The Top Greenhouse Lessons Learned in 2025
2025 was grounded in precise design, practical infrastructure, and energy-smart retrofits. Through dozens of site visits, planning sessions, and operational audits, the LLK Greenhouse Solutions team pushed greenhouse thinking beyond basic enclosures and toward resilient systems built for decades of performance. From its many articles and expeditions, the LLK team has organized the following lessons it’s learned in 2025 that help define long-term greenhouse success.
1. Smart Infrastructure Planning: Design with the End in Mind
Whether you’re building new or modernizing an aging facility, every infrastructure decision is a strategic one.
- Plan for adaptability from the start. “It’s cheaper to overbuild infrastructure upfront than to retrofit it later.” Early overbuilding of utility capacity, access space, and water treatment potential creates lasting ROI.
- Compartmentalization is non-negotiable in multi-user research facilities. MSU’s greenhouse overhaul emphasized “separate, individually controlled zones” as essential.
- Sidewall height impacts everything from air mixing to lighting layout. MSU’s shift from 7-foot, 6-inch to 13-foot walls unlocked LED integration, vertical crops, and mechanization capacity.
- Even challenging sites can become assets. Petitti’s Bath Township project reengineered a sloped, retention-heavy parcel into a retail showpiece.
2. Heating Systems & Energy Efficiency: Building Smarter for Decades
The focus on heating system longevity and thermal efficiency was a recurring theme across 2025.
- “Most of these greenhouse facilities have an economic life of decades,” so heating design must be fuel-flexible and maintenance-friendly.
- Energy curtains can reduce heating loss by 20–75% and bring “up to 50% on their heating bills.”
- Don’t forget system insulation: seal glazing edges, insulate ducts, and check for heat leaks.
- Rebates can support smarter HVAC and thermal upgrades — if you “plan for efficiency from the beginning.”
3. Built for Biosecurity: Infrastructure That Withstands and Protects
Greenhouse performance isn’t about productivity alone. It’s also about risk mitigation, reliability, and uptime.
- “Testing of all systems…is recommended to help prevent malfunctions that could result in crop loss.” Build a culture of preemptive checks.
- Preventive maintenance should be calendarized — not reactive. Kent State’s team does full PM “before spring and again as part of winter prep.”
- High-mounted, hard-to-reach systems — like polycarbonate panels and fan bearings — hide the biggest failure risks.
- Fall prep includes checking seals under bar caps and lubricating noisy rack-and-pinion gears.
4. Water Systems: Test, Treat, Reuse with Precision
Water is one of the most technically demanding and misunderstood areas in greenhouse ops.
- “We always start with an honest-to-God water analysis” — don’t skip full water panels (ions, microbes, hardness, TDS).
- RO systems can be game-changing if correctly paired with pretreatment and maintained.
- Reuse demands data: “How much fertilizer is still in your water when you collect it?” Fertigation strategies must adapt.
- Rainwater harvesting and moisture sensors can reduce overwatering and runoff.
5. Innovation & Institutional Partnerships: Accelerating Smarter Greenhouse Systems
LLK continues to partner with institutions reshaping how greenhouse infrastructure serves research, innovation, and commercial viability.
- NC State’s CEA Coalition breaks silos by integrating “engineers, computer scientists, and aerospace experts” into growing.
- “Letting growers vote on which problems get funded” has kept NC State’s research grounded in real-world application.
- LLK’s collaboration with MSU demonstrated how to keep a $35M facility operational during phased renovations.
For additional insights, lessons, and LLK’s top greenhouse projects of 2025, please read the original article found on the LLK Greenhouse Solutions website.
Subscribe to eNewsletter
