: Oh man, that’s like 1% of the population or something, right? With the math. Can I, hey, can I get a statistics check on that? Here. We’re gonna, we’ll be back with you here in a minute. But no, seriously, if you want a job, look us up. Look me up first. It’s my show, bro. I’m just you know, I’m sorry.
Freaux: I can’t argue with you on that.
Chip: Yeah you know, we’re looking for experienced cannabis people that either live in Oklahoma or who are interested in moving here. We pay an honest wage for an honest day’s work. You know, both of us are good people and we’re looking for all types of, all types of people. You can, you can drop by yourresume for Freaux: or for Chip: at thereal dirt.com. You can look on the website, and it’ll be a little thing someplace. It’ll say like, :resume.” Like, point that and like, you can drop your resume in.
Freaux: Hey, that sounds like a plan right there.
Chip: It could say like, “help” on it. It could say like, “employment opportunities.”
Freaux: You know, word to the wise too, it’d probably be the funnest job you ever had, huh?
Chip: Dude.
Freaux: Especially if you like weed. There’s nothing better than working around weed plants all day.
Chip: Yeah, yeah, you don’t get to smoke weed all day, but you definitely get to play with weed all day, right?
Freaux: Yeah, straight up.
Chip: Right right. Yeah, man it’s been another fabulous episode here on The Real Dirt. It’s almost like The Real Dirt with Freaux. That’s how I should start saying it. Like, this guy ’cause like, you know, we know I’m The Real Dirt. But it’s like, it’s The Real Dirt with… Here’s The Real Dirt. In today’s real dirt, we’re with Freaux. I love it. I love it. Alright, here I’m gonna start over. Right, it’s The Real Dirt. This is another episode of The Real Dirt. My name is Chip: and this real dirt, we’re with Freaux. It’s The Real Dirt with Freaux. I’m gonna have to work on that.
Freaux: I like the way that sounded so far. I liked the start.
Chip: I know I had last episode, I had a song, right?
Freaux: That song was awesome, man.
Chip: You had some great weed there, man. I hope you brought some good weed this time, man.
Freaux: Always. I definitely got a backpack full for you, Chip.
Chip: Well, we’ll have to, we’ll have to go up into the private residence after this and check it out. So thanks for joining us on The Real Dirt. You can download this episode and others at therealdirt.com. Please subscribe on iTunes or Spotify or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. And make sure Real Dirt is one of those. And hey. also check me out on YouTube. I just started a Real Dirt YouTube channel over there. We’ve got about 500 or 1000 followers, and you too could be one. If you’re not now please, please, please please, please join my YouTube channel, please. Real Dirt.
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