Advanced Yield Expressions
About the Advanced Calculator
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Advanced Yield Expressions expand on the basics by including human resources, crop cycles, remote facilities, rotational harvest schemes, and risk analysis to name a few. In addition to basic flowering facilities, an independent set of ratings for the entire grow room operation has been added. This allows one to examine or compare single-area and multi-area gardens, traditional single-harvest and rotational multi-harvest schemes, or any mix of these four common gardening strategies. And at the same time provides a realistic picture of the entire grow room operation, not just its flowering portion. A Crop Cycle Overview condenses data into three prime cultivation interests (production-efficiency-risk) growers use for decision making, while Calendar Simulations project crop cycles over a year and allow each grower to edit results until he finds a long-term strategy that suit both his annual production needs and life style.
Standard ToolTips found throughout the forms supply a brief description of each data point, simply hover your mouse over any data point or entry box. Maxi-ToolTips utilize hyperlinked column headings (hover your mouse over this link) to supply detailed information without ever leaving the form. You can use Maxi-Tips with headings at the very top of a form to first obtain a general understanding of the columns covered under that heading, and then drill-down into the underlying columns to learn more detail.
It is strongly recommended to explore the forms by clicking the Insert Examples button and reading About the Examples below. If you want to check results on the fly (as you input data), work the Entry form from left to right, clicking the Calculate button after each input. If results don't appear, check your typing to make sure it contains only numbers and no blank spaces or other characters. However, some results depend on several inputs and won't appear until all of them contain data. Enjoy!
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About the Examples
A grower wanted to know how changing his strategy from a rotational harvest scheme to a traditional harvest scheme affected
his grow room operation. His former 375 gram crop yield and the 5 pounds it produced each year was more than adequate
to meet his long term needs. Needing to produce only 4.5 lbs for himself, he donated 1/2 pound each year to a compassion
club. So his reason for making these changes was not to produce more, but to break even over the long term and free
himself from the hectic 12-day rotational harvest schedule that was too frequently demanding his attention and time.
He wanted to lighten the ball & chain that was keeping him hostage to his grow room.
Entering Information - To compare before and after performance, he entered crop and garden data from his former rotational harvest strategy on line #1, and data gathered from his new gardening strategy on line #2. His new strategy involved reallocating remote vegetative resources (shown on line1) by incorporating them into his flowering area (on line2). For him this was simply a matter of removing a light-tight barrier separating the two areas, thus exposing to his flowering area the 150w HPS he previously used for the vegetative phase. This made his flowering area larger without reducing its light intensity. And though vegetating plants under both lamps allowed him to cut two days off his usual veg time, it still added 10 vegetative days to his crop cycle (notice the unmarked checkbox under Vegetative Phase Days on line #2). His workload was reduced by performing harvest-clone-root-veg-flower tasks only once every 70 days, instead of once every 12 days (5 times over 60 days, see the Rotational Harvest Scheme form). The 2 hours he saved were the combined result of propagating 39 plants in 1 sitting every 70 days, rather than 12 in 5 sittings every 60 days, and no longer needing to shuffle them from one area to the next every 12 days as they grew larger.
Reviewing Results - What stands out most are the differences between the flowering facilities and grow room operations. The new flowering area is less efficient, but his new strategy made the grow room operation noticeably more efficient. Time-efficiency (labor) increased as well.
Asking Questions - Of some concern to this grower were the 10 days of non-productive veg time introduced to his new flowering facility. Would it prevent him from yielding the same over the long-term? To answer this concern we turn to the Crop Cycle Overview and look at the crop cycle production rate (CC-PR). Because CC-PR is based on the entire crop cycle, and not just the flowering phase, it's the only number a grower needs to judge long-term effectiveness. To break even, his new CC-PR simply needs to match his old 6.3 figure. At 6.9 he's yielding more over the long-term than before, and saving work & time in the process. To find exactly what this means in terms of repeat work, and the ball & chain, we turn to personalized calendar simulations.
Getting Personal - Looking first at the default simulations, his new strategy could produce over 1/2 pound more annually, from fewer crops and with less work. But remember, this grower was already donating more than 1/2 pound each year to a compassion club. His goal was not to donate another 1/2 pound, but to lighten the ball & chain keeping him tied to his grow room operation. In order to maintain this perspective he needs more than the 365-day default simulations can offer. What he really wants to know is how much better the year's schedule would look if he still grew his original 5 lb annual yield, but with the better performing strategy of garden #2. Or said another way, he wants to view his new strategy in terms of the work & time it could save him each year, instead of the extra annual yield it could produce. To do this he simply replaced the default weight with his own personalized Annual-PR number, which he accomplished by entering 5 lbs in the white Edit box on line #2 under Calendar Simulations. Enter that number yourself to see the trade-offs, then try it again with 4.5 lbs to see only his personal stake in the annual operation.
Given his druthers, and new strategy, he can afford to trade off his new annual production any way he wants. Producing at his usual 5.0 lbs, the new strategy will eliminate 36 hours of work and 5 weeks of growing time from his calendar and save $69/yr in energy costs as well. If that weren't enough to lighten his ball & chain, he could eliminate up to 2 months of growing time and an additional 9 hours of work by trading-off donated surplus for more free time. Also notice how annual risk diminishes with fewer crop cycles and days in operation.
