Greenhouse irrigation setup, climate control, and growing systems
Nobody builds a greenhouse hoping insects will move in. But here’s the thing: a greenhouse is basically a bug resort. Warm, humid, loaded with food, zero predators inside. You’ve given thrips, whiteflies, and aphids everything they need to explode. I’ve…
Supplemental lighting is one of those greenhouse investments where the decision tree looks simple on paper but gets tangled fast once you dig in. HPS is cheaper to buy. LED saves on electricity. Pick one. Except then you find out…
Most greenhouse growers I talk to think about irrigation in terms of water delivery: is the crop getting enough, is the EC in range, are the drippers clogged? That’s half the picture. The other half is what your watering schedule…
A greenhouse is a closed environment. That’s the whole point. It traps heat, blocks pests, and lets you control what happens to your crop. But sealing the place up also traps one other thing: a shortage of carbon dioxide. Plants…
Canada doesn’t fit the standard drip irrigation playbook. Most of the world’s drip adoption happened in places where water is the obvious constraint: Israel, California, Australia. In Canada, the constraint isn’t just water. It’s time. A prairie grain farmer in…
A greenhouse without climate control is just a fancy tent. And climate control runs on energy. Heating in winter, fans in summer, circulation year-round. If you’re running a commercial greenhouse and not tracking what all of that costs per square…
Walk into an unventilated greenhouse at noon in July and you’ll know the problem immediately. The air is thick, your glasses fog up, and the thermometer reads something that shouldn’t exist outside a sauna. Plants don’t sweat the way we…
If you’ve ever walked into a greenhouse at 2 PM in August, you know the feeling. It’s not just hot. It’s the kind of heat that makes you wonder if anything alive could possibly survive in there. Plants feel the…
I watched a farmer in Thailand take down his entire shade net structure three months after building it. The problem wasn’t the net. He’d mounted it at 2.2 meters, right above his pepper plants. By week six the afternoon heat…
A farmer I know in Ohio told me something that stuck: “My high tunnel cost $8,000 to build, and the first year it paid for itself in tomatoes alone.” He’s still farming in it five years later. High tunnels, also…
