I've been thinking of going back to a tent...or just getting out of growing altogether. Just really not worth it any more.
I have two 4 x 8 tents in storage, but I'm thinking a 4 x 4...although a little extra room is always nice. Probably limit my grows to 6 in flower now, just to keep it all legal. I'm more worried about a house fire than cops at this point.
You know an insurance company would not pay off with an illegal grow!!
And must be everyone is going to LED, or getting out of growing. I bough new Galaxy ballasts a year or so ago, for $200 each. They now are going for $100 brand new, and used ones are selling for like $40.
When you can buy quality ounces for $100 and legit cartridge's for $20-30 a gram, unless you have a love of growing, it's probably not worth it.
In my location, even on a good day a black market ounce is hitting around $150-200, dispensaries sell at around $150/oz for their pre-ground when on-sale (see lowest quality salable) bud, not on sale it's about $200 for the bottom shelf. Distillates and oils are priced about the same between $60 - $90 a gram and pretty much all come from mold farms, I have stopped trusting them completely.
Yeah I love growing, but having been completely without harvest all of 2022 and run out of my own bud in early May, I can attest in my area it's still far cheaper to grow your own. Since I've been doing it so long, unless I expand my space and have to get more lights, I don't see how it could be made cheaper. I get just short of a lb on three plants at least 4 times a year. Even at the cheapest price in town that's $9600 retail for weed. I do NOT spend $10k a year on my grow, at MOST I've calculated it out to roughly $50 a plant or about $150 per harvest. The calculations are not exact, but having had my grow completely down for the first half of this year I was able to see about how much we didn't spend on electricity with the exhaust fans and lights off, so it's the closest estimate on price per plant I've been able to do. No where in town can I get a pound for $150 much less a pound that was grown correctly to full maturity.
Much like eating out at a restaurant, I can't really make participating in that end of commerce economically cheaper than just cooking at home. Our most expensive meal for a family of 3 run about $35 and that's if I'm making steaks and subsequent leftovers from a Prime Rib Roast. One roast will generate about 4 meals, so dividing it up it comes to just under $35 a meal for everything. Considering that's a special meal when I put upwards of 2 days into cooking a roast that was $100 on the shelf, I only do that once or twice a year. Usual non-steak meals break down to less than $10 to feed all three of us. Eating out at a sit down restaurant (not fast food), usually averages about $50 - 70 for the three of us, and if everyone eats light we might be able to make a full meal out of the leftovers making the best price for eating out around $25 a meal.
I don't even use cheap nutrients, most growers consider Nectar for the Gods to be a boutique level nutrient system and over kill. Also switching to LED's dropped my electrical usage considerably. Honestly I'm hard pressed to make my homegrown weed more expensive without doing something completely pointless like Co2 enrichment. Since I'm open system as opposed to closed system, it wouldn't stay put anyway so I don't waste the money. The one time my weed took a spike in price to produce was when I added a $20 a month labor cost by paying my kid feed the plants while I was working at the MMJ farm. Working at the MMJ farm, I can tell you they're pouring most their money into management and labor and spending fractions of a penny on nutrients. As long as I don't have to pay labor, I don't think I can make my weed cost more to produce than theirs.
It will be quite a few years before we have budget weed down here, the legislature gave all the marijuana grows to the ultra-rich, who bought the cheapest chunks of land with 30 year old existing nurseries (law required it) they could to produce oils only; flower sales weren't included in our original passing of the law. When they added flower a year after the fact, it took them almost another year to buy up indoor properties that could produce saleable flower and they still can't keep the stores stocked with flower.
You can get Delta8 sprayed hemp for next to nothing at every head shop because every jackass in town can get a hemp permit for $100 and grow faux weed, but only the rich are allowed to grow the real stuff for profit. So the market not only didn't get flooded here, if anything the legal distribution of flower is still playing catch up with demand and maybe it slightly lowered the black market price about $50 for an ounce. After state and doctor fees to get the card (around $300 a year) and paying for all the plants that the legal grows throw away due to mold and pests, there is no way legal weed will get cheaper here for several years.
But yeah, I love growing, kind of wish it wasn't a necessity and wish it was was legal for me. Maybe someday, there's rumors of a 9 plant personal grow limit law coming down the pipes in 2024, we'll see if it passes. If it does my grow will cost more because I'll be buying a new house, getting my wife a card and growing 18 plants. Then I might get to complain about the cost of growing. Considering I've figured out how to get by on 3 plants, that many plants would leave me swimming in bud without a clue what to do with all of it.
