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Seth Baumgartner and Jason Van Leuven open the mics for your crop steering and cultivation questions.
Kaisha [00:00:03]:
What is up, Growmies? Welcome to AROYA office Hours, your source for free cannabis cultivation education. I'm your moderator, Kaisha. This is episode 122. I'm here in Pullman with my good friend Jason. What's up, Jason? How you doing?
Jason [00:00:15]:
Good. It's great to have you here.
Kaisha [00:00:16]:
I'm happy to be here. I want to shout out to everybody who's tapping in Live on YouTube and Instagram. Everyone tapping in on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, or wherever you listen to your podcast. Thank you so much for your support. And if you like the pod, drop us a review. We appreciate your feedback. Seth, I'm going to need you to be of. We have a QR code on the screen.
Kaisha [00:00:34]:
Seth is going to. I'm sorry, Jason's going to point that out.
Jason [00:00:39]:
Seth in Michigan.
Kaisha [00:00:40]:
He's in Michigan. All right. That QR code, please scan it. If you're looking to join us, Aroya, at mjbizcon, we're going to be in the north hall in the cultivation pavilion, December 3rd through the 6th. Booth number 35023. Tap in now. Take a screenshot for later. Either way, sign up for updates on the new innovations and other announcements.
Kaisha [00:00:58]:
We're going to be dropping on the show. You don't want to miss out. Sian is also tapped in. How you doing today, Sian?
Cian [00:01:04]:
Doing great, Kesha. It's awesome to see you live in the studio today.
Kaisha [00:01:08]:
I know it's kind of crazy. I'm clearly confused. I thought I was sitting next to Seth for a minute, but I got it all together now. So with that, let's get started. This is a great question we wanted to start with from Sound Mind Concentrates. They ask what is the ideal VPD throughout the different stages of flower, or does it stay the same? So that sounds like an overview to me.
Jason [00:01:28]:
Yeah, yeah. Always love a good segue. Here to share our VPD tool, and I was just going to show this off real quick, how to use it, and we'll talk about the different stages of the plant cycle and what we're shooting for. So VPD Arroya IO is where you can find this tool, kind of just like our irrigation calculator where you get to modify some inputs and get some easy math recommendations on where to be. So obviously see this chart? The main green area here is usually more of an ideal range. And as we move farther away from that band, that's typically going to be lower stomatal conductance. And that's usually what we're using VPD for. Is to optimize stomatal conductance transpiration rates on the right side.
Jason [00:02:20]:
First off, basically what I like to do, since I always use air temp, I always have an ideal air temp. And if we know our leaf temperature offset, we can set that. So let's say we're in like a typical HPS room and I'm my maybe my leaf Temp is like 3 degrees lower than my air temp 2.7, this exact case. Now I can slide these together and say, all right, well, early stages of flower, I like to be, you know, probably 80 degrees, HBS room, maybe 83 degrees in an LED room, early flower. And then I'm going to be shooting for VPD typically in that like 0.8 to 1 range. Right? So let's talk about what our acceptable relative humidity would be. So if those are our settings, then we're shooting for say 0.8 to 1 very early on, say first week, maybe into that second week, third week, we're going to probably be jumping up to 1 to 1.2. And typically, you know, for the last half of the cycle or so, we're always going to be shooting for 1.2 if we don't have concerns for molds or mildews, and then if we do have concerns for molds or mildews, we'll go up to 1.4.
Jason [00:03:32]:
So early here in flower, let's, you know, I use this example air temp for a daytime air temp, and we can slide our relative humidity to see what ranges we'd want to be in. So on the high end. So for a lower vpd, always remember, the higher our relative humidity, the lower our VPD is at that same temperature. So we would want to be between about you know, under 70% to keep it above 0.8 kPa and above 63% relative humidity to be below that 1, about 1 kPa kilopascals vapor pressure deficit. I guess I VPD vapor pressure deficit should start off with that. It's just basically talking about, you know, the amount of difference in the deficit in, you know, water vapor in the air versus not in the air. So it's a calculation of both air temperature and relative humidity. And the reason that's super nice is because when we're shooting for something like 1.2, rather than having to specify both our ideal relative humidities and air temps in respect to a day night differential, we can just say, oh, well, we're always shooting for this vpd.
Jason [00:04:49]:
And then we can get these set points just Calculated based off one number. So let's do that. Let's talk about maybe, you know, we're in the third week of flower and we want to start inducing a five degree night day differential. Um, so let's talk about our nighttime temps. I said about what about 5°. Let's hit that. I don't know what I did there. That was kind of cool.
Jason [00:05:13]:
Uh, we're gonna refresh it. Cause I did something weird to it. Um, let's shoot for 75 at night. Just talking about a five degree differential. 75.2. That's close enough for me. And you know, let's say we're gonna be trying to hit that one to one point, probably 1.2 range, roll that humidity up, and we're going to be at between 67 and say 75%. So very cool to use these tools and get those answers for you.
Jason [00:05:46]:
Diving in a little bit deeper. I always like talking about kind of the scientific backgrounds of this stuff. And um, I always encourage, you know, I learned this stuff mostly off the Internet. Um, mostly off seeing hundreds of growers. Really out of curiosity for how do these plants work? How, how can we use technology to optimize how well they work? Um, and, and also a very visual person. So I like charts, I like graphs. Um, I actually haven't even looked at this one. Just looked cool from a zoomed out picture.
Jason [00:06:19]:
And you know, another thing is like, it's on Researchgate. There's a number of published sites out there where the information is scientifically proven. A lot of times they're scholastic publications. And sometimes the hardest part is how do we relate this to actual production?
Kaisha [00:06:38]:
Like a real world situation.
Jason [00:06:39]:
Yeah. For what I do, I do applied technology. It's exactly my favorite part. It's why I do what I do is let's, let's take some, some concepts and break them down into how can we grow more pot, make more money. Yeah. Or make our employees more happy. That, that's also a really fun part. Part of what we do.
Jason [00:06:59]:
Um, but yeah, so let's see. We all want to optimize transpiration. Right. And so that's talking about how quickly is water coming up the plant and then out of the stomates. That's the most important part. Um, maybe I'll show this picture first because it actually is more related to what I'm talking about. It's nice and blurry. That's great.
Jason [00:07:21]:
So stomates are the pores on the leaf surface that are exchanging. They're releasing water vapor and they're actually taking in CO2, right? So basically one of the most important compounds for growing. And they get that from the air, they off gas, water vapor. And the faster that we can get CO2 into that plant, typically the, you know, the faster the plant's growing, right? So that's why we're always trying to optimize our environment to have the highest tomato conductance as possible, because that means, hey, we're getting more, more CO2 into the plant. There is that one caveat of at a specific CO2 level, because as we increase CO2 from a deficit level to an appropriate level, our small conductance actually goes down because it can, it gets a higher concentration of CO2. If you want to learn more about that same thing, get on like Research Gate or, or some of those other scholastic sites and read about water use efficiency. It's pretty similar for plants in cannabis category as other plants in the same category. So picture that I was showing, maybe I'm still showing it.
Jason [00:08:32]:
It's obviously looking at. All right, how's this stomate getting that, that, that CO2? And like I said, all right, we need to relate this to stimul conductance to vpd. And when our VPD gets too high, these stimul sizes are going down. Stimulus conductance is going down, photosynthesis going down, yields water use efficiency, nutrient accumulation. Kind of cool. They've listed all things there. Really what the plant's doing is it's closing up its stomates in a response to that high VPD so that it doesn't actually wilt due to drying out. You know, there's a limitation from one plant type, from phloem rates, those type of things.
Jason [00:09:20]:
Whereas the plant can only uptake so much water so fast. And if our VPD is too high, those leaf, the stomates on that leaf are actually closing up so that that plant doesn't, it's able to regulate it and it doesn't wilt out in the leaves because it's not able to keep tugger pressure. It can't get enough water up into that plant as fast as the environment's trying to dry it out. So on that side, high VPD is, you know, going to restrict some of our plant growth. Not ideal. That's why we're shooting for those numbers that I had talked about earlier, um, low VPDs. So again, here we're looking at transpiration rates, um, you know, some stuff that, that's not necessarily ideal. Um, this isn't perfectly applicable to too low of vpd it looks like more like kind of appropriate vpd.
Jason [00:10:05]:
Um, but yeah, so again, those stomates are going to be closing up. Not ideal for, you know, the highest yielding plants. Right. Also those low VPDs after we've got some, some nice sized colas. Lower VPDs also mean, hey, we've got more moisture in the air and that's a more suitable condition for mold spores to propagate. So we want to avoid that. I did want to get some stomatal pictures. All right, here we go.
Jason [00:10:37]:
Ooh, this one's cool too. So, yeah, basically this is what it looks like under a microscope and maybe we'll get a microscope picture up on here as well. But you know, stomata closed basically, you know, lower plant growth rates, stomata open faster plant growth rates. And there are ways to measure still model conductance basically. And Meter Group offers one. It's called the SC1. Clip it on the leaves and it's measuring the amount of gas exchange over a leaf surface area. Yeah, I could probably keep talking about it, but I think we answered the question.
Kaisha [00:11:17]:
Yeah, we did. I feel like this is a great opportunity seeing you do a lot of experimenting it in your own operation over there. Just talking about applying everything Jason said to real world.
Cian [00:11:29]:
Yeah, I was just thinking there are some generally ideal ranges that you can stick by. And that VPD calculator that Jason was showing, that tool is awesome to be able to play with and modulate the effects of different scenarios that you're going to try to actually use in your growing. Generally what I trend to follow with is like a, you know, a moderate VPD around one note to encourage a balanced transpiration rate without excessive stress during that early to mid flower range. And then once I get a little bit into my later flower, I'm going to go a little bit higher VPD and I'm going to reduce the humidity in the room so that it in turn reduces the chance that I'm going to have issues with, you know, all sorts of different, you know, bud rot or potential different types of molds or mildews. And Jason's explanation of what VPD does for your plant is a really wonderful way to explain that your plant essentially needs all of these different pieces and parts balanced so that it's able to Effectively use the CO2 that you are providing in the room and it's able to go through photosynthesis effectively. VPD is, you know, one of those huge parts of that equation. And I think understanding these different parts of how it's going to Affect your equipment and your operation when you're looking at these calculators is a great way to be able to understand, okay, if I set my equipment this way, what's this going to do? If my environment is at this metric, how is my VPD looking? Am I within that range or am I outside that range? And that really helps you understand whether you're making good decisions in that range or not.
Kaisha [00:13:32]:
Awesome. You guys. Well, we actually have a grow me here. John just dropped this on YouTube.
Jason [00:13:38]:
I got a little more to add on this.
Kaisha [00:13:40]:
Oh, yeah, do it.
Jason [00:13:40]:
Yeah. You know, what are we. What episode is this? 120.
Kaisha [00:13:44]:
122.
Jason [00:13:45]:
122 here. And Kaisha in the house next to me. Almost got nervous here. I wanted to show how to use the VPD calculator again because I goofed some of this stuff up that first round. I was just thinking in my head, like, hey, some of those numbers didn't seem right to me. Yeah. So I was talking about in the HPS room. I should have had my leaf temps three degrees higher.
Jason [00:14:05]:
We're seeing that. That solar radiation hitting the leaf surfaces, so typically, they're actually higher than the room temp with LEDs. A lot of times, we'll see it about the same or leaf temp, it'll be a little bit less. And then I also forgot to click the little lock button here when I. When I did the example for nighttime temps. So now if I drop it down to 75, we should have a little bit more appropriate relative humidity ranges for that vpd. And then again, if I drop. Pull it back up to 80, we can see that.
Jason [00:14:45]:
Hey, those are much more appropriate for what we'd want to see. Right. If we're at 80 in the room and we want to hit 1kPa, we need to be 80% humidity. So. Yeah, sorry I screwed it up the first time. Don't do what I did the first time. Don't let Katie make you nerd.
Kaisha [00:15:00]:
Don't let make 120 episodes. I know. I'm so intimidating. Thank you for that, Jason. Also, real talk, do not sleep on the VPD calculator, y'all. It's free. It's available for you to play with. But I did want to add this comment from our groomy, John Simone.
Kaisha [00:15:14]:
He wrote, I dropped my humidity to 40% for the last four weeks of flower. You think that's too early? I haven't seen any mold in the two years almost. I've been watching you guys. Thank you. Dang. Nice work, John. Yeah.
Jason [00:15:27]:
It's probably lower than is necessary. Um, I mean, that's also why you're not seeing mold, right? Because the lower those humidities would go, the less ideal situations for mold. So great that you're not getting mold, but you might be able to get a little bit improved plant performance, especially if you're going. Going that low for the last four weeks. So, again, great, great spot to use the calculator. Let's say maybe you're doing a little bit of a temperature drop there for the last four weeks. Let's say you're at 77 for air temp or so you're going to want to be closer to that, say, 70% humidity, 65 to 70% humidity, maybe even lower than that. If you're really trying to combat molds and mildew, say 60% would put you around 1.5 kpa, and that's on the higher end now, obviously, at nighttime.
Jason [00:16:21]:
Actually, really glad you asked this question, because one of the challenges that a lot of cultivators end up with is when they're trying to do nighttime daytime differentials, they don't have enough dehumidification capacity to hit their ideal VPDs. They'll run into some issues as far as molds and mildews. So let's take your example. So what I say, let's be at, say, 75%. If you're at 40% humidity, our VPD is going to be, you know, up there in that two range, which. Which definitely is outside of optimal parameters for plant growth. And now, as far as, you know, if we're nighttime, let's say we were doing a significant, like a 15 degree. That's.
Jason [00:17:04]:
That's probably more than I usually go, but let's just use that as an extreme example. 15° nighttime daytime differential. Now, when we're at those lower temperatures, you know, your relative humidity is actually much closer to an ideal situation.
Kaisha [00:17:18]:
Yeah, he just added. After watching you guys, I went all out. I got two industrial dehumidifiers. I only need one. Increased the airflow by design. Got rid of the perlite, too. Amazing. Congratulations, John.
Kaisha [00:17:29]:
Keep it up. Thank you guys for a wonderful overview. You guys, do not sleep on the VPD calculator. VPD AROYA IO. It's up and available for you right now. We're going to keep it moving because the live questions are coming in. You guys ready for the next one?
Jason [00:17:44]:
Yes.
Kaisha [00:17:45]:
Awesome. All right. This came from Kevin Nito on YouTube. I love these names. He writes, yo, dudes, got any tips for increasing Brix nutrition or Maybe more to your expertise, environmental conditions or irrigation strategy.
Jason [00:18:01]:
Yeah, so Brix, for those who don't know, is a sugar content in a plant. And in traditional horticulture it's actually really, really important to look at Brix levels to get an idea of how sweet your products are going to be. You know, as far as in cannabis, I'm not going to go out there and say it's actually might be a little bit inverse where sometimes those Brix levels will relate to, you know, an ash or like a, you know, black ash smoke. Typically, you know, towards the end of the cycle I'm actually trying to drop some of those sugar levels, some of the carbohydrate levels as well. So I don't have any great insight on here. First world knowledge as far as how to, or firsthand knowledge, excuse me, as far as how to, like how to work with Brix as an effective number for evaluating plant growth in cannabis.
Kaisha [00:18:55]:
Sian, what about you?
Cian [00:18:59]:
I gotta be honest, that's definitely an area that I don't have as much expertise in. I've heard the term a few times. But in terms of how it relates to what we're doing in cannabis, my understanding is very similar to Jason's that really it's a sugar level and we're trying to in an ideal world, towards that end of flour, decrease and use up the available sugars. And so leaving too much of it around in theory, from my understanding would potentially result in kind of like what Jason was talking about, that ashier smoke or kind of a thicker taste to the smoke.
Kaisha [00:19:41]:
All right, you heard it. Kevin Nito, we appreciate your question and you know, we, our community is very into resource sharing, so you never know, one of the Growmies might have some more insights for you too. Okay, we're going to keep it moving. We have some questions coming in here on Instagram. This one comes from Gandalf's Greens. So good. Is there any way to get the update on the manual dry back calendar? Oh, that's a different thing. Are we talking about the dry back calendar right now?
Jason [00:20:07]:
This was about a dryback calendar, the calendar or just the dryback tool they're.
Kaisha [00:20:13]:
Looking to get an update on the. Looks like just the calculator change back.
Jason [00:20:19]:
Yeah. Well, let's just jump in and do a quick little overview. I shot a announcement video for this yesterday. So we'll actually use CN's grow facility for this because he does a good job documenting his stuff and he's got lots of nice emojis out there. I just Made him have an angry face a little bit.
Kaisha [00:20:47]:
We're doing it for the community, San.
Jason [00:20:48]:
All right, yes. Actually, let's first off, jump in and what you'll notice on the room or the facility dashboard. Excuse me. Our gauge view is this new little. I can zoom in and make it huge. There we go. This little purple area here which shows some squiggly lines and some water droplets. That is the average calculated dryback for the last 24 hours.
Jason [00:21:18]:
Right. And so in this case, when we hover it, we get to see the different zones and their drybacks and the dryback duration. So it's pretty cool. We're showing percentage and a dryback duration and that's getting calculated automatically from an algorithm that's looking at the. The slopes, you know, the peaks and the valleys on your water content lines. So we had some great examples in here of what this looks like when we jump into the room dashboard. So I'm going to open up his long skinny room. Rocketship fire tree.
Jason [00:21:54]:
Very cool. And what we're going to do, let's make this easier to see for everybody. Get a few less sensors rocking. All right, so we're used to seeing those water contents and those ECs. And what you'll notice now is.
Kaisha [00:22:17]:
Let'S.
Jason [00:22:17]:
Jump into that harvest group, is the sensor values. There's now this dryback percentage and a dry back duration option. So we can check that out. And I'm going to zoom in a little bit here so we can see what it's calculating and how that's all working out. Yeah. So in this zone four we can see, you know, on a daily basis is getting the calculation for dry back. I think one of the things that has misled me a few times though is that this chart on the right or the, the Y axis scaling is dynamic. So small changes in dry back percentage might actually look really big on the scre.
Jason [00:23:01]:
So I like to hover it over and be like, all right, cool. My dry backs at 16.5percent there. 17.4. And these dots are representing where it was calculated. So those dots should usually be at your first large irrigation events, your first irrigation events for that day. And that's representing what was the dryback for the last 24 hours in that period. Right. So if we zoom.
Jason [00:23:27]:
Let's zoom in even farther, guys. Bang. So this little dot here is 15.6% and it's representing how much was the difference in water content from that point to that point. Then there's also the dryback duration, which if you watch much of this show, you know that dryback duration is one of the biggest ways that we manipulate plant growth, say AKA crops during usually the dry. The longer the dry back window, the more generative, the shorter the dry back window. It's more vegetative. You know, that's not like an all in one rule, but that, that's one of the major impacts when we start manipulating irrigation. Right.
Jason [00:24:10]:
And so in this case we've got 21.8 hour dry back window we can see. All right, that's very nice. Nice generative type of irrigation. CN is doing great.
Kaisha [00:24:23]:
Yeah, seeing these graphs are looking nice.
Cian [00:24:26]:
Oh, thanks guys.
Kaisha [00:24:27]:
How's that long skinny smelling? What's the terpene? We'll talk about that.
Cian [00:24:30]:
Outflowing gassy.
Jason [00:24:32]:
Okay, that's all I got for it for the dryback tool there.
Kaisha [00:24:37]:
Awesome. Good to see it in action.
Jason [00:24:38]:
Oh, but I think actually the question was yes, yes. All right, let's silence. There was some UI changes that happened. We used to have the view options, I don't know, some, some button here that allowed you to calculate a dry back manually. Now we have these options for single graph view and split view. My favorite way when I start looking at fresh data, I always do VPD and temperature on top, water content and EC on bottom. Nonetheless. So the dryback tool that was in there, the manual dryback tool, is now in this little plus icon where we say manual dry back and then we can select from the high water content to the low water content and it'll give us what that calculated dryback is.
Jason [00:25:31]:
Obviously we can log it if we want it as a manual reading does. Bring up another note, this dryback automatically calculated dryback tool works only when you've got a harvest group with strains populating those zones. So definitely encourage using harvest groups. It's not a ton of work and there's just a lot of value as far as making sure that you're on the right recipe type template for documenting pictures and oats. Knowing what day you're on. I don't know how many times I've.
Cian [00:26:02]:
Said ton of time in terms of just being able, like when, like you said, knowing what day you're on, being able to just quickly look and be like, oh, this is the day of this specific, specific phase that I'm in right now without having to do mental math or input it somewhere else. Invaluable. And then the other big thing is, you know, when you're doing a lot of runs over and over again, having these repetitive templates that you can use to Input all of your set points and your dead bands. Be able to make sure that you have all this information in there without having to keep it in your brain the whole time. It was revolutionary when that first started for me.
Kaisha [00:26:41]:
Don't have to start from zero, huh?
Jason [00:26:44]:
Set reminders to update your climate, set points, all that types of stuff. I've said it so many times, I don't even know how many different instances it happened. When I would leave on a Friday and when I came in on Monday, the whiteboard would have the same day of flower as when I left. And humans, we can just do a lot, lot better stuff with our minds and our organizations. If computers help a little bit. Right? That's what they're built to do. They're usually right unless they're programmed wrong. So, yeah, I guess we're trying to sell some harvest groups out here right now.
Kaisha [00:27:25]:
We do love the harvest group feature, y'all. If you have any questions about it, let us know. But thank you guys for that overview. It's great to see that. I hadn't seen that feature in action yet. So we officially debuted at. How exciting. Awesome.
Kaisha [00:27:38]:
Well, thank y'all for that. Gandalf screens. Thank you for the question. All right, I'm going to move on to the next question. We got here from Instagram. This came from Schmack. Schmack, they write when I'm transitioning from generative to vegetative steering, how fast should I lower the EC in the medium?
Jason [00:27:58]:
So I guess it depends a little bit on what media. Like. So typically when we're. We're changing those strategies, most of the time we're not actually changing our feed easy. And so we're just manipulating how many irrigations we have, what our irrigation window is. And you're going to see that easy usually just drop a little bit. Obviously something like Rockwell is going to drop a little bit faster than with. With cocoa.
Jason [00:28:25]:
I usually don't get too caught up on how fast or slow it is. Yes, we don't want huge changes in easy very, very quickly. But usually since, you know, we haven't changed our feed, you see, by the way that we typically run that, that EC is going to drop over the course of a couple of days. Right. Even if you are in Rockwell, which is. Has very low cation exchange capacity. So cation exchange capacities, how well does it hold on to nutrients or how much. Well is not the right way to say that.
Jason [00:28:54]:
How much does it hold on to nutrient elements? And so the lower the cation exchange capacity, the faster that the EC is going to change in that substrate.
Kaisha [00:29:06]:
Seeing anything to add?
Cian [00:29:11]:
No. That was a great answer, Jason. I think you covered everything in that one really well.
Kaisha [00:29:15]:
He is good at that. Awesome. Okay. And keep it moving. Schmack, schmack. There you go. Let us know if you have any follow ups. Now we've had a couple questions pop up pertaining to harvest group.
Kaisha [00:29:26]:
Nick wants to know. Just double checking. Harvest group is only available in core. It's not in AROYA Go, right?
Jason [00:29:32]:
Correct.
Kaisha [00:29:32]:
Yep. Okay, that's right, that's right. And then on that note, Uptown 420 had a question. They want to know if our system would be good for a two by two tent. They're using 50, 50 cocoa per light.
Jason [00:29:45]:
Yeah, Go Go will still work pretty good in there. Go ahead. See, I was gonna say absolutely.
Cian [00:29:50]:
Yeah, Roy, Go is made for that situation.
Kaisha [00:29:53]:
All right. Uptown 420. Yeah.
Jason [00:29:55]:
The only thing about you know, like a 50, 50 cocoa perlite blend is you might see some a little bit lower volumetric water content than you would see at a straight cocoa. That perlite. One of the advantages there is it does have a lot of oxygen availability to the roots. And then occasionally you'll see those readings fluctuate a little bit just because of the way it quickly absorbs and quickly releases water from the perlite. So, you know, keep that in mind and you'll probably want, you know, if you are running that 50, 50 cocoa perlite mix, you're probably gonna want, you know, at least a 2 gallon substrate unless your plants are gonna be pretty small. And that'll just get you enough water capacity to really play with some of these vegetative and generative strategies we talk about.
Kaisha [00:30:43]:
Amazing. Yeah. Seeing before I move on, you got anything else to add to that?
Cian [00:30:48]:
No, that was, that was great. Okay, I've just been looking at a couple of the other questions in here as they come in.
Kaisha [00:30:53]:
Yeah, yeah, no, we're getting some activity. And just for any on the chat on YouTube, we just dropped the link to AROYA Go in the chat. It's our home unit. It's our R and D unit. It's our small craft grow unit. So take a look, learn more about it. All right, going to move on to this question from Instagram. This is from Bad Habit.
Kaisha [00:31:15]:
They wrote, hey guys. Tips for working with inaccurate sensors. I couldn't afford the AROYA Go and I'm kicking myself for it. Trying to do data driven crop steering without reliable data. Should I tread lightly?
Jason [00:31:30]:
Yeah, if you don't have any reliable data, then yeah, that's going to be hard. You don't necessarily have to have time series data or even root zone sensors to start thinking about and analyzing crop steering. Right. We just. We're kind of nerds, and I like to be able to push the envelope. And when it comes down to production growing, that's how we help our clients stay competitive in the market. It is. All right, let's take some of the concepts that they know, work with those strains, let's apply them and tailor out some of those last fine tuning tweaks in order to push that plant as far as possible and have a great place to document it.
Jason [00:32:10]:
Really, Even if you're just hand watering, we could think about. All right, well, if I irrigate, if I go hand water once a day, I'm more generative. If I get the chance to do it in the afternoon as well, then it's going to be slightly more vegetative.
Cian [00:32:25]:
Cue.
Jason [00:32:26]:
Right. A lot of times I say this and everybody's crop steering. They just sometimes aren't doing it on purpose with an intended goal. You know, that that plant is. It's responding to however you're getting, the environments that you're in, what your nutrient concentrations are, it's responding to that. Right. And so crop steering is kind of just like, you know, intentionally manipulating those variables in order to achieve a specific outcome. Sometimes that's higher quality, sometimes that's higher yield.
Jason [00:32:58]:
Most people I work with want both.
Cian [00:33:02]:
I think that's well said, Jason. Yeah. You know, sometimes we are out there steering Ferrari that has great steering and that we are able to manipulate all these different factors and like Jason said, really kind of get to the pinnacle of quality and of yield. And then other times, you know, a lot of times we were starting out driving a bus that had some flat tires that we needed to get fixed up first, and the steering wasn't that great, but we were still trying to keep it within the lines, you know what I mean? So even if you can't get an ideal set of sensors that are going to give you really perfect, quality, accurate data, if you can learn by using some sensors that you can trust that are within your price range, and some environmental sensors that you can learn to trust, and some basic techniques with watering and understanding, you know, your dry backs by hand, even, you can go quite a long ways just being able to use some basic and simple techniques.
Jason [00:34:06]:
Yeah. And, you know, I've been in hundreds of facilities over the last seven years, eight years of working in this industry, and I've seen some very, very Nice, fancy, well equipped, you know, million, million dollars. I was in a brand new $20 million facility one time and they just really struggled to grow a decent plant. And then again, they have been in a couple of tent grows where it is just amazing, kind of outstanding quality and yield out of them. So a lot of it, you know, it's a pair of, you know, what, what's the quality, what's the inside of the grower? And then do they have the resources to achieve outstanding results?
Kaisha [00:34:56]:
All right, thank you guys for your insights on that. We're big fans of precision substrate monitoring. So consider us as you continue your journey. Glad you are here joining us on office hours and ask us any questions anytime. We appreciate you. All right, we're going to keep it moving here. We got a couple questions on pH, you guys. So I'm going to start with this first one from urban grower Roy, who asks what causes low pH runoff? 0.5 to 1 pH during flower, even big runoff.
Jason [00:35:29]:
Yeah. So what causes low ph? So PH swings come from an imbalance of cations and anions that are available to the plant. And basically what's going on is the plant's absorbing more cations, thin anions, so that ratio is causing the PH to drop. Right. I do want to bring up kind of an article here that is really great and a couple other resources. I don't usually make recommendations on specific places, but I have been reading canergardening.com some of their articles for years and years. I think it was one of the first resources that I have of dug into. They do a great job explaining stuff, making, you know, fairly complex scientific relationships understandable for growers like us.
Jason [00:36:30]:
And so, yeah, actually, ironically, this kind of information, they just pop it right out there and they go over tons and tons of articles about simple growing, more advanced growing. And I loved this, this graphic here that they had. And this is, you know, why we're always shooting for a specific ph. This is the nutrient availability of different nutrients at specific pHs. Right. And so they've kind of drawn some vertical lines where, you know, more ideal levels are at. And basically what we're looking for is the most nutrient availability for the most nutrients, right? Sure. Libium Most available at 8.5, but we can see everything else is going to be in a pretty rough, pretty rough area.
Jason [00:37:20]:
So those ranges here that they have highlighted is where the most of the most nutrients are available to the plant. And that's why we're, we are shooting for those specific ph. This is why we Use ph adjusters because we definitely want that availability. And as the PH swings, you know, a lot of times it's telling us that the plant is eating element nutrients in different levels than are being supplied to it. Right. And I have actually some resources that I built out. So. Yeah, here's our list of cations and anions.
Jason [00:37:59]:
Right. And so if the plant's absorbing more anions, we know, hey, it's uptake of any of these. And that's one of the tough parts with ph is we don't know specifically which element that it is eating most of. But let's say it's absorbing one of these more than the total of these over here. And so we could say, oh, it's really calcium heavy right now. We might see that PH drop. Right. Um, you know that the ways that we can combat that, one of the most common is just upping your feed levels.
Jason [00:38:33]:
Uh, some of the most common PH swings happen when the plant is just hungrier than what we're giving it. Right, right. Cause we never know, like strain dependent. We, we never know exactly what balance of nutrients it is going to be eating. Um, so if we can supply just slightly more than it's eating of, of all the types, then that that balance should stay fairly reasonable. Um, yeah. And you know, I think before some of the more modern advancements in nutrients, it was a popular trend to, to get lots of runoff from your plants. And that was really one of the goals here.
Jason [00:39:12]:
It was like, let's push that imbalanced nutrient solution out of the bottom of the plant, call it runoff. And then we know that our total refreshment should be balanced at what, what we fed it as. So. Yeah.
Kaisha [00:39:27]:
Nice. Yeah. How about you, Sian? Anything to add?
Cian [00:39:31]:
Yeah, you know, low PH runoff during flower or a lowering of your PH during flower and your runoff. I tend to think of it as, you know, a potential of an over accumulation of salts in my substrate sometimes. And kind of like what Jason said, you know, the idea of being able to push runoff and kind of replenish or replace what's, you know, going on in your substrate is one of those key reasons that you're able to kind of lower that back or sorry, not lower, take that effect away and kind of raise that ph back to a more ideal level for the plant. And then the other thing that I also tend to think about is, you know, the root system tends to release organic acids as you're in the heaviest stage of flowering, and that can also lower your medium's ph a little bit. Um, so it can also depend, you know, just how much of a reduction you're seeing. Um, that 0.5 to 1.0 ph drop, that could be a little bit more than you really wanting to see. Um, but, you know, sometimes if you really, if you're just seeing a small dip in your ph in that time of flower, sometimes don't panic right away.
Kaisha [00:40:56]:
Cool. Okay, well, we're going to move on to this next question is a perfect segue into the conversation. This came from Matt. They wrote, so if The Athena nutrients mix 3.0 are not ideal and you do have a low drifting pH 5.2 down to 4.6, what change would you make to the feed?
Jason [00:41:14]:
Yeah, so with certain companies out there, we can actually just adjust what our ratios are. And I don't specifically remember what Athena's is, but, you know, like 6040 is a fairly common one with a client I was working with this morning as hgv. And so, you know, we can sometimes just manipulate what that base to flower formula is or that base to flower ratio is. So here, obviously, yeah, we'd want to analyze and say, okay, which. Which of those two is related to the anions or cations that we need to play with in order to balance out that ph or balance out the plants needs with those nutrients which will balance our ph.
Kaisha [00:42:01]:
All right, how about you, C.N. any more insights?
Cian [00:42:05]:
No, I think that that's pretty cut and dry. Realistically, just like Jason said, with those salts, a lot of times, you know, you can adjust those ratios a little bit to be able to help that move the right direction. There's also, you know, potential for, you know, a little bit of PH adjustment on your feed, depending on what's happening there. But, you know, the way you explained that was great. Jason.
Kaisha [00:42:32]:
Yeah, you guys rock. Thank you, urban grower Roy and Matt, so much for your questions on pH. It really is a journey. We've got a lot of great resources on our own. We'll pass episodes and then in our education guides on pH2. So check all of that out as well. All right. I love this question.
Kaisha [00:42:48]:
This came from Mighty mouse over on YouTube and they write kind of off the wall here. But I'm really curious what their take is on the holistic side of things. Spending time in the grow with your plants, playing music, et cetera. Being such a science focused group. Do you regularly tell your plants you love them? I'm being sincere, by the way. Thanks for the show, guys. We know, we know you're being sincere. I love this question.
Kaisha [00:43:09]:
Yeah, so how about it? Those intimate moments, you and your plants.
Cian [00:43:15]:
Absolutely.
Jason [00:43:16]:
All right. You kick it off, man.
Cian [00:43:17]:
I was going to say absolutely. Gardening is one of my favorite parts of being able to do this job and spending time in your garden, hopefully and ideally is a happy and comfortable space for you. And I'm really grateful that I get to do that on such a regular basis and play in my own home garden all the time. And although we're trying really hard to focus a lot of that on the scientific side, I tend to think if you're not having fun with it and enjoying what you're doing, maybe isn't the right industry for you.
Jason [00:43:53]:
Yeah, I mean, I try to be out in the garden every day in the spring and summertime that I can, sticking my hands in the dirt, testing my fruits and veggies, and, you know, I'm an organic grower at home, so. And a lot of times, like, what we really love to do and what. How we help people in a production cultivation standpoint aren't always completely aligned. And so, yeah, it's really fun to have that question on here because maybe we don't talk enough about how much we enjoy getting in the plants. Like, you know, when my closet, it just reeks like weed because I've been working, I love it. I. When I fly, I like, I like, I'll leave my shirt on after, After I was in the grow room because I want to smell the weed and not the dude next to me. Right.
Jason [00:44:50]:
Like, it's, It's. It really is a thing of passion that we all have on this team for not just cannabis plants. I think it's for all the plants for plant nerds. And one of the. One of the things that, for me, you know, sometimes gets. Gets. Doesn't necessarily get understood from people that haven't necessarily utilized some technology, but, you know, they'll be like, oh, well, I'm sitting on the computer all the time looking at graphs instead of, you know, tell my plants I love them. And when I was cultivating, it actually gave me a lot more time to go just be with the plants because it.
Jason [00:45:30]:
It was. I was able to automate a lot of the things that we were doing manually. I was able to document problems so that we weren't on a daily basis just firefighting. And so I started to get to do things that were actually much more intimate with the plants, like understanding the specifics of how they grow, documenting their growth patterns, crop registration that got into detail, taking pictures of strains so that I could identify similar Characteristics and strains and start to understand, hey, this, you know, this one might respond to the types of steering that this other one works well with. So, yeah, utilize technology so you can get more time to be with those plants.
Kaisha [00:46:12]:
I'm going to add to that. I am not known as a cultivator on this particular program, but actually, one of the things that helped me fall in love with cannabis was seeing it grown as a plant. I mean, a lot of some of us grew up under just say no, tried to steer clear. But there was something that happened when I saw it growing as a plant for the first time that really changed me. I think this is such an incredible plant. It is endlessly fascinating. I do not have a green thumb. I've tried and succeeded and also failed.
Kaisha [00:46:41]:
And I prefer to leave that to the experts because I'm also a very passionate. More than a passionate grower. I'm a far more passionate consumer. But, yeah, no, one of the joys was just looking in those plants every day, checking in to make sure they're good, if they weren't good, trying stuff out to see if they could be better. And I'm nowhere near the skill level of these guys. So, yeah, there's so much love for this incredible plant and the process, I mean, it's just. I don't know, I just feel like anybody who's even remotely curious and lives in an area where they can legally grow it, just try it. Just try it one time.
Kaisha [00:47:15]:
It's worth it.
Jason [00:47:16]:
Or if you're an area where you.
Kaisha [00:47:17]:
Can'T legally grow it, I mean, if you have some seeds and you have some place to grow in, just. We think you should just do it personally. All right, well, anything else you guys want to say before we. We're going to go wrap up a little bit early. I got a couple announcements, but. Yeah. Anything else you want to say before we go? No. Okay.
Cian [00:47:40]:
I just want to do one thing. I want to shout out Nick Marcher for telling us that he's putting classical music on for his plants every day.
Kaisha [00:47:47]:
I see that. And then. Oh, Edward just chimed in. He's recommending Beethoven, Pantera, and Tupac for his plan.
Jason [00:47:53]:
Nice.
Kaisha [00:47:55]:
Yes. Okay. I love that. Yeah. If y'all have need some plant cultivation playlist, you should drop it in the chat, for sure.
Jason [00:48:01]:
I was gonna say the preferred music is strain dependent.
Kaisha [00:48:04]:
Oh, there it is. Like everything else we talk about. All right, y'all. Well, it was so great to be at Pullman for a change for the program. Thank y'all so much. Jason C. And of course producer Chris, who's trying to make me laugh during the program. Thank you all so much for an awesome session.
Kaisha [00:48:22]:
Thank all of you so much for joining us for this week's Aurora office hours. Just a reminder, we are bringing precision substrate irrigation management to mjbizcon. Scan this QR code and sign up just you want to. If you're going to be there, we would love to talk to you about what we got going on. If you're not going to be there, we're going to send you the updates virtually. So definitely sign up. And then of course, last but not least, there are a couple days left to cast your vote for the mjs. Aroya is nominated for Cultivation Software of the Year and we'd appreciate the support.
Kaisha [00:48:49]:
We just dropped that link in the chat. And to learn more about AROYA Phoenix, anybody is interested in learning more about what we do here, book a demo at Arroya IO and our team will show you the ins and outs of the ultimate cannabis cultivation platform. If you have any crops during your cultivation questions, we didn't get to your question today. Never fear, we're on here every Thursday. Drop them anytime in the Arroya app. Email us at salesaroya IO send us a DM. We're on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn. We want to hear from you.
Kaisha [00:49:15]:
And if you're a fan of the pod, please leave us a review on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube. Wherever you listen to your podcasts, we appreciate your feedback and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube so you never miss an episode. Thanks y'all. We'll see you at episode 123. Bye.