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Seth Baumgartner and Jason Van Leuven open the mics for your crop steering and cultivation questions.
Rachel [00:00:02]:
Hey, what's up, grommies? Welcome to AROYA office hours, your source for free cannabis cultivation education. I'm your moderator, Rachel. I'll be filling in for Kaisha while she is on vacation. This is episode 117. Shout out to our live viewers on YouTube and Instagram. Anyone tapping into Spotify, apple Music, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcast. Thank you for your support, and if you like the pod, drop us a review. We really appreciate your feedback.
Rachel [00:00:29]:
Seth, Jason, great to be with you guys today. How's it going?
Jason [00:00:34]:
Good. We're so excited to have you filling in here in case she's getting her break like she needs. And love to see your face out here.
Rachel [00:00:42]:
Yeah, it's always a good time hanging out with you guys, seeing what's up, man.
Cian [00:00:47]:
Hi, how's it going? First time on the show with you guys, but excited to be here all the same. So my first jump into office hours, I kind of wanted to share something, more or less. I have been using this for the last four years, and as it's grown into the product that it is now, I found a couple things being my daily go to features that I kind of wanted to kick the show off with. So, without too much further ado, just pop you guys in here to my screen.
Jason [00:01:22]:
Show us more.
Seth [00:01:23]:
Yes, please. Just so everyone knows, Cian is a member of support staff here, part of our agronomic and client success team. So if you are working with AROYA, he's one of the faces and voices you'll get to talk to, along with Rachel here. So some of you might recognize him.
Cian [00:01:41]:
All right, so to kind of give you guys an idea here, when I log in every day, the first thing that I jump into is always going to be this dashboard page, because it's my preset, save for what I'm going to look at as soon as I log in for any specific room that I want to go and check out. Oftentimes, what I'm going to first do for the day when I get in there is line up a view of the individual graphs for the timeframe that I'm looking to be in there. And the individual zones are really important to me because a lot of times I'm running multiple cultivars in the room, and as a result of that, being able to see how each one of those cultivars is drinking throughout the course of a day is really, really important to me in terms of how I'm going to institute my irrigation strategy for the day. And so just to kind of give you guys an another little snippet here when it first logs in. A lot of times I'm on a 24 hours view, but for the purposes right now, obviously this room doesn't have a whole lot in there in that timeframe. So moving us back into like a month back here so that we can see some actual data. When I go to login, that first place is going to be these individual views that you can access over here on the far right side of the room dashboard, and these individual graphs. Kind of like I was saying, when you pop in and you're able to split apart all of this data that you would normally be seeing, kind of compiled as one screen into zone by zone screens, so that you're actually able to see what each section of that room is doing has been one of the best tools that I think we've been able to come out with in terms of my ability to go in and make decisions quickly with what we're showing.
Cian [00:03:32]:
And I wanted to share mostly because I get so many questions on a frequent basis about how to make some of the data that people are viewing a little more processable.
Jason [00:03:45]:
I've got a great question for you. How did you get those wonderful emojis in your facility room? The room titles there.
Cian [00:03:52]:
That one, actually, I just went in and I popped into, let's see if I have enough space on this screen to actually click the right button.
Seth [00:04:04]:
All right, there we go.
Cian [00:04:05]:
So for that, I actually went into my setup and into my facility and then went into the specific room that I wanted and just edited those in there. My keyboard, I'm lucky, has a little emoji button on it, so it's just a quick click away to add some emojis to anything I want to do. But the other way I've seen people do that is, you know, editing it using some sort of like iOS or Android device. Those oftentimes will have those emojis just hanging out right on your keyboard so you can add something fun in there. And, you know, for me, I thought it was a great way that I could see something fun that will draw my eye to the room I want to look at most frequently.
Jason [00:04:45]:
That's awesome. I always just have to copy and paste from something on a computer.
Seth [00:04:49]:
That's what I was thinking. That sounds way slicker than the way I would have gone about that. So, yeah, thanks for enlightening us on that.
Cian [00:04:56]:
Anytime I do get some questions on the emojis, whenever I show that off, hey, it's fun.
Seth [00:05:02]:
Looks nice.
Jason [00:05:05]:
Is that all you got for us?
Cian [00:05:06]:
Show something else big little thing I wanted to show off to everybody, mostly just a way to be able to more quickly navigate to some of those zone views and see some of the data in a way that just is a little bit more palatable sometimes, rather than if you were to go in and look at the main room graph, you're going to get a lot of those things in there. But as you can see, this is a whole lot harder to be able to comprehend. Even if I take it and blow it up to a smaller timeframe here, I'd still be seeing so many things in that graph at one time that it can be a little difficult to be able to discern exactly what's going on and whether or not things are doing what I want them to do on a case by case basis.
Jason [00:05:50]:
Can you walk us through a little bit of the averages, individual zone readings, and how you maybe select a couple of zones at once if you're trying to do comparisons on that page?
Seth [00:06:01]:
Yeah, especially. I mean, you're a great example because you're always running several cultivars in one room. So I think this is really important for some of our growers that are faced with the same challenges.
Cian [00:06:11]:
Absolutely. So that's one of the other nice things. You can go in here to your zone selections up at the top. And so say, you know, I'm really looking here to try and compare. Maybe this cherry runs the z runts in the wild up here so I can go through, take those zones away and be able to have a view that contains multiple zones like that, so that I can see the differences in between a couple of traits at one time. And then you can go in and.
Seth [00:06:38]:
Share your screen bed.
Cian [00:06:41]:
And realize it dropped off of there.
Seth [00:06:45]:
It's almost like you do this a lot with people.
Cian [00:06:52]:
All right, so what I was going there, or not at all, was selecting these zones up here at the top so that I can have just a couple of zones in that view at one time. So what I was saying is if I'm comparing these three strains and how they're feeding throughout this particular timeframe, I can just put those in my view and deselect all of these other strains and tables so that I can then have just what I'm looking to compare in here in terms of what those particular tables that I'm viewing are showing me. And that gives me that ability to, in this situation, kind of compare how these different strains are drinking and using their nutrients throughout the day.
Jason [00:07:37]:
Nice.
Cian [00:07:40]:
And then one of the things that I always have toggled on for mine is to show the individual sensor readings, and then frequently what I'll do is also toggle that back off so that I can see kind of zone averages for those values as well.
Seth [00:07:58]:
Yeah, I think this is a good point to bring up, too. When we have at least two data points for a specific zone, we can actually start to create real averages. And although it'd be awesome if everyone had a sensor for each plant, that'd be amazing. However, at least we have two data points on one zone. We can actually start to see some of those microclimate differences and really decide like, hey, I'm seeing these two cultivars drinking differently. Now I can go investigate. Is that a microclimate issue? Do I have a dryer into the room? Or are we actually seeing the real differences between these two cultivars? Because sometimes it's important to try to eliminate what is really driving a cultivar specific approach and what is actually just a limitation in the facility. And that's how every strain that we put in there may have a slightly different reaction, but we're seeing a response to a particular environmental issue.
Seth [00:08:52]:
Not saying that your rooms have that, because generally they don't, but we have multiple data points in one zone. We can really pull apart what's going on in that zone to a greater degree of accuracy from remote location.
Jason [00:09:04]:
I think another thing that think about there as well is just natural variation. Right? As we have biological differences, and it's pretty much impossible to get everything set up exactly the same, or it has some differences in the exact amount of drip rates. Maybe your sensor height is just slightly different. There's so many things that can cause some. Some discrepancies across those readings. And that's why, you know, turning on individual sensors is a great way to also investigate some of those discrepancies. Maybe you're going to find something with a clogged emitter or stick that got pulled out, or maybe you just need to do a little better job with the consistency of installing sensors. All that stuff can show its head when we look at individuals versus zones.
Seth [00:09:45]:
Yeah, I think you can come into that seed. It's actually surprisingly common for customers to figure out they have a clogged emitter because it accidentally clogs up on the plant they have sensed. Right. Which is absolutely, you know, it's that. Right there is a nice little savings when we got a plant that's worth a significant amount of money just for what's on that plant.
Cian [00:10:05]:
Absolutely. I would say that that's one of the wonderful things about being able to stack those views is being able to see when something like that happens. And it may not necessarily look immediately like a clogged emitter when you see it on the graph, but at least it's going to catch your eye and be like, what's different? What's going on over here? And cause you to start asking some questions and checking things out.
Seth [00:10:24]:
And, yeah, anytime you see inconsistencies, you know, most sensors out there don't fully lie. Ours are pretty accurate, generally speaking. However, anytime you have a sensor out there that's registering a difference outside of a normal expected range, there's two realities, right? Like either the sensor has massively fallen out of calibration or become physically damaged, or it is registering an actual change. That change just might not be the one you expect or have direct visibility on all the time.
Jason [00:11:01]:
Everyone. Good? Throw it back to Rachel.
Seth [00:11:04]:
Yeah, thanks for the overview.
Jason [00:11:05]:
See?
Seth [00:11:05]:
I appreciate it.
Rachel [00:11:06]:
Thank you.
Seth [00:11:07]:
Pleasure, you guys.
Rachel [00:11:10]:
All right, you guys ready for some questions?
Seth [00:11:13]:
Let's do it.
Rachel [00:11:15]:
Danny Armada asks, I've heard Seth recommend ten degree cooler nights. When should we do this? During a 60 day flower cycle. I've also heard some people suggest the same day and night temp might be better. Thoughts?
Jason [00:11:31]:
So we like to run it towards the end of the cycle, your 60 day flower cycle, you're going to be probably somewhere around day 40 that I'd like to be in those ten degree differences. And it doesn't have to perfectly co align with when we're talking about our ripening irrigation strategies. Really, I think the most important thing here is to understand what the goal is of these nighttime daytime differentials. And as always, it is strain dependent. We're going to have some strains that naturally build lots of anthocyanin, that they get purple color without a huge nighttime daytime difference. But especially in states like California, where that's a huge trend, where they really like the color, the expression of the genetics, it is pretty important to stay, to stay competitive in the market with the shelf product of flower to make sure you are getting the best genetic expression that you can. And so a nighttime daytime differential. Absolutely.
Jason [00:12:26]:
Getting really good anthocyanin production sometimes. It also can help us make sure that we're getting nice, dense buds every once in a while. If we keep those daytime temps really high, we see those photosynthetic rates stay also very high, very productive, and then the plant might become a little bit blown out. So it's one of the ways to not only produce a little bit better chemo type, so sometimes we can get a little bit better terpene profiles out of lower temperatures. Sometimes we can get slightly higher thcs. It is going to depend on what strains you're running. How much experience do you have running those strains and tailoring it specifically to that? As far as a ten degree difference for nighttime, daytime, towards the end of the cycle, that, that's usually where I like to float. We can get away with a little bit more sometimes, but that's.
Jason [00:13:13]:
That's typical recommendation.
Seth [00:13:15]:
Yeah. Yeah. That ten degree diff is, uh, I mean, part of where that came about is old school hps growing. We 75 day time, 65 night time. Um, but a big part of that is, you know, we have a plant that's developed for millions and millions of years growing outside. And just because we brought it indoors in the last, you know, 30, 40 years doesn't mean we've radically altered what that plant responds to. And all those millions of years of evolution that are leading up to its determinate life cycle. We can hold it in an indeterminate state where it's never going to flower if we keep it on 18 hours of light.
Seth [00:13:48]:
But once we flip it to 1212, that plant enters what's called a determinant life cycle. And during that time period, you have a certain number of days where that plant essentially wants to stay alive and attempt to produce flowers in an attempt to produce seeds to propagate for the next year. Propagates not the right word to survive as a species, but part of that process is changing conditions throughout that growing season. So that's part of why we see, you know, like in veg, we're looking for a lighter spectrum. Hey, it's early mid summer. We've got really nice blue light coming in super clear from the sky as we head into fall. Whether you're in the northern or the southern hemisphere, the farther north or south you are, you get a little bit more of a color spectrum change as we shift into the fall. So that's part of why we see, you know, far red supplementation, uv supplementation, or good old hps lights give us that nice color that's pretty similar to like a day outside here.
Seth [00:14:43]:
Like today, we see a pretty similar spectrum coming through because they are singling away. And that lights going through more of the atmosphere and adjusting that spectrum for us. That temperature diff goes right along with that as we head into fall. You know, here right now, we're already getting freezing nights. So, by the way, don't try to grow weed outside in Washington, necessarily. If you really want to be productive. Not that it's impossible, but it is very difficult here because our winters come pretty quickly in terms of overnight temps. But that's a cue to the plant as we get that deeper and deeper differential between day and nighttime.
Seth [00:15:16]:
That's also simulating what's happening outside, you know, in the natural environment. And that's something the plants respond to. So one thing we've seen over time is that differential promotes faster maturation in some plants. If we keep that heat up, some of the plants don't like to finish quite as much, especially in the presence of, you know, pretty, pretty high end fertilizers. I would say we're all running compared to just going and throwing a seed in the dirt somewhere. And we, you know, we see some interesting responses. So any cue we can give the plant to kick more into that ripening is going to help out with tert production, cannabinoid maturity, and overall color and look of the flower. And I think it's also important to recognize that there are differences between hps and led when we're running that differential.
Seth [00:16:00]:
So that's part of why we talk about leaf surface temp and overall plant temperature. You know, everything we're doing in this grow room, the only part that really matters is just a few millimeters around the plant. That's what the plant experiences, that's what it responds to. So I think it's. It's very important not only to run a differential that last two weeks or so of flower, and, you know, some growers like to do it just the last week. Again, strain dependent. Some need more differential in terms of degrees and time running it to get that deeper purple expression. Others need less.
Seth [00:16:33]:
On the flip side, like I said, we get typically higher and better terpene expression and cannabinoid maturity. Like the difference might be, hey, I've got a strain that I'm running super hard trying to get some yield out of. But we're coming into week eight or nine, we're still seeing white pistols, dark green growth, and we haven't been running any differential. So probably the first step there is to next run. Let's back it off and try to work on those ripening conditions to see if that was one of the cues that the strain needs to really go forward. And one of the things we really see is, hey, I've harvested a plant that's 32% THCA and 0.1 or 2% THC. And what that typically means is that you're never going to have a higher ratio of THC to Thcae, when the THC is so low, the delta nine. What that tells us is that we haven't had any natural decarboxylation.
Seth [00:17:22]:
We're probably missing some energy input, either from the lights or a queue like the cold at night, from the plant, to really speed up those processes. If we don't get those processes sped up, we don't get the maturation we're looking for. And I think we all typically know if you're harvesting a product that is super high ThCA, typically, we're not going to get that tert profile expression. We're not going to get all the ripening and look that we want out of the flower. And then at that point, kind of go, okay, we got to look at the market. Does your market demand, you know, back to what Jason said in California with the purple? Does it demand that for a sale price? We have clients we work with where the difference might be between six and nine, or $1,200, depending on the degree of purple that they have in that product. And then at that point, we start to look at, okay, what inside the box that we've built, can we adjust to help achieve that? Because we know if we get this particular trade expressed, we're getting a pretty large premium for the product. And from a revenue sense, if I look at how much, instead of how much grams I'm putting through the room, how much revenue it can actually produce, that might allow me to back off on my plant count and overall biomass in the room and really be able to push that and push a more, for lack of a better word, boutique product that has this specific trait that's hard to achieve.
Seth [00:18:40]:
And I can do it because I'm getting the price premium on it. Now, if we're talking about a market where that is not as important, you know, we all have to be adaptable to what we can do. If I'm in, let's say, Michigan, for instance, and that purple expression is only going to get me dollar 100 or dollar 200 on the pound, and my pound price is already at dollar 600, maybe I don't really want to back off on my plant count and push it down as low. So there's a few things to consider there. One of the biggest being that all of our DHU equipment, typically, unless you've got some pretty powerful ac units, which is a whole other issue, become less efficient the colder and colder it gets. So the ten degree differential is a popular topic for, you know, two big reasons. One, a lot of HPS growers switch to led, they're used to just programming their set points as 75 daytime, 65 night time during stretch or not during stretch, excuse me, ripening. And when you go to the leds, that heat dynamic changes in the room quite a bit.
Seth [00:19:43]:
So when we're talking about, you know, navigating those differences, especially coming into the new age where everyone's, and not everyone, well, just about everyone, is replacing HPS with led for power savings reasons, efficiency, longer lasting fixtures, etcetera.
Jason [00:19:58]:
Availability.
Seth [00:19:59]:
Availability. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you got bulbs out out there, let us know. We can help you find a home for them finding that difference, because in these systems, you know, everyone's got a. Even if you have cookie credit rooms across the facility, they're probably after you've been running for a few years in different states of being remodeled. And by the time you've been running a room for a while, usually your airflow dynamics have changed quite a bit. I mean, Jason, you can probably comment off when we talk to people about just changing airflow in a room.
Jason [00:20:30]:
Yeah, you want it very uniform, right? We know we're not looking for necessarily an intense amount of airflow, but you do definitely want it uniform. And that's kind of one of the basic principles of why pruning is so important. Why plant spacing becomes so important, is because, as you said, we're talking about a millimeter within the plant leaf surface. And if that is plus or minus five to ten degrees across a single plant, then. Now, what do your sensor measurements mean? Right. If we've got a humid, um, humidity and a temperature sensor, that's not representing what the plant is feeling, and we may not be making the best decisions as far as plant growth goes.
Seth [00:21:13]:
Absolutely. And that's why mapping out your plant surface temperatures and really determining what the actual temperature of your plants in the room is, is very critical to figuring out not only how much of a differential you need to push. With leds, for instance, you might find out that it's 75 degrees ambient temp. With an ideal airflow, like Jason is talking about, we might see 72, 71 degrees on that plant surface. So if we wanted a ten degree diff, we'd have to drop it to 61. And that's where we can start to adjust our strategy on. Okay, what is our daytime versus our nighttime set point need to be? I can certainly tell you from experience, we've seen many situations that would buck that trend. Hey, we've got an HPS room with just incredible airflow.
Seth [00:22:00]:
Wow. We have a. We have a negative. If on that one. Ambient room temp, 78, we're seeing 76. Go to the room right next door that maybe doesn't have the same airflow upgrades. Okay. At 75, we're seeing a 78 degree leaf surface temp.
Seth [00:22:12]:
So ultimately, when we're talking about diffs, it really goes back to plant surface and leaf surface temp and what we're achieving there compared to what the set points in our room are.
Jason [00:22:24]:
Yeah, and maybe we'll dive in a little bit here just to take it one step further. As far as leaf temps go, we'll think about the biophysiology of a plant leaf surface. So we have stomates, and the stomates are the opening, they're the pores in the surface of the plant that are allowing for gas exchange and, um, and for it to exude water vapor from the plant. Right. And so if we think about, all right, in a, in a static environment, what is happening close to that plant surface? Well, it's going to be higher in humidity and a lot of times it's going to be lower in temperature. Caveat here till we talk about radiation lower in temperature because of the evaporative cooling going off from that water vapor around the surface. Obviously with HPS's, for most of us, we're used to seeing actually leaf being a little bit higher. And this is also common in outdoor, where we are seeing a significant amount of radiation that being absorbed by that plant and allowing the leaf surface to be higher.
Jason [00:23:26]:
Now, when we're in leds, what's going to happen is we don't have nearly as much of that radiation. Certain wideband spectrum leds, we might see it a little bit warmer, but this is really critical why it's to have measurements as far as what that leaf surface temperature is. It's also really critical to understand why is airflow so important? Well, it's because now we're. Now we're able to break up that microclimate and create a more even climate across the plant. Right. When we're thinking about, all right, well, how much radiation is hitting the plant. Well, depends what level we are in the canopy. Right.
Jason [00:24:01]:
You know, we're going to see usually a factor of five to ten times as much radiation hitting the top of the plant as we are in the lower leaves. Also why we see things like under canopy lighting becoming important and why we see people, you know, talking about better ways to reduce how much larf ratio that they're seeing on their plants. And all of that kind of comes down to this uniformity topic. That we're discussing here.
Seth [00:24:26]:
Yeah, at the end of the day, too, I mean, just like we talk about plant uniformity, that room uniformity is critical. And one of the tough things about being an at scale producer, or even a smaller producer is, you know, once you get above 15 or so, we're dealing with a distance across a room that's very difficult to blow air across. And that's where we start to bring in ducting and multiple fans. Experimenting with that and trying to figure out how do we actually move air uniformly across this room without it being too quick or too hot or too dry, moving too quickly in one area and not quickly enough in another. And that's actually quite a bit of a challenge. So there's a lot to really factor in when we're talking about the diff. I think to break it down. Number one, it is important to producing a quality, finished product that not only has the color you're looking for, but also cannabinoid expression and terpene expression.
Seth [00:25:23]:
So, absolutely, it's a. It's a great idea, technically speaking, sometimes to hit the yield numbers that a business needs, um, and not upgrade, let's say, like, let's say we're out of power and we need to hit three pounds of light. We might not be able to run that much of a differential, and that might, you know, unfortunately, overall affect the end sale price of our product. But if the market dictates that we're not going to get enough of a premium on a better product, well, let's grow within the box we have, and try to do the best job we can there. And then at that point, you know, this is a discussion. We have a lot of commercial producers, commercial viability of strains. So running some strains, a lot of growers out there can attest to this. Every once in a while, you find a weird one that straight up has purple SAP when you're defoliating it really early on the end of week three, let's say that plant tends to produce anthocyanin a lot easier, might not need necessarily that overnight diff, and it might just have a stronger genetic propensity to do that.
Seth [00:26:22]:
If you're in a system where you're at your edge of the limit with your sensible power load, you're not going to add any more d hue, and you're not going to shut down rooms to put power in other rooms. Strain selection might be a huge part of the way you need to approach this as a producer, because maybe you just can't get certain strains to achieve those goals and you're way better off spending time and looking for ones that will achieve that for you rather than, uh, molding a crop out or having to pull out plants. If, again, if you're not getting the premium for it.
Jason [00:26:55]:
Yeah, we didn't want to make an easy answer for this question, so we're diving right in. Yeah, I think there was one last part of that question here that I did want to bring up in that as well. All right, so let's say we've already all agreed upon needing some cooler temps for the plant morphology, the chemology that's coming out of it. So the question there was also, what if we just brought down our daytime temps and our nighttime temps? Right. So he had asked, all right, if they're the same? Well, you know, when we're thinking about chemical reactions, and in this case it's a biochemical reaction, typically they happen faster under warmer temperatures. Right. So if I had a longer, let's say I had a 70 day flower cycle instead of a 60 day flower cycle, sure, I might get away with decreasing those daytime temps as well. But in order for us to build those complex chemical profiles as quickly as possible is usually more efficient as far as a cost and growth rate, in order to keep those daytime temps up, keep those reactions going quickly and using that drop in nighttime temperature in order to manipulate the plant hormones to build those profiles that we're looking for.
Seth [00:28:11]:
Yeah. So an important thing to think about is, I recently thought of a good way to say this. Plants. Plants are cold blooded, so their metabolism is entirely independent on outside heat inputs, at least cannabis for sure. So, you know, as we have temperature go up over time, draw this here, we hit a point around 80 to 82 degrees where we see peak plant metabolism. After that, that plant starts to metabolize less and go into drought mode. Now we're putting energy towards taking heat off. So we're talking about all of our biochemical pathways.
Seth [00:28:45]:
We want to keep inside of a certain temperature range so that plants accomplishing all of the, not only, you know, growing tissue, but also producing cannabinoids and terpenes. So we still need to be inside a higher range and let's say in ripening, we're not quite at that 80, but we still want to be up on the plant surface temp close to about 78. Because if we start to go below that, that's going to slow absolutely everything down in the daytime on the plant plant. And we still want that overnight temp diff because part of that anthocyanin response is similar to you or I getting a suntan if we go outside. So right here in this time period, we have a lot of radiation input. If we go to high inputs in the daytime, the plant still has nighttime processes that are bringing nutrients up and accounting for a lot of the things that are not being taken care of during the daytime. Part of that anthocyanin, it is being able to block some of this radiation from basically overpowering what's going on inside the plant cells. And if we don't have a high amount of metabolism in the daytime, countered by a low amount of metabolism at nighttime, we're not necessarily going to see that response from plants that don't just do it on their own.
Seth [00:29:55]:
And even with strains that purple up easy. You know, I think seeing you could comment on this one, you had a jealousy run a while back where the deeper you could push that temp diff was the difference between some pinks and purples and almost a black expression on the bud itself. Yep.
Cian [00:30:14]:
Yep, that's very true. There's a couple of different genetics out there like that that are going to be really dependent on the temperature differentials. And it may well be the difference in between being able to, you know, have a successful crop that nets the right price per pound that you're really needing it to net, and one that misses that mark.
Jason [00:30:34]:
And when we think about, you know, nighttime stuff with plants, plants don't necessarily go to sleep. What is happening is during exposure to photons during daytime, during lights, on photoperiod, on whatever you want to call it, obviously, our photons are inducing photosynthesis, right? So we're seeing CO2 combining with water catalyzed by light when we're off offsetting for, you know, we're letting off oxygen and stuff. So that's, that's photosynthesis. What's going on is the plant is building sugars that it can use for plant growth. Now, with photoperiod off, that that reaction actually changes. And we're talking about respiration in the plant, whereas it's building those sugar, those building blocks that, that it's created during photosynthesis and it's respiring, it's actually creating plant parts while using oxygen from the environment, expressing CO2, burning those sugars the.
Seth [00:31:31]:
Same way we do look up the krebs cycle. But really, that's, that's what's going on at night. Those plants are using up those metabolites that they create. And also, that's a time when, hey, in daytime we have photosynthesis. Nighttime, those plants are switching to uptaking and fixing nutrients and getting ready to support that building the next day. And also actually growing. Your plants do grow during the nighttime when they're respiring, just as Jason said. So.
Seth [00:31:58]:
Wow, we really got deep on that one growing. Yeah. But there's a lot that goes into the temperature differential and, uh, kind of wanted to highlight that. That is actually when it comes to environmental control, a huge challenge for a lot of growers out there, um, in trying to balance that biomass in the room versus how cold we can get that temp and still maintain control. So good luck. Try running it. Get some sensors and make sure, uh, it's not raining in your room when you try to plunge it down to 65 from 75. Shut your lights off.
Jason [00:32:30]:
All right. We're talking too much. We want to hear from Rachel.
Rachel [00:32:32]:
Yeah, are you guys, thank you so much though, for all that information. You are great. I have a couple from chemical grower here. Is it possible to use your substrate sensors in a 70 30 coco perlite mix? Will I still get stable readings?
Jason [00:32:50]:
Absolutely. We've got tons and tons of clients out there that are using perlite coco mixes. You know, perlites giving you a little bit better oxygen. Not always, necessarily. Depending on what type of coco supply that you're utilizing. Um, they're going to be stable, I'd say.
Seth [00:33:08]:
Jason, I both cut our teeth using royal gold, using some of these sensors. A 70 30 paperwork works just fine. Yep. Um, part of the caveat there though is if you're buying a mix, hopefully it's well blended. If you're hand mixing your own perlite in, do a good job mixing. Try to get as homogeneous as possible. And if I have any advice there, don't mix it on a concrete floor. At least put something clean down so you're not going to get fusarium all up in your media.
Rachel [00:33:36]:
Awesome. Thank you. He's got another one. When do I run off test? When I do a runoff test, is it wise to use nutrient solution or ro water? A lot of growers use our water for this, but to me it doesn't sound logical.
Jason [00:33:54]:
Uh, to you, logical is, is. That's right. That there's no reason to do a runoff test with ro because now you're actually manipulating what the plant substrate is looking at in order to test it. So you're really just automatically creating error in, in what your test is, is trying to support. Um, as far as what winds is best to do a runoff reading. Um, it's going to depend a little bit on what you're trying to determine. So obviously, typically I only talk about getting run off during our p one events. So the easiest way to do a single runoff reading through the day would be right after your last p one event for the day.
Seth [00:34:36]:
Oh, let's, let's draw some other little ones here.
Jason [00:34:38]:
Yeah. Throw some p two s or something in there.
Seth [00:34:43]:
All right. All right. Make it nice. Jeez, Jason, this was going to look nice. Now it's going to look all ratchet.
Jason [00:34:48]:
We got to send you back to art school, man.
Seth [00:34:51]:
I didn't take many. Oh, geez, that's bad. I didn't take many of those classes. Yeah.
Jason [00:34:58]:
And so, all right, what are we looking at for our runoff ratings? Volume and ph are by far the most important ones here. You know, hopefully you are using a writzone sensor so you have a better reading for EC, which is coming directly from the root zone. Anytime that we take a runoff reading for ecdem where basically the reason we're doing that is to try and infer what the actual root zone Ec is. But if we have root zone sensors and we don't have to do that anymore. So we're looking at, you can volume.
Seth [00:35:27]:
By this, but, oh, it looks great.
Jason [00:35:29]:
Uh, I was just hassling earlier. We're, we're looking at volume, right. So what's the percentage that, of our substrate that we're pushing off. And, and usually we only want that volume to be a higher percentage if we're trying to manipulate what the root zone Ec is. And then we're also looking at ph. And ph is just kind of that. Check that, that. Sanity check that.
Jason [00:35:49]:
All right. Our nutrient availability is still good. Our nutrient composition, our fertilizer composition is staying in check.
Seth [00:35:57]:
Yeah. And part of the reason we target the end of p one here is this little issue that we see, especially in, you know, one gallon or smaller rockwool media. Well, even slabs if they've been dried back far enough or too much volume supply, but channeling. So if I put water on too fast, it essentially can run down it through the pores of the media at a fast enough rate that it's not going to homogenize with the nutrient solution in the block. So if I put on my p one s and I'm getting run off. Right. You know, here, let's say as this is coming up right here, a lot of that particular runoff is not going to be very useful. And that's also a sign that I'm putting on water too.
Seth [00:36:32]:
Quickly or in too great a volume without enough rest period in between for that water to wick around. If we're looking to manipulate EC and PH and verify that by getting runoff, we want to give all of that water time to homogenize and actually have that ionic exchange so that we're pushing out ions we don't want and replacing them with ions we do. And as a general rule of thumb, we typically don't want any runoff in our p two s because we're trying to use this runoff event at the end of p one to modulate our EC and pH. If I'm getting run off in the afternoon, way more than I expect if I've built up to, let's say, an eight EC at this point in time when it's the wettest, if I go ahead and keep pushing runoff throughout the afternoon at a 3.0 feed, that's going to slowly pull that EC down day to day and kind of defeat my goals of trying to maintain that EC at a very specific level. The other side of it is pushing too much runoff in these p two s. Not only will it strip out ecdemental, we're putting water on potentially later in the day. So plants typically have about a two hour respiration arc compared to their last irrigation. So if I put water on 2 hours before lights off, I'm counting on those plants being done respirating by the time I shut the light.
Seth [00:37:46]:
They're not respirating, transpiring by the time I shut the lights off, or at least back at a reduced rate. If I push runoff in this irrigation right here about 2 hours before lights off, at that point, I now have water all over my tables, and there's nowhere for that water to go, typically, because no one's getting in there and picking their tables up, turning them sideways, and wiping them off. So that water is just going to evaporate into the air. And that's a lot of times when we're working with clients that have lights off, humidity, swing issues, we can make quite a bit of progress just managing that water later in the day and giving your dehumidification system a chance to keep up with all the water you're dumping into the room.
Rachel [00:38:27]:
All right, that is great information, Seth. One more from the chemical grower. What does 10% runoff mean? 10% of substrate volume or water volume?
Jason [00:38:39]:
I'm so glad we just keep getting more and more of this, you know, and I hit this. I talked about this quite a bit. A couple episodes wouldn't go is traditionally when when people are mentioning that, they're talking about a percentage of the, uh, of the fertigation volume. And for me, it just doesn't really make sense at this point. The way that we're dealing with runoff, the way that we're dealing with volumetric water content. When we look at volumetric water content, everything is relationship to the substrate volume. And that's really nice because it's static for the whole flower cycle. And I don't think I've ever met anyone that actually increases the size of their substrate through flower.
Jason [00:39:17]:
So, when we're talking, we're talking about a runoff percentage. When I'm talking about it, I'm talking about in relationship to the volume of the substrate. And why is that super nice? Because here, Seth's been doing all the drawing today. Please, I'm just blabbering. We'll just use everything he set up. So let's. Let's put some numbers on here. Let's say this is it.
Jason [00:39:40]:
I don't know if I can draw numbers upside down.
Seth [00:39:44]:
You flip it over, make it look nice, and turn around. Yeah, well, Jason's drawing this. I'll kind of expand on that. So, traditionally, we weren't looking at VWC. That percentage of total fertigation volume is what we operate off of. And I do often teach people to do that, quite regularly, actually, because I think it's good to get your mind into a space where you are converting some numbers. What Jason's going to show you, and one reason I think, where this relates to, is we always talk about dryback in terms of percentage of EWC. There absolutely is a very easy way to start thinking of your runoff in terms of VWC as well.
Seth [00:40:19]:
And what that's going to do for you is really keep everything in one scale. And that's part of why we love using VWC instead of saturation. For instance, because if saturation equals 100%, but VW 60 equals 65 on one media, and saturation equals 100% on a different media of the same size, but VWC equals 45%, obviously, there's a conversion factor there that anyone's going to have to do to try to figure out volume. And when we keep it in straight VW, see, like, for a one gallon pot, for instance, I know that 1% of that one gallon pot is approximately 38 ML. So, using the scale on this graph, I can easily figure out how many milliliters of actual feed volume were applied and how much I actually saw in runoff, just based on the fact that my line, if I had targeted 65% in terms of volume in my feed compared to the pot. I can look at it and say, hey, this line hit 60%. I know that 5% of that VWC, or in this case, a little under 200 ML, is going to be runoff. So, yeah, you can go about it with the feed volume.
Seth [00:41:31]:
One easy way to do it, though, is to look at your graph and keep everything in the exact same scale. I think that's where you're headed with that.
Jason [00:41:38]:
Yes, exactly 100%. And then you can start utilizing tools like our irrigation calculator to very simply use yesterday's dryback to calculate what your anticipated runoff for the next day is. Use that number to be able to modulate what your EC goals are for the next irrigation. And, uh, you know, anytime that we are trying to run a productive system, we're starting to look forward instead of backwards. And, um, it kind of, kind of funny when, when I first learned about crop steering, we were, we were just getting, uh, getting better at growing at the facility that I was at. And I used to kind of, kind of make fun of things and say, hey, oh, here the, the crop steers you. And, uh, that's just not the right way. That right.
Jason [00:42:23]:
That's a, that's a reactive type of interaction with the plants. And we're always going to be losing money. We're always going to be behind the times when we're doing that. So if we can get ahead of the game and start trying to understand what is going to happen tomorrow with these plants, you know, how is our irrigation going to affect substrate settings? That is a better place to be. And let me tell you what, it's way happier when you can get there. So some of the numbers I put in here, and I also mentioned this is, let's just say a one liter substrate 1000 just did that for easy numbers here. And I've got, say, 60% is where I'm showing our field capacity at here. And that's a number that we would typically expect to see as the highest point in our water content on our volumetric water content charts, simply because when we go higher than that, you might see it slightly higher than just for a brief, brief amount of time while you are getting runoff.
Jason [00:43:15]:
But if we get runoff, then we are going to see that graph stabilize around field capacity in our substrate. So in this case, I said, let's, our first runoff came here after this p one event that we can see. All right, it peaked out at that p one. That means we probably started getting some runoff after that because we can see we did another p one after that. And so I mentioned, all right, we measured our runoff after these. All of our p one events happened at 50 ML. Well, that's about 5% of our one liter substrate. So we would know that if we'd calculated this irrigation to get up to 65% and our field capacity was at 60%, then that 5% should.
Jason [00:43:57]:
Should show up as runoff at the end of our p one events.
Seth [00:44:02]:
Yeah, keep it all in the same scale. Keep it simple. Because one thing that is definitely tough is, you know, I think a lot of us came out of growing mostly alone or with a small group of people. And now that we're in these bigger production facilities, teamwork is a huge aspect of it. And you're constantly having to teach people, educate them, level them up on some of the science behind this growing. And I know for me, trying to do this with and without data, just having this visual aspect is huge for some people. For some of us, we can stare at spreadsheets all day, and that makes a graph in our mind. Just because we've stared at it and made graphs a punch for a lot of other people, it's way easier to explain something visually.
Seth [00:44:46]:
And, for instance, you know, one thing we. No more red. That's okay, Chris. I don't need it. One thing we do with AROYA, using typically recipes and harvest groups, is program in a set point. So if only I had a green, but blue will do. So I can say right on the graph, if I'm trying to explain to someone who really, their tangibility and understanding with this is, I run water for five minutes, and it moves the graph up this much, I can go, hey, let's keep it inside this line. And then once I've calibrated your minutes of runtime to rise in the graph, I can at least teach you how to do your job without making sure that you understand, necessarily, some of these small complexities of it.
Seth [00:45:33]:
And the reality at certain facilities is technology is awesome, but we've all got different systems and amalgamations of things that we've put together. And, hey, sometimes you do have someone running around, address adjusting a irrigation controller on every single room, every single day. And it might be in that person's best interest to have some really, really simple guidelines they can follow and a simple program that keeps them going that they can understand. And not to say people are definitely unintelligent, but if you're trying to bring someone in and say, program this machine to do this, there's a pretty steep learning curve. And one thing we all want to avoid in this business is killing plants along the way, because, you know, that hurt. That causes bad feelings at the business, at the grow. No one likes to see dead plants happening, and it's generally avoidable. It just takes that communication level between whoever is orchestrating and planning this whole harvest schedule and plan and the people actually executing it.
Jason [00:46:35]:
I think, for me, one of the most fun parts about learning the math and science behind this stuff is we can keep growing the plants how we've always grown them, and just use that as guide rails. And it gives us a basis on how we can communicate. We can document, we can compare, and we can really build this as a industry that's working together to achieve the best products that we can. And so I'm glad you mentioned those guardrails, because those guardrails are what I think about when I'm, like, in there sticking my hand in the dirt or when I know that the plants are soggy. Um, those are the kinds of things that most of us can feel or see, right. Only some of us that have been or working with canvas plants for a really long time can get into the fine details of what some of this math is pretty easy to use sensors to know for damn sure.
Seth [00:47:26]:
I can tell you for sure, too. Your hand feel is only as good as the tool you use to calibrate it, too. So we've all got a great feeling about how hot and humid it is in this studio. It's, uh, it's warm, smells like dudes, you know? But if we put a number on it, that would probably be better than just us saying, like, I don't know, what is it in here right now? 72 degrees, maybe. Oh, what's. Chris? Yeah, exactly.
Jason [00:47:51]:
He's got sweatshirt.
Seth [00:47:52]:
Yeah. Unless we break out a good tool, we're. We're never going to calibrate our. Our touch feel in what we're seeing feeling to an actual number there.
Jason [00:48:02]:
Well, I was just going to say I'm better at lifting pots than you because you bench 300, and that's not a big enough percentage when you're working with something that way.
Seth [00:48:09]:
Oh, God. Start with. Start with injury jokes here. All right.
Rachel [00:48:16]:
All right, you guys. Thank you for that. The chemical grower. Let us know if you have any follow up questions. Next one is from Rick Hawk. How long should I let my plants root into a pot before flip? I heard plants don't root during flower.
Seth [00:48:33]:
They do, in fact. Yeah. In fact, the entire growing cycle, your plants are constantly growing new roots and packing out that pot, you might see some differences between a mesh pot that causes air pruning in the roots. So picture time again. If we had a hard sided pot, we got our plant coming down into it. In that hard sided pot, these roots are going to hit the bottom and circle around the edges of the pot. They're just going to keep getting longer and longer and longer. And if you've grown some healthy plants, especially, you know, in reference earlier, like the 70 30 perlite mix in, let's say, a two gallon pot, if you went and flipped a two foot tall plant, three foot tall plant, by the time you harvest that sucker, you'll pull the pot off and go like, what happened to all the coco? It is all roots.
Seth [00:49:20]:
And you definitely didn't form that level of roots going in. When we've got an I. A mesh pot. There we go. That's, that's how you show mesh on a whiteboard, right? Just do that.
Jason [00:49:32]:
Nice.
Seth [00:49:33]:
We've got our plant coming in, those roots come down, they go to the side of the pot and instead of starting to circle, they hit it, they air prune and that root split. So we actually end up with a lot more efficient root system, which is one nice thing about it. But yeah, to answer your question, we actually like. Me personally, I will veg in an intermediate media, like a yemenite .3 gallon coco, or a four by four by four rockwool cube. And just set that right on top of my one or two gallon coco or my slab. They want to flower. I'm going right in. I'm flipping in.
Seth [00:50:05]:
And one cool thing about that process is all of the plant hormones that go into pushing that root production and developing it are produced in the distal ends or the very tips of each branch. So while this plant is rooting into this bigger media down low, early in flower, it's actually stimulating a lot of growth above ground. And that's why we're able to flip a pretty small plant. You know, if I'm flipping a 14 to 16 inch plant, depending on strain, that might still come out at five, 6ft, no problem. But that's something to be aware of. That root in time is not totally necessary, depending on how big of a plant you're trying to grow and what kind of media it's in. Now, that being said, if we are looking at actual root in times from when I go and transplant from a smaller media or a clone into a one gallon, usually we're seeing in a one gallon, for instance. Wow.
Seth [00:50:57]:
That's not a right angle upside down, these roots have to. If we first transplant, let's say, small blocks, act on top. Obviously, you could bury your .3 gallon coco, but my roots are going down a little bit. Where I really want them to hit is way down here in our suspended water column, where the actual water reservoir is. And usually we're looking at like in a one gallon, five to seven days before these roots actually hit that bottom reservoir. And that's part of why we always recommend to develop that rooting in process. Put a sensor in your rooting in pot and just watch it for a while. You can tell via the VW, see, in the area that you're actually sensing down here, when those roots actually tap into that suspended water column versus, let's say we have some plants coming in that have a heavy fusarium infection, brown roots, and our intermediate media, I might actually never see those roots hit that suspended water column.
Seth [00:51:50]:
And if that's the case, that's a sign to me that I've got an unhealthy plant, despite the fact that it still looks alive and healthy. I can go, hey, that's not rooting in. That's not going to grow. So, short answer is, you don't need any time. Long answer is start putting numbers on it and figure out when the best timing is for you. And also, you know, intermediate versus bringing in a fully rooted plant from veg. That's also an option, too.
Jason [00:52:17]:
Yeah. And I mean, how do you know when your plant is fully rooted in? Well, yeah, you know, it's grading roots throughout flower, but when we see our water content line decrease at the rate that we would expect a mature flowering plant to be at, then that's when we know that we have a really good rooted in plant.
Seth [00:52:40]:
Right.
Jason [00:52:40]:
And, you know, before, even before we're quite there, we can start our regular generative irrigations for that flower cycle. What's happening with this water content line is when we have this closed system, if you will, we are adding water to this, this system, and that water is going to end up in three places. It's going to end up in a runoff. Hopefully. We're measuring that. It's something that's easy to understand how much is getting used there. It's not obviously being displayed in our line. So our line here is showing during lights on, it's showing transpiration and evaporation losses.
Jason [00:53:17]:
Right. If our plant isn't fully rooted in, we would expect this line to be shallower and be closer just to our evaporation rate from that substrate.
Rachel [00:53:32]:
All right, that's great stuff. We've got one live from Instagram, the Fireman 505. What causes plants to not want to finish and flower? White hairs. No fading.
Jason [00:53:48]:
Could be a long running strain.
Seth [00:53:50]:
There's a few different reasons. A lot of it is related to genetics and how you're going to have to treat that plant to get it to finish.
Jason [00:53:57]:
Yeah. And I've worked with some pretty excellent growers that, you know, even run ten week for some very select genetics just because of, you know, a really unique expression that they can get out of it. They just can't get it, get it finished up. Obviously, we. We've always talked a little bit about the ripening process and what we can do to help induce a faster ripening time, but there is a determined, you know, limit to how quickly that can happen.
Seth [00:54:25]:
Yeah. Just like my tomatoes in my garden, I had some 53 day tomatoes, and my ones that were going for 78 days determinate, they didn't finish this year. It got too cold. But that's the reality, right? Each strain, once we flip it into flower, it has a determinate life cycle, each one slightly different. Some of them happen to land in that 55 to 60 days that we really like for production purposes. Some of them just don't. The other side of it is there are certain things you can do in your cultivation that will prolong the flowering cycle of that plant and push those dates out. Nitrate is definitely one of them.
Seth [00:55:00]:
And obviously, we all love calcium nitrate using that. But certain strains will respond by continuing to pack on racks and pistols and try to produce more floral production, new tissue past the point when they naturally would, or when we want to try to induce them to do that. And then some strains. I know I've seen this on things. I always talk about GMO, but that's always my great example. If you try to bulk that one, typically, we'd see, you know, increased yield, bigger flowers, but there's no way we're going to harvest that in eight and a half or nine weeks.
Jason [00:55:32]:
Um, you know what can happen, though? You can get some very tasty live resin, fresh frozen products before our cannabis is fully ripened.
Seth [00:55:41]:
And that's true, too. So, again, a lot of it comes back to your market. And, uh, I actually just did notice on the. The column over here a comment about aroma. This. This kind of rolls into the same thing. There are quite a few things we can do in terms of cultivation to help influence plants to grow well. But ultimately, as cultivators, what we're trying to do is provide the most healthy environment for that plant to achieve its full expression.
Seth [00:56:04]:
And to the comment about aroma, I wish I could count the number of times that I've been through a feno hunt and we, we picked the wrong one based on yield and, you know, after everything was dried and cured, we're like, oh, man, number six was just, that was the bomb in terms of nose. Number four yielded better, but we already threw away the cuts for number six. Uh, unfortunately, there's a genetic component to that terpene variability and in quality that is only going to be pushed so far in cultivation, same as that day length. Um, I do know producers that'll grow, you know, 70, even 75 days on some strains that produce, you know, well over four pounds of light. But at 75 days, if I'm running 20 days longer than the guy down the street who's able to crank out way more crops than me, that's not necessarily the most commercially viable strain to be growing. And we're just, we're just edging into that where, you know, for forever, breeders were limited by their ability to actually plant out enough seed to explore variability. So really all of us were just hunting forever for, hey, what's, what's the best nose, the best look and the best yield? And a lot of those things, you know, if I plan out 100 sees seeds, probably 95 of them are going to be kind of mutually exclusive. With some of those characteristics.
Seth [00:57:22]:
One might be really awesome, but I remember doing one where we ended up with like a semi dwarf grade, semi dwarf gene, where amazing plant, beautiful, great to smoke, cannot get it bigger than about three and a half, 4ft tall, can't get it to produce. And we're just hitting a point where cannabis is starting to catch up a little bit with, uh, you know, more traditional horticulture, which luckily we have over a hundred years of tools to use and really try to focus on strains that not only are vibrant to the nose, vibrant to look at, yield well, but also things like mold resistant, get the stature we want, have the water drinking habits that are easy for a grower to replicate, and we're just starting to get there. I think it's important for people. It's part of, it's a rarity thing for most of us. Like, man, in 20 years, cannabis grows are going to be boring. No one's going to be excited about them. I'm kind of joking there. We'll all still be excited, but having that really special flower is like, it seemed like such a rarity to some of us for so long, but the reality is that the genetic variability out there in cannabis is just astounding.
Seth [00:58:34]:
It's so broad, and there are good plants to find in so many lineages. Part of it's just actually going out and finding them. And, man, it's hard. It's hard to go out and pay money for a cut, bring it into your system and accept that. Like, a lot of the cuts you bring in, even though you know the person who gave it to you or someone else had given you some really bomb flour, and you're like, this is. This is awesome. Some of them just will not be commercially viable in a way that you can make money on them. And it's unfortunate.
Seth [00:59:02]:
It's a pain, but that's the reality. And that is absolutely not unique to cannabis. If I look out outside of the studio here, we're surrounded by wheat fields. The wheat we grow here is not the same wheat they grow in Kansas. Why? Because it's more commercially viable here for both our market and the growing conditions.
Rachel [00:59:23]:
All right, Seth, thanks so much, everybody. Thanks for joining us for office hours today. Thank you again, Seth, Jason, and our producer Chris for another great session. To learn more about AROYA, book a demo at AROYA IO and our team will show you the ins and outs of the ultimate cannabis cultivation platform. Got crop steering or cultivation questions you want to cover? Drop them anytime in the Araya app. Email us at salesroya IO or send us a DM via Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn. We'd love to hear from you. And if you're a fan of the pod, please leave us a review on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Rachel [01:00:07]:
We appreciate your feedback. Thanks, y'all, and see you at episode 118.