A pre-roll line is a chain, and the machine you buy first decides how much of the chain you fix.
Chuck Warner of STM Canna walks through what actually changes when you automate: which machine to
start with, what a bad grinder costs you three steps downstream, and where the labor savings really
land. One Michigan operator went from 14 people on the line to 6.

Elliott Gorfain sits down with Chuck Warner of STM Canna, who has been with the company since the
beginning. STM builds in Spokane, Washington. Their first Rocket Box filled 453 cones in under a
minute and they deliberately moved to a 72 count tray instead, because a smaller tray that keeps an
assembly line moving beats one big number. That tradeoff runs through the whole conversation.

In this episode:
- Whether to buy one machine or the whole line, and why modular beats all in one
- Why an all in one machine becomes a graveyard when a single part fails
- What a grinder actually determines about your fill, and why it is the wrong place to save money
- The scissor cut, and what operators are really asking for when they ask for it
- How to fill a cone that does not canoe, and why packing too tight is also a failure
- Hitting spec without weighing every unit
- The labor math: 14 people down to 6, and what that does to hiring, training and overhead
- Infusing at 72 units in about 90 seconds, and what else runs through the machine
- Closer throughput, the Dutch crown, and which papers actually work
- What payback looks like, and how to run your own numbers instead of trusting a headline figure
- Why buying too much machine is a real and common mistake

Chuck also owns Cannabis and Tech Today.

Episode 8 of Growers MBA by Green Thumb Depot, hosted by Elliott Gorfain.

Building or dialing in a commercial operation and want help speccing it? Give us a call and we will
review what you need. greenthumbdepot.com

New episode every week.

Crop steering is not a setting you turn on. It is a set of cues you send the plant with water, EC
and timing, and most growers are already doing it without knowing which direction they are
steering.

Elliott Gorfain sits down with Liam Spenser, Account Executive at AROYA, for a full walkthrough of
how commercial cultivators actually steer a crop.

In this episode:
- What crop steering actually is, and why every grower is already doing it
- Which sensors matter and what each one is really telling you
- Why irrigation is the fastest lever but the environment is the context for every call
- Field capacity by media, and how much water a one gallon block really holds
- The hard floor: never below 30% water content, and why rockwool channels past it
- The four phases of the grow, and vegetative versus generative stimulus
- Why microbes struggle in a high salinity root zone
- Brix as a margin for error
- Shot size by the numbers, and how to size emitters so a 1% shot takes one minute
- How to back into your irrigation window from your daily dryback
- P1 and P2, with the generative and vegetative recipe for each
- What stacking EC really is, and how runoff is the lever
- Why you cannot steer a crop when VPD is on a rollercoaster

Episode 7 of Growers MBA by Green Thumb Depot.

Building or dialing in a commercial room and want help speccing it? Give us a call and we will
review what you need. greenthumbdepot.com

New episode every week.

Coco coir or rockwool? Elliott Gorfain has spent 27 years in controlled environment agriculture, and
in this episode he breaks down every grow media a commercial cultivator can buy, what each one
actually does to your root zone, and how to pick between them without wasting a season finding out.

Growing media quietly sets your irrigation strategy, your labor cost, your freight bill and your
nutrient control for the entire run. Most growers pick it on habit. Elliott walks through the nine
things that should actually drive the choice, then goes media by media.

IN THIS EPISODE
- The nine factors that should decide your grow media
- Why roots need oxygen more than water, and how overwatering kills
- CEC explained: why high CEC helps coco and zero CEC is the point of rockwool
- Loose fill vs compressed blocks, and the rehydration catch
- Why unflushed coco carries sodium, and how a CalMag flush fixes it
- How rockwool was invented by accident at an insulation factory
- Why freight is 20 to 25 percent of bulk peat moss
- The one growing media Elliott says never to use
- Aeroponics, ebb and flow, buckets and deep water culture
- Why commercial farms run top down drain to waste

Episode 6 of Growers MBA by Green Thumb Depot.

Shop growing media and talk to a real grower about your facility: https://greenthumbdepot.com

New episode every week.

Every grower asks the same three questions: LED or HPS, how many watts do I actually need, and which light gets me the biggest yield for the lowest power bill. In this episode James and Elliott Gorfain give you the 50,000-foot answer to all of it, from the light types to avoid to the LED features that are quietly changing commercial growing.

Elliott walks the whole lineup. Why the bulbs in your house cook a room and grow nothing. Why fluorescents got banned in California and Canada, and the one job they still do well. The HID family, HPS versus metal halide, and why red light flowers a plant while blue light keeps it short and bushy. Then the number that matters most: a 1,000W HPS and a 720W LED can put the same usable PAR on your canopy, but the HPS throws off roughly twice the heat, which means you pay for that energy once at the meter and again at the AC. That is the whole efficiency case for relighting, in one sentence.

From there it is all LED. The two fixture types and how high to hang each. What separates a commercial light from a hobbyist one. Why a 1,500W monster is useless unless your VPD, CO2 and feed are already dialed in. And the LED superpower no other light has: spectrum tuning, using UV to push potency and aroma, far-red for the Emerson effect and more yield, and channel control to simulate spring, summer and fall across a single cycle.

Then the part that pays for the whole upgrade: rebates. One customer got $60,000 of lights for around $15,000. Elliott explains why you never buy an LED before checking the rebate, what DLC and the QPL list mean, and why last year's rebate-ready light might not qualify this year.

Episode 5 of Growers MBA by Green Thumb Depot.

In this episode:

• Why household bulbs and fluorescents are the wrong tool, and the one case fluorescents still fit
• HPS vs metal halide, and why red light flowers while blue light vegs
• What PAR actually is, and why maximum PAR with minimum heat is the whole game
• The two kinds of HPS heat, and why radiative heat lands straight on your plants
• The real LED efficiency case: same usable light, roughly half the heat
• Single-ended vs double-ended HPS, and where each tops out
• How to size and hang bar lights vs high-power LEDs for veg and for flower
• Why a 1,500W LED is wasted unless VPD, CO2 and feed are in sync
• Spectrum tuning: UV for potency, far-red and the Emerson effect for yield, seasons on demand
• How growers get $60,000 of lights for around $15,000 with rebates, and what DLC and the QPL mean

Need help choosing? Green Thumb Depot can spec your lights, run the rebate paperwork with your power company, and dial in the dehumidification, CO2 and nutrients around them.

Shop and get a quote: https://greenthumbdepot.com

Subscribe for more commercial growing breakdowns with James and Elliott. New episodes every week.

Elliott Gorfain started growing at 16, in a closet, under clamp-on fluorescents, with seeds out of a bag. The nearest garden center was 67 miles away and it stocked exactly one nutrient line. 27 years later he is Green Thumb Depot's head consultant.

This one is different. No sizing math, no spec sheets. James sits down with Elliott to walk the whole 27 years: the first two grows that failed, the DIY two-liter bottle hydro system he built off a magazine page, the harvest his mom kept alive while he was in Europe, and the golden age of Prop 215 California when the goal was quality and nobody was counting margins.

Then the part that matters if you are growing today. Elliott breaks down what actually changed: lighting from whatever you could find to metal halide and HPS to tunable LED, nutrient recipes that were guarded trade secrets giving way to published science, and the new problem that science created, which is data overload and not knowing what to trust. He is blunt about what survival looks like now that the black-market margin is gone. Attention to detail. Chasing rebates on lights, dehumidifiers and pumps, because the operation down the street is chasing them and will undercut you if you do not. Quality flower in a glutted market. And why chasing a single THC number is, in his words, ridiculous, when terpenes and the full profile drive both the effect and the shelf life.

If you have been in this a long time, this is the conversation you have been having with yourself. If you are new, this is the shortcut.

In this episode:
- Where a 27-year career actually starts: one closet, one nutrient line, 67 miles away
- Why both of his first attempts failed, and why nobody's first grow works
- The DIY two-liter bottle hydro system, and its one design flaw
- How lighting evolved from metal halide and HPS to tunable LED spectra
- Why nutrient recipes went from guarded secrets to published science
- The data overload problem that came with all that science
- The research that did not exist 27 years ago: UV augmentation, the Emerson effect, deep red and far-red
- What survival takes now that the margin safety net is gone
- Why 1% more yield and a rebate you missed decide who stays in business
- Why potency alone is the wrong target, and what terpenes and the entourage effect actually do
- Where the industry goes next, and why the science is the trend worth chasing

Need help with any of it? Green Thumb Depot can help you spec lights, dehumidification, nutrients, and anything else your room needs, and we will help you find the rebates too.

Shop and get a quote: https://greenthumbdepot.com

Subscribe for more commercial growing breakdowns with James and Elliott. New episodes every week.

Most dehumidifier quotes are wrong. Either badly oversized or badly undersized, because they are based on the wrong math. In this episode, James and Elliott break down how to actually size dehumidification for a commercial grow, and why it comes down to how much water you irrigate, not square footage or plant count.

Dehumidification is the one system that will kill a grow the fastest if you get it wrong. Elliott explains vapor pressure deficit and why it drives everything, the real sizing method built on irrigation volume in versus water out, what lowers the load and what raises it, the extra capacity you need for lights-off, why a unit rated at the nameplate removes far less in your colder and drier flower room, and why many smaller units beat two big ones for redundancy and fine-tuning. He also covers heat load, staging your humidistats so you do not trip a breaker, and the heat of condensation question that confuses almost everyone.

If you have ever called for a dehumidifier quote and had no idea whether the number was right, this is the episode that fixes it.

In this episode:
- Why dehumidification is the fastest way to lose a grow
- Vapor pressure deficit (VPD) and why it matters
- The real sizing method: irrigation water in, not square footage or plant count
- Why roughly 97% of the water you irrigate has to come back out of the air
- What lowers the load (drain to waste, plant metabolism, HVAC) and what raises it
- Extra capacity for lights-off, and how sunsetting the lights helps
- Why dehumidifiers lose capacity in cold, dry air, so you size for the peak week
- Heat load, and why the air conditioning is always sized last
- Many small units vs two big ones: redundancy and fine-tuning by grow phase
- Staging humidistats so your compressors do not all inrush at once

Got a sizing question? Green Thumb Depot can help you size dehumidification, grow lights, soil, fertilizers, and anything else your room needs.

Shop and get a quote: https://greenthumbdepot.com

Subscribe for more commercial growing breakdowns with James and Elliott. New episodes every week.

Rolling benches are one of the simplest ways to get more canopy out of the same room. In this episode, James and Elliott break down exactly how they work, how much extra production they unlock, and what to look for before you buy.

Most commercial licenses are limited by canopy square footage, so every wasted aisle is wasted money. Elliott walks through the fixed-base, sliding-top design, the single moving aisle that replaces four or five fixed ones, the real math on how much canopy you gain, when it makes sense to go vertical with tiered V-track racks, and the lighting, trays, and trellis details that separate a good build from a great one.

If you are planning a build or upgrading an existing room, this is the practical, no-fluff version.

In this episode:
• What you are really optimizing for: canopy size and licensing
• What rolling benches are and how the moving aisle works
• The real numbers on how much extra canopy you gain
• Going vertical with tiered mobile V-track racks and how to ventilate them
• Lighting: HPS vs LED bar lights and light lifters
• Kit vs custom builds, lead times, and crating
• How to spec your bench: widths, height, trays, trellis, and CAD layouts

Planning a room? Green Thumb Depot carries all the major bench and rack brands and can do custom quotes and CAD layouts of your space. Send your room dimensions and the team will help you maximize the canopy.

Shop and get a quote: https://greenthumbdepot.com

Subscribe for more commercial growing breakdowns with James and Elliott. New episodes every week.

The Growers MBA podcast is back. Host James sits down with Elliot Gorfaine, Green Thumb Depot's head commercial consultant and one of the most experienced cultivators in the industry, to break down how to set up a commercial grow the right way and stop leaving yield and money on the table.

If you are scaling up from a tent or garage grow into a commercial facility, this one is for you. Elliot walks through the room layout the pros actually use, why grow tents quietly eat your margins, and the changes that boost both yield and cash flow.

In this episode:
- Why a commercial grow runs on 4 flower rooms, and how the 2-week cycle keeps every room full
- Grow tents vs rolling benches, and the economies of scale most new growers miss
- HPS vs LED, plus the rebate strategy that helped one farm get roughly 60,000 dollars of lights for around 15,000
- Why 480V beats 240V, and how high voltage frees up your entire facility
- The rhizosphere mistake: how salts and hypochlorous acid strip the flavor, terpenes, and shelf life out of flower that looks perfect

Chapters:
(00:00) Welcome back: the Growers MBA relaunch and meet Elliot Gorfaine
(01:05) The optimized commercial grow: why you want 4 flower rooms
(02:50) Grow tents vs rolling benches and the economies of scale problem
(05:50) Lighting and electricity: where commercial growers overspend
(07:00) HPS vs LED, and the rebate that got 60K of lights for 15K
(08:50) 240V vs 480V: why high voltage unlocks your facility
(11:20) The rhizosphere: how salts and hypochlorous acid kill your terpenes
(13:50) Call before you waste money, and a note on staying humble
(15:00) Next episode: dehumidifiers

Have a question about your own setup? That is exactly what Elliot is here for. Reach out early, before you spend money you did not need to or lose a harvest to something avoidable.

Talk to a consultant and shop gear: https://greenthumbdepot.com

Subscribe so you do not miss Episode 2, where we go deep on dehumidifiers.