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Seth Baumgartner and Jason Van Leuven open the mics for your crop steering and cultivation questions.
OHL Ep 77
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[00:00:00] Kaisha: What is up, Grommies? Welcome to Office Hours, your source for free cannabis cultivation education. I'm your moderator, Kaisha, and after a few weeks on hiatus, we finally reached episode 77. We really miss y'all, so welcome back. Here's how we do it. I'll keep an eye out for questions in the chat. Drop them any time, and if your question gets picked...
[00:00:20] Kaisha: We will get right to it. We're also going live on YouTube. So if you're logging on over there, same idea, post your questions. And if yours gets picked, we'll do our best to cover it during the show. [00:00:30] Jason and Seth, what's up gentlemen? How are you? Hi, welcome back. Vacations, life, welcome back.
[00:00:39] Seth: Thank you.
[00:00:40] Jason: It's good to be in
[00:00:41] Seth: here.
[00:00:42] Kaisha: Yes. All right. Well, we're just going to go get right to it before we get to your questions, though. We wanted to kick things off with a little bit of a, an overview of our security features, right? I'll let y'all take it away.
[00:00:53] Jason: Oh, with our security features. Sorry. Uh, yeah. So we, uh, sorry. I didn't realize that was a question, Kesha.
[00:00:59] Jason: [00:01:00] Um, you know, we implement some, uh, pretty awesome security features, obviously, uh, we are, um, We have been, uh, working with other companies in order to be validated as a secure site, um, currently we do use AWS for some of our databasing stuff that we're looking to in house, um, so all that security information has been validated through, uh, processes, uh, we're also ISO standard certified, so.
[00:01:28] Jason: Those are kind of things that, uh, [00:01:30] we set as a standard for cannabis technology. Uh, for a lot of technology industries, this stuff is fairly standard. So we're trying to just meet that as, as a, uh, ability of AROYA to, to be in a tech space rather than, you know, cannabis trying to meet those levels of standards.
[00:01:50] Seth: Yeah, I think we've done a lot of work, uh, much to. Maybe some of our personal convenient daily lives in terms of, uh, data security, [00:02:00] but it's important, you know, going forward, like everyone in this industry. One thing that I always like to, uh, point out is it's cool. We're all developing IP as we're doing this.
[00:02:11] Seth: Like every run is some sort of experiment and something to learn from. So, uh, this data, this data security is super important going forward. If someone discovers something in terms of cultivation practices or genetics, They want to map that NONET and part of that is us not [00:02:30] letting the secret out, right?
[00:02:32] Seth: It's gotta, gotta stay native and also, you don't want, uh, too much outside influence on your own data. So, we, we do our best to make sure everything stays native and not release anything that we shouldn't, right? And
[00:02:47] Jason: we work, we work with, uh, quite a few MSOs and some of them have required us to be SOC 2 compliant.
[00:02:53] Jason: And so that's kind of the, the technology standard, security standard that, uh, we exceed.[00:03:00]
[00:03:03] Jason: Sorry, y'all. Thank you.
[00:03:04] Kaisha: I was typing at the same time. Thank you for that. One more thing. Can we talk a little bit about the kiosk feature in AROYA and just like how that can kind of help a little bit with, you know, roles and permissions, y'all being able to control who can actually access the data within your own
[00:03:17] Jason: company?
[00:03:18] Jason: You bet. So the kiosk feature is, is really a feature we designed from feedback from our clients who wanted some ability to access AROYA, you know, either display graphs, input tasks, uh, [00:03:30] register that their tasks have been complete and the kiosk mode is designed to be run on. Android or an Apple device, and basically the plan is that this device could be mounted outside of the ground room.
[00:03:41] Jason: So lots of people use iPads in our kiosk mode. The security features in the kiosk mode is that until someone inputs their key, their, uh, their PIN number for their account. All that the kiosk is displaying is the room parameters. Uh, some of these room parameters can be highlighted with, uh, out of [00:04:00] range alerts right on the screen.
[00:04:01] Jason: So it'll be flashing a red icon. Uh, it's just kind of like our gauges dashboard where you're getting your humidities, temperatures, DPDs, light levels, substrate information, you know, water content, AC temperature, the substrate all displayed just in the gauges. Um, highlighted outside of the room. So it's a great way to give a heads up.
[00:04:19] Jason: You know, a lot of people are doing this daily walkthroughs, uh, pretty common. The first thing you do is just walk through there. And, and, uh, this kind of helps them not have to go into the room and check these values [00:04:30] or, or use another system. And it just quickly highlights it with exactly the data that they're used to looking at.
[00:04:34] Jason: Probably the data that they went to bed looking at last night on AROYA at home. So that's a, a great way to have a heads up monitor, heads up display, a HUD for,
[00:04:44] Seth: for your room. It also gives a great opportunity, uh, for employees to interact with AROYA and use a lot of its features without actually having to pull out their phone inside of a room where they're getting all sticky and stuff, like a lot of us has been there going through putting sandwich [00:05:00] baggies over your phone and then progressing to trying not to touch it when you're all sticky to, uh, you know, just giving up and washing it with alcohol really regularly.
[00:05:10] Seth: Um, it allows employees to not have to use their own personal phone. Go through all that gunk and still enter data, interact the way they need to. with a stationary system. Um, we're really trying to recognize the process flows here and how, uh, sometimes handheld devices don't actually work the best in a hot sticky wet [00:05:30] environment.
[00:05:33] Seth: Fantastic guys.
[00:05:34] Kaisha: Thank you so much. Yeah, so there you have it. We've got really built in robust data security features. That's just inherent to what AROYA does, but then also we've got kiosk mode. That's a lot of flexibility for your team, but also that allows you to control who has access to that data. So, we take it very seriously.
[00:05:49] Kaisha: On that note, Let's get to some live questions. Josh just posted a couple things in the chat here. Josh, if you want to unmute yourself, you're welcome to, but let me, let me read these two. First, you had [00:06:00] a feature request. If it hasn't been done yet, can we add reservoir selection to open sprinkler integration?
[00:06:05] Kaisha: For example, being able to add zone to multiple rooms. Anything you guys want to say to that?
[00:06:14] Jason: Um, not exactly on the, sure on the question here, obviously with OpenSprinkler, I mean, you can use those, uh, outputs and you can connect a relay and have them control pretty much anything, uh, when you say reservoir selection, I think of, uh, you know, uh, just a sprinkler [00:06:30] solenoid, that's different reservoirs for selecting what you're feeding to what room, um, Yes, absolutely.
[00:06:35] Jason: You can just control that 24 volt AC solenoid directly from OpenSprinkler. Or like I said earlier, you know, one of the things I recommend to clients a lot of times is just run a relay bank with your OpenSprinkler. And then what you can do is control basically any, any voltage, um, input or output, and then just make sure that you've got your programming set up right so that it fires when you need it to.
[00:06:57] Seth: Yeah, to answer it super directly, basically you would [00:07:00] be setting up, you know, depending on your pump setup, whether or not you're going to have a master relay control that pump and the valve, but essentially you would set it up so you have a master valve zone for the whole room, which is pulling from a specific tank.
[00:07:13] Seth: Um, currently the way it works in AROYA, you would have to do some reconfiguring with your open sprinkler when you wanted to make those selections, but I imagine, uh, mostly what you're talking about is having like a, uh, a veg early flower, mid flower and late flower tank. For the [00:07:30] whole facility that you can draw off of for different rooms and that's we can totally accommodate that it just takes some configuration and then breaking down the real simple functions of OpenSprinkler and the fact that as Jason just pointed out it in the end is a controllable relay device you can make it do I mean, we could turn on lights, we could do all kinds of weird things without a sprinkler if we wanted to, that's the reality.
[00:07:53] Seth: It's a, it's an awesome automation tool and just digital control of physical things, right?[00:08:00]
[00:08:01] Seth: Excellent. Yeah, Josh, go for it. Um, yeah, so I don't know if it's changed since I tried it last, but basically it wouldn't let me, um, add a second master essentially. So I'd have my master and then I'd say I have two rooms I want to pull from, from one res. Um, and two rooms I want to pull from another. I wasn't able to set them.
[00:08:20] Seth: Uh, basically what would happen was it would force me to, other than, other than the master, it would force me to select a specific room in a specific zone for that valve. Um, so I [00:08:30] wasn't able to take that valve and apply it to, say, three rooms at a time type deal.
[00:08:37] Seth: Gotcha. I would love to dive into that with you and see if we can make it work. I think it's possible. There just might be some fun playing around we have to do and also make sure that competing signals aren't stepping over each other at the same time. Thank you. Okay. Awesome. Yeah, we, we use it like we use it like outside of AROYA integration and it works fine, right?
[00:08:54] Seth: I just couldn't figure out how to make it work, um, through the AROYA platform. Yeah, shoot us an email, dude. [00:09:00] We'd be happy to dive into it. Awesome. Thanks.
[00:09:04] Kaisha: That's a great question, Josh. Thank you so much. Uh, you posted a couple of others. I'm going to get to those as well, but I want to also factor in our YouTube questions here.
[00:09:11] Kaisha: Let me answer this one here from, uh, Jill next door. Can you help me get a better understanding on C M H versus H P S versus L E D. I see more commercial growers lean towards H P S. What are the benefits?
[00:09:28] Jason: Yeah, so let's just break out what they [00:09:30] stand for, uh, CMH being Ceramic Metal Highlight, um, HPS being High Pressure Sodium, and then LED being Light Emitting Diode.
[00:09:40] Jason: Um, basically the differences are, uh, let's say, let's start from the application side, um, I guess maybe we can talk about the technical side as well. But typically CMHs are going to be a little bit lower wattage. Um, a lot of what actually, you know, how this affects the plant has to do with, uh, the wavelengths of these different life [00:10:00] types.
[00:10:00] Jason: And so basically, uh, CMH is going to be, uh, you know, it's, um, a high voltage, kind of like the HPSs, but what's happening is the chemicals inside that the doping agent on the, um, bulb in there is a little bit different compound. And typically those are going to be a little bit more blue. You can typically almost always see it with your eyes, uh, when someone's running a CMH, they were very popular in bedrooms, um, right now, LEDs are getting to be kind of, uh, a standard in the industry because of [00:10:30] some of the capabilities that have been developed in the last five years, um, so what we do see is, you know, CMH is in a little bit older bedrooms or, or places that haven't decided to upgrade to LEDs.
[00:10:41] Jason: A lot of times, Those CMHs are doing a great job with fedging because they have a little bit more blue than the HPS and blue, uh, light is encouraging stock stems and root growth. Right? And basically, uh, you know, historically HPSs have dominated the market, especially in the flower rooms, simply because they have a pretty reasonable [00:11:00] full spectrum output.
[00:11:01] Jason: Uh, a lot of times you're working with thousand watt DEs, so you can get a quite a bit of light output from these devices. Uh, and so they've been the standard in a lot of indoor growing, not just cannabis for, you know, the past three decades. Um, some of the disadvantages of HBS would be the, uh, amount of radiation that is hitting the leaves, just the simple amount of heat that is put off by these lights and their efficiency.
[00:11:27] Jason: So they're creating actually more [00:11:30] heat than they are light, uh, by the, from the power that they're using. And so if we transition and talk about LEDs, uh, LEDs, basically, um, histrionim is it's a light emitting diode. Uh, anyone that's familiar with electronics, there's a junction and what they do is they put a doping agent in the junction and they can produce light from it when a charge is applied to that.
[00:11:50] Jason: junction. And, uh, fortunately, LEDs come with all kinds of different, um, wavelengths. And what happens is most manufacturers are going to have a lot of [00:12:00] LEDs that are the white. Uh, sometimes they'll put a little bit of pink or purple on there. And a lot of LED manufacturers these days actually allow you to adjust the spectrum.
[00:12:09] Jason: So the advantages of the LEDs is a very high efficient, um, output. Typically, they have less mounting constraints, so if you need to be in a two or three tier rack, it's nice because you can get a shallow LED. Um, their efficiency, like I said, their efficiency is really one of the huge highlights, is for using probably less than half the [00:12:30] power for a same, LED to produce the same light as an HPS and so, but, uh, those advancements, the price drop in LEDs just because of popularity.
[00:12:40] Jason: I think what the market is right now is about half and half with LEDs and HPS as the main light sources. Um, and the LED shares is growing at a pretty rapid pace. So that's kind of the application side.
[00:12:53] Seth: I think that the important thing to look at too is, uh, kind of, you know, the source of some of these technologies.
[00:12:57] Seth: So we're talking about [00:13:00] CMH or HPS, we're talking about high intensity discharge lights. So this is technology that dates back to, you know, probably the 60s, maybe even earlier when we were looking at, um, you know, how do we use this bulb technology at the time to project high amounts of light out of a relatively small bulb.
[00:13:18] Seth: And, uh, as growers, um, you know, we can, we can look back at some good old, as we refer to them, trap grows from back in the day, but there were people using magnetic ballast from streetlights [00:13:30] or, uh, you know, when we're talking about grow lighting, it was, Pretty much the same as what you would see in a lot of, like, gymnasiums and, uh, sports venues and stuff like that.
[00:13:39] Seth: So we were working with, you know, CMH being that lighter spectrum. A little more blue, a little more, uh, you know, to us, blue and white light. And then the HPS being, you know, having more of that far red and yellow spectrum. And that was an obvious technological choice, right? We use one CMH for veg, HPS for flour because we're [00:14:00] getting a more desirable spectrum for flour.
[00:14:02] Seth: Now that we're moving into a world of, uh, fine tunable LEDs, manufacturers are able to create a lot of the same spectrums when we look into it, saying, you know, Hey, we're gonna make an LED that's specialized for veg. That's gonna have a little more blue concentration. We're gonna have something that's adjustable to bring in more far red for flower.
[00:14:21] Seth: And, uh, I think that's one thing to look back on, you know, when we look at, like, which lights produce the best flower. Um, you can [00:14:30] produce great flower with both lights. Part of it comes down to, you know, making sure you have a spectrum that your particular strains like, and gives you the chemotype at the end that you're looking for.
[00:14:40] Seth: Um, we see plenty of plants that are grown under, you know, uh, basic full spectrum LED. They perform differently under HPS, because we're seeing, you know, different, uh, spectrums. So you want to pay attention to that, see what your plants are doing, and then really fine tune it when it comes to leaf surface temperatures.
[00:14:59] Seth: And then the spectrum [00:15:00] that your plants are seeing, because a lot of producers, we're, we're in an era now where the world is transitioning away from HID lights and towards LEDs. And unfortunately for boutique growers, it's going to get harder and harder and harder to find your H, your HID bulbs in the future.
[00:15:19] Seth: That's just the reality. Manufacturers backing off. And you know, right now, California is seeing it the hardest because the government is pushing people to move towards LEDs, which is fine. [00:15:30] You know, the idea is like less emissions, more efficient use, however, as growers, we all have to adapt to it because as the market changes for these light fixtures, we're not going to have access to some of the old technologies we had before, and it's important to understand what those types of technologies we're doing for you versus what the newer technologies are doing, and that's where crop registration comes in.
[00:15:54] Seth: Yeah. And
[00:15:55] Jason: one tip for people that are either setting up a new grow room [00:16:00] or are planning on changing from HPS to LEDs is do keep in mind what the different lights will do to your environment. So when we've got, uh, you know, a hundred HPS bulbs in our room, we're producing. tons of heat, and we're burning off lots of humidity.
[00:16:15] Jason: So if we go in and we're setting up a new room, make sure that our HVAC and our humidifiers and dehumidifiers are appropriate for that light type.
[00:16:24] Seth: Yeah, and in looking at, you know, everything, we always talk about this, everything we're doing in this whole environment from light [00:16:30] to HVAC to fans is about that, you know, one to two millimeters around the leaf surface.
[00:16:35] Seth: So when we look at like, uh, you know, certain people feeling like they get better color expression out of their HID lights. They get better turf profiles. Part of that is really learning to work with what, what our surface temperature is on the plant, that leaf surface temperature, what the nug temperature is, and then also maximizing that spectrum, but realizing that, hey, when I had an HPS, Even though I was running, let's say, [00:17:00] 75 daytime, 65 nighttime, my plants might have actually been experiencing on average more like 81 daytime and 65 nighttime, so making that jump from the one style of lighting technology to another is a little bit more complicated if you want the same chemotype expression at the end, and that's where as growers we have to go in and really analyze that and see how we can manipulate that equipment to try to replicate those conditions.[00:17:30]
[00:17:30] Seth: Yo, that's a
[00:17:30] Kaisha: juicy overview. Thank you guys for that. Great question. Awesome. Okay, I'm gonna keep it moving We've got a few questions coming in on YouTube. Plus I got a couple more from Josh here Taylor wrote and this is a multi part question. So we might need to break it down Should I ramp up my PPFD from 800 week one flower?
[00:17:50] Kaisha: to 1200 by week four, or should I start high 1200 going into flower and then ramp down through bulk? Essentially, when should [00:18:00] I hit peak PPFD? And when should I ramp down? How should temps correspond?
[00:18:06] Jason: So, uh, hopefully that's nice answers are correlating here, but I, I like to be usually at full intensity by the end of week one.
[00:18:15] Jason: Um, basically, uh, you know, no later than day 10 in there. And so going in at say 800 PPFD is probably a good place to go as long as you know that you're, uh, at a reasonably high PPFD in flour or in veg, excuse me. So [00:18:30] in your bedrooms, obviously we have 33 percent longer light that is being Push to the plants.
[00:18:36] Jason: So for it, 500 PPFD in there, then 800 PPFD going into flower should be just fine in order to get the same amount of energy to those plants. Um, that's my answer.
[00:18:47] Seth: Yeah. I mean, I think that's the key is really maximizing your veg and making sure you're hitting your DLI goals when you go into flower. And like Jason said, ideally we want to hit, you know, within the first week is a great rule of [00:19:00] thumb if you're really nailing veg, but, um, In general, we want to hit the flower room with the most light, most CO2, maximum production with the lights on as possible.
[00:19:11] Seth: So the longer it takes you to, uh, you know, ramp up those lights, the more productivity you're losing over time. So what we're really looking for is trying to max, minimize that time where you're ramping the lights up and maximize the time you're at full blast. A [00:19:30] lot of balancing to do over there. I'm not laughing about the question, by the way.
[00:19:34] Seth: My phone was driving me nuts here, people. Seth's
[00:19:38] Kaisha: in demand. You gotta let him know you're on live.
[00:19:41] Seth: Exactly. Need a little bounce back.
[00:19:44] Kaisha: Awesome. Taylor, that was a great question. Thank you so much for that. Um, alright. Josh posted a question here. Seth, I'm going to direct this to you. Seth mentioned using a bleach mix for clipping sterilization.
[00:19:56] Kaisha: Can he elaborate on mix strength?
[00:19:58] Seth: Thoughts on that. [00:20:00] Yeah, so we're looking for usually, generally like a 5 to 1. 5 percent concentration bleach if you really want to go in depth on how to utilize bleach and one thing to pay attention to is getting pure bleach that you can trust the dilution rate on, but some of the best techniques for that are housed in tissue culture techniques ad nauseam.
[00:20:20] Seth: So basically, What we're doing is doing a, you know, up to 30 second bleach dunk, dipping in deionized water, and using the same protocols that we'd use to [00:20:30] sanitize, uh, plant tissue to bring it into a Petri dish in order to bring it into the clone room. And that's really where you want to look at, like, Hey, if I'm bringing in outside genetics, you know, roots are bad.
[00:20:44] Seth: Unclean plants are bad. It's it's really all about keeping that incoming Biomass as clean as possible that way you have a fresh start and you're not introducing any outside contaminants to your facility But I would encourage anyone that look wants to look into it [00:21:00] to experiment and also, you know You don't have to dive all the way into tissue culture, but if you look into any kind of tissue, tissue culture technique and program, it's going to give you a solid way to sanitize your incoming biomass.
[00:21:14] Seth: Uh, like I said, that way you're, you're starting with fresh, clean material. And then also remember, you know, if you, uh, if you pull in plants that have a viroid. or some sort of internal infection, the, uh, the bleach dip's not going to help you there. So, always keep an eye on it, take [00:21:30] notes, take pictures, and then really practice with it, you know, when we're talking about plant sanitization, cloning.
[00:21:36] Seth: tissue culture, all of these things are, uh, very scientific in nature. There's very precise ways and accurate ways things need to be done, especially when it comes to, like, mixing concentrations. But, there's also the operational skill. So, you need to be able to repeat this process time and time again, in terms of times of dunk, how you treat putting a plant in and making sure you get all the bubbles off of it, [00:22:00] all of these procedures, so.
[00:22:02] Seth: Practice, practice, practice, and don't make a choice to, uh, immediately stake your whole grow on changing this procedure. Like anything else, take the time to learn it and practice it. I mean, the best example I can give is trying to teach people how to clone. You know, I've taught a lot of people how to clone.
[00:22:22] Seth: Some people just can't get down the hands on art of it. And, uh, sanitizing plants is just another one [00:22:30] where that hands on skill is extra important.
[00:22:35] Kaisha: All this, uh, tissue culture stuff that's happening in cannabis is so exciting. So, Josh, good luck out there. Keep us posted on what you're doing. Thank you for that answer, Seth.
[00:22:45] Kaisha: Alright, we're gonna keep moving on here. We got a question from IndieBud on YouTube. They wrote, Growing in 2 gallon coco, feed EC to 3. 0, but runoff goes from 5. 3 to 13. [00:23:00] That sudden increase started after stretch. Is it because in bulking it's taking less water and slower dryback?
[00:23:09] Kaisha: Oh,
[00:23:10] Jason: that's a great question. I mean, some of the best ways to analyze this is obviously by having root zone sensors and understanding what the EC is in the root zone. Um. Traditionally, you know, when we're pushing a generative stacking is when we'll see a little bit higher ECs in the runoff, uh, than the, than the, um, feed ECs.
[00:23:29] Jason: [00:23:30] I think, you know, during bulking, typically what we're doing is we're adding more irrigations throughout the day. And so that's typically going to end up in a runoff EC, usually more runoff and a runoff EC that's lower, closer to our feed EC than our root zone EC. Um, so you might just check your irrigation schedules and make sure that they are what you intend for generative stacking and for, um, vegetative
[00:23:54] Seth: bulking.
[00:23:55] Seth: Yeah. I mean, it sounds like you might've really nailed that, uh, generative time [00:24:00] and when your plant's stretching and really like you've, you've found the point when it's feeding super heavily. In order to build that structure because, you know, you got to remember when that plant's building stems, branches, any of these stiffer parts of the plant, it's, there's a lot of load on it to produce things like protein and cellulose.
[00:24:16] Seth: So it's going to feed a lot through those first three weeks. And if we looked back, if we could look back at your substrate EC data, what we'd probably see is that that EC line is not getting excessively high until that plant slows down on its rate of [00:24:30] feeding. And what we're seeing is that the plant dramatically slowed down, and it's likely that now it's getting, you know, it's not using up as much every day in terms of salt, so we're seeing a higher EC spike, and just like Jason said, going into that, you might want to look at, like, how much runoff you're pushing, especially at the end of your P1s in order to try to balance that and keep it inside of an appropriate range, because As we're, uh, watering later in the day, we should see less of an upswing, [00:25:00] but there is a subtle nuance where if those plants stop feeding, we've got to make sure that upswing doesn't get too high and manage it.
[00:25:07] Seth: And, you know, if you're in that situation, start checking your runoff pH. Make sure that that's not drifting up or down on you, and a good point to look at is if your pH is drifting out of range, there's a good chance you're not resetting that ionic balance on a regular basis.
[00:25:27] Kaisha: Awesome, you guys. Thank you so much for that. All right, we [00:25:30] got another question in here from Hector on YouTube. They're looking for a recommendation for data logging hardware for the Teros 12.
[00:25:39] Jason: I would suggest the AROYA NOS. Yeah. It's probably the best way to get data logging from the Teros 12. Obviously, not only is it very rugged, you know, it's in a waterproof enclosure.
[00:25:51] Jason: We've got... 50, 000 plus units out in the field that are all performing excellent. You get three minute data reporting and you pair it [00:26:00] up with the excellent AROYA software that's built for cannabis cultivation and you get to talk to Seth or I.
[00:26:06] Seth: Yeah. And for reference, uh, both Jason and I got to use a lot of this equipment before the platform existed in its current state.
[00:26:15] Seth: And, uh, I can tell you digging through raw data, sorting it and building graphs on a daily basis is something that I would happily pay for. It's a job that doesn't need to exist anymore when we have this whole future world of software ahead of us. [00:26:30]
[00:26:31] Kaisha: That's right. So, Hector, we'll look forward to you booking a demo or getting an appointment on the calendar.
[00:26:36] Seth: Oh, also of note, we do have AROYA Go coming out here in a few months. So, we have more price point opportunities to get into it so we can work with you now. Smaller and smaller growers that may not have the size and budget or feel like they have the size and budget to make the full investment. More to come on that one, though.
[00:26:54] Seth: We're looking to accommodate the little guy as hard as we can.
[00:26:58] Kaisha: Yeah, we got a lot coming down the road, so [00:27:00] Hector, if you're not on the email list, you're going to want to get on that. All right, we have a lot of questions coming in here. I'm going to switch back to another one from Josh, and I think, Josh, you may have to unmute yourself here, but he wrote, VPD.
[00:27:11] Kaisha: EC dry backs for rooting and veg in four by four by 2.5. rockwool. Looks like he's looking for some benchmarks there.
[00:27:21] Seth: Yeah, so if you're rooting in, in your bedroom, keep your V P D low, that 0.6 to 0.9 range as far as EC goes, you're gonna be, [00:27:30] uh, being very patient with some light pulsing while you root in trying to watch for that overall dry back to go from, you know, basically 0% day one.
[00:27:38] Seth: By the time we hit day 5 to 7 in those 4x4s, we want to see at least a 20 percent to 25 percent overall dry back and then at that point, we're going to be pulsing pretty hard and then washing basically, essentially up or down to a 3. 0 and generally a few days before transplanting, I like to start pulsing those with a 4.
[00:27:59] Seth: 0 [00:28:00] feed. So I can try to set those blocks up to a point where I have a good basis to start off stretch from.
[00:28:08] Seth: All right.
[00:28:09] Kaisha: Thank you guys for that. Okay. We've gotten a few questions in here about curing. Josh wanted to get some best practices for commercial curing. Taylor posted some YouTube. They're looking for some scientific indicators to identify when the cure is complete. Um, let's talk, let's do a little overview about curing.
[00:28:27] Kaisha: Let's talk about some considerations for that. [00:28:30]
[00:28:30] Jason: Sure. Let's just, I'm going to start off and answer Taylor's question there. Um, so water activities. Kind of the industry standard for understanding when a cured product is, is ready for the shelf. Uh, it's what a lot of the certification labs that you're sending your products out to, so that they can be labeled shelf stable.
[00:28:47] Jason: Um, that's what they're using. They're using water activity, um, equipment. You can get that equipment right from ADIUM, uh, AROYA's parent company. And really what is happening with water activity is, It's a lot tighter [00:29:00] measurement than, uh, moisture content, uh, concentrate, um, moisture content, excuse me, and, uh, what, what's happening there is, you know, if we're looking for a specific water activity, we, we can get that, um, a much, a much more consistent product across the board, uh, for moisture content, we would have to have an extremely, well, an unavailably accurate, uh, Machine, uh, in order to, to really nail that.
[00:29:24] Jason: And so by using water activity, we can look at the water energy in that, um, that bud. [00:29:30] And, and really what we're looking for is if we can, you know, nail say a 0.65, um, a 0.6 to 0.65, depending on how long it is to get to the shelf, uh, that can, in ensure your product has as much moisture in it as possible, um, which one is gonna typically.
[00:29:45] Jason: Retain more terpenes. Uh, it's going to be a little bit stickier when it gets to your customers and you can also sell a little bit more weight in product because you haven't dried it off.
[00:29:54] Seth: Yeah, I think a really good point to bring up here is when we're looking at a water activity, we're looking at the [00:30:00] availability of that water to microbes and fungus, right?
[00:30:03] Seth: So we're looking for that perfect dry point where we know we haven't overdried the product and gassed off a bunch of turps slash ruined the cure. And we've also found that point where it's, it's shelf stable, it's safe. So basically, if we were just looking at moisture content, um, anyone that's in post production or working with long term longevity of the product, is going to be taking those moisture content readings and trying to figure out what the water activity of that [00:30:30] product is anyway.
[00:30:31] Seth: So with going with, by going with water activity, you're kind of cutting out the middle there. And then also you're, you're really fine tuning that cure to say, Hey, if we bring it down to a 0. 55 too fast, we notice it's hard to get it to homogenize later on. We've kind of got a crust on the bud. If we dry it down too slow, we open ourselves to having too much water activity, AKA it's.
[00:30:53] Seth: Accessible to microbes. We get, you know, certain types of rot in the product. So really defining where that's [00:31:00] at. And then also looking, you know, in packaging, not just at that moisture content, but shelf stability. How long is it stable for? And then. You can start to use some of those measurements to tune your cure and keep your plant, or keep not your plants, but keep your dried product in an acceptable range to facilitate the cure because, as any of us know who have done this on a commercial level, if you dry too fast and your cure doesn't go off, you don't have great nose when you open the jar, right?
[00:31:29] Seth: [00:31:30] So, at the end of the day, um, are there guidelines to go by? Absolutely, but operationally, you want to know your water content, your moisture content, and your water activity, track that, and then, uh, get people to smell the product, because some of us working in, you know, too closely with it are jaded. Every once in a while, ask someone, like, hey, does this have a good nose on it, like, are we doing a good job, or does it smell kind of like, well, like, hey, maybe we're curing it too fast, or drying it too [00:32:00] fast, and not giving it a good enough cure condition to actually allow some of those terps and cannabinoids to mature, because throughout that cure process, we're not, you know, It's not just letting it sit, right?
[00:32:11] Seth: There's certain biophysical processes that are maturing. We're letting chlorophyll and other sugars break down a little bit inside the bud. Um, so what we want to do is match up some of these, you know, KPIs, these key indicators of how that progress is going. with how to produce that smoothly. I mean, I, I always hate to [00:32:30] say it, but you know, some of the old, I don't say it to say it.
[00:32:32] Seth: I love to say it. Some of the old school techniques about like how long it takes to properly dry and cure still stand strong. We're just using science to replicate that and reinforce
[00:32:43] Jason: it. Yeah, exactly. And you know, it's, it's always nice to have some type of, um, measurement that, Hey, I'm, I'm. would not lose my mind today.
[00:32:51] Jason: I, you know, if I got COVID 19 and my nose ain't working right, at least I can rely on some other practices to, to help me, uh, ensure [00:33:00] the same product goes out
[00:33:01] Seth: every time. And give people an easy value. You know, if we're looking at packaging, Hey, before you package up a 10 pound lot, throw a sample in, see if that's ready to be packaged, or if you need to hydrate it a little more, or, you know, also part of this at the end of the day, we're selling something by weight.
[00:33:15] Seth: So over drying is not beneficial to the producer. That's for sure.
[00:33:21] Jason: Yeah, you know, and something simple that you can do to just help make sure that your products are staying. At the same water activity and moisture content is having [00:33:30] environmentally controlled trimming rooms. Um, so just making sure that, hey, if our product is at 0.
[00:33:36] Jason: 6, um, water activity, which is actually the same as 60 percent relative humidity in a room, right? So if we have 60 percent humidity in our, in our, trimming room and our products at 6 water activity. There's going to be no moisture transfer from the product out into the environment and no moisture going into the product as well.
[00:33:54] Jason: It's going to be at 6 water activity when it leaves that 60 percent relative humidity
[00:33:59] Seth: environment. [00:34:00] Yeah. And some of those changes to make in the, in the, uh, processing, uh, workflow sometimes aren't hard. You know, we've definitely run into a lot of producers that are losing grams frequently because they just needed to put a, uh, humidifier in the corner of their processing room, you know, that's, that's the cool thing about that whole process is sometimes the solutions there are incredibly simple.
[00:34:25] Seth: Um, but
[00:34:26] Kaisha: one thing I do have to find issue with, I can't imagine getting tired of smelling [00:34:30] weed personally, that's just me personally. So, if anybody needs a nose, I'm here for you. Okay. Thank you all for those caring questions. Um, yeah, great overview. But yeah, this is such an important part of the process.
[00:34:42] Kaisha: So glad we got to get into that a little bit. IronArmor had a question here. Oh, David, we're going to get to that after this one. Okay. Hold tight. Um, IronArmor had a question. I have the same question, so let's talk about it. They want to know, can you elaborate on the difference between a chemotype, phenotype, and genotype?[00:35:00]
[00:35:01] Jason: Yeah. So, uh, starting off a chemotype is basically uh, including how the plant is grown, right? So it's talking about how did the environmental and root zone factors turn a specific genetic into, um, an exact product, right? Uh, so just a really easy example would be, let's take two, uh, two clones from the exact same lot.
[00:35:25] Jason: And let's put one clone in a growing environment where we've got low nighttime temperatures and [00:35:30] maybe a little bit lower daytime temperatures. Typically what's going to happen in there is we're going to induce a little bit greater anthocyanin production. So that's responsible for the purpling color.
[00:35:38] Jason: So let's say the, you know, the one clone that's in the static environment, maybe it's always 75 degrees in their day, night, throughout the whole cycle. It's not going to have nearly the expression of purpling as the other one. That's kind of the most obvious example I could come up with for chemotype.
[00:35:52] Jason: Yeah,
[00:35:52] Seth: yeah. With chemotype, what we're looking at is the overall result in different cannabinoid concentration, terpene concentration, and what that [00:36:00] profile looks like. So, theoretically, right, if we grow the same strain the same way, every single time, we're going to have a very consistent chemotype expression.
[00:36:09] Seth: Um, and just as Jason said, part of that, the reason we, that in cannabis it's gone so far as chemotype is we can manipulate this plant enough with indoor growing to have one strain that, Consistently harvest green. If we grow it at a certain temperature, consistently harvest purple and then going forward even into like the extract market when we look at wanting to get [00:36:30] certain cannabinoids and terpenes out of a plant, we might be saying, Hey, we're going to grow it this way, but we're actually going to harvest it at six and a half, seven weeks.
[00:36:38] Seth: Like I grow strains that I pull down at seven, seven and a half weeks because I like the terpene profile pulled down at that point. Yeah. Better than if I let it go longer, um, that's, that's a personal thing for me, but in terms of broad market expression, it certainly exists. You want to have a quality consistent product.
[00:36:57] Seth: Um, when we're looking at phenotype, that's [00:37:00] basically when you go ahead and make a cross, you've got basically, you know, I don't want to say one set of genetics because we have recombination, a bunch of different things happening, but we cross two parents. And now we've got a bunch of seeds. Phenotypes are different seeds.
[00:37:14] Seth: Each seed's going to be a little different. And in cannabis, we grow those seeds out, sex them, try to figure out what's male, what's female, hopefully before we have any kind of cross pollination contamination, and then clone that female plant over and over. So those phenotypes are just [00:37:30] different expressions off of the same cross, and then genotype is the parents.
[00:37:34] Seth: What is that source material? Where are the genetics from? So, genotype is, would be in this case the cross. Phenotype would be which seed out of the cross that you popped and decided to clone off of. And then chemotype is how do you grow it versus your buddy down the road and what are the actual differences in an expression at the end of the run.
[00:37:58] Kaisha: Thank you. [00:38:00] Finally, I get it. Doesn't, it doesn't help that they all rhyme chemo, pheno, and geno, but yes. Thank you for that explanation. All right. David posted here in our chat. How do you measure water activity?
[00:38:13] Seth: Let's talk about it.
[00:38:15] Jason: So there are a number of ways to do measurements for water activity. Um, probably the way that I would recommend is by using what's called an Aqualab.
[00:38:25] Jason: Uh, it's a food grade instrument that is used in lots of other industries. [00:38:30] Uh, some of the biggest customers for water activity. Measurements are jerky and cereals. Um, dog food manufacturers use this type of equipment. Um, as far as the actual technical ways, you can do a dew point measurement, um, or you can do, uh, what is it?
[00:38:48] Jason: Tunable diode laser, uh, TDL measurement. Um, so those are some technical ways that you get it. Uh, really the, the most important thing is that you're getting a high quality machine that is [00:39:00] giving you. Uh, repeatable results, um, and that you're, uh, maintaining that piece of equipment for predictability. So, check out Aqualab, um, get a hold of one of the sales reps there at, uh, Atium, and they will walk you through how you can use it and the advantages that you can get to improve the profitability of the crop.
[00:39:20] Kaisha: Thank you for that. Thank you, David, for your question. Let us know if you have any more. All right. Rocketbudfarms posted on uh, YouTube, Hey guys, how many drippers per plant [00:39:30] do you recommend and what size? Are 0. 5 gallon easiest to control how much we feed?
[00:39:37] Jason: So the, um, 29s, sometimes people call them 3s, but technically when you're from buying a net of hemp product, it's a 29.
[00:39:44] Jason: Um, our most favorite two drippers per plant. Uh, that being said, you know, 5s are going to be still very controllable. Um, it's a slow enough rate that when we do change the amount of time, um, we are not making a huge change in the amount of [00:40:00] water. Uh, you know, if we add three seconds on there, it's very minimal change in the amount of water.
[00:40:04] Jason: Uh, another thing that's nice about the slower drippers is we'll have the capillary effect of the substrate to soak up. Right? So if we put water in substrate too fast, it's going to encourage irrigation channeling. Uh, it's not going to allow the coco or rockwool in most of our examples to soak up and saturate into the corners of the substrate.
[00:40:24] Jason: And that's really important because one, we're paying for that substrate and two, our plants need that as available [00:40:30] root zone. Uh, and actually three because when we are taking measurements in the substrate, we want to make sure that we're attributing, uh, the best average, right? And so the great, the greater the gradient.
[00:40:44] Seth: Yeah, I mean, as a, as a blanket answer, honestly, about one gallon per hour per plant, whether you accomplish that with 2. 29, 2. 5s, or a single 1. 0, something to think about is just operational redundancy. Also, I've got two drippers per [00:41:00] plant. One of those drippers can fail, eventually will fail. And at least if I've got two drippers, I've got some redundancy where I might not lose that plant, you know, I should be walking around and looking at it and then when you go up to like, let's say a 1.
[00:41:14] Seth: 0 gallon, that's also a great rate, especially if you're in a 2 gallon coco pot, for instance, but going beyond about a gallon per hour, right? We see infiltration rates that are way too quick, essentially, you're not getting a good mixture in the root zone, and it goes right back to irrigation [00:41:30] channeling, like Jason was just talking about, where we're putting, you know, we go back to like an uncorked 20 gallon, 20 gallon per hour octobubbler, um, it's really hard to actually make an irrigation event short enough that you're not pushing channeling through the media, especially in these small pots.
[00:41:45] Seth: You know, if we're talking about a big bed with a lot of volume and a lot of water we're putting on, sure, But when we're talking about a one to two gallon total substrate volume per plant, maybe pushing three sometimes, that's not a lot of wicking ability. It's not a [00:42:00] very big sponge if you want to think about it like that.
[00:42:02] Seth: So you've got to put it on slow enough to actually get mixing and affect the changes in the root zone we want. Yeah. And
[00:42:09] Jason: I think another important thing to think about as well as difference between drippers and emitters, right? So a lot of times we could run, you know, say a, a one gallon emitter and then a splitter to two drippers.
[00:42:21] Jason: Um, I. Personally, I think it's pretty important to always have two drippers, uh, in a substrate unless you're in a vegging four by four by four, sometimes you get away with a single [00:42:30] dripper, but you know, it's important to have that water spread out as it's entering the substrate.
[00:42:36] Seth: Absolutely. What we're looking for is the most even mixture we can get in there.
[00:42:40] Seth: So if you're just watering through half the pot, the uh,
[00:42:48] Seth: uh, nutrient concentration. It's not getting wet enough. And we might see some, uh. Well, essentially another microclimate there, right? Where a good portion of the pot, let's say 30%, is not behaving the same as the [00:43:00] rest, therefore... That's 30%. We're not using nearly as efficiently as the rest.
[00:43:09] Kaisha: Fantastic, guys. Thank you so much. All right, y'all. We just passed the hour. We got just over 15 minutes left of the show, so if you have any questions and you're on with us live, now's the time to drop them in the chat. I'm going to move on to Instagram because we've gotten a lot of questions over the last few weeks that we were dark.
[00:43:23] Kaisha: Matthew wrote in, we use GrowLink and we do spot checking with our solace meters, which has a big [00:43:30] difference in readings to our GrowLink, such as a 20 percent difference. And a 1. 2 to 2. 0 EC difference. So, which is correct? They left a note here that they're grow length, they're working with 5 to 6 inch prongs, and the SOLAS is 2 to 3 inch prongs.
[00:43:47] Jason: So, you know, if the Terrace 12 is installed at the proper height and the substrate, um, that's the one that I would use for confidence. Um, Basically, you know, the TRS 12 is utilizing the capacitance measurement [00:44:00] that meter group has been working on for three decades. Um, so it is the pinnacle of moisture content or water content, volumetric water content and electrical connectivity measurements.
[00:44:12] Jason: In the substrate, uh, you know, if you are in a really big substrate and that Terrace 12 isn't necessarily attributing, uh, the five or six inch prongs on the, the grow length, then, then maybe you are, you are getting a skewed measurement, but, but traditionally, anytime that I've used, uh, AROYA equipment, um, [00:44:30] versus some of the grow link stuff, uh, usually the right stuff is, is going to be what you want to look at for making
[00:44:36] Seth: decisions.
[00:44:37] Seth: Yeah, it all comes down to what sensor you're actually using with your grow link there, and then at the end of the day, sensor density. Um, just because I have a sensor plugged into one plant in a zone or a room, doesn't mean I can actually expect, you know, after factoring in all my microclimates. That that one plant is actually representative of the entire row.
[00:44:58] Seth: I might get lucky, [00:45:00] but, you know, these are living plants. It's always a dynamic growing system. So, depending on what you're growing in as well, like, let's say you've got, uh, any, any number of branded standard, standard pre fill coco pots, compressed brick, right? I'm expecting to see across brands a fair amount of variation, just because I've seen it across a bunch of brands.
[00:45:22] Seth: And also. I generally, if I order a palette of one particular brand, um, I don't expect all [00:45:30] of those coco pots to end up with an even 5%. VWC at field capacity of one another. So, if I'm just going around a room sampling, I can look at like, okay, this one didn't get as high, but can I really mid run run a test to see if this pot even would hit 55 percent when the other ones are hitting 45 or 65?
[00:45:51] Seth: So, at that point, what I want to do, using something like SOLIST, is go around and this is where, um, pretty quickly if you start to total up hours doing all [00:46:00] this root zone testing, you'll figure out that you could easily pay off a system like AROYA. What we're, what we end up looking for is overall trends that we can actually make actions on, right?
[00:46:10] Seth: Like, even though my plants are stratified in terms of actual moisture content and field capacity, I can start to recognize that, hey, overall, on average, I'm getting a 10 or a 15 percent dry back. Here are my irrigation actions to deal with that. And now I can move forward making good choices. Um, I think that's an [00:46:30] important thing to understand is the, yeah.
[00:46:32] Seth: There's a break over point on like where if you had one sensor per plant in the entire room, that might be more data you can act on, but if you're way on the other side where you're severely under censored, um, it's going to be tough to make those decisions without putting in a lot of time manually testing things.
[00:46:50] Seth: And that's, that's kind of where, you know, all this technology came out of, right? Like, If we all had the budget to hire two people per room to go around and test plants and look at [00:47:00] things all day, this would all be not nearly as hard, and actually that would be even harder than doing it digitally, so that's kind of the balance you've got to look at is like, hey, am I getting, you know, all the data I actually need from this one source to make that choice, and if I'm not, How am I going to go about it?
[00:47:20] Seth: That's a, that's
[00:47:20] Jason: a great point. Um, you know, in reference to the question, it's like, Hey, are those sensors actually measuring the exact same substrate? Right. You know, if we pull a sensor out and put a [00:47:30] different sensor in, we've modified the substrate. Uh, so we know that there might be some difference when we do that.
[00:47:35] Jason: Uh, you know, if we plug it into the other side of the substrate, there still might be some gradients within the substrate. We plug it into a different plant are looking at that uniformity. Um, I'd encourage the asker to check out our growth behavior slides on, um, on YouTube. I shot it a while ago and talks about uniformity and consistency, uh, as different variables.
[00:47:55] Jason: And so really, you know, some of the best uniformity I've seen in crops, [00:48:00] uh, using our, our sensor systems, plus or minus 3 percent would be like, absolute best, like very good, you know, a 6 percent gradient. Like Seth said, he wouldn't expect to see a 5 percent gradient, uh, across a good crop. And so when we think about, uh, that, that's looking at uniformity, right?
[00:48:16] Jason: How alike are all these plants to each other? And then really what's important when you are trying to crop steer is using the, uh, uh, The picture of consistency, right? So if our uniformity is, is good enough, then we can start [00:48:30] applying some of these strategies and have the population all act about the same through a day to day, to day to day consistency of how we are irrigating and operating the environment.
[00:48:41] Seth: Right. We're using, uh, you know, at least with the T12, um, very accurate instruments to actually get a good idea of what kind of precision we're using in our irrigation tactics. And, Look, you know, I'm trying to project that across crop uniformity. Um, if we've got a better sensor, we can get a better [00:49:00] reading that we can trust, we can identify better trends and be more precise about what we're doing in the room because we know we've got, you know, some standard deviation going on in terms of moisture content, water holding capacity, and plant size.
[00:49:14] Seth: You know, another factor here is what are you doing in veg? What are you doing when you're making your cuts? How uniform are your plants coming in? And if your plant size is. You know, I mean, I would challenge any of these growers to go, you know, just go point at five plants in the room and then those all [00:49:30] yield wet within like a hundred grams of each other.
[00:49:33] Seth: Um, there's a fair, there's a fair bit of diversity in size in the population. In any given grow room. And when you're looking at not only identifying some of these trends, but reacting to them, you've got to look at the factors that are creating these trends. And, uh, let's say you have been rooting in into a one or two gallon coco pot and you're seeing, hey, I've got plants of like, you know, up to 5 6 inches different [00:50:00] heights going into flower.
[00:50:01] Seth: Okay, well if that's the case, we can't fix those uniformity issues by the time you get into flower. That's gotta be dealt with beforehand so that coming in, you're as uniform as possible. So, sometimes I think there's a tendency for... Um, especially in passion growers to really focus on like the flower cycle and being reactive in there and sometimes you gotta really try to take a step back, collect that data and then at the end of the day or the end of the run, look back and say, is this [00:50:30] telling me that, hey, some of my plants are taking up way more water?
[00:50:34] Seth: Let me go look at that, take some pictures, register it, and now I know that I've got 20 percent of my plants that tend to be like 20 percent bigger than the others on a zone. Now I've got to deal with that problem. And the solution to that problem isn't my irrigation system. It's getting that plant uniformity down beforehand.
[00:50:53] Seth: That way when they come into this system, I have the capability to actually deal with it. Um, if you're not, if you're not running [00:51:00] a uniform crop, if you have a lot of issues run to run with, you know. Just equipment in the room. Those are all problems you can, you have to solve before you can really get consistent, predictable production down.
[00:51:12] Seth: Yeah, and
[00:51:13] Jason: probably the easiest way to measure uniformity. I'm glad that Seth mentioned it as far as the, the, the wet yield going out the door. Um, If you are in a state that requires you to weigh each plant, just graph those plant measurements on a t curve [00:51:30] and get yourself an average and a standard of deviation.
[00:51:33] Jason: And if you start working with some processes to improve how you're cutting or you're trying to improve how your irrigation is done, distributed throughout the plants. Um, all those types of things, you should see your standard deviation go down. Right? So the plants that the curve is going to shrink a little bit.
[00:51:49] Jason: It's all going to get closer to the median weight. And then as you start playing with crop steering and or other ways to increase the yield of the plant. So let's get our uniformity in and then let's [00:52:00] increase our yield with consistency.
[00:52:12] Seth: We always, we always talk about how this is, we're in this time it's coming out of the garden and into the factory. And once we're in the factory mode, everything, every problem has a root cause that needs to be identified, and unfortunately, a lot of times, that root cause is much farther back than a lot of us have hoped at a [00:52:30] certain point, because, yeah, the reality sometimes is, if you've identified this four weeks into FLOWER, You might already have your next room already set up in there.
[00:52:40] Seth: You might be like two, three months away from being able to solve this problem with a fresh batch of clones that you've treated perfectly and solved those problems with. And I think that's one of the hardest things for operators to get through is there's a pretty big time delay on a lot of these actions actually taking effect and showing an improvement in the bank account, [00:53:00] right?
[00:53:01] Jason: I have to point out the pun there of the root of the problem because actually yesterday I was working with some people where the roots were the root of the problem. They didn't didn't have a very oxygenated healthy root zone.
[00:53:13] Seth: Yeah, and sometimes it's, it's little factors like that that, um, don't always seem super obvious, but once you have the data to look back, you can go, Oh, that's been affecting us this entire run.
[00:53:24] Seth: I'm not going to worry about it. We solved the problem.
[00:53:29] Kaisha: Yeah, I [00:53:30] mean, you guys just gave so much good information than that. And just a reminder to everybody in our community, our knowledge base is packed with education guides. I write a lot of the content, but I interview the two people that you listen to every week for that content.
[00:53:42] Kaisha: So take a look at what we got in our knowledge base, all of our YouTube channel, our videos. It's a lot of great information on there. But, um, yeah, thank you for that overview. Again, jam packed with overviews this episode. All right. This last five minutes, hopefully we can squeeze in like two more. We got a question here from Ian on [00:54:00] YouTube.
[00:54:00] Kaisha: If I want to increase the EC in one gallon coco, what shot size should I use? How can I tell from the AROYA app if I'm getting run off? Thanks.
[00:54:10] Seth: Um.
[00:54:12] Jason: Let's, I'm just going to address this question backwards. How can you tell on the ROYA app if you're getting runoff? A couple of ways that you want to look at things is one would be how much dryback that you had and then look at the amount of water that's applied, right?
[00:54:24] Jason: And so if we had a dryback that was 15 percent and we applied 20 percent [00:54:30] during our shots, we would have an approximate of 5 percent runoff, right? As long as we hit our field capacity on a day to day basis. So I guess the other way to determine that would be is if you know, when you've hit field capacity, the rest of the irrigations are going to be runoff.
[00:54:47] Jason: As far as, uh, you know, what types of irrigations for stacking, uh, there's a lot of things that are going to be dependent there, right? One would be feed easy. Another would be how fast your drippers are. Um, if you have the [00:55:00] AROYA system, it makes a lot of that way easier because we can just start to determine what our, our EC is doing in that substrate.
[00:55:08] Jason: And so, uh, I always recommend that we are getting to field capacity with irrigations, but if we see our EC is, um, is not rising, then maybe we're getting too much runoff and we want to pull back on. Either the number of irrigations or the, the irrigation durations. Um, if we see that r e c is rising when we don't want it to, then let's increase the [00:55:30] number of feeds and get some runoff.
[00:55:32] Jason: Um, really simple way for the, the less technically enabled. put a tray under your plants and see how much runoff is going to get a measurement and then get some pH measurements in there. It's one of the things I recommend people do on at least, you should do it on a daily basis, is to measure the pH runoff of your
[00:55:50] Seth: plants.
[00:55:52] Seth: Yeah, and you know, one thing I've, I've definitely noticed, especially in the coco world, is, uh, don't be scared to get out a tape measure and [00:56:00] verify your actual media volume. Sometimes that can throw you off when you're trying to do your, uh, your calculations on trying to reach field capacity again, just figuring out what, how many milliliters that percentage of shot is.
[00:56:11] Seth: that you think you're putting it on, and then, you know, always verify. Uh, and also, you know, that's, this is where that 24 7 time series data on root zone EC comes in, because what we can do is look and go and say, Hey, is your EC not building because you're pushing too much runoff? Based on the [00:56:30] math you've been doing about the shots you're putting on and how quickly you're putting on.
[00:56:33] Seth: Or, are we able to look at your EC line and go, Hey, we're seeing this water concentration when you're not watering overnight go down. And yet your EC is not rising up. In fact, sometimes it's like mimicking or going parallel to your water content line. And when that happens, we can start to look at it and say, hey, based on the numbers we're seeing, you know, generally one EC equals 500 ppm.
[00:56:56] Seth: This plant is taking up as much or maybe even more [00:57:00] than you're putting in. And that's where we can make the decision to say, hey, should we pull back on runoff and take a few days off and try to jack it up that way? Or. This plant's feeding super heavily. Maybe we need to increase that input EC up to a 3.
[00:57:13] Seth: 5 or a 4 to try to overcome how much it's taking up and also give us a little tool in our box to be able to continually reset that ionic balance. So that that runoff pH is not drifting too far down or too far up. Yeah. One,
[00:57:29] Jason: one great [00:57:30] example. I'm really glad that you pointed out the measuring tape, um, because, uh, some of the most popular rock wool manufacturers, um, actually use metric measurements when they're manufacturing their blocks.
[00:57:42] Jason: And so like a six by six by six actually isn't six by six by six. Um, you know, it's a metric equivalent that's close to that. It's just the, the. Standardized units adjustment and an easy way to talk about it, right? We wouldn't want to say a 5. 95 by 5. 95. So, [00:58:00] um, great, great point to just measure it yourself.
[00:58:02] Jason: Use
[00:58:02] Seth: metric measurements always for this stuff because, uh, it turns out that a lot of, uh, a lot of this stuff isn't manufactured in the U. S. and we're kind of some of the stragglers there with our gallons and stuff. And, I mean, just simple things, right? Like, A gallon in Canada and the U. K. is not the same as a gallon in the U.
[00:58:20] Seth: S., so those are things you want to be aware of in looking at like where you're sourcing media. And then also, we'll go back to the coco. Um, unless you want to pay [00:58:30] five times as much, there's always going to be a certain amount of inconsistency in that product. So it's really important for you as a grower to constantly be analyzing that and seeing what you're working with.
[00:58:40] Seth: And I say that because I've seen plenty of situations where people ordered a couple pallets of one gallons and those actually measured out to like 1. gallons. Now, is that really a bad thing? No, you got more bang for your buck there. You got more coco for the same price, but if you're unaware, you can chase your tail trying to figure out, [00:59:00] uh, what kind of shot sizes you want to put on and what those durations are.
[00:59:06] Seth: I
[00:59:07] Kaisha: mean, how, I mean, drop a knowledge this episode. Seth and Jason. Thank you so much. We were at the end of the show. So if we did not get to your question, worry not. We have it in the question bank. We'll get to it in a future episode. But thank you to everybody for joining us live this week. Thank you, Seth and Jason and our producer Chris, as always, for another great session.
[00:59:27] Kaisha: It is so good to be back on the air with y'all. Before [00:59:30] we go, just want to let y'all know we are having, we have a half off sweatshirts deal going on at AROYA. shop. Head over there, get fitted. We And look fly like we do. All right, thank you for joining us for this week's AROYA Office Hours. We do this every Thursday.
[00:59:43] Kaisha: And the best way to get answers from the experts is to join us live. To learn more about AROYA, book a demo at AROYA. io and one of our experts will be happy to walk you through all the ways the platform can improve your cultivation production process. If you have a topic you'd like us to cover on Office Hours, post questions anytime in the AROYA [01:00:00] app.
[01:00:00] Kaisha: Drop your questions in the chat or on YouTube. Send us an email to sales at aroya. io or DMS. We are on all the YouTube, LinkedIn, and Social Club. Definitely want to hear from you. And we'll send everyone in attendance a link to today's video and we will post it on the AROYA YouTube channel. Be sure to like, subscribe, and share while you're there.
[01:00:19] Kaisha: All right, we'll see you next session. Thanks all. Bye.