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Seth Baumgartner and Jason Van Leuven open the mics for your crop steering and cultivation questions.
Kaisha [00:00:01]:
You. What's up, gromies? Welcome to Aroya awful sours, your source for free cannabis cultivation education. I am your moderator, Kaisha. We are on episode 97. If you're on the hangout or checking us live on YouTube or Instagram, drop your question in the chat, and if it gets picked, we will cover it during the show. Seth and Jason, how you doing, guys?
Jason [00:00:25]:
Good it?
Kaisha [00:00:27]:
Yeah. You ready for our first question?
Seth [00:00:29]:
Yeah, let's jump in.
Kaisha [00:00:30]:
All right. We got a lot. Let's just get right to it. So Dave dropped this one last week. He writes in situations where we have to water into the night due to drying back so much, would it be better to put the last shot one to 2 hours after lights off or hitting it with an emergency shot one to 2 hours before lights on to see if we one to 2 hours before lights on. If we see 15% to 17% water content.
Jason [00:00:59]:
Let's start off with a few caveats here. 15 to 17, if I'm running generative really hard in coco, might not be too worried about getting emergency irrigation in there. I personally would rather go one to 2 hours before lights on just because I don't like to have higher water contents in my plants during the night. That being said, if you just give them a couple of bumps over the night, that's not a bad route to go either. Optimal solution here is get a little bit more media volume available, or if you are in a one gallon coco at 40%, then get a one gallon coco that hits that 65% capacity. So you got a few options here.
Seth [00:01:41]:
Yeah. And maybe look at what in your process is contributing to having too big of a plant for your container size. I know I've definitely encountered that situation a bunch where we moved down to a smaller container, still vegging our plants the same amount of time, maybe just flipping them a little bit too big for that container. And this is another thing. We always pound in time series data and crop registration. But if you can watch that dryback overnight and then have some environmental parameters, you might find that you are a lot better off irrigating closer to the morning. Just because we always see that lights off humidity swing, it's really difficult to get that under control. And if you're already in this position, I would hope that we're looking more at ripening at this point, that this isn't happening by week three, where we're already drying back to dangerous levels.
Seth [00:02:26]:
If it is happening at ripening especially, we want to really manage that overnight humidity in the room. And anytime we put water in, especially overnight, it really is going to shoot that humidity up. So trying to pinpoint like hey, we're hitting the danger zone. What do I need to get me through till I turn the lights on and I can actually water with some serious strategy.
Kaisha [00:02:47]:
Got to watch out for that danger zone. Awesome. Thank you guys for that. Dave, good luck. Keep us posted. We have a few irrigation questions. Let's just talk about irrigation for a little bit. So James dropped this one.
Kaisha [00:02:58]:
They write what irrigation schedule do you give for generative and bulking? Running an indoor grow, having issues with growing bigger buds.
Jason [00:03:09]:
Yeah, so generative and bulking. A lot of times I'll run similar P ones. Really the options are is anytime I'm running P ones, I never want to do less than four shots to get to field capacity. A lot of times to keep things simple. If I've got an overwhelmed schedule of trying to manage complexity at the facility anyways, a lot of times I'll just keep those p ones the same when I'm doing bulking vegetative. Ideally I'll just do twice as many irrigations at half that size to get up to field capacity just because every irrigation is bringing oxygen, encouraging a plant growth response. That being said though, like I said, if that complexity is too much, I'll just leave my P one type irrigations the same. When I go into vegetative bulking, it's just clean, it's easy.
Jason [00:03:57]:
Like I'm making less changes, less chance of mistake. Every time we make a change somewhere there's a chance we get an ampm wrong. There's a chance that we get like I was typing stuff in today and I put an extra eight on there. So I was 882 rather than 82. That'll be plenty warm enough for plants, right? Sorry, but yes. So that'll be the only thing that I really share between generative stacking and vegetative bulking. A question was worded in such excuse me that I'm not sure if he was asking for what's the same or how do we do each one?
Seth [00:04:32]:
Yeah, let's just cover some basics. When we're talking about crop steering in general, we're looking at phase one or program one and phase two or program two irrigations when we've got a true generative steer. Ideally we're only utilizing p one irrigations to reach field capacity, hopefully within a two hour window, and to try to push that 22 hours dryback. And then once we're going into bulking, we're still achieving field capacity. And just as Jason was saying, if we're really trying to optimize it for some strains, we might be adding more smaller events to that p one to maximize our total number of shots. And then in that p two we're usually looking at at least a shot every hour. And basically we're letting it dry back just enough that we know we're not going to push extra runoff. So usually anywhere from 2%.
Seth [00:05:16]:
And then we're going to be bringing that water content up not to field capacity, letting it dry back and replacing it. And a lot of times what that looks like, especially if we're talking about a bigger production facility where we've got let's say 17 or 20 rooms and a limited number of people to go reset that irrigation cycle every day. Plus maybe you're also battling with cycle times on your irrigation. So hey, I'd love to put on twelve P ones that are super small at one and a half percent, but maybe I can't cycle through my irrigation the facility quickly enough to actually meet demand and follow the schedule. I want to stay on to hit field capacity. And if that's the case, that's where we're looking at. Usually in the range of four, sometimes up to eight P ones. But just as Jason said, if you got four you're rolling to bulking.
Seth [00:06:01]:
A really easy way to do it is you've already been increasing those P one volumes and sometimes adding events depending on your media situation. But you've established what you need to get field capacity, usually by three or four weeks in you've got a pretty good solid p one strategy where it's predictable and you're not having to change it. Absolutely. Every day when we roll into bulking now we're just looking at what is that interval time to get those small replenishment events that we want and then try to cut irrigation 2 hours before lights off to let it dry back. So there are some similarities, there's some differences. I think the biggest thing is getting familiar with the idea that hey, we've got our two hour window that we're looking at for generative, we're trying to give it the longest dryback possible and then with bulking we're looking for the strategy that hopefully fits that strain. But understanding that the more we stimulate that plant with shots over a longer period of time, that's how we're going to push that overall bulking behavior in the plant leading to bigger buds.
Jason [00:07:01]:
And always when we're trying to explain this stuff, when we talk about generative, we're leaning on a fairly extreme or very generative type of recommendation. Same thing with vegetative. If I'm talking about an eight hour, ten hour vegetative irrigation window. First irrigation to last irrigation, that's pretty vegetative, right. And then for generative, if we're talking about getting the field capacity in 1 hour. So 1 hour irrigation window or maybe two hour irrigation window like you were talking about, that's fairly generative. There's always some gray space in there in between that some strains actually do prefer. So when we're talking about this, it is a sliding scale.
Jason [00:07:44]:
And a lot of times we're explaining one end of the scale versus the other end of the scale just because it's easier to generalize that. Right. If we have a perfectly balanced type of irrigation and environment, then we can't.
Seth [00:07:57]:
Really talk about vegetative ore. Yeah, and I think another thing that's important to understand too, if you're looking at developing a steering strategy for a strain, there's a few things we look at, one of them being how sensitive is this plant to, let's say an excessive number of shots in a day? How long do we need to run bulking to still be able to ripen up this plant in the timeline that we want to ripen it up? So there's a few factors to consider there. But one of the biggest ones that I've definitely seen people struggle with is operating in a fully reactive state. So they're checking their irrigation every morning and then trying to make some radical changes. And what we really need to do is try to follow a program, making some small adjustments to, let's say, keep our EC and ph in the range we want to. But trying to follow that strategy so that, hey, we actually did get three to four weeks of a true generative steer on this plant without bouncing back and forth. That's one frustrating thing, I think, for people that first go down this road of improving their crops through irrigation is every day is a chance to make a change. And unfortunately, those changes we have to make need to be small.
Seth [00:09:03]:
We need to stick to that overall irrigation strategy, because if I flush out my EC reactively, suddenly I've ruined how that plant might react to the higher light levels that I want to put. It won't be able to take as much input energy. So you really have to stick to a plan, maintain parameters, and wait until you've either killed your plants or had a successful harvest to evaluate whether that strategy worked out. And then also take that holistic approach and say hey, did I have some extreme humidity or temperature issues that might have influenced me to change that? And what did that do to my crop? If my AC went out and suddenly I could run, I had trouble getting it down below 80 degrees on the plant during the daytime. For the last four weeks of my run, I might expect to see some quality problems no matter what I did with my irrigation in that situation, a.
Jason [00:09:54]:
Lot of it comes down to the idea of the harvest group. Right. This was a feature that was really in our heads before Aroya was even a product. And some of the things that I always like to say was, don't let the crop steer you. Right. Just kind of a play on words. Because we want to outline. Here's what we anticipate to do.
Jason [00:10:15]:
Here's how we can outline things that's easier for a business schedule. It's never going to be perfect. Every run we do need to make some small tweaks, but those shouldn't be major reactive decisions. Those should be on a scale of less than 10% change, typically, unless something really bad has happened. So keep that in mind when we say it's crop steering. Really the goal is we're trying to control it for a desired outcome, for some stability in the yield and quality of these products.
Kaisha [00:10:48]:
Don't let the crop steer you. Those are such wise words. Awesome. Great overview, guys. Thank you. The live questions are coming in hot on YouTube and Instagram. Let me change gears. Julie stopped this one they write, how can I differentiate a nutrient excess versus a nutrient deficiency? I started seeing some markings in my leaves, but I really can't tell what's causing it.
Jason [00:11:10]:
Leaf tissue analysis. Send it in. When I started, I was always printing those off. As far as. Here's a list of nutrient deficiencies and excesses and here's what they look like in the plant. And yeah, some of them are fairly defined, and then most of them actually just look like something else on the chart. Right. That's like, oh, this excess might look like that deficiency.
Seth [00:11:33]:
Yeah, I think before you even get to that level, number one, tissue analysis is great, right? Yeah, I was going to say ph. And unfortunately, usually the road we go down once we talk to people about tissue analysis is, hey, we see that you've got too little calcium or nitrogen or name a nutrient we're looking for. Okay, what's the solution? Increase your feedyc. So another thing that, although lab tests are great, one of the biggest things you need to understand as a cultivator is how to actually make those improvements. So number one, by the time you notice it, you're not going to fix that leaf. You can only hope that the new leaves that grow are going to be nice and green the way we want them. Number two, we got to look like, hey, it looks like I've got a deficiency. What is my root zone Ec? Am I seeing values that are below, let's say, a 4.0 while I'm running 1000 plus ppfD? Okay.
Seth [00:12:23]:
I know that at those light levels, that EC becomes very important to the plant, being able to keep up with all of its processes, such as photosynthesis and tissue building in order to tolerate that much light, that much energy input. So right there, if I'm seeing some leaf striping very pale green to yellowing plants, and I know that I've got a very imbalanced input set, that's the first place I'm going to look. And in that case, raising your feed EC and building up your substrate EC is going to be the solution to getting more of the minerals that you need into that plant so that it can take advantage of them. And then usually when we're looking at the difference between too little and too much, when we talk about specific nutrient toxicities, you're either dealing with a fertilizer that wasn't manufactured properly, you got a bad batch. So it actually does have toxic levels of something. But in most well balanced formulations, we're not giving the plant any particular element that's going to produce an actual toxicity in terms of plant health. Like, we talk about plants having too much nitrogen, having a downturn leaf tip, putting out vegetative growth, that downturn leaf tip and continued production of foliage and flowers is not necessarily a sign of bad plant health. That's just the expression we're getting out of giving it that much nitrogen.
Seth [00:13:45]:
We haven't given it enough nitrogen to actually kill the plant or cause it to decline. We're just not getting the expression we want. So usually when we go to we're know nutrient toxicities, most of the time, that classic lockout that we talk about when your EC gets really high. Well, if I've been cutting runoff, stacking up my EC, and not replenishing that ion balance, a lot of times I've drifted down into like a four to five ph range. And in that zone, the plant is functionally deficient on almost all of its nutrients. And then at the other extreme end, let's say I've been feeding it at a 5.0 EC, pushing a lot of runoff through there. Well, all I'm doing is pushing more of that fertilizer through the block and wasting my money. I'm not likely to push it high enough with my.
Seth [00:14:30]:
If my feed EC, let's say, is restricted to a three to four EC, if I feed it too heavy, the worst I can do is wash it back down to that three to four Ec. In which case if you're highlight, for instance, that might not be enough. But you can really glean a lot by looking at your whole system and just finding out where am I short on my inputs, what is out of balance here? And that's usually a good sign to point you in the right direction. And unfortunately that ranges everything everywhere from getting those light levels at the canopy, getting that time series data on what your environment is doing day and night. Do your lights go out and you're getting no transpiration overnight because the humidity goes completely too high? Is that causing us to not get enough water and nutrients up to the plant? So we're seeing some issues. There's a whole host of things, but that's why we always know. Crop registration time series data, pay attention to everything and you can usually find weak points there without jumping to some crazy conclusions. And then always remember like, hey, we've got a crop that turns around in about two months once we get into the flower room.
Seth [00:15:35]:
So as Jason said, there's rarely a perfect run. Things kind of happen all the time. There's always little failures in the facility. But we're turning it over so quick, it's not like we're waiting for next year to try this again. Guys, it's more like next week or next month to make the change and then see how that's affecting that next crop.
Jason [00:15:55]:
Yeah, we're putting a lot of information out there, so I kind of want to just break this down into a few step process of like, all right, I think I have a nutrient deficiency. Well, are you seeing that because your PHs are off or are you trying to recognize that from your eyes? If your PHs are off, if you recognize it with your eyes, look at your time series data. Are your plants eating more nutrients than you're feeding them?
Seth [00:16:18]:
Easy.
Jason [00:16:19]:
Fix up the nutrient levels. If you work through these things and you still find that there's a problem, or you just want to validate it, then get that leaf tissue analysis that's going to tell you what is in excess, what is too low, not that you are. You should be identifying that with simpler, faster, more effective means. That being said, I love them just because they're very scientific and pinpointed. But if you're mixing your own nutrients, it's not going to hurt to do that anyways.
Seth [00:16:48]:
Yeah. And now we have a little bit greater access to that as cultivators. Companies like Arvum are around now that are specialized in the cannabis industry, they have a lot better insight. If we rewind back the clock a few years, there was kind of difficult. You had to send your hemp samples to potentially a state university to get your tissue analysis done, and then they gave you back values that were very approximate for. Usually I go with tomatoes. It's like the closest nutritional needs I'm going to get right now. We do have access to that.
Seth [00:17:20]:
And quick turn. Yes, quick turn. You're getting your information back quickly. And now that there's deeper engagement in the cannabis community, some of these companies are really putting focus into helping that continued education, where it's like, hey, no, I want you to do this as a service, not just send us one sample and we'll try to help you. We want to give you the complete picture. So if you are going to go down that route, which I do highly recommend, I think if you're just learning about plant nutrition, looking at some of those tests over time, over the lifecycle of your plants, especially different strains that are growing in the same conditions, can really help you understand some of these really particular differences and what you're looking for. More information is always better, right? The more ways you can measure something, the more you can learn about it. So, yeah, go after it.
Seth [00:18:07]:
Just understand that the power is still in your hands. Once you get that tissue test back, you still have to figure out what exactly you're going to do about it and achieve those results. If Jason tells you to feed a 3.5, you still got to do some math and mix up a 3.5. It all starts on that operator's levels and is in the hands of the growers.
Jason [00:18:28]:
There's just so many nutrient options available right now that it's like all the rest of the recommendations that we make. We're trying to group a whole bunch of different ways to grow and make some recommendations. If I say 35, that's going to be actually optimally different depending on if we're two part salts, who our two part salt vendor is, what those NPK values look like, all of that stuff, and especially if we're still running a liquid nutrient. So, yeah, we're just trying to make the most generalized, helpful information come out there.
Kaisha [00:19:04]:
Trying to drop some science as guidance. Right? Awesome, you guys, thank you for that. On the subject of issues with leaves, Alexander dropped this question on YouTube. What does it mean when my plants have tip burn? I'm forced to hand water this room every day, once a day in six inch rock wool with a 3.0 ec and 6.2 ph.
Jason [00:19:27]:
Could be a ton of things. Sometimes when we're looking at highlight levels too early, we can get some of that at 6.2. If you're in one of the soilless medias that are most popular for production these days, coco, Rockwell or coco perlite type blends. Probably a little bit too high on that ph and we might see some nutrient imbalance. So those are the questions that I would ask is, are my parameters in check to avoid this? If one of them is not, then you can dive a little deeper into maybe some strain specific responses.
Seth [00:20:00]:
Yeah. When we're looking at leaf tip damage specifically, it kind of leads us down a road where we're looking at, okay, what is causing stress to the plant that's making it difficult to get water and nutrients out to this portion of the plant? So when we're looking at a general deficiency or, say, low ph for too long of a time, we might see spots or symptoms on the entire leaf. When we're looking at specifically leaf tip burn, the reason we're seeing that is that's the distal end of the plant. That's the farthest the water has to go from the root out to the very tip of that leaf. It takes the most energy to get there. So when we have a plant stress event that causes that to happen, typically that means it's more of a water stress issue or a holistic stress issue. So in this case, since you already indicated you're in six inch Rockwell cubes, I would say there's a strong chance that at different points, your plants are eating up a lot of water and you're having to put a lot on to try to maintain that, which if we've got a little bit of non uniformity in the crop, and we're also fighting this thing where, and we always pick on the Hugo's, I guess, just because this is a constant thing we run into in the industry. But I've seen many a Hugo grower that's growing in Hugo's have an issue or six by six by six, whatever brand you get, basically they've outgrown the pot by the end of like week three or four.
Seth [00:21:16]:
And we've hit a point where, hey, we're putting water on all day, we're effectively in vegetative bulking. But these plants are getting so big and going so hard that we hit a point even by week six, where if we have a dripper plug up for a day, we've got a dead plant. And what that means is when you have a huge dryback range, your plant is experiencing a really wide range of osmotic stress, wide range of water stress. All of its parameters to do at the root zone are ranging wildly throughout the day. And by wildly, some things are starting low, like you see, raising up really high water content, starting high, dropping very low. So cumulatively, throughout a few weeks of that, we're seeing those symptoms pop up because they're just slowly building up every day when we hit those extreme ends, particularly with deep, deep drybacks, I would say when you're running the hugo's, that tends to be you take the plant from a very comfortable zone, and then for a certain part of the day, every single day, there's a good chance it's going down into a pretty uncomfortable zone that it doesn't like, and it's just not there long enough for us to see wilting or actual plant death, just a slow accumulation of symptoms.
Jason [00:22:28]:
Well, keep in mind for me, stress is always a trigger word with cannabis, just because I think a lot of times it's used, even within the scientific community specifically for cannabis, just because we've got fairly unique set of parameters in contrast to some of the traditional horticulture things. And if we're in Rockwell, we should never even be getting close to water stress, unless maybe you're going crazy at the generative, maybe the last three, four, or five days max. And that's simply because when we're looking at Rockwell, the plant available water is always there, unless we're below 5% water content. And so for Rockwell, in order to even just maintain the properties of that Rockwell throughout the run, we need to just be staying above 30, 35% water content. So always keep that in mind when we're trying to identify, all right, what stressor might have caused this plant.
Seth [00:23:29]:
You know, that's a good point to bring up, Jason, because one thing I've definitely seen a lot, especially with the small volume rock wool, is we do hit a point where we've reduced that field capacity. Now we're steering within a narrower range, but we've already built some EC up in the block, and now we're drying back to a point where we're not necessarily putting water stress on the plant because we are in rock wool. But maybe that last 5% of dryback pushed the EC high enough where the plant is experiencing an undue amount of osmotic stress for, let's say, even three or 4 hours a day right before the lights come on. And that's where, again, that time series data really helps you identify. Hey, on my EC, I notice when I dry back past a certain point, it's really cranking up. Okay, what could the effects of that be? What am I seeing my plants do when my EC is, let's say, at the wettest point of four? But now that I'm drying back instead of the 25% vWc, I'm down at 15. And where that used to rise from a four to a nine, now it's rising from a four to the sensors picking up like a 22. Now, sometimes, especially at the really low water contents, we might have trouble getting a good EC reading.
Seth [00:24:39]:
But one nice thing about sensors in general is unless they're really broken, they're not going to outright lie to you. You can install them wrong. You can put them in a situation where they're out of their general tolerance range or out of their best range of operation, but when you register a change on that sensor, something's happening. So when you start to see these variations and then plant health issues happening at the same time, you can start to draw a little bit of correlation and say, hey, every time that I run my run like this up to this point, I start to see these symptoms. Here's one thing that really stands out. And like I said, a lot of times, that might be really high EC for just a little bit of the day. And to correct that, that's where we might need to go with a shot before the lights come on. Trying to identify that time or what we always talk about, instead of band aiding it, fix the problem, grow smaller plants in your hugo's, or switch to a media that gives you a little bit more comfortability on maintaining that field capacity and keeping everything optimal for your plant.
Kaisha [00:25:44]:
Oh, my gosh. That was great advice, you guys. Thank you so much for that. Thank you for that question. Okay, we got, speaking of sensors, we got this question here. Someone wrote in, I'm new to using a TDR sensor. I'm in slabs now, and my readings indicate my poor water EC is rising with every p two shot and decreasing while drying back in p three seems to be the opposite of what I should be expecting. What do you guys think?
Jason [00:26:11]:
It sounds like just your overall EC level in the root zone is too low. So if we're, say, irrigating it, say, 3.0 and that's rising our EC. That means that the EC on the substrate is less than 3.0. When we're irrigating, that just means that the plant's eating more than we're supplying from a day to day basis. Same thing. It's going to always just drop. And when we're irrigating, typically we want to be stabilizing our EC, not necessarily providing just enough nutrients for that plant to stay alive. We want to provide more nutrients, allow that plant to thrive, and then if there's any preferential uptake in nutrient levels, at least the plant has enough to satisfy a balance.
Seth [00:26:58]:
Yeah, when we talk about crop steering, specifically in cannabis, we're also starting to use those elevating EC levels as a tool to apply osmotic pressure. I'm not going to say stress, Jason, because we get all kinds of guff about that, but what we're trying to do is use that as a tool to apply to the plant to say, hey, we're increasing all these available elements to you. At a certain time, though, we can actually restrict the availability of those elements by raising that EC for a period of time in the day to slow down the uptake. And when we do that, that's how we can shorten inner node space, because we're not allowing the plant to take up as much nitrate and grow nearly as much during that time period. And that's just one small example. But this is probably the first type of commercial agriculture where we're really starting to use that EC as a tool to affect plant expression. Whereas in traditional egg, exactly what you're describing is what we'd be looking for. Perfect efficiency.
Seth [00:27:52]:
I feed the plant, it eats it up. I feed the plant, it eats it up, and I get an acceptable product based on the inputs that I put in, which I'm constantly trying to economize. Luckily, we have a commodity price high enough and an industry standard that, hey, cannabis producers do have to spend more on fertilizer than any other crop, and that's something we know and as consumers end up paying for.
Jason [00:28:20]:
Anytime that we start talking about osmotic potential, I get super excited and I start seeing visuals in my head of Tugger pressure and plant cells and how they're responding to the salt concentrations, right? And so when we're thinking about Tugger pressure, the osmotic potential between the root zone, between what's in the substrate and the plant itself, typically we have a little bit higher concentration of salts in the plant, right? Unless we're just way hypertonic. Situation. And so what's happening is obviously the more Tugger pressure, the more pressure that plant is applying on pulling up water. And that's why we see elongated node spacing, that type of stuff. So as we get closer to having the EC levels the same in the substrate as in the plant, getting closer to an isotonic situation, that's actually decreasing the tugger pressure in this plant. And so if we do that in a realm where our water contents are all within a reasonable amount, it's controlling that plant's growth. And so you'll hear us talk about plant physiology, and that's basically modifying those substrate conditions in order to get that plant to do what we'd like for our facility and for our output.
Seth [00:29:39]:
Yeah, I think it's important to understand too, as a grower, you're always going to be applying different things and learning about some of these different variables. And as you're going down this journey, reading about general plant physiology is a really good way to help. Just like Jason said, visualize what's going on in that plant, and then you can start to look at what kind of expression you're getting out of your plants and understand why might this particular plant stretched more or less on this run? Hey, I've grown this plant ten times and it's never came out like this. Let's start investigating the variables and figure out did I have a better EC curve where I was able to slowly crank it up and maintain a very slow and even stack of my EC, and then maintain it exactly where I want to and then write out the end exactly how I wanted to? Or, hey, this run, it stretched more, but when I look back, I had a pretty low EC state where, let's say, my EC line was fairly parallel to my water content line, and I was just never able to achieve that level of osmotic pressure on the plant. On some strains, I might notice that if I can't get that EC high enough, even if I was able to avoid some plant health issues, the difference between running one strain at a 3.0 or a 4.0 baseline compared to running the same strain at a six or seven or an eight baseline, I might see a fairly dramatic difference in expression. Maybe not so much in the buds that end up in the jar, but as a grower, I might walk in and say, hey, this plant is normally kind of not fun to wrestle with. Like, it's really branchy, it's too tall, it's floppy, it's weak. Oh, hey, on this round, we did get that Ec up and we're seeing that, hey, we've got a healthier plant than usual.
Seth [00:31:18]:
We've got stiffer branches, we've got a better overall structure that allows us to be more efficient in our cultivation operations. And that was the only thing we changed. And that's another part of this is really dialing your facility to make repeatable runs. That's also huge in this whole process, because if you have too many changes going on, it's too many variables and it's really difficult to pinpoint which one is actionable, which one made the difference, and which one do you want to do to make the difference next time?
Jason [00:31:49]:
Yeah, and I was going to mention, anytime that we start diving into what we think caused something else in a plant, this is when it's absolutely critical to have that data documented. It was so many times that I went in to try and identify what had happened to cause my plants to be either the good or the bad that I was seeing that round, that sometimes I just didn't have good enough documentation to suggest that, hey, this change that we made was the reason for it. Just like you were talking about, all right, the stretching. Did we hit the easy levels that we wanted? Well, did someone forget to turn up the lights or turned up the lights too much? And now we had a plant height that was just right or just wrong. So that's when that documentation, something like harvest groups, where we can go back and look at the most of the nine cardinal parameters that we can and actually see what kind of notes we're taking into that crop registration that suggests that, okay, this is that singular variable. This is the one that changed and have enough evidence to suggest that that was the actual cause, rather than maybe some accidental thing that sometimes happens in some facilities.
Seth [00:33:03]:
Yeah, I mean, I can think of a great example. I've encountered a bunch which is, hey, my plant looks like this name a symptom in your mind. And my first question is, hey, what's your runoff ph been? They go, oh, well, we'll check it first thing. And I'm like, well, cool. And then they come back and, hey, it was 4.8. Like, okay, well, we got a problem. My next question is, can you show me your validation sheets from last week or the week before or the week before that? And then you go look and say, oh, well, we weren't taking runoff samples at that time. Like, okay, guys, we identified the problem.
Seth [00:33:35]:
What we really needed to do is have a time series, well, just a daily series of data for that particular data set. So we can pinpoint when we actually started to run into the problem because that's when we needed to fix it, like with our ph issues. I want to see that daily reading, because what that's going to help me prove to you is that the changes you need to make are usually like a week before we start seeing these symptoms. We can identify that we've got this problem building and correct it before it actually becomes a symptomatic issue, rather than only reacting when it gets pretty bad. A great example I can use, and I know a lot of people, especially if you've been running a smaller traditional grow, if you want to call it that, or whatever, but you're doing a lot of hand mixing. And if you're hand mixing and testing and hand mixing and testing and testing your runoff all the time, hopefully you've got a stable water supply and you get intimately used to exactly how much of each salt you mix into your solution and exactly how much ph up or down you use to mix up a feed solution every time. And so what that means for me is I know that with the fertilizer, I've been running the last couple of runs at home, I've documented it. I can get through most of a run without if I'm super confident.
Seth [00:34:46]:
And this isn't good practice, by the way, but I figured out that unless my tap water changes massively, I've got a pretty good recipe that I can mix up and be exactly at my 3.0 and 59 every time. Now, is that a good habit, not to check that daily? Absolutely not. But it also highlights another reason to check it, because you build that confidence over time, and you always want to question yourself, but you always want to build your confidence, too. And also being that you do build that confidence, it just puts you in. Like my case, bad habits. I'm not taking that. So if I did have an issue and I went back and looked, I'd go, I don't know. The sample looks okay today, but who knows? Maybe for a week I ended up having an issue, or I got a particularly bad batch of something, and that month I wasn't hitting my 3.0 or I wasn't hitting my 5.9.
Seth [00:35:44]:
And since I didn't check, I didn't know anything until I saw the symptoms. And now all I can do is be reactive.
Jason [00:35:50]:
Yeah, and you brought up a really good point there. Anytime that I get in an advising meeting, one of the first things I do is look at an entire runs data. They'll be like, all right, they got some questions about what's happening today. What are they encountering in today's hands on with the garden? And I always started looking at the entire run so far, that might be three weeks. We might be at the end of week seven, that type of stuff. And really what that's doing is just giving some clues to what might have happened in order to cause what we're seeing now. Right. It's very unusual that a plant will respond faster than two or three days to some type of issue.
Jason [00:36:34]:
And so we want to see what caused that. How long did it happen? Was it a gradual change? Was it, we screwed up mixing the nutrients one day, and now the impact is showing four days later. What can we identify and what types of things can we in place to make people's jobs easier so that those mistakes don't occur in the future?
Kaisha [00:36:59]:
We say it every week. All documentation is key. That's a great answer, you guys. Thank you so much. All right, we're going to move over to Instagram. We've gotten a few questions over there. This first one, do you guys recommend a day 21 and 42 strip? I've heard you guys say not to on day 14 through 16, but what about day 21 and 42? What do you guys think?
Seth [00:37:24]:
It depends on what you're going for. We have successful growers all over the country that go from doing a day one, a day 21, a day 42 to doing a day 42 only just for hygiene reasons, to not have any dead leaf material in the room. But what it really comes down to is what your goals are and what strain are you growing and how does that behave. So if my goals are as a boutique producer, let's say I want to only grow a grade flower, I'm probably going to lollipop that around day one and then I'm going to wait until the end of stretch. So for some plants, that's going to be day 21, for some plants, that might be day 28, for other plants, that might be day 17. So there again, right back to documentation, track that. But typically I want to leave all that foliage on there so it can photosynthesize and help that plant grow during stretch. What we're trying to do with crop steering is not so much slow down plant growth, we're actually trying to maximize that but guide that morphological expression.
Seth [00:38:21]:
So if I deleaf too much too early, I'm not going to get as much good growth during stretch. And while that may not give me as tall of a plant, my goal with applying generative stress or generative steering strategies is to shrink that plant down height wise, but not biomass. So the idea is I'm just not producing as long of inner nodes and because I'm producing shorter nodes, I can get more nodes in a given, like, let's say 1ft of branch length. So don't slow the plant down.
Jason [00:38:50]:
Yeah, a lot of it comes down to facility constraints too. You covered the goals part of it. Facility constraints like deleafing labor is one of the most labor intensive processes that's going on in a facility. And if you have to jeopardize the cleanliness of your facility so that you have more time doing labor, deleafing labor, probably not worth it.
Seth [00:39:12]:
Right.
Jason [00:39:12]:
Let's change some other factors in there. Do we have the ability for under canopy lighting in there? Sometimes we require a little bit less deleafing just because of light penetration. What's our plant spacing? These are all questions that you kind of have to analyze in order to optimize how much energy you put into deleafing and stripping.
Seth [00:39:33]:
Yeah, and I think there's a few things I'd like to touch on too. Number one, we talk about deleafing and stripping. I think the way we need to direct the conversation is about pruning and defoliating. Those are two different things. When we're talking about a skirting or a strip, usually we're talking lollipopping. Yeah. We're talking about actually pruning the plant and removing buds along with leaves. We're saying, hey, I don't want this particular node to be a production site because I think it's going to be shaded and produce subpar flower down the line.
Seth [00:40:00]:
So let's not waste energy on it. So finding that balance too. Every single strain that comes through, we're going to see a point where, hey, we can deleaf the exact right amount for our goals. Let's say it's a grade flour and if I continue to deleaf, I might be able to get some of these lower nugs to swell up a little more. But at a certain point I'm going to be taking energy from my upper nugs or upper flowers, trying to really get that light down to the lower canopy. So it's finding that balance between, hey, what are we looking for? Do we have a vertically integrated company where we sell everything from top grade or a grade, top shelf flour down to joints and all the way down to distillate or edibles? Let's say. If so, hey, we're probably not going to look at deleafing as much. I know my own experience in the Washington market was, hey, we're a top shelf flower brand.
Seth [00:40:51]:
Well, year and a half later, I think close to 40% of our sales was going in joints. Why? I don't know. I wasn't buying it, but people were. And so what that let us do is say, hey, we're actually starting to have to dip into some of the product that we want to put in jars and that we're taking more time to trim. Let's just prune and deleaf a little less. Let's have more of that mid grade that we actually can shove through the trim machine and just put into joints because we have a market for it now. And it just kind of have to have that aha. Moment in that situation to realize that, hey, I know as cultivators, we're going for the best grade a flower we can.
Seth [00:41:28]:
However, let's save some money and make more money. Now, if you're in a top shelf only boutique flower situation, yeah, you're probably going to want to go with the d leaf that end of stretch. And then I always recommend, like that day 42. So minimizing those plant touches usually three times is not enough that you're going to totally overdo it. And then almost more than anything, really learn your genetics. If I'm working with an old wedding cake or ICE cream cut, I know because I've grown that several times that I don't need to lollipop that one nearly as hard. Certain genetics do respond better, not necessarily more favorably to having deep canopy light, but they have the ability to pack on a little more weight and quality in that lower part of the canopy than other strains, too. So really learning that and then some strains when you're deleafing, have more of a tendency to pull stringers off while you're ripping leaves.
Seth [00:42:24]:
So getting your own technique down to where you're either using scissors or making sure you sever the petty oil, not pop it off at the base where you have that obsidian zone and learning just how to be really consistent in your craft and do it at a high level of quality all the way through.
Kaisha [00:42:42]:
Amazing. Thank you, guys. Yeah, growers have so many considerations these days. Thanks for touching on all that. Okay, we've got another question in from Instagram. This one came from Nas. They are looking for the best time, when to apply nematodes before lights on. When lights are on or when lights are off.
Kaisha [00:42:59]:
My question is, what are nematodes?
Jason [00:43:03]:
Nematodes? Are they're predatory insect that can be applied as a biological means of control. So it's a biological pest management type of application.
Seth [00:43:15]:
Teeny microscopic, wormy looking guy. Yeah. There as far as when to apply them. I mean, obviously you don't want to do a drench at a time when you're going to flush everything out of your pot. There's a few considerations there. I know. Personally I try not to push nematodes through my irrigation system. A lot of companies say they're fine with the pressure and stuff.
Seth [00:43:38]:
My counter is I seem to find them in my disc filters. If I try to do that and then I think about the tolerance on an actual emitter and the pressure that exists in the base of that pressure compensating emitter might not be the most economical to push them through that system. That being said, my favorite time to do it is in the morning while your p ones are running. Especially if you're going to go hand apply them or with a small pump. If you understand the concentration that you've mixed up your solution in and you got an airstone in there, especially if you got a bucket, stir it around a little bit to keep those bad boys suspended because they're a little bit bigger than any kind of salt or dust or anything. But you don't need a huge volume to get the amount of nematodes on that you need. So we're not talking about doing something like a no fly drench or something to get rid of a specific thing. We're just trying to get those nematodes into the pot once they're there.
Seth [00:44:28]:
As long as we're not drying it down to excessively sub 15 10% levels, those nematodes are going to be fine. So during your p one is a great time. After the P one just depends on how you're applying them. And yeah, if you're going to use your fertigation system, I always warn people I haven't seen the same results as I have the hand applying.
Jason [00:44:52]:
You know, an interesting tip that I had never thought of until I was chatting with a very well regarded guy in IPM industry stuff. He was like, you should also check your satchels of predatory bugs of any biological coming. When do you actually get them? Are they alive? Because certain suppliers and they go through ups and downs a little bit. But at certain times if you're applying X amount of nematodes, you want to make sure that the ones you're applying are alive, right. We can't be guaranteed that the work that we're doing is going to actually be a preventative measure or combating some of the issues that we're running into, unless we validate that it's a living predator that we're applying. So put them under a microscope, make sure that the promised amount of surviving predators are in there. A lot of times, most of the reputable suppliers these days, if you're like, hey, I got a half dead batch, well, they'll usually send you out a fresh kit pretty quick.
Seth [00:45:59]:
Yeah. And with that, by the beneficial strategy, which I think we definitely push here quite a bit, because that helps you avoid spraying anything on your buds that might allow you to fail a pesticide test. That delivery time, that's something you want to get set up with the company to be fairly rigid so they have a delivery method where they trust it to get to you within a short amount of time, and you trust it to show up at the time that they say it's going to show up. So in my example, for instance, ours generally all showed up before noon on the same day of the week. What that meant was we could actually plan around, hey, we've got these living organisms in. We're going to make it part of our work day to go apply those as soon as possible and not leave them in packaging, maybe in an office or in some bugs, like the nematodes, you can throw them in the fridge. It just depends on what you've got. But making sure you don't do anything on your end once you receive them, to actually kill any of them or handle them in a way that's going to result in you wasting money and time.
Seth [00:46:58]:
And time.
Jason [00:46:59]:
What you're trying to eradicate is probably exponentially growing in that time that you're not applying predators.
Seth [00:47:07]:
Absolutely. And honestly, too, anytime we're talking about biological additives in general, whether it's beneficial bugs or even root zone enhancers, like any probiotic that you're going to put in there, I know, I've tried a bunch out over the years. You get samples, your friends get samples. There's that classic. I actually tried to do a colony count. I plated it out on some petri dishes. Nothing grew. And then the last time I ran into someone doing that, I was like, well, I don't know if this is a fair evaluation because I actually checked the label on the sample that I got and it was expired before I got it.
Seth [00:47:43]:
Probably sat on the store or on the shelf at the hydro store or behind the counter, whatever, in the sample section for. It looked to me like about four months before I ever got a hold of it, it had been expired. So on that front, led me to say, hey, I don't think this product works at all. I think it's just a load of crap. But I also didn't even give it a chance. And maybe I wouldn't end up using that particular product because, hey, now I know that there might be some supply chain issues that prevent me from getting a fresh product. Or at the very least, I'm going to talk to them and be like, hey. So here was my experience.
Seth [00:48:18]:
I'd love to try another sample. Can you make sure that I get one that is not expired this time? Because I want to make sure to give your product a fair shake.
Jason [00:48:28]:
I love the irony here, actually. Last night I was doing ammonium sulfate all over my yard to get going for the year. And guess where all of my expired inoculants ended up? Mixed up in that. All over the yard. Yes.
Seth [00:48:45]:
And we all get there too, especially when you're getting as a cultivator or a manager of one of these facilities. We get all these samples all the time. You get your good old chemical closet filled up with all kinds of packets and small bottles and stuff and go, oh, let's try this one out. But the expiration date is very real on any kind of biological product like that.
Kaisha [00:49:06]:
Another thing that's very real is Liverpool reject 90 one's comment that nematodes are gangster. Thank you for that. I know I learned something new today. Amazing. I love the IPM conversations. We actually got this question from our Grammy carpet drip. I'm here in the hangout, and I think this kind of also factors into stuff like IPM. But they want to know what are some of the things I should look for? Look at for making sure my air movement is appropriate in my.
Jason [00:49:38]:
Mean, airflow. It's one of those things that obviously has moved a long ways from the old days of being in my basement. My favorite way of just ensuring good airflow is using air socks. Just because you get some consistency in there. We talk about having a baseline air movement across the room. Well, if we've got oscillating fans, that level is always going to be different.
Seth [00:50:01]:
Right?
Jason [00:50:01]:
We're going to have areas that are maybe close to getting some wind burn, and yet there's still going to be areas where we don't have good wind flow.
Seth [00:50:08]:
Right.
Jason [00:50:09]:
So when we're thinking about, all right, what windflow or airflow is enough. Well, for me, it's really more about what's the consistency of my airflow across the room. And that's where HVAC socks or running little HVAC tunnels that diffuse the air across your tables. Those are really the best way to ensure that there is some amount of airflow across all of your leaf surface areas, but not necessarily pushing too much on some hot spots or specific areas in the canopy.
Seth [00:50:41]:
Yeah, I think one of the best ways to visualize it is, honestly, you don't have to get an expensive one. Go pick up a cheap anemometer, go to the wall mounted fan and hold it up in the airstream and start walking away. And then look at how far it is across the room to the fan on the other wall. And I mean, that's slightly more advanced, just walking around with your hand open at different points in your canopy. But I think the basic principle we got to look at, it's similar to light, right? Like we have a dissipation of energy, we lose potential. The farther from, the farther we get away from that air source or the register. So like Jason was talking about, air socks, I love those. They're a great solution because they're easy to wash, they're a lot easier to clean than a regular duct.
Seth [00:51:24]:
But what we're doing is looking at reducing the distance from the source of that air, whether it be the fan or the register, the source of that energy to the plant, so that it's really consistent across the room. What we're really trying to avoid is dead spots. There's nothing more frustrating than getting your room all set up and then figuring out one corner of it will never yield. Well, because every time you stand over there, especially if you've got a meter, you realize that the humidity is higher, there's very little air movement. And wow. Lo and behold, all the plants in this corner of the room are small and or susceptible to mold.
Jason [00:51:57]:
So basically the easiest way as well, if you don't have a numerator. I love my little windenometer. It's a great way to document it. Know for sure, you can just put some data points across the room, but really we should be seeing pretty much all the leaves in the room just quaking. We don't want any of them pulling really hard. We don't want any of them just absolutely static. And when we think about why is this important to the plant? When we talk about vapor pressure deficit, when we talk about leaf surface temperatures, the plant's creating a microenvironment around its leaf surface, right? We've got transpiration. So that very small boundary layer around the leaf has higher humidity, usually a little bit less temperature because we've got a drop from evaporation.
Jason [00:52:43]:
That water content is cooling the air around it. And so we kind of want to break that up because we want it to be stabilized. It's super hard to identify what are our optimal conditions if we have a substantial difference in the environment around the leaf, on the top of the canopy to the middle of the canopy, or from one side of the room to the other side of the room. So the best that we can disturb that in a consistent manner, the easier it is for us to say, here's our set point for what temperatures should be running. Here's the set point for what our RH should be. It's taking that bell curve that I'm always talking about in the population. That bell curve occurs in a volume as well. When we look at what is our average temperature in a room, that's not what the temperature of the whole room is.
Jason [00:53:29]:
But we have to kind of simplify it so that we can operate this based on control parameters.
Seth [00:53:35]:
Yeah, and when we're looking at that airspeed too, approaching like getting up over three or 4 meters a second is getting pretty high. We don't need a massive amount of airflow. One thing you'll see, especially looking at some of these big commercial installations, where if you're seeing a picture of a room that's three to 5000 sqft, that's where we have to resort to some solutions you won't see in a smaller room like lift fans, accessory fans on posts. Sometimes you got to get creative with these big spaces. And I think it's important to understand too, especially because there's a lot of, I'll say smaller time, legacy, trap, hobby, whatever you want to call yourself in the 20 lights and less game, particularly there's the intention to want to really build it out as you would see a big commercial production. And I think it's important when you're looking at that to recognize that hey, someone building a 10,000 square foot room, they might have actually way more limitations on the facility than you do in your much smaller, than your much smaller space that has ample power for the space that you want. Let's say it's a 20 x 20 area. You happen to have one that doesn't have a post in the middle or a cold wall on one side or any of these other factors.
Seth [00:54:50]:
Utilizing some simple stuff like duct socks and inline fans can be a better solution than some of the really high dollar stuff you see at large scale and that's just because, hey, moving air over a long distance takes a lot of energy, and you might see some really big fan setups that people have out there trying to blow air an incredibly far distance across the room. And at the end of the day, just like Jason said, you want those leaves to just quake a little bit. And so for us, that means trying to get that air distribution as even as possible so I don't have to blast a really strong stream where the plants right in front of the fan are hitting the point where they're getting physically beat up or some of my leaves are starting to taco and stuff because they're getting too dry and cold, whereas the ones 10ft away are just fine. Awesome.
Kaisha [00:55:40]:
Thank you, guys. Thank you. Carpet dripum. Grow me for that question. We have only a couple more minutes before Instagram boots us off, so I want to ask us one more question related to environmental conditions. What's your take on AC reheat for dehumidification? Lots of the app about this. Your perspective is appreciated.
Jason [00:56:01]:
If you can use it, it works.
Seth [00:56:03]:
Absolutely. Is it expensive also? Absolutely. So take a look at what your energy usage is going to look like and how effective it's going to be in your actual application. But one thing we all kind of know, and if you don't know it yet, you'll figure it out as soon as you try to drop your nighttime temps, is that your dehuse just are not nearly as efficient as we get to lower and lower nighttime temperatures. And that's where reheat can come in to heat up that air, cool it back off, pull the moisture out of it twice, and get it back in the room. So if you're curious about it, it definitely works. It's definitely out there, and something to think about if you're in the process of replacing or upgrading or freshly building out your HVAC system.
Kaisha [00:56:51]:
Outstanding, you guys. Thank you so much. We had so many great questions submitted. Do not be defeated. If we didn't get to it today, I got a bank. We're going to get to it eventually. We appreciate everybody submitting their questions, but most of all, thank you, Seth and Jason and producer Chris for another great session. Thank you all for joining us for this week's Aroya office hours.
Kaisha [00:57:10]:
To learn more about Aroya, book a demo at Aroya IO and our team will show you the ins and outs of the ultimate cannabis cultivation platform. If you have any crop steering or cultivation questions you want us to cover, drop them anytime in the aroya app. Email us at sales at aroya IO or send us a DM. We're on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and we want to hear from you. And if you're a fan of Pod, be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel so you never miss an episode. Thanks, y'all. We'll see you in the next one. Bye.