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Seth Baumgartner and Jason Van Leuven open the mics for your crop steering and cultivation questions.
Kaisha [00:00:05]:
What's up, gronies? Welcome to AROYA office hours, your source for free cultivation education. I'm your moderate acacia. This is episode 102. 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 you listen to your podcast. Thank you so much for your support. And if you like the pod, drop us a review. We appreciate your feedback. Jason is in the house.
Kaisha [00:00:29]:
Jason, how you doing?
Jason [00:00:30]:
I'm doing well.
Kaisha [00:00:31]:
Fantastic. Good to see you, man. All right, let's get this party started. You ready?
Jason [00:00:36]:
Yeah, let's do it.
Kaisha [00:00:37]:
All right. Danny dropped this comment. Love it. He wrote, ph going down in runoff and EC ranges in bulk versus gen seem to be hot topics. Maybe need to do a video that over explains it all. So if anyone asks, refer them to that vid. We appreciate the suggestion, Danny. We're going to, we love an overview around here, so let's get into it.
Kaisha [00:00:58]:
Jason.
Jason [00:00:59]:
Yeah, absolutely.
Kaisha [00:01:00]:
Yeah, go for it.
Jason [00:01:01]:
Um, actually, I'm going to bring up a slide here that kind of helps us talk a little bit about what, what can happen. Sorry, uh, little feedback there. What, uh, what can happen, as far as you know, why? We see ph changes in our runoff here. And basically what it has to do with is nutrient uptake. So we got cations and anions. And when we feed, we're at some level of balance in here, right. So if we're in something like coco, we're feeding 5860. We've got a little bit higher concentration of cations than anions in there.
Jason [00:01:42]:
And what's going to happen is as this plant feeds on specific elements that are in the solution there, it can modify what that balance between cations and anions is. Right. So we can see nitrogen different depending on your nutrient composition, what chemicals are in your nutrients, it can be negatively charged or positively charged. And so on the left side, these are all going to be specific nutrients that are negatively charged. Um, so we can see in most cases, uh, you know, phosphorus, sulfur, chlorine, boron, molybdenum, all can be negatively charged. And then cations. Over here we got our potassiums, calciums, magnesiums, irons, manganese and zinc. So what's happening is obviously, is this plant is feeding specifically on certain aspects or certain, um, compounds in there.
Jason [00:02:32]:
Then we start to see the ph in the solution change. So the ph in the substrate solution starts to change. And meaning that our runoff is going to be lower or higher, um, regardless of which part of the cycle it is. You know, this is something that we always want to do continuous checks on is the ph of our runoff, because obviously there's a few things that can happen here. One, if we're just simply under feeding, then that plant's going to be running out of a supply of specific nutrient. You know, easy fix there is just up our Ec. If we are already feeding an appropriate EC, then we have a couple options here as far as, you know, pushing a little bit more runoff so that we're diluting unbalanced solution and recharging it with, with the stock concentrate or the stock composition from the nutrient supplier that we're using. And you know, why you might see a difference in which way this ph swings when we are in veg or in generative, you know, simply because the different chemical demands of this plant.
Jason [00:03:34]:
So this is kind of a great breakdown and kind of just thinking about, all right, it's pulling up specific ones that's going to be modifying our ph.
Kaisha [00:03:46]:
Amazing. Thank you so much for that, Jason. We're also, I'm all hard at work on a blog post because we do get a lot of questions around this, just like putting these pieces together. So thank you for that. Amazing. All right, you ready to get into some live questions?
Jason [00:03:59]:
Let's do it.
Kaisha [00:04:00]:
Let's go. All right, we got carpe drip. I'm on the hangout with us today. You dropped a couple questions in the chat. Let's start with the first one here. Have you had any experience with using enzymes like phosphatase? I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right. And menonase. If so, how does it affect your crop steering strategy?
Jason [00:04:20]:
Yeah, a little bit of experience in there. I know. Old school product, hygrazyme. Still see it quite a bit in places. Um, front row has been pushing their fossil quite a bit.
Kaisha [00:04:32]:
Really.
Jason [00:04:32]:
What's happening with enzymes? It's. It's help increasing the nutrient uptake in the plants. Um, which is great. Right. We want this plant eaten as much nutrients as it can. Uh, and digesting that into, you know, it's photosynthesizing that into plant material, which obviously can be increased plant size, increased bud size, um, better terpene profiles, higher, higher thcs. The more that it photosynthesizes, the more money we're making out of that facility. So.
Jason [00:05:00]:
Absolutely. You know, I do recommend using enzymes if it's an option.
Kaisha [00:05:05]:
Oh, I love that question. Thank you so much for that. They dropped another one here. Wanted to know, is temperature of your water or in pot temperature ever used as a tool in crop steering.
Jason [00:05:17]:
Yeah, absolutely. Um, so let's just talk about water temps here. Here. Obviously, you know, usually we're shooting for, you know, somewhere in that 67 degree range, plus or minus a few options or a few degrees. Really what we're trying to do is, obviously we want cooler water so that we can have higher amounts of dissolved oxygen. So in most solutions, gases dissolve better in them as our temperature decreases. But we also don't want to be so cold that we're going to be shocking the plants at all. You know, another thing to kind of keep in mind here is how much does the temperature of your fertigation water change as it gets from its source, whether that be your, your inline injection system or your batch tank? How much does that temperature increase from where you're taking it to at the dripper itself? And depending on how far that water has to travel through irrigation lines and or how long it's sitting in those lines, you know, it can warm up fairly significantly.
Jason [00:06:16]:
So obviously, as temperature changes, there sometimes can change the ph of it and also change the dissolved oxygen of it. So kind of keep in mind, you know, how long does it take this water to get to the plants and, or should we take that temperature at the drippers themselves and then do an offset for the temperature of our tank if we can? Substrate temperature, it's, you know, it's one of those things where we don't necessarily have a lot of control over it. Sure, we can take some measurements, but substrate temperature, temperature is going to be based on mostly like three factors. Well, we could say four factors. There might be a few other small factors in there, but, you know, first would be room temperature is going to have the largest effect on it. Next up would be irrigation temperature. So that water temp that we were just talking about, amount of solar radiation that's hitting the pot or the substrate. So obviously, a lot of times we'll see black pots are absorbing more solar radiation, far red radiation, infrared radiation, and then a little bit of wind speed or how much airflow you have, it's going to cause differing amounts of evaporation from that substrate.
Jason [00:07:25]:
So things like mesh pots probably going to have a little bit more evaporation coming from it. Slab, you know, Rockwell slabs would be on the lowest side of that. So, you know, yeah, sure, we can modify it there, but what we're going to have to do is change other factors that we may not want to adjust in order to control substrate temperature.
Kaisha [00:07:50]:
Awesome. All right, that was a great question. Thank you so much for that, y'all. All right, I am moving on to instagram. We've gotten a couple live questions here somewhere. Right in. I'm having a low ph problem. Week five of veg.
Kaisha [00:08:04]:
I think the problem is too hard of dryback. Is this a possibility? And what are some corrections?
Jason [00:08:10]:
Uh, I mean, it is a possibility. You know, usually when we're in veg, we want to have a pretty decent dry back. That's why we're always trying to match the size of the plant to the size of the substrate is because we, we want to exercise those roots, get them chasing the water, uh, get fresh oxygen and nutrients in it on a regular basis. And so when we are in veg. Yeah, sure. The more times that we can irrigate it, typically, the faster that plants growing. As long as we're not over watering. Right.
Jason [00:08:37]:
So that's why a lot of times when we're, uh, in intermediate substrate sizes, so not in a clone, but we'll be in like a four by four, like a delta six, uh, grow down, you know, four by four by threes or four by four by fours. Or you can be in a four by, um, coco cube. You know, obviously there's. There's other ways to do that. You got like, just regular planters. That's. That's one of the reasons that that intermediate size makes it easier to, to run through veg. As far as, you know, your ph adjustment, kind of that.
Jason [00:09:09]:
That question that I already answered here a little bit earlier was, all right, are we simply getting an imbalance of nutrients in there based on not enough nutrients, not a great nutrient composition match for our specific plants needs? And some of your solutions, obviously, would be either increase ec if you are feeding too low and or start to push a little bit more runoff, help. Help rebalance that by diluting it out.
Kaisha [00:09:39]:
All right, thank you so much for that, Jason. Okay. I got this one in a couple weeks ago. We just hadn't gotten a chance to get to it. Mitchell dropped this question on YouTube. They wrote, I have two 1000 square foot flower rooms side by side in the same building, and they are identical rooms. However, the issue I'm having is that the first flower room always performs better than the second one. I ran the same strains in both rooms, but I'm experiencing the same issue.
Kaisha [00:10:07]:
Flower room one always comes out better. Any thoughts on that?
Jason [00:10:13]:
Yeah, so, you know what I would do is if you have an arroyo system or a way to track that data, start to try and digest it at the whole harvest group level. So take a look at three months data from room one versus three months data from room two. Do you see any differences in room temperatures in relative humidities? VPD's, light levels? Just try and diagnose it. I get that it says identical in here, but there's a chance that, you know, something's running different based on maybe one. Your h vac sensors isn't quite calibrated perfectly in there. So I would definitely dig in and try to get an understanding of if we have a different output, then there's probably somewhere a different input that's resulting in the output, and hopefully that that gives you some insight on to what you can dig into to improve it.
Kaisha [00:11:08]:
Yeah, exactly. There's something different in those rooms. So good luck out there. Helps to track that data. All right, y'all gotta keep it movie. We have so many questions coming in. This one came in on the hangout. Seth just dropped it.
Kaisha [00:11:23]:
Welcome to the show, Seth. I'm a brand new AROYA go user and have been using the sensors for about two weeks on fresh transplants in six inch Hugo blocks. My question is about general parameters and what kind of levels I should be targeting as a beginner with lots of unknowns. I aimed for a 40% initial dry back after transplant and have been sticking to about a 15% to 20% p three dry back throughout early veg. Is this an advantageous strategy? My Ec at field capacity is lower than my feed Ec of 2.5. Any idea of why that is?
Jason [00:12:01]:
Yeah, so we've got two questions in here. First off, just general recommendations. You know, transplants into like, six inch hugo blocks, you know, hoping they're going into flower with those, um, you can do it right from, right from veg, but it's a little bit, a little bit bigger. You know, like I says, my, my favorite is to always go from, if I'm using rockwool, to use a four x four cube for, uh, for veg and then get that onto a slab for flower. Um, I aimed for 40% initial dry back after transplant. Uh, I try to get to 40%, not necessarily a 40 dry back. So when we initially soak up, uh, most rockwool, we'll see it at about 60% to 70% field or, uh, water content for its field capacity. And so I usually will just obviously do just a couple of maintenance shots on it on a daily basis, very, very small shots, just to make sure that the, the plant is getting, uh, some amount of water into the turrets and stuff.
Jason [00:13:01]:
And then I won't do my first real irrigations till I hit that 40. So a 40% dry back. If we went from, say, you know, 65 and we did a 40% dryback, you'd be down at that 25% volumetric water content. And that's, that's probably lower than we really want to go. And we're at that point, we have the chance of jeopardizing our rockwool, seeing it become hydrophobic, probably just a little too far. So usually when I hit that 40% water content, and typically that'll happen, you know, three to five days after you transplant. Then when I hit that 40%, that's when I'll start my, my regular irrigations for those, uh, ta da. I've been sick into about 15% to 20% p three dry back throughout early veg.
Jason [00:13:47]:
Yeah, that's, I mean, that's fantastic. Um, obviously, if you're in a six inch and you're in 15% to 20% dry bags, uh, hope your plants are going to be growing really fast. That's, that's probably a little bit higher than I would typically see. You know, a lot of times we'll only see those 15% to 20%. Um, you either late veg or early flower, even in a six by Hugo. Um, so, yeah, just, you know, just keep an eye out with that, with that plant size. Obviously, if you're hitting that big a dryback and you're not planning to increase your media size when you go into flower, it might be a challenge to generatively steer, uh, simply because you're going to require more irrigations, uh, than a generative queue will, will be. Um, you see, at field capacity is lower than my feed Ec of 2.5.
Jason [00:14:32]:
Any ideas of why that is? Uh, yeah, uh, it's probably because your, your plants are feeding on more nutrition than you're giving them. So anytime that we see EC levels lower than the feed EC levels, that mean. That means the plant's nutritional uptake exceeds that of the amount of nutrition input. Right. So that's something where we really want to take a look and say, how. How much higher of my feed can I go here? Um, and hopefully correct any of those issues. Typically, we should see EC climbing throughout the cycle, well, at least throughout late veg, in order to be able to hit higher EC levels, right, when we go into flower. So I definitely investigate how much higher EC that you can go and start leveling that off so that you're not running into lower substrate ecs and feed ecs.
Kaisha [00:15:25]:
Awesome. Thank you for that, Seth. Welcome to the world of AROYA go. Good luck out there. Keep us posted, posted and let us know if you have any other questions. All right, we got this question. I think it's a two part question here. No, maybe it's one part from Doug over on YouTube.
Kaisha [00:15:41]:
He wrote, currently running 18 plants, nine plants each on two two by four tables. Each table has a think grow model h. Four four by four grow down per cubes on top of a unislab room is 10ft by 11ft, 70 pipe de humid pint dehumidifier 4.2 gallon humidifier. What is the best irrigation strategies for vegetative steering and for generative? And they're looking for number of floods and length of time during flower. Got any advice for Doug?
Jason [00:16:18]:
Interesting enough. So did he say number of floods?
Kaisha [00:16:22]:
So number of floods and length of time.
Jason [00:16:24]:
So he's probably running flood and drain. Um, kind of fun. You can definitely do crop steering with flood and drain. One of the things here though is typically it's going to be most successful with, uh, smaller substrates. Um, so, you know, by far the largest substrate I would be running in flood and drain. It's like a six by six. You go, uh, definitely seen it happen where people can do flood drains with, with four by fours and, and be successful crop steering. And really what's going to happen is in order to crop steer with flood and drain her crop steer effectively, you know, the way you want to would be make sure you have some substrate sensors in there with real time data and we can start to see the amount of dry back between our floods.
Jason [00:17:05]:
Right. And so if we are running generatively, we're just going to try and, and stretch things out. So if we know, if we can get away with it, we'll do one flood a day. Um, if, if not, then we'll just, you know, continuously flood once we get to a high amount of drybacks. So it might be say, you know, every time we get to 25% within, uh, that irrigation window, then, then we might do, uh, a flood as far as vegetative. You know, I do about the same thing. Just make sure that you're doing less of amount of dryback. So we might actually do a flood, flood every five or 10% within the irrigation window that we want.
Jason [00:17:44]:
And when I'm talking about, you know, within that irrigation window, obviously, you know, we don't want to do a flood within probably one to 2 hours before lights off. We're just trying to reduce how much humidity is in the room, that type of stuff.
Kaisha [00:18:00]:
All right, on, good luck out there, Doug. Great question. All right, we got this question in on Instagram. This topic doesn't come up much, even though pests and pathogen management does good hash. Rosin wrote, how would you prevent the spread of hoplite and viroid if you found a plant with it in your facility?
Jason [00:18:20]:
How do we prevent the spread? Yeah, so make sure that we try to get rid of that plant. We don't take any clones off of it. And then, you know, one of the next steps that I would do would be also check on where did that plant come from. Right. So did we clone it in house? If we did, then we need to do some serious investigation on does some other plant have hoplite? And did it contract that from some of our tools that might have been contaminated during the cloning process and then also identify other plants that were taken during that same time, same cutting process, same mom. Try and see what type of viral vectors have been the cause of it. And then obviously, if it came purchased from a nursery, then have a discussion outside of there and see what they can do to help you get a healthier stock.
Kaisha [00:19:18]:
Yeah, great. Greater review. That is definitely a reality, unfortunately, that cultivators may have to face. Thank you for your question. Good hash Rosin. All right, we got this question from Jetson on YouTube. They wrote, to my understanding, hotter temperatures, like around 82 degrees Fahrenheit, causes faster plant growth in Vegas. Theoretically, if we flower in warmer temps, would this also give us bigger buds?
Jason [00:19:42]:
Yeah, you know, it can. So obviously, the rate of photosynthesis is correlated to temperature up to a certain temperature. And so typically, you know, in like, a led room, we can get up to that 84, sometimes 85 degrees for room temp. And, you know, what's. What's going on there? As early in, in flower, I like to have those temperatures up. Right. I'm trying to get as much plant growth as I possibly can so we can build it out to, to get some good infrastructure as far as how much bud can this plant support? So, yeah, for, you know, depending on the strain of the plant, I'll be in those higher temperatures, at least for the daytime, early in the flower cycle, maybe, you know, one to three weeks.
Kaisha [00:20:32]:
All right, thank you, Jason. Thank you, Justin, for your question. All right, Rocketbud Farms wrote this on Instagram. They want to know how big of a dryback are we aiming in between p one and the first p two?
Jason [00:20:47]:
Yeah. And these details, I always, when I'm thinking about vegetative and generative, I always just like to think about myself. Irrigation window. Right. Um, it from first irrigation to last irrigation. What's that timeline? I mean, that's going to be the biggest impact as far as our, you know, amount of dry back, how this plant feels, as far as what our crop steering does. You know, what. What type of key was it getting? Um, you know, for.
Jason [00:21:16]:
For vegetative between p one and p two. You know, usually we'll go anywhere from, like, one to 3%. Um, and typically, I just use that as the same amount as our drybacks between p two events. Right. So, for p one s, I might have, uh, an irrigation every 15 minutes and do, like, four of them. Um, that's kind of my. My minimum. And then if I'm going p two s and I'm doing one every hour, um, then I'll probably just start it the, you know, the hour after my.
Jason [00:21:49]:
My p one's gone. Let's keep it simple.
Kaisha [00:21:54]:
Keeping it simple. That's right. We also, just a couple episodes, did a little dry back math overview, if that may be helpful. I think it's on our Instagram, even. Okay, speaking of equations, we got this from urayray zero nine on Instagram. They want to know, how do you accurately find the volumetric water content? Is there an equation, or does that come from the size of pot that you're using?
Jason [00:22:19]:
Yeah. So there's a couple ways to accurately find it. You know, one of the first ways would be use an aurora sensor. You know, whether you're using the solus for spot checking what that volumetric water content is, or if you have the full arroyo system, you get to see what that is over the course of time using time series data. You know, another way to do it is by, if you know, you can use weight, right? So if you know the dry weight of the substrate that you're in, and then we can have water in it. Any additional amount of water weight in that substrate is going to be, you know, your VWC, if you divide it by the volume of the substrate. Right? So if we have a, say, we have a one gallon media, and we measured a water weight in that substrate of 500 grams, that's going to be 500 ML. So I guess I went from gallons to milliliters here.
Jason [00:23:20]:
That's going to make my math a little turkey. But. So, let's say, yeah, we had, you know, half a gallon of water in there, we'd be at 50% water content.
Kaisha [00:23:30]:
Awesome. Thank you so much for that. We're getting. We're getting quite a few questions about, like, this, the math. Some of these math, which we love. That's great. This one came from the fire Co. LLC on Instagram.
Kaisha [00:23:44]:
They want to know what's the best way to deal with variations of dry back one gallon coco pots. I have around six to 10% variations in my overnight dry back, and runoff is occurring one shot earlier in some pots to others. Is this okay, or is there anything I can do to bring, I think, the EC all up to speed. Thanks, guys. Your sensors are the best thing since sliced bread. We appreciate you. Thank you.
Jason [00:24:10]:
Yeah.
Kaisha [00:24:11]:
What do you think, Tyson?
Jason [00:24:12]:
So it sounds like these variations are, you know, across the. The planters, you know, at one time, if you will.
Kaisha [00:24:18]:
We're.
Jason [00:24:18]:
We're not. He's not. I don't think it sounds like he's seeing variations on a day to day basis, you know, so. So rather than, you know, in this case, I'm going to talk about uniformity because that's kind of my snapshot of how much alike are these plants in the room right now? How much. How alike are they behaving? And so, you know, six to 10%. I personally wouldn't get too caught up on it. Um, you know, what might be the time to start understanding, all right, the ones that are having larger drybacks, where they actually at, you know, in water content, if they have a little bit lower water content in general or higher water content in general. And also take a look at the plants.
Jason [00:24:54]:
Obviously, plant size can dictate some of that issues or concerns. And then uniformity wise, is everything the same strain? If this is across different strains and then might actually be good, we'd expect different strains to be drinking different amounts. Um, and so that, you know, that could definitely indicate. All right, for specific strain a in the room, I need to run a different irrigation strategy than for strain b. That's seeing those different amounts of dry back.
Kaisha [00:25:26]:
Amazing. Thank you so much. Okay. Yeah. Because the questions are coming fast and furious. Let me keep it moving. We got this one from tungsten. They want to know what your thoughts are on two high k levels, late flower and antagonism.
Kaisha [00:25:41]:
I think k is potassium. Is that right?
Jason [00:25:44]:
Yeah.
Kaisha [00:25:45]:
Yeah. I have learned something in two and a half years.
Jason [00:25:48]:
Nice. And so antagonism. I'm actually really glad that it brought that up. I will share a slide from the same slideshow that I had earlier, but a little different aspect of it. So let me jump back into the show, and we'll share it. I don't know if everyone's gonna be able to see it. Very easy here. So nudler's chart.
Jason [00:26:35]:
This is kind of how specific nutrients relate to other nutrients as far as uptake. And in this case, we're looking at antagonism and then encouragement as well. So. Or synergism is what they're calling on this. This slide. Basically what's going on here is when we're looking at different types of nutrients, if we have too high levels in specific nutrients, it'll actually block some of the uptake. And that's what that antagonism is. And so he's asking, all right, if my levels of potassium are too high, you know, potassium k.
Jason [00:27:10]:
We've got it up here in the right. They call it potash. We. We can definitely see some, you know, a lot of antagonism in there. So it. It's going to be. We have to. We have to follow our errors.
Jason [00:27:25]:
It's going to be, uh, antagonizing the uptake of boron. And that actually looks like about it as far as which specific nutrients it's antagonizing. Um, is it. Is that bad? Uh, there's definitely worse nutrients that we could be in high levels of as far as how they affect other nutrients being uptaken. So it depends how much level of too high are we? Because obviously that amount of high is going to be not only affecting the chart, what we see here, but it also could affect some of that plant.
Kaisha [00:28:06]:
That's a cool resource, Jason. So Mulder's chart, people just can google that?
Jason [00:28:11]:
Yes.
Kaisha [00:28:12]:
Oh, amazing. Okay. Love that question. Thank you so much for that. All right, we just got this question in on instagram. I think it's a pretty great one. They want to know, how are you crop steering when female hunting? Any special tips given the drastic variation in plants?
Jason [00:28:30]:
Fun question. How do we crop stairwind female hunting? So that's if you have the right answer for it. That's awesome, because we don't necessarily know how to crop steer a specific plant and even a specific pheno until we've run it a couple times. Right. Where I would start off with is how are you crop steering the crosses that this plant came from? Right. And if they're. Unfortunately, you know, when we make crosses, a lot of times they're not the same as, uh, as either the parents as far as some of the characteristics, growth characteristics that they express. So it is a real challenge.
Jason [00:29:13]:
Right. So, you know, there's. There's two options here. One, you can either try and do it like the parents, um, if they were similar in. In the ways that you found successful crop steering, or you could just kind of go middle of the road and, and see what happens. You know, the challenge here is obviously you may not get the best expression, um, plant expression from some of those fenos because, you know, we haven't necessarily had the option to, to tailor crop steering to it. So that's kind of one of the reasons I like to go middle of the road, if we can. And they're going to end up seeing, all right, this, you know, certain phenos express, well, under those conditions, um, certain other phenotypes may express better than them.
Jason [00:29:55]:
We, we just don't know what inputs they need in order to do that.
Kaisha [00:30:02]:
Kind of just adding another question, just on my own curiosity, can crop steering shorten the female hunting process, make it go a little bit faster?
Jason [00:30:12]:
Possibly, yeah, you know, so if we are doing a pretty drastic ripening, maybe we do a little bit longer type of ripening. Sometimes we can, you know, get that plant to finish quicker. Um, you might, might be able to cut, you know, three days, maybe, maybe five days of, uh, of growth time. But that being said, you know, are, are we going to see the filled potential of that pheno if we try to cut it early? Um, and when I'm you knowing, I, I really want the best expression of each of these plants so that I can make sure that I'm, I'm getting the absolute best, um, genetic variation from this cross.
Kaisha [00:30:55]:
Amazing. Okay, thank you for the insights there. That was a great question. Thank you for that. Okay, moving on to YouTube. This one came from Paul. They write, how much can controlling root zone, EC and water content actually reduce flowering time?
Jason [00:31:14]:
It depends on the strain, definitely. You know, when we have sufficient amount of nutrients and sufficient water and we are doing, you know, actively getting good drybacks, making sure that we're growing this plant as fast as possible, you know, we can definitely get to, um, the plant infrastructure faster. We can definitely get, you know, if we're doing it a good generative queue, we can start to get that plant to build bud sites as quickly as possible. So yes, it works. Um, there's typically no downside to it as long as it's done well. And, you know, you just have to make, make those runs, do some tweaks with the crop steering and see if you can get, get to a good finished product that has the yield that you want, has the amber trichomes that you're looking for, just the right amount of ripeness and do some documentation on it. Right. All right, if we start.
Jason [00:32:11]:
And one of my favorite ways to kind of know when a plant could come down was with a USB microscope. So just taking some pictures on the computer of the color of those trichomes as they started to get milky and then starting to become a little bit amber. That was really nice. For the next run. Yeah, I was running some multigenetic greenhouses, so I'd have typically four to eight different strains in a pretty large greenhouse. And I would also dictate kind of my cut down schedule. Uh, any of the plants that last time that I know, hey, this one's going to be perfectly ripe at, you know, day 61. Well, hopefully a couple other strains in there.
Jason [00:32:54]:
You know, we landed at day 61, 62. 63. And we just didn't have the staff to get everything down at once. Um, also, you know, you could plan it out so that you are cutting when, eh, one is perfectly ripe. So that was a great way to document it. And with a system like AROYA, you can just throw it right in the harvest group, so it's easy to find later. Just go reference that stuff.
Kaisha [00:33:18]:
Yep, that's right. Track your. Track, your crop registration, and use arroyo. We're big fans of that. Perfect. Okay, good luck, Paul. Thank you so much for your question. Ian dropped this question on YouTube.
Kaisha [00:33:31]:
He writes, we had trouble with our one gallon coco plants running off at different times. The problem was that the pressure compensating emitters needed to be replaced. Uh, we also changed brands of coco, which helps, so. Oh, thank you so much, Ian, for your. Your feedback. Yeah. Anything you want to add to that, Jason?
Jason [00:33:49]:
Yeah, uh, run into it hundreds of times where pressure compensating emitters, uh, you know, one, they just start to wear out after, you know, a certain period of time. Um, two, if you've run any organics into the injection system, through the lines, anything that's, uh, you know, a little bit chalkier or chunkier, um, those. Those definitely are going to end up clogging them up and making sure that you've done a good job using filters, cleaning your filters out, that that definitely can help making sure that, uh, or prolong the life of our pressure compensating emitters. Another thing sometimes is actually get clogged past that at the drip stake itself. Um, out there, there's going to be a couple of strip stakes on the market that actually, they clamp around the outside of the. The dripper tube, which I like because, you know, a lot of times, I'll see that salt build up right. Right there in the. The end of that.
Jason [00:34:46]:
That tube where the traditional steaks go inside and reduce, you know, how much volume can come out of it. So great work figuring it out.
Kaisha [00:34:56]:
Thank you so much, Ian. All right, well, on the subject of drip irrigation, we got this question on YouTube. What is a good rooting in strategy? What is a good rooting strategy in veg? When using drip irrigation, is there a certain technique to get the plant to root in faster?
Jason [00:35:13]:
Yeah, absolutely. I kind of went over this a little bit earlier. So really kind of my strategies are, is make sure that, well, first off, make sure we've done a good job saturating the blocks that we're going to transplant into, you know, whether it's coco or rockwool, you know, making sure that across the board those are as unified as possible is going to make this process way easier. When we do get that plant into its new media, we'll, we'll want to do, you know, small irrigations each day just to make sure we're getting fresh nutrients, fresh oxygen in there, encourage those roots to, to follow that water content and, and make sure that, hey, this plant just doesn't dry out because it doesn't have enough root zone in the new media to, to pull up that, uh, initially saturated block and then use some type of sensor system to make sure specifically, probably a royal would be the best way to do it to make sure that we're, you know, we're seeing an overall dryback throughout the day. Right. So even though we are doing some maintenance shots throughout the day, while we're rooting in, we do want to make sure that, you know, for those first, typically, hopefully you can get rode in in three to five days. We want to see that water content less by the end of the day than what we started at. Right.
Jason [00:36:28]:
So we'll do some, some maintenance shots, but not, not enough to increase the water content. So typically, yeah, so for in something like Rockwool where we'll be starting at say, 60, 65, you know, 60% to 70% field capacity, then we'll. So we'll do maintenance, irrigations, and then here, I guess I got a whiteboard. I could draw it. We got some new whiteboards here. We're going to give them a try.
Kaisha [00:36:53]:
Oh, my gosh. It's our first episode with a whiteboard. Y'all look out.
Jason [00:36:57]:
We've talked about it for years. So we have. All right, let's see what we can do here. So let's go. This is going to be field capacity. We're going to call it Fc. We're going to put it at, say, 60% just to make some math easy and then we're going to do some days in here. We have to forgive my whiteboard art, because it's been a while.
Kaisha [00:37:27]:
It's just going to get better with practice. I think the whiteboard is probably going to be on every episode now.
Jason [00:37:32]:
All right, so we're at field capacity, and Chris is laughing at me because I am actually trying to do a really accurate job here.
Kaisha [00:38:01]:
It's like surgical precision happening on that whiteboard. Suspense is killing me, Jason.
Jason [00:38:14]:
All right, so, uh, here we go. I don't know if I can. Oh, well, all right, Chris is going to do it. So this could be a good example of, you know, how we want to do riding in for Rockwool. Let's say my field capacity is at 60%. This is where we transplanted right here. I don't know if I can draw an arrow from the backside. Oh, that's good.
Jason [00:38:43]:
So this is where we transplanted. These are those maintenance shots that I was talking about. Um, so we're doing those throughout the photo period on. But as I mentioned, we want to make sure that, you know, by the next day, our water content's still less. Right. And this is going to get us onto the trajectory of, uh, not starting our regular irrigations till we're about 40%. And, you know, each of these irrigations, like I said, is going to, you know, one sustain the plant while it has a very limited root zone. Um, so, you know, that initial, whether it be a clone plug or whether you're going for a four by four into the new substrate itself.
Jason [00:39:16]:
So we're getting those maintenance shots, like I said, to sustain the plant, get fresh oxygen, fresh nutrients in, encourages the roots to follow that water as it gets pulled by gravity throughout the substrate. And then, you know, next day we'll do it as well. Next day we'll do it as well. And typically, I'll do that until I reach about 40% with, with rockwool. And that's when I can start my regular irrigations after that. So that's, that's kind of my very generic wording in strategy.
Kaisha [00:39:45]:
Amazing. Thank you for the demo on the whiteboard, and thank you, front row ag, for hooking us up with a whiteboard. We love that. All right, well, that's a new cast member. Y'all get used to that whiteboard appearing. All right, going to keep it moving on the topic of volumetric water content, we got this question from despicable dabs. They want to know, is 59% volumetric water content decent for coco, or should I change brands.
Jason [00:40:14]:
Yeah. So I'm guessing they're asking about water holding capacity. So field capacity, uh, for the. The smaller pith type of coco, uh, 60, 59% right there. That's kind of across the board, typically what I see. And so, you know, if I'm in a one gallon, I definitely want to try and probably use something like that where it's at that 60%, simply because it's going to allow me to grow a little bit bigger plant and still have some capacity to do, um, generative steering, um, for, you know, certain size plants. For the size plants I like to grow, if I'm in a two gallon coco, I do like the little bit. A little bit chunkier stuff, which will, a lot of times see field capacity close to about 45%.
Jason [00:40:57]:
Um, however, you know, if you are growing monsters, then a, you know, two gallon at that 60 would give you a little bit more holding capacity, you know, and so we'll break down that math. All right. If I have a one gallon and I've got 60% field capacity, that means I can have 0.6 gallons of water in that substrate. And then obviously, if I'm in a two gallon and I'm at, say, 45% field capacity, and I can have 0.9 gallons of water in that substrate.
Kaisha [00:41:29]:
Excellent. Thank you. Despicable dabs for that question. All right, we actually have a follow up to your whiteboard activity there from carpe drip. When you talked through rooting in, in Rockwool, they want to know, does the rooting in strategy change much in coco?
Jason [00:41:43]:
So very similar.
Kaisha [00:41:47]:
Yeah, there. There it is.
Jason [00:41:48]:
Might just have, you know, different water contents that you're shooting for. So depending on the type of coco, your field capacity, it's gonna be a little bit different. Um, so you might have to adjust what that looks like and the target that you're shooting for when you start your regular irrigations.
Kaisha [00:42:04]:
Love that question. Thank you, Carpe. All right, JC dropped this onto YouTube. Um, they write, my plants are pushing water through the stems to my buds and causing mold. I'm assuming I'm irrigating too frequently over watering. Any tips on preventing this? Looks like they're working with an arroyo. Go. They have VPD around one to 1.3, and they are working with Hugo's.
Jason [00:42:32]:
Yeah. Some tips to avoid molds. Obviously getting your environment dialed in. If I'm later in flower, I probably gonna be higher than a one vp. I definitely shoot for that one. Four. If molds been an issue in the past with this strain, I'll even go a little bit higher than that. Like one five for, you know, strains that I'm not worried about.
Jason [00:42:54]:
Mold at 1.3 definitely is a great area to be. You know, it's just not worth the cost of that loss and hassle to deal with it. So we'll. You'll definitely, you know, there's chance that pushing that environmental factors up a little higher can help you. Making sure you have good airflow in there. It's definitely going to help reduce that. Um, you know, one that kind of goes without saying is general facility cleanliness. Uh, how, how well are we sanitizing stuff and sterilizing things between each cycle and what types of activities are we're doing during the cycle to just reduce how much spore content we have in the room? Obviously, you know, it's, it's almost impossible to eradicate spores completely.
Jason [00:43:32]:
So we're just trying to reduce the, the total number of them that are in there. Um, so, you know, that's always the preventative, um, how to combat it. We talked about that with environment a little bit. You know, another thing I like using silica as an additive. What that does is increases the thickness of the cell walls. It just helps encourage the plant become a little bit more defensive towards any molten mildews. So increasing, you know, plant health, making sure that we do have super healthy plants is going to be one of the first ways or second ways if staying clean was our first way and one of the, one of the great ways to make sure that we don't have our decreased pest pressure or mold and mildew pressure as well. So I think those are kind of the strategies that I would start with.
Kaisha [00:44:20]:
Awesome. Yeah, thank you for that, Jason. JC, we appreciate your question. Thank you so much for that. We also have a great education guide on integrated pest management. Just actually reiterates a lot of the points Jason just pointed out. So be sure to check that out. All right, moving on.
Kaisha [00:44:36]:
We got this question from golden child. What would you consider to be too much runoff for soilless mix in a one gallon? I feel like I'm having to push an excessive runoff to prevent my EC and ph from walking away on me. I have to push like 1000 ML plus runoff to maintain my levels. Any advice for golden child?
Jason [00:44:57]:
Yeah, that does, that definitely sounds like a lot. Um, obviously, you know, by being able to control some of these factors, reducing runoff, we can have a little bit better usage of our nutrients, have a little bit less waste and stuff. Uh, I'm actually glad to hear that. You know, it sounds like you're doing it for the right reason. And that is because you're monitoring your ph and, um, and your ec levels in there. There, you know, there's a chance that, um, you might be able to get a modified nutrient, um, ratio. Uh, is one way to do it. You know, starting to look at, hey, maybe I need to modify my ab or my base and my flour just depending on what type of nutrient you use.
Jason [00:45:39]:
Um, so yeah, kind of analyzing hay is an option to, to go vary myself a little bit from manufacturers recommendations to, to help combat that change in ph. And then, you know, as far as, you know, keeping your EC dropped, you may just have to drop your feed easy if you see that the, um, runoff you see is always high. The one thing I do kind of always keep in mind though, as well, is, you know, runoff uc, typically it can change. So you know that if we're measuring early in runoff, usually it's going to be highest EC that we'd see in that runoff. And as we start, you know, to see the EC in the substrate normalize because of the feedc being lower, some of that runoff is going to start to get, you know, a little bit lower and lower and lower in EC. So kind of keep in mind of, hey, when are we taking that EC measurement? As we start pushing some of the saltier amounts of solution out of it during irrigation.
Kaisha [00:46:38]:
Awesome overview. Golden child. Good luck. Thank you so much for your question. All right, we got another question here on YouTube. Boxwood farmer 120, asks, when running a multiple strain room, I go from two drippers to one cristrains that drink less to keep my dry backs more dynamic. Should I leave two in till slow drinkers catch up or maintain the strategy?
Jason [00:47:04]:
Um, it depends. If, if you're treating this different strains differently by, by strain, then it's probably okay, right. Um, you know, however, in the past, I have seen some people apply this to, you know, within one strain where they see, you know, certain plants aren't drinking quite enough and so they'll have, uh, you know, go from one dripper to two drippers. I personally wouldn't do it. You know, it just sounds like an increase in complexity. You know, I might start chasing my tail a little bit on that stuff. Just, you know, make sure you're monitoring it and shoot for, for the best average, make sure we're getting the big plants enough water and a lot of times the smaller ones will catch up. Yeah.
Jason [00:47:45]:
So that'd be my advice here.
Kaisha [00:47:50]:
Very concise. Okay. Gonna keep it moving. Um, we got this question recently from Spencer, they wrote. So I keep running into a problem where, like clockwork, in every room around four week, four or five, I see the stalks in the colas start to turn dark purple. The plants that get the dark stalks have reduced yield and sometimes even popcorn buds. I follow you guys advice and monitor EC and drybacks with my solace. Any advice? I'm in a two gallon coco core pots.
Jason [00:48:22]:
Yeah, that's, I mean, that's a little bit of a weird one. I guess, for me, I would try to just start to analyze what data are you seeing from that? Those plants that's different from another plant. Now, there could be a few things going on here. You know, is it, is it based on an area in the room? You know, maybe it's like right under an AC unit. So you're getting colder temperatures. You know, that would kind of, you know, indicate why it'd be turning purple and a little bit less yield, possibly. You know, there could be issues, obviously, with zerpers. Are they getting a little bit less, less water, less nutrients? And so they're starting to suffer for that reason.
Jason [00:49:05]:
It's hard for me to say without necessarily enough data to suggest, but what I would do is obviously get your crop registration information and start comparing, you know, when you start to see that, or actually even better, before you see that. Hey, is there some commonality between these suffering plants as far as the ecs that I see or phs that I see versus the plants that aren't suffering? Right. So if you can get, you know, at least three or five or even more samples from each of those plants, and definitely on a day to day basis, ideally, you know, something like a royal go could help you take a look at that time series. Why? Because, you know, when we are just taking a single sample in time, there's a chance that it doesn't quite give us the visibility we had to catch the issue in that sample.
Kaisha [00:50:02]:
Those are some great tips. Good luck out there. Purple stocks sounds like it can mean all kinds of things. Looking at the data is going to be key. We've gotten a couple questions in related to terpene production. Let me start with this first one. Louisiana recently posted. Have you seen higher limonene? Closer to light and heat? I've seen this in my data.
Kaisha [00:50:23]:
Have you ever encountered that, Jason?
Jason [00:50:27]:
You know, I can't say that I have ever tried to, tried to draw a correlation necessarily between specific terpenes and locations. Wish I could chime in with something here. I don't have much. I got nothing useful at least.
Kaisha [00:50:45]:
No, all good. I love the question. Yeah. Let me ask you this one. This one came from instagram. Do you guys believe in drought stressing at the end for some trichomes? So it looks like folks are trying to steer towards particular trichome production. What do you think?
Jason [00:51:01]:
Yeah. And so this kind of comes to one of my favorite topics, and that is, what is drought stress? You know, when we're talking about drought stress, really, we need to dive into matrix potential. And the thing that's nice with hydroponic medias like coco and Rockwool and, you know, that soil less stuff that we're looking at, usually we have a pretty good idea of what the matrix potential curves look like in respect to water content. That's why we can really use water content to define. All right, where would we expect to see permanent wilting point? Where would we expect to see temporary wilting point? And how close do we want to get there at that edge? Right. So traditionally, you know, some drought stressor would be just getting to temporary wilting point and not. Not going much farther than that. In general production, we still.
Jason [00:51:55]:
We don't even really get to temporary wilting point unless we're doing some extremely hard, generative drybacks. So, yes, you know, with, with ripening at the end, we are going to be getting closer to drought stress than. Than we might throughout the cycle. And definitely really doing that to make sure that we are getting the best trichome production as possible.
Kaisha [00:52:21]:
Awesome. Yeah. Thank you for that. That was a great question. Thank you. Hands down, you. Good luck. And looks like I'm going to be doing some blogging about osmotic potential.
Kaisha [00:52:30]:
I'm into it. All right, we got this question a couple weeks ago. Hadn't talked about it yet, but someone wrote in, in an ideal environment, should CO2 and flower run all the way through harvest? On online forums, it's recommended cutting it during after week five, but no data to back that up. What do you recommend?
Jason [00:52:55]:
Yeah, so I work with a lot of people that do end up cutting it for ripening or at least decreasing it at the very least. I don't necessarily think there's going to be any issue with supplementing it until the very end. That's what I like to do myself, just because I want to make sure that, hey, for any amount of growth that can be sustained, to have sufficient CO2, and it's not going to hurt to have that extra CO2 during that amount. And so for a cost benefit, to me, it's kind of nice just to have that available to the plant. However, results show, or people's results seem to indicate that it may not be significant as far as the amount of extra growth that can happen towards the end. So, kind of comes down to a cost benefit analysis.
Kaisha [00:53:48]:
Doesn'T it always? Thank you, Jason. Okay.
Jason [00:53:52]:
In production, it usually does. Yeah.
Kaisha [00:53:54]:
It usually does. Yeah. All right, we got this question in from biker 21 93 recently. They wanted to know for the last two weeks, flower, what's your targeted EC range that you want to be at? So what are some considerations?
Jason [00:54:09]:
Yeah, last, last two weeks, um, you know, when we say EC range. So really what's happening here is depending on if you're. If you're supplementing, um, you know, if you're cutting out your nitrogen and you actually have, you know, a product like fade, for example, that that you're putting in there. Um, you know, we might see ecs. If we are supplementing that, uh, that with. With a product like that, then, you know, we might be season of three to. Sometimes they're pretty high when we get down to that dryback, you know, since we are doing generative, you know, we might see, all right, at our feed, we're in a root zone, you see, of, you know, three or four, you know, after. After dryback.
Jason [00:54:55]:
It might be up in that, that eight range, ten range, as we've pushed those dry bags pretty hard. Uh, I wouldn't get too worried about that. And then, obviously, you know, if. If you're not and you're just cutting nitrogen out by. And reducing your ec, uh, so let's say, you know, feed ec of. Of 2.0. Um, then, you know, we'd see it's definitely a little bit lower ecs. Um, and I like to try and, you know, taper my ec if I'm doing that right.
Jason [00:55:22]:
So I won't just go to a lower feed level immediately in one day, I'll start to drop it over a few days.
Kaisha [00:55:33]:
Excellent. Thank you, Jason. Okay. Sorry. We've got some real live questions in here. So this one just came in. I think it's actually a really good one for us to kind of wrap up. Jedi wrote, they would love to see or hear examples of how they prefer to log the Daily checklist.
Kaisha [00:55:51]:
So, ph, bc, et cetera, all the critical information. Any related suggestions? An editable whiteboard on the wall, perhaps? I mean, I think we're big fans of AROYA, right?
Jason [00:56:05]:
Yeah. So, I mean, we can jump in. I'll see if I can share it here. Just to show you all my favorite way to do it and why. And obviously you've got the Aurora web interface and the AROYA app, so it's pretty easy to jump in on your phone and enter these if you can. So it's an option that we call manual readings. And one of the best parts about manual readings is the option to actually chart them as well. So not only is it easy to enter them that way, everybody that has access to your interface can see immediately after they're entered.
Jason [00:56:48]:
It's super easy because they're managed by harvest group. So if you need to go back and look how a specific parameter behaved for a specific strain in a specific room at a different point in time, easy to look that up. And then you also get that visual of the dynamics over the period of time that you've entered into. So I'm going to share my screen here and give you all an idea of how that works in a royal. Obviously, if you don't have a royal, then some other digital format is probably going to be the best. I like g sheets myself, but I have arrived, so that's how I do it. All right, so let me zoom out a little bit. And we've got this little plus button where we can do readings is what it's called.
Jason [00:57:42]:
And these are going to be our manual readings where we can select. All right, which room are we going to be tracking this in? And the reading type. So we've got tons of options. You know, runoff ph is one that I'm doing very commonly. And we can plot this right to a specific zone. Maybe we need to make a comment about it. Alright, ph is perfect. Or if it was low or high, we could be like, you know, just any type of representation with it.
Jason [00:58:10]:
And we can also attribute it to a cult of VAR as well. So all of these, you know, auxiliary tags are making it easier to manage this data farther along. And I'll go over the list of manual readings that we have available in the arroyo system here as well. So let's take a look. Reading types. Yeah, drybacks. You can either do those manually or you can actually use arroyo to log those automatically by selecting when you want to get that dry back. If we want to put in feed phs, you know, definitely one to keep track of leaf temps.
Jason [00:58:47]:
Great one to have in there occasionally. Node spacing, plant height. These are ones that, you know, are kind of the basis of building a crop steering program, getting this information documented. So not only do you know how it behaved this time, but you can know when you need to adjust your times or how significantly you're steering in order to optimize the size and the output of the crop, we got spot water content. So if you're in there with a solace, great way to, you know, just validate that the data in the system is accurate and do some spotlight intensities. We can look at stimatal conductance if you have something like an SC one, you know, if you're logging data in your dry room, we can look at water activity. Definitely a great way to start improving any of the drying processes you have is start seeing your humidities and temperatures in the room and then log that water activity, especially, you know, as you're getting close to target dryness. And then you can really dial that in.
Jason [00:59:51]:
We need to go a day less, day more. Make the most of the product that you've. That you've created, CO2 levels. So, yeah, some of these numbers obviously are types of numbers that we have from. From the system itself with automatically log data coming out of the sensors. And a lot of times it's just nice to validate that, you know, if we have any questions about it or we're taking that information anyways, just so we get a hands on feel for it. And a lot of these are just ones that are from auxiliary sensors that you just need to get into a system somewhere.
Kaisha [01:00:29]:
And there it is. All right, awesome. Well, Jason, nice work. Thank you for holding it down and dropping hella knowledge today in the studio. Always good to see you. And to our producer Chris, thank you so much for helping me and Jason put together another great session. And thank you to everyone for joining us for this week's Aurora 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 cultivation platform.
Kaisha [01:01:00]:
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 via Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn. We want to hear from you. If we didn't get to your question, don't worry. Submit it again. And if you're a fan of the pod, please leave us a review on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts. We appreciate your feedback.
Kaisha [01:01:21]:
And be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel so you never miss an episode. Thanks, y'all. We'll see you in episode 103. Bye.