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Seth Baumgartner and Jason Van Leuven open the mics for your crop steering and cultivation questions.
Kaisha [00:00:02]:
What's up, gromies? Welcome to AROYA office hours, your source for free cannabis cultivation education. I'm your moderator, Kaisha. And we are on episode 107. Shout out to our live viewers on the hangout on YouTube and on Instagram, to everyone tapping in on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, or wherever listen to podcasts. Thank you so much for your support. If you like the pod, please drop us a review. We really appreciate your feedback. Jason, how's it going?
Jason [00:00:28]:
I'm doing well. How are you?
Kaisha [00:00:30]:
Good. I'm good. Welcome back from Europe. We want to give a shout out to Seth, whose dog just passed away. Thinking about you, Seth. But yeah, with that, Jason, you ready for our first question? We'll get right to it.
Jason [00:00:43]:
Let's get started.
Kaisha [00:00:44]:
Let's get started. All right, we got this one from miles. He dropped this a few weeks ago. Weren't able to get to it, but we're going to do it today. They write, Jason says to leaf by pinching the petiole around one quarter to one half inch long versus snapping them off clean. I've always snap them off. When you leave it there, it dries out and dies and either falls off or stays there and looks ugly. Others have always said leaving it can introduce moldy or dead tissue.
Kaisha [00:01:09]:
Can we get some clarification?
Jason [00:01:12]:
Absolutely. I'm glad you're asking for some details on this as well. So when we're talking about pinching it, we're also, we're still talking about removing the leaf there kind of the idea of pinching and twisting and, or trimming that off is every once in a while, when we snap it off cleanly, it'll pull some of the main stem off with it. And that can introduce an area for any molds, mildews, any bacterial growth, that type of stuff on the plant. Really, the goal here is to minimize how much injury happens to the plant so that we do reduce any of that site that's available. And so by pinching and twisting and removing it. So I think that's where we kind of missed the detail on it. You still want to remove it? Definitely don't want any of that dead material in the plant because it's unsightly.
Jason [00:02:02]:
And it does, does end up being, you know, a site for any, any pests to grow. So great, great question there. Like I said, just to reiterate that the goal is to just minimize everyone smiling. Anyone that's done clean snapping, a lot of times you see it'll pull some of the fiber off the main stem as well. So that's what we're trying to avoid, is just get a little ways off the stem, and that way you're only removing the petiole and nothing more.
Kaisha [00:02:31]:
Great overview. Thank you for that. Because I know that I personally have done that the wrong way. Now I know. All right, we're going to move to miles. Second question. Should I be keeping PPFD capped in veg so that my DLI doesn't decrease going into flower? We've been getting lights to 100% intensity in veg. And then when they stretch vigorously after flip, the PPFD increases solely due to the plant gradually getting closer to the lights, which are fixed height.
Kaisha [00:03:00]:
What's the harm in a decrease of DLI?
Jason [00:03:04]:
Yeah, going to answer this kind of backwards here, the harm in a decreased DLI would just be solar plant growth. Right. Adding days to the cycle, reducing how much photosynthesis happens in this plant. And so when we go from veg to flower, we always want to try and match the DLI. And since we have typically 6 hours less of light, you know, going from an 18 hours photo period to a twelve hour photo period, you know, we want to make sure that our light intensity is increased by about 33%. Right. So if we're thinking about, all right, our lights in veg are at 500 micromoles, then, you know, we need to make sure that we're up in that 700, 800 range when we're in flower. That way we can match our DLI.
Jason [00:03:52]:
Right. So this plant is, it's used to having a certain amount of photons hit it throughout the day. And so it's trying to optimize its photosynthesis based on how many photons it's getting. Well, when we drop 6 hours of light, we want to make sure that it's still getting the same amount of photons. Right. And to get to the beginning of that question, it really kind of depends on, you know, what, what is 100% at the, the canopy level for you in veg? If it's, you know, five or 600 micromoles, then you're probably on the route to optimizing how fast these plants are growing. And then when you get into flower, yeah, you want to make sure that you can hit 33% more light intensity so you can match that DLI and flower. And it's really important.
Jason [00:04:36]:
And a lot of times people say, oh, well, you know, we need to baby these plants through that transition time. A lot. A lot of times, if they are struggling, it's simply because, you know, those plants are getting less at less DLI, and they're not maintaining the same environmental parameters as they were coming out of veg. So not in the question. But we really do want to make sure that we're matching our VPD to the veg room as well, keep the temperatures the same and have as few of, you know, change factors in there as possible. Obviously, if we are putting the plant onto its final media, we will need to do some rooting and irrigations. And if we already are rooted in, then we'll want to do some, some generative irrigations for most strain types coming out of that. Coming out of that bedroom.
Jason [00:05:21]:
Right. You know, first day of flower. Let's. Let's start treating these plants how we want to. And, and, yeah, so that's, that's kind of the basis there.
Kaisha [00:05:31]:
New rock. Jason, thank you. Miles Mercy, thank you for dropping those questions. We appreciate your patience, too. All right, we're going to keep it going. We got this one from newbie day trader. They wrote. Seth and J, could you reduce airflow at night? If drybacks are too aggressive, let's assume there's too much airflow.
Kaisha [00:05:49]:
Had a buddy encounter this issue in his room which had way too much airflow. So the dangers of too much airflow, what do you think?
Jason [00:05:56]:
Yeah. So let's kind of get down into plant characteristics here. Obviously, when we have photoperiod on. So during the daytime, our stomachs are opening up, hopefully as much as we possibly can get them based on VPD temperatures, light amounts, available water and nutrition. And so they're transpiring. When they're transpiring, they're obviously adding humidity, water vapor to the immediate surrounding around that leaf surface. And we always want to make sure that we have good airflow because it's helping to homogenize what the environment is like. Right.
Jason [00:06:33]:
Try and reduce some of that boundary layer humidity and make sure that the parameters are consistent from plant to plant and throughout that plant. And also that our, our sensors, our instrumentation is, you know, somewhat accurate for what the plant is feeling. Right. The better that we have that room homogenized, the easier it is for us to deal with it. Now, when lights go off, our stomachs start to close up and that plant is going to be transpiring significantly less. Probably not none, but significantly less. And so, you know, too much airflow at night. Yeah.
Jason [00:07:07]:
You know, it might be one of those things where you just have increased evaporation from the substrate. Right. Because when we have water content loss, there's mostly really just three ways, three areas that that water goes to runoff, which we should have really good control of transpiration, which is something that we're trying to optimize. And then evaporation from the substrate. And depending on what that substrate is like, you know, if it's a rock wool slab, it's very minimal evaporation because it's. It's mostly encapsulated. If you're something like a coco mesh bag, then that evaporation could be a significant amount to break the question down. Simply, we always want our airflow to be optimized, right.
Jason [00:07:49]:
Not too much, not too low. And that's going to be important for both lights on and lights off. And mostly because we're always trying to reduce any chances of microclimates. So especially during, later in flower, when we see increased areas of humidity, that increases the chance of molds and mildews. So we do want to make sure that there is some airflow at night. If it's too much. Well, that's probably a better situation than too little because we could go in there and turn down the fan speed or unplug some fans, just kind of reduce that a little bit so it sounds like they're in a good situation just to get in there. If you want to start documenting it, you can use an anometer, a wind anomiter, and start taking some, some airflow measurements throughout the room.
Jason [00:08:37]:
See how consistent it is, see which areas are too high. And that's where I would start trying to reduce that airflow in those areas.
Kaisha [00:08:48]:
Great insights. I love that question, too. Thank you, newbie day trader, for that. Just a shout out to everyone. We are live on all the socials. We're live on YouTube. So if you have any questions for us that you want us to cover during the show, be sure to drop those in the chat. All right, moving on.
Kaisha [00:09:04]:
Here's our next one. This one came from Brad. He writes, I'm in two gallon coco, 3.0 athenae and 1200 ppm CO2. What's a good vegetative feeding schedule in flower?
Jason [00:09:16]:
Yeah, so, you know, if you watch the show much, you know that I really like two gallon cocos, especially on, you know, the larger sized plants for growing five plus foot plants. Two gallon coco is a really nice size substrate, and so a decent vegetative strategy. Well, obviously, we're looking at p one s to get up to field capacity. Certain types of coco, we're going to see that field capacity, usually around 45% for coco, that's a little bit smaller grind. We might see that up towards that 60%, sometimes 65% field capacity. And so that's going to be one of the determining factors here on how many p two s and how large those p two s are. As a general kind of rule of thumb, since we are in a little bit larger substrate, I might try and do, you know, get my p one s to field capacity and, you know, within an hour block. So typically within 2 hours after lights on, I'll be at field capacity and then I'll have my irrigation window, um, probably something like 6 hours, right.
Jason [00:10:19]:
Maybe 7 hours in a larger substrate like that. Uh, obviously, if we are seeing drybacks, um, having a more percentage than we want, then we could stretch that out to, say eight, 8 hours. Um, you know, that's fortunate. That's why I like those two gallons. Cause it, we do have a little bit more flexibility as far as how we run those irrigations, simply because we're not as likely to run out of, out of water content in that plant before, before we're ready to irrigate the next day. So you might do something like, you know, at a minimum, I like to have four p one events and say something like four p two events, right. That would, that'd be kind of the bare minimum. So maybe a p one event every 15 minutes, then be at 1 hour into our irrigation window.
Jason [00:11:08]:
And if we need to do, uh, you know, we want to add 6 hours of, of p two on there, then we might do, uh, an irrigation every hour and a half.
Kaisha [00:11:16]:
Right.
Jason [00:11:16]:
A p two irrigation every hour and a half. And, um, that's kind of where I would start. All right. A little bit more on the balanced side. If we are trying to steer harder vegetatively, we might, might double that and say, hey, we want to do eight p two irrigations, one every 45 minutes. Um, or we might stretch it out a little bit and say, hey, we want to do eight p two irrigations, one every hour, right. So we're actually widening that irrigation window up. So it kind of comes down to if, you know, as a general recommendation, I like to run slightly balanced, even when I'm doing vegetative or generative.
Jason [00:11:50]:
Right. I like to just lean a little bit towards the middle before I have a great understanding of how this strain behaves. And then if you need to turn that dial a little bit, a little bit harder, push them more, then you have that opportunity to do so.
Kaisha [00:12:05]:
Awesome. Thank you so much for that, Brad, thanks for dropping that question. Good luck. Let us know how it's going. All right. The live questions are coming in. I'm going to shift gears and head over to Instagram. This one came from canon.
Kaisha [00:12:17]:
They wrote, I'm in coco with a seven gallon pot. Next run going to downside to one to three, but I'm having trouble fully saturating it with two drippers. Should I add two more? So four corners are getting wet. What do you think?
Jason [00:12:33]:
Yeah, so obviously, when we're in a large media, like a seven gallon coco, that's a lot of area to cover. When we're talking about how does the substrate, I'll use the term homogenize again, because, you know, same thing as environment as we want in the substrate. And the more equal that water content and EC is in there, the easier it is to control. Easier it is to monitor. If you're going down into a one to three gallon, I mean, even that's still a pretty big variation, but at a three gallon, you should be okay with two drippers. Right? In that case, we're looking for the capillary effect of that media to basically soak the water throughout the substrate. Right. And it's pretty common that people can be successful with two drippers in any coco size, you know, one to three gallons.
Jason [00:13:22]:
If you're getting bigger than three gallons, a lot of times that, that dripper's not going to give you, you know, or two drippers is not going to give you enough, um, spatial coverage, if you will. Whenever I, uh, am looking at how does the water content, um. Or how does the water content in the substrate be affected by the drippers? It's kind of like an upside down ice cream cone, right. Um, as that water drips through the substrate, it's also spreading out a little bit. This is one of the reasons that I like to have my drippers in the corners of the substrate as well. So, great time to get the whiteboards out. We'll use some colors here.
Kaisha [00:14:01]:
And that's right, y'all, we got color markers. Look out.
Jason [00:14:07]:
So in this case, we're going to be in a round pot. I guess you don't really get to put the drippers in the corner. But when we have things like our good old square, square coco bags, compressed bags. So we've got the plant in the middle, obviously, and that's gonna be in green. And then a lot of times when I go into a facility, I see we'll have the two drippers like this, right? And so when we think about how does the water dispersion happen? I'm gonna draw some kind of. Some dotted lines, right. If we think about those ice cream cones we can see around the dripper. Uh oh, I got my left one's a little bit clogged here.
Jason [00:14:47]:
But regardless, those were supposed to be the same size for perfect drippers. What's going to happen here is actually right here. And right here, that water is going to hit the, the side of that coco bag, especially if it's a plastic bag, it's going to start running down. Right. It's not going to have quite as good of dispersion as if we ended up putting it in the corners. Right. So give me just a minute. We'll draw what happens when we put those in the corners.
Jason [00:15:24]:
And ideally, right, we're going to kind of split the distance between the corner and the plant. So we'll have our dripper there and our dripper there. And so now when we have our more localized water content dripping from that, we can see it's all within the pot and we're covering more area that's going to help homogenize that substrate. So kind of a simple thing where. All right, let's just think about the geometry of our facility, of our plants, of our drip systems, and how can we just maybe tweak one of our simple procedures, how we set stuff up to optimize it? You know, it's kind of like, also when we are setting up our plants on the benches, if we stagger those, then we can possibly get just a slight bit more area for that plant.
Kaisha [00:16:18]:
All right, great overview. We love the whiteboard. Thanks again to front row ag for that. And thank you, Kenneth, for your question. Good luck. Let us know how it's going. All right, our next question from IG came from dapter 21. They are looking for details on what are the cues for ripening and the bulking.
Jason [00:16:38]:
Yeah, what are the cues? I mean, that this could be answered two ways. One would be, what are the cues the plant is telling us that we should be starting ripening in that process. Start to end up or start to end the cycles, the last kind of segment of the cycle. The other way to answer that would be what cues are we going to give the plant when we see that? So that we can optimize how this plant is finishing off. Glad we said ripening. Some people call it finishing. Those are the perfect terms because we can start thinking about how do we get the most preferred characteristics from this plant in the last seven to ten days. Right.
Jason [00:17:18]:
Everyone's. Why we'll go two weeks if it's a strain that needs that. So things like all right. If we need to increase our purpling color in there, let's make sure we have a very significant nighttime daytime temperature differential, say ten degrees, maybe even a little bit more. It's going to help produce that purpling in there. One of those nice things that we want when we are, are looking for a desirable colored plant on the shelf in some markets, you know, that that's almost a must in order to have a top, top shelf product. Some of us don't, don't necessarily care as much about that purpling as far as, you know, as important as some of the terpene profiles and that type of stuff. But in some markets, it's absolutely necessary.
Jason [00:18:00]:
So when we're also thinking about that typical side effects of increased nighttime daytime differentials would be a little bit more dense nugs. So depending on how that product's gained up and how that strain leans, as far as bud development, we might want to mitigate how, how much we apply that temperature differential and where we're keeping those daytime temps as well. So really what we're doing towards ripening is we're trying to cue this plant and say let's make as, you know, let's make that last ditch effort to be as, as generative as possible. So typically we'll stick with p one s, but a lot of times we'll also start to decrease some of our total nutrient levels. Ideally, a lot of times we're pulling out nitrogen from some of our feed and that's going to help reduce how much carbohydrates and sugars are built up in that plant when we go to harvest. So those are, those are kind of just a couple of things that we think about. One of the tricks is making sure that we are managing what our EC levels look like, because as we are only doing p one s and we've got a very mature, large size plants, every once in a while we can start to get in low water contents. While it's going to be hard to start managing our EC levels unless we're pushing a determined amount of runoff, that's helping us manage that EC.
Jason [00:19:18]:
So those, those are kind of the places that I start when I'm thinking about how do I want to ripen this plant.
Kaisha [00:19:25]:
Well, I love that overview and also just right on time. Thank you doctor 21 for your question. Right on time. Our gromy iron armor dropped this one you touched on a little bit in your answer. They write from my understanding, lowering nitrogen, decreasing temps and lowering TPFD during finish helps promote anthocyanin purple and cannabis. What processes are happening in the plants to promote this? Mind doing a little bit more of a deep dive?
Jason [00:19:53]:
Yeah. Where's our PhD chemist to jump in the show today? I'll just be straight honest with you as far as what's going on with ADP and stuff in the plant, not sure exactly what is inducing that anthocyanin production. Uh, I do know that, you know, when we're looking at things like blueberries and huckleberries, it's, you know, it's the same protein that's um, or excuse me, same pigment that's being expressed, uh, in those situations. So, um, yeah, sounds like Mother Nature. Maybe I'll dig in and have something better to share for you here. We can, we can get really science y about it.
Kaisha [00:20:32]:
That's cool. Yeah. And also mother in nature just doing her thing. So. Yeah. Cool. Iron armor. We appreciate your question and yeah, if you find out first, let us know.
Kaisha [00:20:40]:
All right, going to keep it moving. This one also came through on YouTube. Justin wrote. Any tips on managing multiple tents? Because of my space constraints, I have to spread out over a few tents, creating multiple environments. Would something like open sprinkler work for automation?
Jason [00:20:58]:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, open sprinkler is one of the more flexible systems that I'm familiar with that I've used. How do you manage this? Well, obviously it's a little bit of a challenge, but one of the things that I learned is growing in greenhouses was uh, yeah, I'm gonna have multiple environments and something like a 5000 square foot greenhouse. Front of my greenhouse is always gonna be cooler and I guess you have certain tents where uh, you know, maybe managing those temperatures are a little bit more challenging. Really the best thing that you can do is start to document how your strains are growing in those different environments and just start optimizing which ones are placed in, in which tent. Right. So obviously, you know, it's one of those. If you have an uncontrolled variable, let's just try to optimize things that we can control to take advantage of some of those changes.
Kaisha [00:21:44]:
Right.
Jason [00:21:45]:
So if we have a room where, you know, it's typically hotter, maybe it's on the south side of the building or whatever's causing it. Let's throw some strains in there that end up taking advantage of that. Maybe, maybe they grow bigger, maybe there's strains that aren't going to turn purple anyways. And so let's just take advantage of some of those constrictions.
Kaisha [00:22:06]:
Awesome. Jason, thank you for that, Justin. Appreciate your question. All right, moving on. All right, we got, we are moving on to Instagram. This one came through from Humboldt, og. All right, Josh Newlinger from AROYA was saying 1% ppFD equals to 1% more yield. But in what case are we going to yield more? 78 fahrenheit, I think at 78 f and 1800 ppfd, or 83 f and 1100 ppfd.
Kaisha [00:22:41]:
Since photosynthesis is not driving by the light only. This is what they wrote. Did you catch that?
Jason [00:22:48]:
Yeah, I think I did. So my answer is probably going to be the warmer temperature at the lower light levels, and simply because we have to start looking at some of the diminishing returns when we're looking at photosynthesis. And I'm going to do my best to recreate a chart that is fairly prolific on the Internet. If we look at photosynthesis versus light levels, CO2 is also going to be a really important one here. Let's say photosynthesis on the y photosynth. And then we're going to say light levels. I'm going to have the assumption that CO2 is equal throughout this chart. If we need to change CO2, then I can add a, draw a couple more lines on here.
Jason [00:23:44]:
But just for simplicity sake. So what's going to happen here is this is going to be rate of photosynthesis, and this is going to be light levels. At some point with our light levels increasing, how much light actually isn't going to get you more yield. Right. And this, like I said, this axis is going to be dependent on how much CO2 levels we have in there as well. But let's say, you know, let's say the warmer room is going to be at light levels right here, right? And then let's say the room at 1800 micromoles is going to be up here. You're exactly right. Like when we start to induce multiple variables there, there is a chance that, hey, you know, having a warmer temperature, a more ideal environment, except lightning, is going to allow this one to be up here.
Jason [00:24:39]:
So we could draw other lines as well. Let's see if we can do this here. So let's go at, I don't remember, what do you say, 74 degrees or 78?
Kaisha [00:24:55]:
78.
Jason [00:24:56]:
78.
Kaisha [00:25:00]:
And then the other option was or 83 degrees.
Jason [00:25:09]:
At U three. So let's go like this. And we're supposed to get some, some play by play. So we're gonna put x's and o's on here for like football play here.
Kaisha [00:25:29]:
High tech y'all.
Jason [00:25:30]:
This is gonna be 1800 ppfd. This one's gonna be 1100 ppfd. All right, so now that we've induced temperature as another variable, we can see. All right, well, our photosynth rate of photosynthesis at the specified light levels by axis x is actually going to change. So it's like, all right, well, we're going to have a little bit higher photosynthesis at the same light levels if we have a little bit warmer temperature. And this is obviously looking at leaf surface temp instead of air temp. But what we can see here is now when we're evaluating photosynthesis, total photosynthesis, we can see that, hey, at that higher temperature, yeah, we're going to be achieving probably about the same, and I'm just throwing an estimate out here. Have to do some actual plant calculations to validate this.
Jason [00:26:31]:
But this is kind of just a great way to explain. All right, if we have a less ideal environment, then increasing that light here might actually get the same photosynthetic rate as if we have a more ideal environment.
Kaisha [00:26:47]:
I like it. Awesome. Humbled OG, thank you so much for your question. Sorry I bungled it as I was reading it, but we really appreciate you. All right, moving on.
Jason [00:26:58]:
Probably one last caveat in there, strain dependency. Like some strains are just going to grow better at other levels than certain ones. You know, there's certain strains that just aren't going to be happy at 1800 micro moles regardless of what temperature it is, right?
Kaisha [00:27:18]:
Yep. Strain dependent. All right, awesome. Thank you so much for that. Okay, moving on. This question came through. I love this handle from real jalapeno they wrote. Hey guys, great show.
Kaisha [00:27:32]:
The VPD in my dry room ranges between 0.69 to 0.81. Averaging between 0.72 to 0.78 is the minimum and max going to affect my dry. And in how many days could I expect a perfect dry? What advice do you have?
Jason [00:27:53]:
Yeah, uh, I'm not gonna have any exact answers for them here. Actually. When I'm working in a dry room, it's kind of ironic because when I'm in a grow room, I always look at temperature and VPD. Um, when I'm in a dry room, I. Humidity is kind of the first thing that I start looking at. Right. Um, and simply because I, you know, my VPD is not going to be as, as big a deal. Right.
Jason [00:28:15]:
If I need to dry a little bit faster, you know, I might up my temps a little bit and, um, make sure my humidities are right. When we look at what's the constraining variable for a lab test of a dried cannabis, and or how do we optimize the weight and quality of that cannabis? We're actually looking at the humidity itself in the bud, and we make some specialized equipment that looks at what's called water activity, which is a measurement of the humidity in that bud itself. And so when we think about, all right, if I want to be at 0.6 for my water activity, then if my dry room is at 60% humidity, I'm usually never going to be able to go lower than that 60%. I can usually never go lower than 0.6 with my water activity unless I have just like, way too much airflow or something weird going on in the room. Um, and so that's why I look at humidity first. When I'm in a dry room rather than when I'm looking at a grow room, I always want my temperature and my VPD, because as long as my temperature is where I want it and my VPD is in a good range to optimize, to model conductance, that means that my humidity is happy, right? If my VPD is not good, sure is good, then I'll start to look at humidity and say, all right, how can I tweak that to optimize my VPD? Um, whereas in the dry room, obviously, we, we don't have any plant growth, there's not any photosynthetic activity going on. And so I'm trying to say optimize. All right, my finished product, if I wanted at 0.6, then I need my dry room at 60% humidity.
Jason [00:29:41]:
Um, sure. You can start modulating some of those temperatures a little bit to change how long that it takes to dry. Other things that are going to change how quickly the plant dries in there is. How big are your buds? How close are your buds together in the room? What's your airflow look like? So there's just way too many variables to kind of tell you exactly when, how long. Kind of in general, what I like to do if I am walking into a dry room blindly is I like to be about 60% humidity, 60 to 65 degrees, and shoot for around seven to ten days dry time. The best thing that you can do to start optimizing this is obviously documenting what your water activity is towards the end of that drying cycle. Right. So the first few days, I might take one water activity reading.
Jason [00:30:35]:
Um, by the time I'm at day five or six, I'm probably going to have at least one to two to three water activities a day. What I'm trying to do is project a slope as far as how quickly my product is drying to match that up with when it needs to come down from the room.
Kaisha [00:30:54]:
That's great, Jason. Yeah, real jalapeno. You got some good considerations for dialing in your dry room, so good luck out there. Keep us posted. Let us know if you have any other questions. All right, moving back to YouTube, this one came from earlifly. Sorry. All right, they write any recommendations on water holding capacity limits to reduce chances of overwatering bacterial pathogens forming in the root zone.
Kaisha [00:31:23]:
Every time I try to water follow Athena's guidelines, pushing run off and saturation, I end up killing my roots, and my plant health goes down across the grow, and I can't ever fix it.
Jason [00:31:34]:
Yeah, great, great question. I love this one because obviously, sometimes there's principles that are harder to actually do in application, right? And so we talk about, you know, reading manuals. All right, let's, let's try and achieve this. And, um, a couple things going on here. Obviously, when we are over watering, and it's kind of a funny term, because, um, in things like coco and rockwool, overwatering is typically just going to mean some amount of stagnation of water. To me, that usually means, hey, we're not seeing enough transpiration, um, or transpiration and evaporation. We're not seeing enough water loss that we can do frequent irrigations. What's happening with freaking irrigations is we're bringing in fresh oxygen, fresh nutrients, and we're queuing that plant for a growth response.
Jason [00:32:21]:
And so one of the most challenging phases of the plant growth is when we go into a bigger media, and we're trying to manage the water content in there, right. So what that means is, all right, we don't have any roots in this new media yet, and so we need to make sure that we're nothing over irrigating. We're not putting too much water in there. That is allowing the roots to stagnate. A lot of times, anytime I see brown roots, typically what's happening is as that water in the substrate is in there too long, it's starting to lose its oxygen content. So that dissolved oxygen is very key to helping explosive root growth, very key to help keeping, you know, crystally white, partly white roots that are growing. And then the hardest part of this is we still want some amount of irrigation so that those roots are following that water content throughout the substrate. So obviously, we need to maintain that plant growth in the smaller media, but we're trying not to make the large new media have water content go up, we want that to go down on a daily basis.
Jason [00:33:28]:
It's net water content needs to drop until we have a good road establishment in the new media. And so one of the things that's nice about looking at time series data is we can see how much faster that new media is drying back, and that gives us a good indicator about how much root penetration, how much root establishment we have in that new media. So, yeah, best thing you can do is start to have some type of reading in there. If you don't have time series data, go in there with some spot checks, go in there with a scale, whatever you can, to start getting the idea of, all right, how can I limit my water levels in order to achieve a more regular irrigation schedule?
Kaisha [00:34:18]:
All right, it all comes down to data logging, doesn't it? I love it. All right, Earl of I thank you so much for that question. All right, we got this one. This is also up your alley. Well, these are all up your alley, Jason, but you're like, this one. This was from mister Beans and clones. They wrote how do you feel about far reds for ten minutes when lights shut off?
Jason [00:34:39]:
I feel great about it. So when we think about plant biology in how does far reds affect some of that plant, either side of the spectrum? Actually kind of comes down to about a month ago, I was talking about phytochromes, carotenoids, cryptochromes and their response in the spectrum. These are all photoreceptors that activate certain types of secondary metaboloid activity in this plant. And those can be responsible for certain types of chemical development in the plant. They can be responsible for increased physical presence of that plant. And so I think it's good, right. When we look at the studies of photo morphogenesis. Excuse me, we were just talking about how it's one of my favorite words and I can't even say it now.
Kaisha [00:35:33]:
It's a good one.
Jason [00:35:33]:
Then we actually kind of think about, all right, how can we match the certain responses from these photoreceptors to different timelines in this plant lifecycle to optimize its growth during that phase? And so it's really cool studies. Again, certain strains are going to react to it in different ways because of what their physical representation, their chemical representation is genetically, but in most cases, a little bit of far reds, it's not going to hurt, especially there at the ten minutes for the end of the day, definitely not going to hurt. You might see a small improvement in some of those responses from those photoreceptors.
Kaisha [00:36:17]:
All right, there it is, mister beans and clones. Thank you for your question. All right, fam, we're going to wrap the show up a little bit early. We're going to end with this one that trichome Valley just dropped on Instagram. They wrote, when the ph is drifting lower, you guys have said to increase feed EC to rebalance the ions. I'm feeding 2.5 EC under hps and I bump it to 3.0 ec. Is that enough of an increase? Do I push more runoff than usual? Is it going to show an effect on the ph right away? How long do you continue this higher EC feed? Thank you.
Jason [00:36:54]:
Yeah, one of my favorite questions here. So you're kind of right on the track of how we would start to approach, you know, a ph drift. And one of the things here that, again, is really nice to have is time series data looking at what the root zone Ec is. And if, if we see two cues, you know, one cube being low ph in our runoff and then the other cue being nutrients decreasing throughout the day, then we definitely want to make sure that we're adding more nutrients. How much runoff? If three o is going to be enough? Um, those are all things that your substrate readings are going to have to tell you. Obviously, if we start to see that ph equalize and, well, and how quickly, um, it's going to be determined on the media type as well. So something like Rockwool, we should see, uh, you know, a corrective ph probably within, you know, one to two days, typically. Um, and that's because it's got a lower cation exchange capacity.
Jason [00:37:55]:
Right. Um, whereas something like coco, it's going to be a little bit more buffered. So it's going to take some time for that to happen. For something like soil, even longer. Right. You know, those exact details are going to depend on. Yeah. How much runoff do we have? How big is our substrate? What's the age of the plants? Those are all variables that are going to kind of change the details of what you're looking for here.
Kaisha [00:38:21]:
Great answer to a great question. Tricon Valley, thank you so much for dropping that. All right, y'all, a little programming note. Next Thursday is 4 July, so we're not going to be on the air, but it's all good. We'll be back after that. So with that, Jason, thank you so much for such a great show. Holding it down solo today. Producer Chris thank you so much.
Kaisha [00:38:40]:
And thank you all for joining us for this week's AROYA. Office hours 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. If you have any crop steering or cultivation questions you want us to cover, drop them anytime in the AROYA app. Email us at salesroya IO. Send us a DM. We are on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. We definitely want to hear from you, and if you're a fan of the podcast, please leave us a review on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts. We appreciate your feedback, and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel so you never miss an episode.
Kaisha [00:39:15]:
Thanks y'all. See you on episode 108. Bye.