I often think about starting a hydroponics business where we sell vegetables that we can grow year-round. Where I live, there aren't many options for vegetables that haven't been shipped from the other side of the country. Does this idea sound viable? Any input?
DUDE
>>1165568
Depends on the climate. If where you live vegetables are shipped from other side of the country I'm guessing it's pretty cold, so you will spend a lot on heating and artificial sunlight lamps.
>>1165624
This, and unless you label and only grow organic produce to help hike up the prices you will probably not make more than you would have to spend. And if you are really wanting to do this, then move to the part of your country/state that has actual soil and land fit for agriculture and start growing.
>>1165634
Do you think that saying that a product was grown with hydroponics, that it could be a selling point? If people knew how much water that hydroponics saves against traditional farming, that they would choose this over another product?
>>1165580
AYYLMAOing to the bank
just remember a carbon scrubber is a good investment, you know, for your herbal garden that contains those fragrant herbs like lavender and chamomile. hipsters will pay bucketloads for hydroponically grown herbs fresh all year round
>>1165568
I work for a hydroponic marijuana grow in Alaska. Do you have good seed money and room? If so I'd bet you could make money. Only real cost we have is nutrients, electricity and pH solution.
>>1165704
It could be, but most of them right now jizz at the word organic at Trader Joe, while most ties to the word hydroponics bring to mind weed and drugs, which some people despise veryuch. It's stupid, but the truth. Marketing it as both would probably be best, like how many products do already such as gluten free no high fructose farmer grown lactose free enviromentally friendly eco green organic recycled hydroponically grown tomato dicks.
>>1165735
This makes me want to bring up the issue of actually selling the produce. Would I sell directly to stores, or would I sell to some kind of distributor? I'm not familiar with this sort of thing.
>>1165782
Why not have the farm and have them come pick the crops. You could even pay an underage kid under the table for tips to follow them around with a basket and pick the crops and carry the shit around.
Then at the end have a craft organic smoothie bar, make shitty smoothies that mustache wearing fucks will pay 10 bucks for, get even craftier and spike em with cheap vodka and charge 15. Meanwhile that kid weighs out their shit, bags their groceries and brings them the bill and helps em load it into the car.
It could be a "organic premium grocery store"
Or call it something gay like NU GROSH, or 1800's or something.
>>1165568
energy costs?
water costs?
>>1165568
build a small pilot farm and see how it goes before spending a lot of money
Do it, doesn't even need to be hydroponic.
We just put down ~150 tomato plants. Easy extra income especially since they produce multiple times a year.
>get enough up and going and it's an easy 35-50k for not too much effort
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26xpMCXP9bw
>>1165719
could you elaborate more? how much seed money is ideal? and the room? Where could one learn more about starting such a business?
Illegals work damn hard for less than minimum wage farming. Why would you want to compete with that? My grandparents and great grandparents were hard working farmers with little to show for it.
>>1166164
I'm definitely doing this. I already have some bell pepper seeds and some green onion seeds, and I've started planning on what to buy.
>>1166161
Water costs are going to be super low, all I need is enough to fill a small Rubbermaid container, mix in nutrients and pH solution, install a water stone to mix oxygen with the water, then I will pump the water to the top of the setup, where it will flow down through the roots, and back into the main reservoir. Hopefully it will look like pic related, but withe more rows flowing into each other.
>>1165782
Never heard of a farmers market? Lol also talk to the store managers at some grocery stores they have a budget for that sort of thing and if it brings them money they will no problem. PS grow Elephant Garlic or mushrooms shit is expensive as hell great returns. 1 acre of Elephant garlic can yield you over 60k profit a year.
>>1165568
Don't even pretend you're not selling weed.
People are scared of the word 'hydroponic'. Use 'organic' instead.
>>1166357
The best way to learn is to do. We had no idea what we were doing when we first started but as long as you track your costs and price well you should be able to pull a profit. Growing space is easy, you can build a nice large she'd for a few grand.
You need to decide what type of hydro you want to do (ebnflow is cheapest imo, dwc is my favorite though) and how much you are growing. Go to a grow shop for nutrients. Instead of buying premixed you can buy the actual nutrients in crystal form and mix yourself. Look into led lighting if power is a big cobcern. I choose hps lighting because it's God tier but the heat and electricity from them could be a problem.
You might be able to find agriculture grants and loans in your state too. Alaska has really good financing for farmers but I couldn't get it because of weeds legal status. I would check it out, you could easily get free money to start out.
>>1166357
Also, check out microgrowery and macrogrowery on reddit. It's for weed but a lot of it could be applied to any type of growing.
They also have a really good hydro sub for all types of growing but I can't remember the name of it.
>>1167260
Yeah, experience seems like it would really be able to help me with this. There's a hydroponics specialty store in my town, so I think that I will be paying them a visit. Looking for a grant will help me a lot if I decide to get serious about hydroponics. Do you have a link to the lighting you prefer, and can I see some pictures of your setup? I'm going to mount mine on a blank wall in my garage, and see how well that works out, but I want to see how to build the pipeline.
