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Seth Baumgartner and Jason Van Leuven open the mics for your crop steering and cultivation questions.
Jason [00:00:08]:
All right, hey, everybody. Welcome to office hours, episode 98. Today, we're missing Kaisha, so we're going to do our best to moderate ourselves and just be patient. Hopefully, we get to your questions. As always, check us out in YouTube or Instagram. These videos will be uploaded there for later watching or also on any of the Spotify, any of those other applications that you can get some podcasts on. If you're on the hangout, ask some questions. Hopefully we'll pick you out.
Jason [00:00:39]:
And without further ado, let's get rocking and rolling. First question in our question bank here, we've got Hashbro Farm wants to talk. He's asking if we can talk about the root in process for clone going directly into a two gallon quick fill, asking what kind of target drybacks we should be hitting during weeks one and two before flipping the flower. All right, so basically, what our answers are here is, uh, this is a great way to go. Uh, obviously, we're missing out on that, um, that middle transplant, which is a nice way to expedite the process, save a little bit of materials, a little bit of labor and stuff like that. Um, however, great question, because you do have to be kind of careful when we're transferring from a very small media to a very large media.
Seth [00:01:25]:
I've.
Jason [00:01:25]:
Obviously, we need to monitor those dry bags, the water contents, specifically to encourage that root growth going down into the new two gallon quick fill. So a lot of times what we want to do is make sure we follow proper procedures to have the two gallon prepared for these clones. Um, sounds like they're doing it. Basically, two weeks before flipping into fire one is two weeks before flipping the fire. Also a great time to promote growth, that type of thing. So, let's say we're in a quick fill of two gallon at 45% water content. That's usually gonna be our starting water content when we go in and transplant. Um, typically, we're gonna wanna make sure that we've got sensors in there monitoring how much water loss we're seeing.
Jason [00:02:04]:
Usually for the first couple of days, pretty much all that water loss is just gonna be evaporation. And what we might do is just give some very small irrigations to make sure that we're getting water content into the plant itself. Right. So those roots haven't necessarily seeked out any of the new media. We need to make sure we get a little irrigation. Usually I'll do, you know, between two and four very small irrigations throughout the day. And over the time of those weeks, we're going to typically see that water content drop and drop and drop. And what's happening is those roots are going to follow those irrigation, those small shots of irrigation that we're getting.
Jason [00:02:38]:
We never want to get back up to that field capacity till we're ready to start some of our crop steering irrigation strategies. Basically, what we'll see is, let's say we're at 45% water content. Typically, I won't do full irrigations until I'm seeing that total water content about 35%. All right. And so if we do three 1% shots a day, um, maybe evaporation, we're losing, say, 4% the first day, 5% the next day, 6% the next day, as those roots start to get some water out of that substrate as well. So not just evaporation, but evaporation and transpiration. Um, once that total reaches a certain amount and you see some roots in there, time to start doing some regular irrigations. What are your thoughts?
Seth [00:03:20]:
Yeah, I mean, really, we want to target, you know, somewhere between a 15 and a 25% total dryback before we're actually putting on any of those big full irrigations to bring it back up to field capacity. You know, part of that's so we can get good oxygen infiltration. And as you're lowering that water content throughout this process, you are allowing more pore space for oxygen. So even though we're giving it a smaller irrigation, we're not necessarily oxygenating the root zone maybe as much as we'd want in a two gallon, just because we can't put on as many small shots. If we have greater porosity in the media, greater airspace, we've got more oxygen, which is definitely good for a root in procedure. And right at the beginning of this, Jason, you mentioned a quick fill with a 45% field capacity. That's an important thing to think about when you're moving up to something like a two gallon media size. When we're looking at a really small, let's say, three liter, even up to a gallon coco block, typically, we actually want a little bit higher water holding capacity.
Seth [00:04:14]:
You know, if we can get up to that 60% to 70% range, effectively our pots bigger because it holds more water, we've got a bigger gas tank to drive the plant with. However, once you start to go up to two gallons and beyond, having that really high water holding capacity can really contribute to the development of anaerobic conditions in the root zone, just because we're not getting as much of a dry out. So when you are starting to go with, let's say, a two gallon pot or even a three gallon, that's where we actually do see going back to, you know, potentially a coco perlite blend or even just a coarser coco that puts us at, you know, 40, 45% to 50% rather than that 60 to 70 to help in with that root in process. And uh, you know, we always talk about kind of the pros and cons between going with an intermedia and not. And if you're running this system, I mean, it'll just kind of bring up basically that you go, you end up with a longer veg if you're trying to veg straight into a two gallon pot. However, pending your labor force, how many people you have, how many hands and how much time you have to get things done. That extra week or two of veg might not be very, very much of an interruption into your production schedule. And I think also when we're talking about drybacks and veg, it's important to remember that, hey, we're running higher humidity, lower light levels, higher temps, we're not going to see as much transpiration.
Seth [00:05:29]:
So one of the important things to look for is really getting that 15% to 25% initial dryback before irrigating and then understanding that, hey, once my plant is rooted in and I bring it back up, I might not see, you know, a 1015 percent dryback in a single day ever in veg potentially, before I flip. And you know, once we get into the flower room, especially after the first few days, we start cranking the lights up, cranking that VPD up just a little, we're going to get more transpiration. And that's when you're really going to start to see your bigger dryback numbers.
Jason [00:06:00]:
Yeah. So breaking that down kind of in some simple answers is obviously everything prepared right. Uh, time it with your clones. We don't want to go in too small. All make sure, make sure that we've optimized the full zone of our clone plug so that they are ready to start blowing out in that two gallon as fast as possible. Do that reading and procedure we just talked about and hopefully that sets us up to start our generative steering right when we flip to flower. Yep.
Seth [00:06:26]:
Keep it simple, not a big deal. And yeah, using just any kind of technology, even if you don't have any soil moisture monitoring sensors, you can always go get a scale and start laying your pots and veg because your plants aren't growing that much on that initial root in period. But, uh, you know, especially if you're out there hand watering all these two gallon pots that can be really, really difficult to meet your water applications. So understanding what's going on in the root zone and understanding the variation that you have is going to be really, really important to getting your whole crop all the way through veg and minimizing those plants that just don't root in as well and don't take off. And another thing to be aware of, too, when you're going into these wetter, higher capacity pots, that clone health is critical. So if you're having problems, you know, if you're already below, let's say, a 90% success rate, cloning, you find some clones with a little bit of brown on the roots or weak rooting in, you're going to have even more troubles going with the bigger pot there. So always evaluate, you know, that, that whole process up to that point and try to make the best decision on which media you're using.
Jason [00:07:32]:
Sounds awesome. Uh, thanks for that question. All right, next questions up. We got, uh, be dawn in the morning. Um, he asks. So the point of dryback stress is to stress using high EC but not lack of water?
Seth [00:07:48]:
Uh, not exactly. We're basically trying to. I mean, high Ec does help a little bit, but we're trying to trick the plan into thinking that there's a long period of time between when it rains. Right. So it's kind of going to a mode where it's not stretching as much, slowing down that internodal growth, and encouraging it to grow more nodes. But we're not typically trying to use a super high Ec. The point of the dryback really is spacing out those events where we're stimulating plant growth and not pushing further stretch in the plant. So it is a combination of higher Ec than your baseline Ec that definitely helps us put a little bit of restriction on the water and nutrient uptake of the plant, but also, you know, timing those signals.
Seth [00:08:30]:
So we're not, oh, what's a good analogy here? You know, when we're in bulking, we're somehow tricking the plan into thinking it's raining and sunny at the same time all day. And in generative, we just want to, you know, give it a little breakfast and then make it work on that the rest of the day, if you want to simplify it to that.
Jason [00:08:49]:
Yeah. So, you know, my kind of viewpoint here is, as usual, I try to avoid the term stress just because it's not a very good scientific indicator of what, what is actually happening, um, in the plant or the environment. Um, so when we talk about drybacks exactly what Seth said. Uh, not lack of water. Uh, that's the part I kind of wanted to touch on. Usually when we're in a soilless application, the plant's never going to know, uh, a lack of water. Uh, if we're in coco, it doesn't necessarily know the difference between 60% water content in the. The substrate or 25% water content in the substrate.
Jason [00:09:25]:
Really, you know, what the plant is feeling is the matrix potential that the substrate is. Is requiring in order to get water out of it. Right. And so really, what's going on there? Yeah, we. We typically try to avoid any lack of water. And when you talk about dry back stress, stress using high ecs, typically, you know, what we're thinking about there is the osmotic differential between the plant itself and the root zone. And how does that regulate, um, fertigation flow between substrate and the plant?
Seth [00:09:56]:
Yeah, I mean, you know, even in some old school, like, deep water culture, hydroponic situations, you do use high ac at certain times to push certain responses in the plant. But I think it is really important that we always highlight that we're really not trying to apply any actual stress to the plant. We're essentially trying to trick it into thinking it's stressed while keeping it as healthy as possible. So it's a, you know, not necessarily the most intuitive when you think about it that way, but it is what it is. I guess there's no other way to put it.
Jason [00:10:29]:
Yeah. You know, I always think of the reason I don't like talking about stress is because that's usually beyond the bounds of what we're trying to manipulate in order to achieve the physiological response in the plant. When we're playing with the hormone balances in these plants, if we go too far, it's a stress, and most stresses are going to result in some amount of plant growth decrease. Right. We want to optimize that growth and just manipulate how it's growing.
Seth [00:10:55]:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, a great example I can think of is, in a past life, I did a lot of research with drought resistant varieties of like, peas. Okay, that may not be quite as exciting as cannabis, but when we're looking at drought resistance, when we're actually trying to evaluate drought stress on a plant, and how well different varieties respond to that, we're going in and purposely not watering plants in the greenhouse, tracking that dryback and going, how dry can it get before this plant actually hits temporary wilting point? And then we'd have that plant, you know, possibly in different media or just a bunch of different varieties of plants, trying to expose them to those same conditions to look for the differences. Now, that's the complete opposite way to approach agriculture compared to what we're doing. That's looking at like, hey, if I only get so much rain this year and I don't have irrigation, can I pull a crop out of this? Is this good for planting in suboptimal conditions? We don't ever want to approach suboptimal conditions for our plants. We want it to be as optimal as possible. And all we're doing is steering it a little bit through morphological responses to irrigation.
Jason [00:11:55]:
That's why we call it controlled environment agriculture. For most of our growers, obviously, our outdoor growers, they have a lot of different sets of challenges. So keep that in mind. All right. Tommy guns, 202. He asks, what's the best way to sanitize your ro storage water? Reverse osmosis storage water.
Seth [00:12:18]:
Uh, you know, a couple things. Keep your water oxygenated. Keep it cool. Don't let it just sit there and bake it, you know, 80 degrees with no oxygen going into it. Uh, running things like hypochlorous acid regularly in there can do a good job. Chlorine dioxide, uh, there's a variety of products on the market, serotol even, that can be used to maintain a sanitized state in your, uh, your ro storage. Just pay attention to what you're getting and realize that certain things have a shelf life as well. So there's always a, you know, a little bit of an art to balancing your water storage capacity compared to your water needs.
Seth [00:12:51]:
And, uh, you know, just for reference, we're looking at 0.6 to 1.6 liters, usually for an average sized, healthy plant water usage per day. So, that's really a baseline where you can start to calculate your water usage. And then over, you know, a few runs, you can do some simple calculations just based on what your volumetric water content is, how many milliliters you're putting on each plant, how many milliliters is going into the room, even if you don't have a flow meter, and start to figure out how much storage capacity you actually need. And then, you know, another thing I like to really consider in this is how often do I need to actually empty those tanks to clean them? So, in an ideal setting for one room, if I've got one tank, I think it's really nice if I can empty that tank at the end of every day and have an opportunity to clean it. If I've got a tank that lasts me a week. That's really awesome. Obviously, a little less maintenance, but it's going to be more prone to growing biofilm and storing other contaminants while it's sitting there. So food for thought.
Jason [00:13:53]:
Yeah, I love those treatment options. I just kind of want to bring up some of the preventative ideas that I have. Obviously, making sure that your storage water is not exposed to light is going to be one of the things that's going to help reduce any bacterial growth. Um, and then staying regular with your, your cleaning options. You know, the longer it goes, the harder it's going to be to sanitize it. So keep those in mind when you're applying Seth's ideas here. Yeah.
Seth [00:14:19]:
And, you know, look at, uh, some of the harder to reach spots sometimes in your irrigation system. Like if I've got a fertigation room and a pipe that has a couple turns and goes through a wall, there might be some cleaning challenges present there. And I know that when I introduce more bends, more joints to a pipe, I'm creating more spots in that network for biofilm to grow and, you know, little bits of sludge to build up. If I've created a system that is particularly susceptible to that for various reasons, it means I'm going to have to clean it more to stay ahead on the maintenance. So another consideration, you know, I mean, we've talked about this on here in the past. Don't get white pvc, especially schedule 40 for your irrigation lines. Try to get thicker pvc and get it in gray or black if you can. I've seen people do things as simple as go and spray paint their pipes, too, just to help with that, but.
Jason [00:15:10]:
Or use pipe insulation on them.
Seth [00:15:12]:
Yep. Another great thing. Temperature control is huge. You know, sometimes we look at that volume of water that's in a one and a half inch pipe running down a hallway. Turns out we actually have enough volume there to affect what's going on, a certain portion of the plants in the room, and it's not enough volume to maintain its own temperature very well in the pipes. So if it's sitting in that hallway up on the ceiling and it happens to be 80 degrees up there, that water might be warming up and spending more time closer to 80 degrees than we want. And that's just one example of where you might have just a small part of your irrigation system that could be responsible for contaminating things further downline. But starting with that, clean water storage is super important.
Seth [00:15:52]:
That's for sure. I skipped one there.
Jason [00:15:56]:
Yeah, I might have skipped one. We'll see you got swishes and a dosha. Any suggestions on battling two spotted spider mites in veg?
Seth [00:16:09]:
Be clean spray one of many products on the market. Probably one of the biggest things is try to schedule in the ability to empty out your bedroom completely at one point. So, you know, one of the biggest issues we see in bedrooms is sharing your veg space with your mother stock, which makes it very, very difficult to actually get rid of all pests in the room because now we can't go use fun things like heavy doses of bleach to spray all over the room that would normally kill a lot of these things. Yeah, there's a bunch of great products out there, from old school nuclear up to micronized sulfur. We go on and on about that. I like pyrethrins quite a bit in, like, the greenhouse application. I know that can be controversial, but at the end of the day, making sure you can clean out the room, fully, nuke it out, get the nooks and crannies. Realize that a lot of these bugs survive on organic debris that might be in the cracks in your floor, corners of the room.
Seth [00:17:04]:
You know, try to seal everything up as best as you can. Sometimes it does get to that point where you clean the room and you are in there caulking different joints and stuff on your walls. But, uh, cleanliness is number one. And then number two, you know, once you've got them, try to figure out where they came from. You know, is it springtime where you live and you actually are starting to see those outside on some of your plants? You know, maybe you've got some rose bushes outside or something that are starting to get some mites? Or, uh, did it come in on a cut you brought in or with a teen or, you know, what, what was that source? Did you go visit another farm and possibly bring it back as a hitchhiker on your clothes? Because if you can't figure out the source, they're probably going to come back if you don't change anything else in your biosecurity protocols. And otherwise, though, they're usually not terribly hard to get a hold on. Like I said, emptying out your bedroom is probably the biggest challenge for a lot of producers. I know.
Seth [00:17:57]:
I've been there when it's like, hey, we just, we don't have a mom room, so now we just live with this constant pest pressure that we're trying to just attempt to keep down to a level that's not economically impactful.
Jason [00:18:09]:
Yeah. And you hit on a lot of great points here. Um, you know, the fortunate, fortunate situation about this question is, in veg, that's obviously giving you a lot more opportunities on what type of pesticides to, to use, to help, uh, help battle them. Um, you know, as with so many pests, eradication is, uh, is very difficult, you know, to get rid of them. Totally. So doing the best that you can to figure out where they came from, um, battle them harshly to try and get to that eradication. Um, and, and then making sure you also have really healthy plants. Uh, this is one that I'm always trying to hit on is.
Jason [00:18:42]:
All right, what are ways that we can help this plant battle them itself. Right. And so the healthier we've got for veg plants, um, making sure any, any dead material like you're talking about, their food is not available. Um, I like to use a little bit of silica in, in those, those times, uh, you know, especially during veg, to help strengthen cell walls and, and prevent any intrusion of spider mites on the plant itself so that there's, there's something to feed on. They're going to probably try not to live there. Yeah.
Seth [00:19:10]:
And I mean, that's. At the end of the day with IPM, your, your first, best. IPM is a very healthy plant. Whether we're talking bugs, mold, pathogens, um, plants do have an immune system. Um, we just have to help it sometimes.
Jason [00:19:25]:
Yeah. You know, and a healthy plant and a healthy environment. So, you know, typically spider mites are going to thrive in a little bit drier, um, environments. And so let's, you know, that veteran. Let's make sure we've got those humidities up above 70%.
Seth [00:19:43]:
Absolutely.
Jason [00:19:44]:
Next up, we've got trichome Valley. He says, I love the show. You guys are great. I have a question. The nutrient line I'm using recommends about 50% to 60% dry back from full saturation before watering again for the first three weeks of flower. When I water after dry back to that level, I noticed the leaves will go down for a few hours before going back up. Is this a normal occurrence? Am I doing anything wrong? I've ever bought out a kitchen. I've never bought out a kitchen scale.
Seth [00:20:11]:
Even brought it out.
Jason [00:20:11]:
Oh, I even brought it out. Yeah. Thank you, as always. Yeah.
Seth [00:20:16]:
I think the first thing we should touch on there is, you know, when we're talking about dryback percentages, I would say 99% of the time, unless something specific like this comes up. Jason and I are talking about volumetric water content as compared to saturation. So, on the scale we're. We're always talking about, VWC means the portion of the pot that is comprised of water. So, we're looking at the total volume of the pot. If we have a one gallon pot, 3.785 liters. 100% is 3.785 liters. So, on our scale, you would never hit 100% for one.
Seth [00:20:48]:
And number two, it also means that when we're talking about, let's say, a 25% dryback, we're talking about 25% of the volume of that pot, not 25% of the total concentration or the total amount of water in that pot. So, if we're looking at saturation in this case, and also, it's a good point, you know, we, because of that scale difference, probably would never say a 50% to 60% dryback because that is outside of the range we're talking about on the VWC scale. But for a 50% to 60% dryback from full saturation, that means we're taking and saying, hey, where we would say we feel capacity at 60% vwc, and I'll just say a one liter pot to keep it simple. So, we had 600 ML with saturation, 600 ML equals 100%. So 50% dry back to 60% dry back would be 600 ML down to 300 and a little less. So, is that good or bad? So, if you're starting to see a level of temporary wilting like that where your leaves are drooping, and it's important to notice, too, like, when we're. When you're saying your leaves are drooping, most plants will lose a little bit of trigger pressure at night when the humidity goes up a little bit, we don't have light hitting them. They should go down.
Seth [00:22:02]:
Fully drooping means, like, we actually lost trigger pressure inside those cells, and we're seeing the leaves actually wilt. And in coco, for instance, you know, we. We've got a little bit of a dead band there. We can bring that plant back if it's starting to wilt. Uh, not so easy in Rockwell. That being said, if we are seeing, uh, some actual wilting, um, I would probably not go with 50% to 60%. I'd probably get it more back to 40%, by the metric you're measuring. And also, um, it wouldn't be a bad idea if you've already got your kitchen scale out and you're.
Seth [00:22:34]:
Especially if you're using, you know, quick fill bags or any other, uh, pre prepared compressed coco, brick or rockwool, do a hydration test. Take one of your dry pots, weigh it on your scale, go soak it up the way you normally would. Let it run off, bring it back, weigh it. 1 gram equals 1 water. So take that total wet weight, subtract your dry weight, and now you know how many milliliters of water you have in that pot, and you can start getting a lot more precise, uh, with some of these measurements. You know, you. You know what that 100% saturation level is in milliliters now, not just by weight.
Jason [00:23:11]:
Yeah. Uh, I I think if I was, you know, the nutrient company, I just try to say it a little bit different. And, uh, you know, I would be talking about, uh, 50% to 60% of total water, uh, in. In the substrate. And so, uh, you know, Seth's got all milliliters on us over here. Yeah. But for american growers, you know, if we've got a one gallon pot and we're hit a 50% water content in there, um, we would have a half gallon. And if your nutrient guy is recommending that 50% to 60% of that water is lost, then you'd be at 0.25 gallons or 25% vwc for irrigation again.
Jason [00:23:53]:
And that's actually, that's a pretty good type of generative strategy to go with. I did want to share. I've got. I've got a little video here that I made of time lapse photography, dineural activity, which, for those of us, dinaural means difference in nighttime and daytime. And I'll bring it up here and share it with you. Kind of a fun way to get some insight on how this plant behave while I'm sleeping, hopefully sleeping or getting alerts on something going on at the facility. Let's bring it up real quick. And there we can see, uh, obviously, like, you're talking about a little bit of loss of tigger pressure at the.
Jason [00:24:44]:
The night time. Uh, once we're applying some light, uh, get that photosynthetic activity going on, get some irrigation. In the day, we see the plant responding with, uh, increased sugar pressure and some praying plants, as a lot of people say. Yeah.
Seth [00:24:59]:
So I think that's another thing that's important to establish, you know, what, uh, when your leaves start to droop, how. How bad is it? You know, when we hit that true perm or temporary wilting point, that's going to the point where you. You start to see your leaves become. What's a good word for it? Deflated almost. You know, we lose any kind of stiffness in the leaf when you touch it. It's just super soft, very squishy. And, uh, if you've done this repeatedly and actually cross that line, even when you do hit per temporary wilting point, usually we do see a little bit of leaf damage as a result, especially hitting that repeatedly day after day. If your plants are acting similar to the video Jason just showed, there's a pretty good chance that that's just normal behavior.
Seth [00:25:38]:
And if we are steering those plants pretty generatively, that's, you know, part of what we want to see is the lights come on and those plants start to build a little turgot pressure, and then we water them, and then they get really, really happy, for lack of a better word there. And, uh, yeah, I think that's, that's really important, though. When you're talking about dry back with any particular person out there, any source of information, there's a lot of great information. Just make sure you're talking about percentages in the same language. Make sure they're talking about saturation, if that's what you're going for. Or ask if they're talking about volumetric water content, because both are completely applicable. We talk about VWC just because we're constantly using sensor technology that expresses it in that measurement.
Jason [00:26:26]:
Awesome. I actually just Google searched some tigger pressure here in images on the Internet, and there's lots of great, great visuals that are related to plant wilting and a little bit of that stuff. So encourage anybody, go out there and explore this stuff. Get a little education for yourself. Don't, don't just trust us on these things, you know, build out your own opinion and get all the scientific basis on the things that we've reviewed to answer these questions like this.
Seth [00:26:54]:
Yeah, I always want to stress, you know, cannabis is an amazing and special plant, but it is a plant. There's no magic in it. That's not. Especially when we're talking about basic plant functions, like how water moves through leaves or through roots, up into the leaves and back out into the air. These are all processes that have been very heavily investigated over the last hundred plus years that are really well described. And even reading a book about general plant physiology can teach you a lot about basic plant processes. And they're concepts that you can see actively happening in your grow. Just like the time lapse video that Jason just shared.
Seth [00:27:30]:
You're experiencing that every day. I find that when I'm actively learning like that, the light bulb turns on a lot quicker with some of those concepts because I can see it happening.
Jason [00:27:42]:
Nice. Right? Let's keep the show moving here. We got boxwood farmer, 120. He asks, do you think there are advantages or disadvantages to bending or snapping, usually as some strains stretch too close to the lights? Well, if they're too close to the.
Seth [00:27:58]:
Lights and you bend them over, ideally, not snap them, just bend them over. Uh, they're not going to get bleached at that point. But, you know, the overall situation we're looking at is like, hey, sometimes my plants get too close to the light. Why is that? Well, there's a variety of reasons. Um, you know, one of the early, one of the easiest things to look at is how big was that plant when you flipped it, especially if it's just one strain or two strains out of, let's say, ten that you run, that tend to stretch this far. You know, that might mean like, hey, we're going to have to treat this particular strain a little different. So for some strains, that might mean pushing generative, steering a bit longer, trying to keep that height down. It might mean not bulking it quite as hard.
Seth [00:28:37]:
Might also mean we need to crank the lights up and lower the lights down earlier on in the growth cycle so that we don't get, you know, such a long base part of the plant. I know a lot of times, Jason, you could echo this. You walk into a room where the lights are fixed to the ceiling. They've got no way of lowering them. And in a lot of older school setups or, you know, I would say midway to perfection setups, people are upgrading. Sometimes you don't have the ability to modulate your light output that much or the ability to raise and lower your lights. So what happens is we get a plant that stretches quite a lot during those first few weeks until it actually grows up into the light intensity levels that allow it to not stretch quite so much. So there's a, there's a few strategies there to go about it.
Seth [00:29:20]:
Um, I think, number one, look at your irrigation schedules. Look how long you're running generative versus vegetative. How long does that plant stretch? You know, if it's, uh, if you're switching to vegetative and you're like, man, this thing's stretching into, like, day 34. Well, uh, maybe tried running generative longer next time until you can actually document when that plant stops stretching. That's a big part of it. And, uh, yeah, get a light meter if you don't have one. I know, I've been there. Like, you go into the same room day after day after day, sometimes years on end, you know, and, man, I don't notice how.
Seth [00:29:56]:
How dim my old HPS bulbs are getting or just how little light I actually have at the canopy because I just haven't checked it in a while.
Jason [00:30:05]:
Yeah. You know some of the trends that I see is less, less topping. Um. And what allows people to do this is the things that we're talking about. What you're talking about here to better control the morphology, the shape and the size and how this plant is growing. So you know, optimally having some of this stuff documented and having those procedures to um. To make it so you don't have to do any bending. Um.
Jason [00:30:28]:
Like Seth said, you know snapping. Yeah. Probably not the best route to go for me. Topping. Um. If I can avoid it, I absolutely am. If I can get that plant to respond to these generative cues that, that I'm pressing and get it to. To bush out like I want.
Jason [00:30:42]:
Um. Just a good way to one save the plant growth that you're put some energy and time into and then to not waste your own energy and time. So let's uh, you know take those approaches and just optimize what we're inputting into the systems. Yeah.
Seth [00:30:57]:
And you know we used to the. The old term was super cropping going and snapping over a bunch of branches. But um. There's, there's kind of a. There's two sides to that right? On one side we're breaking a bunch of the vascular tissue in the plant. We're inducing a wound response where it's going to build up a bunch of callus. And then uh, you know in certain cases we do actually see greater bud production on that branch that was bent over. However, you know once we get into streamlined production, every time we go touch that plant, wound it, break it, anything like that, its not going to say it heals but for lack of a better word its got to heal.
Seth [00:31:28]:
The plant has to recover from that stress event and also you know, rebuild the damage that was done. So once were in commercial production and we cant run plants ten to twelve weeks. Um were on a rigid eight to nine week timeline. We may not have time to deal with that inefficiency for a few days. So where you know in previous situations some strains did respond well to that technique. It's better to approach some different techniques in terms of time management because if you're in any kind of scale going through and breaking every branch over in the room takes a long long time and is quite expensive. And then you know, part of the reason I bring up light, light intensity there. One of the.
Seth [00:32:09]:
A huge rule when it comes to plant hormones is, you know, auxins are driving our main stretch when we look at plants. You know, the ability for a plant to fall over and then start growing back up towards the light. Um, basically, that's just because oxen is, uh, it's antagonized by light. Light destroys oxen, especially uv rays, but light in general. So what you're seeing is when the branch is laying like this, there's a lower oxen concentration on the part of the branch that's facing upward towards the light. Therefore, the plant on the backside, where there's higher concentration, grows faster. And that's how plants always stay upright, essentially, at least with their growth. So what that tells us from a scientific side is that when we get that vegetable out of veg into the flower room, if we can optimize that light intensity and adapt that plant to a higher light intensity, that allows us to hit them with a higher light intensity.
Seth [00:32:58]:
Right when we get into the flower room, especially if we can maintain humidity. And that greater light intensity does two things. It pushes more productivity in the plant, especially if we have a hardened off to that light. And it also is acting to help us keep that internodal spacing down and stack more nodes on the plant, because it's not trying to, uh, reach toward the light, for lack of a better term.
Jason [00:33:22]:
Nice. I like it. All right, we've got, um, we've got igro Dapps has got, got a stack of questions here for us. I'm going to, uh, we're going to start off with the first one. Uh, and I'm gonna substitute his other question for the second question he's got, because it was talking about tanks, how to keep them clean. We kind of, we kind of hit.
Seth [00:33:40]:
That earlier in the show.
Jason [00:33:40]:
So, uh, he says, what are some combinations of veg gen cues one might give to steer finicky plants or overly veg slash gin strains, like GMO slash Mac one.
Seth [00:33:54]:
Yeah, that's a, that's actually a good, uh, dichotomous example there. Two extremes. Um, you know, GMO, when do you want to finish it? Can you grow it? Ten or eleven weeks. But if you got to harvest it at nine or ten, we're probably looking at running primarily generative. And that's, I would say, on this particular example. The reason is, you know, in my experience, growing it, anytime I started to hit it with multiple irrigations in the afternoon, my p two cycle, I would start to get an expression that was new Brax, new white pistols, just overall resistance to the plant finishing, you know, when everything else had completely red hairs, amber trichomes that GMO was just not ready yet and looked like it was still two weeks out. So in that production system, all I can really do is not try to bulk it or if I do, you know, bulk it for maybe a week mid cycle and then try to push it into finishing at least three weeks, you know, or try to push into gen at least three weeks before finishing. Uh, for Mac one, kind of the opposite.
Seth [00:34:54]:
You know, I've got a pretty small plant that like, hey, it's a, it's a semi dwarf. It doesn't like to get tall, not completely, no matter what I do, but it doesn't like to get tall. So that's one, you know, out there that commonly we'll see people veg for a little longer. They might go to a three week veg versus a two on their Mac one. And uh, we might actually start hitting that with more of a vegetative watering cue right out of the gate in the cycle because we're actually trying to get that to stretch up on Mac one. For instance, um, I've got a few other strains that have a similar quality where when I do a really, really good job with my generative steering and then go into bulking, those nugs are so tight. Um, there's, I like, there's not good airflow. You know, you, you basically grow yourself into a situation that's just promoting mold formation.
Seth [00:35:40]:
And depending on how well you can keep, you know, mold spores out of your environment, uh, that, that's what it's dependent on. You've created a bud that's just perfect to form that. So, you know, those are kind of two extremes. We've got one that you're going to bulk most of the way through. And then, you know, we've got strains like oreos growing back in the day where bulk it all the way through to week eight and it still finishes. So for some of your finicky strains, I think one of the best things you can do is really, really drill down on your crop registration and, you know, documentation on your irrigation strategy so you can really look at it. And another one, since we're always doing this very cyclically, it's happening all the time. Take pictures and attach them to your information.
Seth [00:36:19]:
So, you know, like, hey, at week four with this irrigation strategy, this is what I should expect to see. So that way you can start relating it. And then, you know, plant science, we've got a certain amount of theory. That theory was all developed and confirmed through experimentation. We do street strains out there that kind of buck the norm for the normal steering rules that we put on them. You know, and I'll definitely say with having a lot of friends out there, they're always trying different things. There are a lot of these strategies that people do stumble upon, and the reason that they're able to take advantage of that knowledge they accidentally generated is because they documented it well and they could look back and go, okay, those were the exact differences. We're going to try that again.
Seth [00:37:06]:
And, oh, hey, it produced the result that that was the thing that we did different that seemed to be effective for this plant. But I've also seen a lot of people that struggle with it because they are trying out these different things. But, you know, they might not be isolating their variables quite well enough. So they're kind of struggling between two different variables all the time, trying to figure out what's more effective or just not taking enough notes or not having enough pictures to effectively, at the end of the run, sit down and do a full analysis. And that's another thing to keep in mind, you know, when we're looking at like, hey, what's. What's this irrigation strategy do to my plant? There's those changes you see every day, especially if you've been growing those strains over and over and over. You'll walk in one day and go like, wow, I've never seen them this big at day 14, you know, or this short, conversely. Um, but we really can't make a great, great, you know, analysis of what happened in that run until we see the product at the end of it.
Seth [00:38:03]:
You know, we've got to look back and say, hey, how did this strategy steer the crop? Not how did the crop and its challenges steer my strategy on the way through, if that makes sense.
Jason [00:38:15]:
Makes sense. All right, we got a live question here that I'm going to toss in the mix. Riptabong asks, I have pollen Sachs. Excuse me? I have pollen Sachs on two strains at day 19 in flower that normally never have this problem. Irrigation schedule is strong, very little stress in that regard. Is there something more than light pollution that I should look at?
Seth [00:38:38]:
Uh, yeah, yeah, there's a few different things. Did you recently switch from HPS to led? I know a lot of growers that tend to struggle with that. We're looking at strands that have been, you know, sometimes selected for several, several generations under strictly an HPS spectrum. So that means we're selecting an expression based on a very particular range of light and then when we shift that to a full white spectrum or something a little cooler, we see a little bit different expression. That's definitely something that can be going on, you know, in different, different episodes. We've talked about things like gas leaks, which is always a funny one. And then, you know, one that I personally have seen quite a bit. And it's really frustrating because you do run the strain for a long time, is go look at your mom's dog, see if you have any pre flowering.
Seth [00:39:27]:
A lot of times, you know, you're looking for some major environmental factor, and it turns out you. You just have some mom health issues. And, you know, we're looking at plants that were, you know, they evolved for millions of years to go back to seed every six months or so. Every six to eight months. So, like, hey, when you keep a mom in. In one pot for, you know, we always try to say that three month line is about the end of what you want to go. Well, a lot of times it goes past that. And then also, you know, if we have things like accumulating bacterial loads, viral loads, any kind of health problem with the mom, if we're cloning that in future generations and not doing it in a way that's like reducing that load, um, we, you know, it.
Seth [00:40:07]:
You might have a mom that is green, and because you have it under not too high a PPFD, it's not super stressed in there, but it actually is starting to load up with pathogens, viruses, whatever it is. But a big expression you can see is just tiny Braxton pre flowers on your moms. If your moms are pre flowering, you might be dealing with some unstable genetics, holding the mom too long or some form of stress in there that, uh, is difficult. And, like, a big one I've seen is, uh, and we've actually seen this in the industry. You know, a couple years ago, a lot of people were keeping their moms in really, really big pots. I mean, when I first started, I think, what, 20 to 30 gallons, something like that. Jason, while we were running, well, what happens is, you know, those pots get so, uh, so full of fusarium pythium, different types of root bacterial rots, that there's a level of constant stress on that mother plant that is visually hard to tell because you're babying it in every other way. And eventually, that's just the expression we see out of that level of stress on the plant's immune system.
Seth [00:41:09]:
It's trying to reproduce because we're slowly killing it.
Jason [00:41:12]:
It caught on rift bong says no light switch. Always been hps.
Seth [00:41:18]:
Okay, well, that's good. I would probably look back at your mother's then. And, you know, also over time, we always, not necessarily on this show, but it's big in the industry, talking about, you know, moms and cuts, getting tired again. We're not taking these plants through any of their DNA repair processes that they evolved to go through. So that's why we do occasionally see sometimes mutations or declining plant health. There are ways around that. It can be very expensive sometimes. A solution that I've certainly utilized is to go back to the source of where I got that cut.
Seth [00:41:49]:
Hopefully, you have that option that you have. You know, a few friends or business associates will say any, any kind of contact that can maybe help you get a little bit fresher source of that and maybe get a cut from something that can isolate potential problems that haven't been introduced along the way since you've had it or in between, you know, you know, if you got it from the guy, your buddy that you got it from, got it. Maybe you're cutting out some, uh, some pathogens it might have experienced in that grow on the way to you.
Jason [00:42:18]:
Yeah, I was just recently actually helping a client, um, get some sources for doing, uh, tissue culture, uh, you know, cleaning up their, their genetics and, you know, just for, you know, rough estimate out there, about five grand per strain. Uh, looking at, uh, implementation time, about eight, eight, eight months to a year to get that fully cleaned up and then back into rotation. So definitely not necessarily something that you want to just try out first. Um, but. But if you've isolated that, it's. It's time to. To get it. Get it, uh, refresh and then, uh, a cool thing.
Jason [00:42:51]:
And I love it because it brings back some of the. The strains that have been in the market for two decades, three decades, you know, some of those really, really fun old school strains. And, uh, you know, maybe I'm just partial to them because I guess I'm getting old or something, but. Uh huh. But, but for me, it's. It's like, those are the ones that I know. Those are the ones that bring back some nostalgia.
Seth [00:43:11]:
Oh, yeah. And then we're, you know, because strains have cranked over so quickly over the last, you know, five to five, six years, it's really accelerated. Um, some of those. I always. When I'm talking to clients, anytime someone brings up marketing strategy, there's a company in Washington that grows. What is it? Super lemon haze? Which, you know, ten years ago was nothing special. You get it all day all over the west coast. But guess what? Its kind of a longer flowering strain.
Seth [00:43:38]:
Its not necessarily the biggest yielder ever, and a lot of people dont grow it, but its got that, you know, that brand to it, its got that name. A lot of people know what it is, and this particular company doesnt have a problem selling it. So we are talking tissue culture. Its important to kind of weigh your, you know, what, what do you stand to benefit from it? And honestly, if you can work out the budget, usually quite a bit, I think one of the keys, too, is working with these companies. Finding a good company can definitely be a challenge. But then understanding, too, that we're at a point in the industry where this type of technology and these services are only going to grow in popularity very, very quickly. Because this is a common problem that all kinds of horticultural producers experience, which is just, hey, now we have IPM, but it's plant pathology, IPM, we're managing plant diseases, whether it's viruses, we're looking at mutations, refreshing genetics. And what's the solution? We take them back to the lab, we refresh everything up, and then once we get them out into production, you know, every three to six months, we just refresh that with new moms from tissue culture.
Seth [00:44:45]:
That way we're trying to keep it as fresh as possible and not having to watch that potentially slow decline. And as we're seeing the introduction of HLV to, I don't know, I don't want to say most of the farms across America, but I always hate telling people to test for it. And that's sad news. And it comes back positive. But we're seeing that become an increasing problem. And as a producer, it's not necessarily economical for you to be able to just kill everything in your facility and start from scratch. Thats a pretty big investment that most of us cant make. The solution is just refreshing your moms and keeping that viral load below an economically impactful level.
Seth [00:45:25]:
Ultimately, with an IPM of any kind, you got to look at your economic injury threshold. And I was always taught to compare that to, what if I do nothing? How much money do I lose? Versus what if I do this? Because there are times when you might want to rip that crop down early on because you've identified a problem that, hey, could I get it to harvest? Sure. At a low quality, low yield, unsalable product. Well, that wasn't worth the money to get it that far.
Jason [00:45:54]:
So evaluate your opportunity cost. All right, great questions out here. As always, we do prioritize live questions on here. It looks like we've got another one in here. Sasha Okiri asking anonymously, does the open sprinkler. Oh, from anonymously. Sorry buddy. Does the open sprinkler data that is programmed within Arroyo show up in some fashion as part of an overall export of the harvest group? I don't believe that it does.
Jason [00:46:28]:
So it's just going to be recorded as in the recipe. So it's a great feature request. Uh, we'll get in the, in the list of things that we, we know that people would love to see because uh, obviously if we change that recipe, then we don't necessarily know how our irrigations were operated other than what's expressed in the graph itself, which is actually really the sole truth. Um, because yeah sure we can identify maybe a mistake that was made or something, or discrepancy between the open sprinkler and the actual irrigations that happened. But when it comes down to evaluating the performance of the harvest group and making comparisons, probably most important is what's actually the plant seeing. Yeah absolutely.
Seth [00:47:11]:
And with that graph data or just CSV format, we can very directly relate the, you know, an increase in volumetric water content to an irrigation event in real time. So we can look back at any point and say when did that irrigation go off? Right there. But yeah, it's definitely something we want to add in there and make always more visible and easier to use.
Jason [00:47:36]:
Let's jump back in. We've got, I grow dabs with a couple more questions here we haven't worked quite through. He's asking about before transplanting into lesser cleaned coco, would you recommend rinsing with hydrogen peroxide or anything else at some point in the process before or after loading plants? If so, what would happen if you use too much or too little? Cant wait for the next episode.
Seth [00:48:03]:
Lets see, before transplanting into lesser clean coco, um, you know if ive got some coco that I hydrate with rock or ro look at it. Hey, the runoffs red. I tested its at like a 1.2 ec. I know thats going to be mostly sodium. Typically what Im looking at doing is using like a three to 500 ppm calmag feed to rinse that out. Part of that's because hey, I could use any kind of nutrient mix. I wanted to provide that. It's got a little bit of calcium and magnesium in there.
Seth [00:48:31]:
Most of your standard mixes do. However, the that cal mag application is typically cheaper than mixing up a full nutrient batch and wasting any of that. To do this rinsing because what you're going to be doing, what you're going to be doing is repeatedly bringing those to field, bringing those above field capacity, letting them run off and just manually flushing them out, essentially, which is definitely annoying and highly wasteful. As far as hydrogen peroxide, um, you know, ideally not. It's certainly something you could do if you think you've got some fungal or bacterial contamination in there. However, at that point, that's where I'd probably want to start calling it and saying, I'm not ever going to buy that coco again. Um, as far as putting too much H 02:02 in there, just remember that it's a peroxide. It's got oxidative action.
Seth [00:49:17]:
So if you put too much in and planted your plant into that mix into that media too quickly afterward, you could definitely do a lot of root damage and kill your plant for sure. You could definitely torch that thing. So, uh, if you're going to do that, if you let that sit for about 24 hours, most of that H 02:02 is going to be gassed off. And you could plant into it just like it was hydrated with water.
Jason [00:49:39]:
I would ph your pre rinse cal mag in that coco as well.
Seth [00:49:45]:
Yeah, check your, check your runoff. You're getting off of that coco, too. If you think it's dirty, get that Ec and get your ph and just look at what you're dealing with. You know, it, it. I've certainly seen situations where I've made the choice to say, no, we're not going to plant in this. Like, why? Well, what are we going to do? Sit here for two days trying to rinse it out by hand? You know, like, let's just go to the store and get more.
Jason [00:50:04]:
It's better to say that before you plant than five weeks into heart into flower.
Seth [00:50:09]:
Oh, yeah, yeah. And yeah, there's nothing worse than, you know, just like, hey, this was simple. We just went and planted all this out, and a week later, all your.
Jason [00:50:15]:
Veg plants are dead or worse, performing poorly. Now you have to make a decision.
Seth [00:50:20]:
Yeah. You got them. Yeah. The longer they're sitting in there doing bad, the more money it's costing you.
Jason [00:50:24]:
Yeah, exactly. All right, last question here from igro dabs, not last question of the episode, just from him. When would you phase out silica from your recipes?
Seth [00:50:36]:
Are we talking about economics or just full of salt?
Jason [00:50:41]:
Yeah, I mean, usually I, I would think about halfway through a flower, um, maybe three quarters, way through a flower, um, and a lot of it, like Seth said, economics it just depends on what concentration that you're, you're supplementing with. Um, most, most of your plant cells are going to be pretty well reinforced. They're going to have taken full advantage of the silica by the time that, you know, we hit the end of our, our generative stacking.
Seth [00:51:07]:
Yeah, typically, you know, bare minimum. I want to run it about a week after I'm done in generative just to make sure that I've kind of accommodated that strain and, you know, kind of understanding what that silica is doing and what it's not doing for your plant. So just like Jason mentioned earlier, it's really beefy beefing up the surface of the plant and making it both physically and chemically tougher, making it more difficult for any bugs to get in. Also, if you have run a mix that's low on silica without silica supplementation, then started to supplement, usually you'll notice the surface of your plants gets a little rougher, uh, almost more sandpapery like, you know, your leaves get stronger. And that's really what we're looking to do is, you know, help that plant build the best, most healthy structure to take on the weight of those buds we plan on stacking on there. Um, at a certain point when the plants not building as much structure, most of that silica is just going to run out the bottom of the pot. So there's really just looking at, okay, what's the point of diminishing returns where we don't need to be spending this much money every day? You know, I know back when I was first starting to experiment with that, mixing up 250 gallons at once, wed start running through what felt to me like a lot of money in silicon every day when it was first hitting the market and thats when it was like, okay, lets pay attention to that. But alternatively, before we had to buy the second batch of it and we remembered what that cost, were just putting it up pretty much full dose every day all the way through because there didnt seem to be any adverse effects to doing that.
Jason [00:52:38]:
Nice. All right, we got, we got time for one more. Let's, should we pick out the best the group here? Let's finish off strong. You want to do last fertigation before harvest?
Seth [00:52:59]:
Yeah, yeah, let's talk about that.
Jason [00:53:01]:
All right, we got zombie rider in here. Submitted. When do you give your last fertigation before harvest? Question mark, 24 hours?
Seth [00:53:10]:
Uh, potentially, yeah. It depends what my harvest plan is. You know, um, I know me personally. Uh, excuse me. Uh, there we go. If, if I'm gonna have a crew go in there. I really like to make sure that that room is, you know, not 75 degrees, more like 70 degrees. Turn off a good portion of the lights, which means, like, hey, that last day when we're actually harvesting, there's a chance we're not going to get nearly as much transpiration as we did the day before.
Seth [00:53:38]:
So sometimes 24 hours is fine. However, I want to watch that water content and make sure that no plant is going to hit a point where it's approaching temporary wilting point or, you know, high ec, low ph stress right before harvesting. I always want to be cutting as healthy of a plant as possible. And although there's, like, a little bit of the intuitive wisdom that might tell us, like, hey, if I put water on the plant today, and the longer I wait, you know, the closer to dry that plant is, perhaps when I cut it down. But the reality is we want that plant, like I said, to be as healthy as possible when we cut it, because that means that plant, that plant still has active immunity to things like mold. So that's kind of my take on it. You know, I don't want those. And then there's a balance, too, where hopefully I don't drench everything that morning so that the pots aren't super heavy and I have to carry them out of the room, you know, but I guess probably a big thing that, that it comes down to is, yeah, the labor aspect to it.
Seth [00:54:34]:
And then are you going to be pushing any environmental parameters that are going to be dangerous during those last 24 hours in spite of the low water content?
Jason [00:54:41]:
Yeah. What I do is I take a look at what your typical drybacks are towards the end of harvest. And if you don't have those, then if you're in the ripening phase, look at, look at what those are at, you know, for it, you know, 30%, 35% dry back, and I'm in a 60% field capacity, then we can maybe just barely get away with skipping that last days irrigation. Um, and really what we're doing there is, it's just trying not to get to that temporary wilting point. So that is different for different types of substrates. Um, I guess if I was in rockwool, I probably wouldn't want to drop below about 15%, um, ten to 15% water content for the last day. And if I was in coco, probably wouldn't want to try to get too much under about 15% to 20%. Yeah.
Seth [00:55:26]:
A strategy I've used for just for simplicity is, you know, you've got your, your generative schedule running. Hopefully you're in a well sized pot so you're not putting on too many p two s at all. Hopefully none. But, uh, when I start that morning, ideally I'm watering one or 2 hours after lights off or after lights on. That means, you know, crews going in, they start right before they start harvesting a bench. They shut that valve off, then they're working on that. The other benches fire off as needed. Hey, they moved to the second bench.
Seth [00:55:54]:
They shut that one off. And if they finish harvesting much, you know, anything before us in between two p ones, we're not going to add any Extra Water to the room on those benches, making it more Humid or those pots heavier. But if it's going to take me from 08:00 a.m. To 05:00 p.m. To complete this harvest, yeah. A good portion of that room could use a p one just to make sure that it's going to be healthy throughout the rest of the day.
Jason [00:56:20]:
Perfect. Well, it's great episode today. I was kind of fun playing as Kaisha. Hope everyone enjoyed the show. Not sure how we wrap it up here, but I guess I could read off some of the script. If you want to learn more about Arroyo, jump in and book a demo at Arroyo IO, and we'll give you a full session talking about the platform itself and get you information on the hardware that you need. Get a quote rolling for you if you're interested in it. You got any questions, then drop them in the royal app.
Jason [00:56:51]:
You can email us at sales arroyo IO or at arroyo IO, Instagram or Facebook, DM's, LinkedIn, reach out. You can send them up on YouTube. Thanks for watching.
Seth [00:57:04]:
Yeah, hopefully we did it without Kaisha. Yeah, you did a good job, Jason. Thanks for doing that episode 98.
Jason [00:57:11]:
We're getting better at it.