I have an opportunity to start an entire grow op from the ground up with a few partners in the state of Florida. They will be facilitators and investors and we are family and friends. I was brought in to do the growing since I have some experience working at indoor and outdoor grow Op’s. There is still currently a lot of debate as to which direction to take the company, whether industrial hemp or CBD. We have decided to grow Hemp CBD to prepare for when THC legalizes and get our systems in place. We have over 200 acres to play with and I am moving to the property to live onsite and make sure it comes together. I am reaching out to growers with any advice along the way as we are going to have a ton of hurdles. We finally got our licensing and the go ahead to pop seeds. I have a small collection of Peach Mint Kush Indica to test in our veg room. Were using soil with plastic containers with drip irrigation and will be a hybrid indoor/outdoor system depending on what weather permits, we are learning as we go as I just moved from the PNW and am still learning about the climate here in Florida. We have decided to use a shipping container to get things going, upfitting it is our first project. Then we will start work on the greenhouse which at this point we have decided on a large hoop house and shade house close by for outdoor hardening. We are past our season to grow outdoors but that gives us this winter to get our systems inline. Our current project is emptying out a giant barn that is full of broke down farm equipment and getting electricity in there so we can run a travel trailer to live in until we build our own home onsite. I have several fun projects scheduled like building a compost system and worm bin and a home garden. I am hoping to hear everyone’s opinions. Thank you for reading and please wish us luck!
Hi @VenusFL , welcome to OG!
Whereabouts in FL are you?
With the use of supplemental lighting and light deprivation, you can grow outdoors year round in South Florida.
I moved to SoFla over 40 years ago in order to do this.
Best of luck with this endeavor!
That’s quite the undertaking, best of luck, hope it works out well for you.
Welcome to OG and good luck with your operation.
Welcome!
I would be wary of a shipping container grow down in FL unless you can put a roof over it. Please dont try and bury them, thats a myth, they arent made to hold loads on top and will collapse.
It will be prohibitive to cool unless you are using a reefer I would think
Indicas will more than likely mold outdoors, I would be very selective in choosing what will go outside and what will be inside. Or have a good IPM for scale ready to go.
Honestly I would think as a business plan you would have to look at the timeline until you are allowed to grow medical as a loss, because the Hemp market crashed a couple years ago. You can get bulk sacks of shucked hemp for about 5-10 a lb these days. So I wouldn’t worry about selling the crop, rather just see what works and doesn’t. However, most would run out of $ by the end of the journey so idk tbh.
In FL you actually would probably be best served running IN winter haha its lower temps and lower humidity and it doesnt ever really freeze that would be dope to do indicas then, light deps would be optimal for that.
Just my .02, looming forward to seeing some pictures!
Welcome to OG @VenusFL , good luck with your new endeavor!
Hey thanks for the reply, I am looking to connect with Florida growers to get more info on climate issues, pests, etc. so it is awesome to connect with you. We are located in the Lake Placid area. I am still new to Florida, have only been here a month. I understand photoperiod but are you saying you would grow in the greenhouse year round or are you suggesting I can grow fulltime outdoor? How do you combat heat and temperature outdoor? I visited a fellow grower’s operation near here and he had a greenhouse and shade house that he had recently taken down. He had recessed to his Shipping container and had only mothers and clones lit up, running 24/7, was a nice setup and was refrigerated as well. He warned me a bit about preventive pest maintenance, can you give me any advice? thanks Calyxander!
Here are some before and after pictures. This is the part of the ranch in it’s crudest form. We already have had a few hiccups, including setting the barn on fire! one of the workers began a burn pile in the middle of the barn to get rid of some hay and it caught real fast and the flames were licking the ceiling. anyways… got that put out and cleaned up most of the farm equipment out. We got our travel trailer in and power hooked up because we need air conditioning before we can even attempt to start any manual labor in direct sunlight, with temperatures reaching up to 98 this week. We are set to move in next Sunday after we get water and sewage hooked up. Were moving along quite fast and should be renovating the container within no time. Also got another bag of seeds of unknown origin from another friend to test our processes on as well. OH AND there is a lot of different kind of fungus on the ranch, I am going to start foraging soon. We also have plans to get a deer blind built, apparently there’s wild pig here as well. BTW we do not have a shipping container, to be more specific it is actually a Reefer, an old Refrigerated Unit that attaches to a Semi-Truck. They work excellent for insulating cold/heat. We are installing an air conditioner to it. Not sure on details so I can’t be that specific at the moment since there are a lot of moving parts and things are changing everyday. Thanks for the support and i’m excitied to be part of the OG community.
@Dr.VitaminGreen , thanks for the advice. I just posted today with some updates. To clear it up we don’t have a typical shipping container, sorry for the confusion. We actually are going to use a Reefer. Have you any experience upfitting one? We are planning to finish plants in the greenhouse with light dep. Still uncertain of growing outdoors yet, getting used to the Florida climate myself. My team visited another grow op that recently minimized, the grower there had an outdoor shade house that was pretty expansive. He was growing maybe 100 plants there with top/side shading and blackout tarps and drip irrigation so I know it’s possible. I definitely agree with you there is going to be a big financial loss until it legalizes, I have been saying this to my team earnestly but we are still pushing forward with great conviction… so it will be interesting to see where this all goes. Until then this whole operation is practice until it does eventually legalize. I am going to be experimenting with as many strains as possible in all types of environments and variables and keeping good records along the way. Determined to make this work!
No not a reefer, just regular shipping containers on a friends farm, that’s where I had my knowledge of not burying it lol, we had thought to use the earth’s temperature to balance out the heat.
That pole barn would fit several shipping containers under it, would keep the heat off them directly, and save you some $ for sure. I know they have gone up in price though since the pandemic, but a clone/mother room in one, then a perpetual SOG in another, with flood and drain tables, roughly 144 plants a light in 4 blocks, start a new block every two weeks, build out a small access/lung room at the front of the trailer so workers can change into clean gear/hair nets/gloves whatever, leave about 2 foot on each side of the tables and run it down the middle…then a trailer for drying/curing in totes…it’s a real nice system, these are semi vague numbers because we built that system out a few years ago and I have a bad memory and don’t have the plans. Very easy to scale up though is why we really liked it.
If you leave it out side, would definitely paint the outside white to help cool as well. I would plan ahead for where to dump water/drain excess as that will be labor to move it out of the reefer. Watch for potential flooding as well, a shallow pit with gravel would work well to place the reefer on.
Honestly, I would stay away from any broad leaf plants and try to find mold-resistant narrow leaf plants for outside, they will grow well in the summer(Florida is a beast for veg period) it’s just come hurricane season there’s alot of potential for rot. As long as y"all stay on top of IPM though, they will perform well.
Have you gotten soil tests yet?
You can easily plant in rows with plastic mulch and have thousands out in a field, especially if you have a pond or some form of water reservoir nearby, and pump the water from there.
You don’t have to do automated light dep, however you need to make sure the person that is responsible for tarping at lights out/on is responsible. A “wook,” won’t cut it lol. You can get 3 harvests in easily if you do light dep, simple hoop houses you can DIY are cheap. I wouldn’t spend big $ on automation till I was certain it was a go for legal bud.
The heats not really a concern the humidity and pathogens are the real issues to take head on I think. But choose the right strains, and it ain’t a thing.
Hope this helped give you some ideas to run with!
Funny, starting a burn pile UNDER a structure, jeez haha.
How do you make money on weed? What about after fl gets flooded with Oregon mids? Is weed recession proof?
I quit trying in NV thank God I did. 10k for non existence medical grow license and can only sell to medical holders.
Weed here has become worthless.
You have a better chance there for now but think of your future
I have been kicking around ideas about what to do with product as time passes. True it’s a dilemma. We have yet to discuss options. I heard that a medical grow license here in the state of FL is $60,000 to apply and that doesn’t mean you’ll get it. Might have to grow a guerilla op somewhere else on the property to fund us until we get by. I can’t imagine there’s a good demand for CBD flower on the black market, I haven’t heard of anyone buying a pound of CBD flower with less than .3% THC. However, if you haven’t seen prices here at the medicinal dispensaries, they are astronomical and I’m sure the patients are looking for some kind of financial relief at this point 
what do you mean Oregon Mids. I was just living in Florence for awhile and loved it. Weed was the cheapest I’ve seen anywhere and was bomb!
Mass outdoor grows with illegal workers they output mids cheap and fast.
You never know where rosin and processed shit comes from probably from outdoors left over trims.
The money now is in good genetics and taking trims of mids, processing it and selling wholesale to black market at a premium. That’s all I see today.
Greenhouse, light dep etc grow excellent mids but you dont get the same frosty dense yummy nugs an indoor grower with natural tricks and foliars can get IMO
Once you can get away with tons of outdoor mids others will too and you’re now Oregon.
If you make any money I’d save it for what’s next and that’s what no one can predict? Is it seeds since everyone and their mom growing? Is it shrooms cause weed doesn’t do anything for today’s depressives?
I bet my money on sterile (triploid) unique genetics and I guess machinery if u can process weed cheap and sell the extracts n shit.
I bet in few years the ultra depressed crowd will need shrooms extracted active ingredients so people can properly great reset themselves.
Sorry if I’m too cynical.
great advice thanks you so much @Dr.VitaminGreen. We actually have two units. One is a legit reefer sitting on flat land elevated by two lying phone poles to keep it off the ground atm. It needs leveling and the door refitted to seal. The other is just a semi-trailer with corrugated metal flooring that is lifted on it’s trailer wheels and requires stairs to enter, its doors seal perfectly. We have a lot of options here and at this point in the season it seems very practical to stay inside the Reefers. I like the sound of the container setup you had. I was just thinking today about keeping indoor/outdoor equipment separate for contamination purposes, it never occurred to me to create a sanitizing “lung” as you so put it. It’s a fantastic idea. I like the way you think! Along with painting it white, another good idea. Perhaps we can fit it under the shade house or build another pole barn. Both of the Units we have are currently filled as storage units and are totally filthy and will need to be heavily douched before we can start. I am glad to hear you have container experience, I’ll be posting pictures in the next two days of the Reefer before and after prepping it to upfit. Also they did the soil tests before I got here and was told it was “good” meaning I think they just tested for pH in case we move into outdoor. But at this point we’re likely to mix our own and stay indoor until next spring. I do have plans to start doing soil sample testing when I move into the trailer this week. I plan to be playing in the dirt there regularly. Thanks for your input I really appreciate sharing your knowledge so freely 
Careful about growing MJ there…inspectors might find it convenient to search your cbd grow for thc plants.
I hear you there. We have about 230 acres, and possibly plan on having two operations in different locations on our property. We are legally scheduled to grow in a certain area where we will grow our CBD plants. The surrounding area in our property should be off limits. Do you disagree?
Here my thoughts. Refer trailer scream blackmarket grow op, you have experience growing… Inspectors may try to put 2 and 2 together and use it as an excuse to look for weed. I definitely wouldn’t be growing my headstash at that place…
That’s absolutely right. The Headstash will be grown out of sight, next to the Moonshine Still. The Refer we have is scheduled to be upfitting into a clone/mother room for Hemp CBD that is testing under .3% THC sometime this coming week. We are still seed shopping for Florida pilot certified seeds to begin our first crop (I do have some PMK CBD beans in hand to begin). In the meantime I have to figure out how to obtain hot seeds so I can get my own smoke grown to avoid paying 50 bucks an eighth. As a Colorado transplant I swear I feel like I time travelled back 10 years into the past. Shit is archaic here.
You could drive up the east coast to Virginia to get some seeds… Washington, DC has seed shops. So you don’t have to ship anything.
Thanks for sharing your adventure here. You seem well aware that you are playing in a risky arena and your excitement comes through loud and clear.
Very best wishes, I look forward to following your story. 
-Grouchy
PS, here’s a link that provides some insight into the commercial weed market pricing. Not too encouraging, but hopefully helpful nonetheless.