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Seth Baumgartner and Jason Van Leuven open the mics for your crop steering and cultivation questions.
Kaisha [00:00:00]:
You. All right. What's up, Gromies? Welcome to Office Hours, your source for free cannabis cultivation education. I am your moderator, Keisha, and this is Episode 81. Here's how we do it. I will keep an eye out for questions in the chat, drop them anytime, and if your question gets picked, we'll get right to it. We're also going live on YouTube, so if you're logging in over there, post your questions. And if yours gets picked, we'll do our best to cover it during the show.
Kaisha [00:00:23]:
And we are also live on Instagram, so if you got questions over there, drop us a DM. If you're not on our email list, you want to head over to Aroya IO, sign up for our newsletter and on our homepage, and you'll get the latest news and updates from the ultimate cannabis cultivation platform. Lots coming down the pipeline. And you definitely want to stay tuned for the whole session today because we've got a big announcement at the end of the show. What's up, Jason?
Jason [00:00:44]:
Hi.
Kaisha [00:00:45]:
Nice to be in studio with you. It is it's kind of crazy. I'm freaking out.
Jason [00:00:49]:
Yeah. Really fun having you in here. It's good to be awesome.
Kaisha [00:00:53]:
Well, I think we're going to just get right to it. Are you ready for our first question?
Jason [00:00:57]:
I am.
Kaisha [00:00:57]:
All right. Well, this one we got in. We get these a few times. We figured we'd go ahead and address it directly. Somebody wants to know, how much does a subscription to Aroya cost?
Jason [00:01:07]:
Let's talk about we used to be on the direct square footage, where the pricing was correlated specifically with exactly the amount of square footage and canopy being monitored in the system. We are still on square footage, but we have broken it out into tiers. And so at the lowest tier, Aroya is starting at $150 a month.
Kaisha [00:01:27]:
There it is. Where can people go to learn a little bit more if they want more details?
Jason [00:01:31]:
Yeah, absolutely. So probably the best way to get started learning about Aroya is Arroya IO on the Web. Go ahead and request a quote or request a demo. I think the buttons up in the top right of the website that'll get you hooked up with some of our sales staff, and we do custom tailored quotes for larger facilities. And so we'll make sure that that subscription matches the size of commercial cultivation operation you're running.
Kaisha [00:01:57]:
Fantastic. Yeah. Hit us up. Get a demo. Let's talk about what you got going on over there. Sweet. Let's keep it moving. We also just got a write in asking, does Aroya offer training for or on the cultivation product itself? If so, how do we set that up?
Jason [00:02:13]:
Do we offer education on the product?
Kaisha [00:02:16]:
Yeah, training. They're looking for some training. Yeah.
Jason [00:02:19]:
So when you are a subscriber for Aroya, obviously you get the hardware, and then you get our onboarding. So basically what happens is we hook up with some of your team members there on site. A lot of times we're doing that digitally for some of the smaller grows. For some of the larger grows, we try to make it to help do the install. And really what that looks like is an onboarding process first getting the interface tailored for your facility, making sure it's all mapped out, helping you get the sensors installed, gateways online, and make sure you're starting to get data the right way. After that, it's basically follow up with a few training calls and then some agronomic advising. So those training calls are really to try and get the most out of the software, including harvest groups, tasking alerts, any of the harvesting work that you're doing, and kind of just fully utilize what we've built Aroya to be as a production management system. And after you got some weeks of data, it's kind of time to dig in and start talking about the plants.
Jason [00:03:24]:
What does that data that we see mean? What are some options for improving whether it be environmental parameters or possibly tailoring irrigations to steer crop growth?
Kaisha [00:03:35]:
Okay, and then yeah, just to be clear, though, the consultations are built into the subscription fee, right?
Jason [00:03:40]:
That's not extra for the most part, yes. Basically what's going on there is we're just trying to supply the footing work as far as one hardware training, two software training, and then three is follow up agronomic education.
Kaisha [00:03:56]:
All right, awesome. Well, thank you for that question for submitting that. We always appreciate anything specific to Aroya. But also, let's get right into cultivation and crop steering. YouTube is already buzzing. So we got this question here from Indie Bud. They wrote what kind of pipes are used to deliver water to the rooms from Fertigation room? Are they PVC pipes, ones used for water pool systems? I have a small 80 light facility in four rooms and setting that up.
Jason [00:04:25]:
Yeah, most of the time you're looking at PVC. Typically I would recommend Gray Schedule 80 PVC just because it's a little bit more durable. That pretty much the typical for commercial cultivation facilities. If you're in a smaller, say, maybe you're doing homegrown or something, you might end up with packs or old school CPVC if you're running some smaller lines, but anything that's on scale is typically going to be in a PVC construction.
Kaisha [00:04:56]:
Great. Awesome. Indie Bud, thank you for that. I know you've submitted a few questions, but we're going to do our best to get as many of those as we can. We got a write in from Instagram from Alex here. They want to know what poor water EC do you guys maintain in cocoa after stretch in flour? I am going with 3.0 EC PH 6.2. Poor water EC is showing 4.6 to 6.8. I am still seeing purple coloring on top of fan leaves.
Kaisha [00:05:27]:
Any advice for Alex?
Jason [00:05:28]:
Yes, we're looking at after stretch. So typically kind of the weird thing here is a lot of times what people call stretch phase. We're always referring to generative stacking as the steering that we're trying to do. So we're trying to basically control how much stretch that we're seeing. In most strains, what's really going on there is we're mitigating how much stretch is coming out of the plant and the goal is to get as many bud sites as possible. So typically shooting to reduce node spacing. And we'll do that as long as it needs to, to start to curb some of that vertical growth in the plant. And so after that, we're typically talking about that vegetative bulking type of strategy.
Jason [00:06:12]:
And in a vegetative bulking strategy, root zone ECS in the range of, say, five to eight is usually a pretty good spot to be for unknown or first time that you're running a strain, that's a great area to shoot. So when we talk about that being a range a lot of times all right, well, after our first irrigations, we'll start to see that EC typically drop and then before the first irrigation in the day, we'll see it rise up. And so EC is a fairly dynamic number, especially when we're looking at hungry plants, plants that are going through a significant amount of dryback. Basically what's happening is some of the salts are concentrating with a little bit less water in there. Same amount of salts we'll see that EC rise up. So those are the ranges that are typically a reasonable range in vegetative bulking. That being said, some strains are going to perform differently at that. So that's where documenting in the system, taking as many pictures and logging them into Aroya as you can do it on a timeline basis.
Jason [00:07:20]:
Obviously try and get that into your harvest group so that when you go back and compare some changes that you might be doing to a strain that you know which way is the best for the plant's performance, do that.
Kaisha [00:07:33]:
Crop registration is important. Awesome. Okay, thank you for that question. Thanks for bearing with us, y'all. We got some audio issues on YouTube, but don't you worry, we're working on it. Hold tight. Let me ask this next question from Indie Bud. They wrote earlier about pipes.
Kaisha [00:07:49]:
And so the second question here, they're looking to how to calculate how much water I'll be using per plant on average hourly growing in two gallon cocoa. So I can plan tube size accordingly.
Jason [00:08:02]:
Sure. So basically, it kind of comes down to if you have some existing numbers for the plant sizes that you're working with right now, and then we can go do the reverse math and say, all right, well, if we're looking at 25% dry back in one gallon pot, that's a quarter of a gallon a day for our typical plants. Maybe in that size. Maybe if we're in a two gallon, maybe we're also seeing 25% on a much larger plant. So it's going to kind of come down to your growing style and what your strains are seeing. Obviously you're going to want to oversize a little bit. But to get back to the math, basically, let's say, yeah, round these numbers. Let's say we're in a two gallon cocoa bag.
Jason [00:08:46]:
We're hitting a 25% dryback. So we've got pretty massive plants. So on a daily basis, our per plant water usage would be 25% times two gallons. We got a half gallon of water that's being transpired and evaporated out of that plant. So for running, let's say 1000 plants in the room, that's going to be 500 gallons per day.
Kaisha [00:09:08]:
All right. Wow. Quick math. Do you see all that just envisioning in front of your eyes? That's amazing.
Jason [00:09:16]:
I did all right in math growing up.
Kaisha [00:09:18]:
You know a little something about math, our head of applied sciences. Yes, I get it.
Jason [00:09:23]:
And as far as application goes, you also want to kind of consider the drip emitter size. Right. So I think that's the reason that he was specifying hourly. Obviously, you're just going to have to break that down into what is my drip emitter rate? And so we always want to be able to supply more water to the room than the total of the dripper rate. So if we got two drippers per plant, we're in the same room of 1000 plants. That's going to be, what, 2000 drippers in there? They're half gallon per hour drippers. Then, let's see, we're going to need 1000 gallons per hour, right?
Kaisha [00:10:04]:
Okay, excellent. Good luck out there with that. Keep us posted, indie bud. All right, blaze dropped a question on YouTube. He wrote, hey, guys, what is the best way to record average canopy heights in large flower rooms? What other metrics should we record?
Jason [00:10:22]:
This is a good question because it makes you wonder, what does best mean? The best way is to probably use some type of LiDAR measurement or other type of optical measuring system. I know there's a few companies out there that do offer that kind of work, which should give you average canopy height and the peaks and the valleys and try and break that down into a digestible number. So that might be the best way. Another best way might be the easiest, fastest, and cheapest way, depending on how you're using this data. And for me, a lot of times, just having a yardstick up on the trellis posts is a great way for a quick glance and measurement, a super easy way. If you're familiar with playing with your security cameras a little bit, just set up a security camera so you're shooting across the canopy height against that yardstick, and then you don't even have to be in the room and you know how tall your plants are.
Kaisha [00:11:24]:
There you go.
Jason [00:11:24]:
And you can also go back and do maybe a time series or time lapse photography of that, just using the security camera and be like, all right, well, this is what we're seeing. We're seeing an inch of growth a day when we are irrigating the plant this way in that environment.
Kaisha [00:11:40]:
Nice. Back to just be cool footage to look at, right?
Jason [00:11:43]:
Yeah. And the tricky thing about that, which is kind of why I gave this a two pronged answer, is because when you do just have a yardstick, what are you calling canopy height? Right. Is canopy height where the top of where my calyx peaks are at? How do I visually justify what the middle of the canopy is?
Kaisha [00:12:07]:
Okay.
Jason [00:12:11]:
Like I said, probably the least expensive, more effective way to start capturing some of that data. And depending on what you're doing with it, you might want to invest in a little bit more complicated solution.
Kaisha [00:12:25]:
Great. That was a great hack, though. Good luck out there, Blaze. Keep us posted. All right. Rocket bud farms wrote in. They're looking for they're asking, can you please explain how to calculate I e. 20% dryback? If coco has 60% full saturation rate, would 20% of that then be 48%?
Jason [00:12:47]:
Yeah. So with anytime that we're talking about dryback and about volumetric water content is the technical way that we talk about it. Basically, we'll use one gallon just because then I don't have to do any complicated math. Let's say we're in a one gallon cocoa bag, and in this case, he said 60% volumetric water content is the field capacity of that cocoa. And that's a pretty common range for some of the what I call coffee coco, simply because it's a lot finer chip and pith than some of the chunky cocoa. So let's say, yeah, 60% water content of one gallon would be 0.6 gallons of water that is in that substrate. When we're talking about a 20% dryback, we're talking about not 20% of the field capacity, but 20% of the volumetric water content. So it actually makes it way easier for the math because we're looking at all right, if we had one gallon of water and a one gallon substrate, we'd be at 100%.
Jason [00:13:48]:
Well, since we have a bunch of pores or a bunch of product in there that not everything is open pores, so that cocoa takes up some space, we'll see field capacity at, say, 60%. Well, if we see a 20% dryback, now, we're at 40% water content in that substrate. Okay.
Kaisha [00:14:06]:
Yeah.
Jason [00:14:07]:
And we've seen this question quite a bit. It's not 20% of the 60% when we are talking about it.
Kaisha [00:14:15]:
Yeah. 20% of the total volumetric.
Jason [00:14:18]:
Volumetric.
Kaisha [00:14:18]:
Water content.
Jason [00:14:20]:
The nice thing there is if we want to say, all right, well, how much water is that? 0.2 times one gallons. We got 0.2 gallons was the amount of dryback in volume.
Kaisha [00:14:30]:
Yeah. It helps when you simplify the math a little bit. Yeah. Just to try it out. Awesome. Thank you for that question. Rocket bud farms. All right, let's keep it moving.
Kaisha [00:14:40]:
Tyler dropped a question here. They want to know what EC do you like to run under Led week seven and week eight with 56 days to finish, when do you switch to plain ro? Currently running two EC finish recipe week seven and ro all of week eight, no flush. Did you get all that? You need me to reread it? There you go.
Jason [00:15:06]:
Yeah, I got most of it. There just the last part that's got me a little bit. He says no flush, but he's ro all of week eight. That's why I like to avoid the term flush in most circumstances because we don't know exactly what you mean from my perspective when you are running just ro, that would be the flushing process. But let's get back to the root of the question there. What ECS towards the end of flour? And when we're talking about ECS, we always need to specify what EC that we're measuring. So our input ECS are always going to be how much nutrients are we mixing into the fertigation substrate. ECS measured with some type of electronic measurement, like Capacitance with the Terras Twelve S that we're also familiar with in the Roy system, and then there's also runoff EC as well.
Jason [00:16:01]:
For the most part, we're always controlling EC with the feed EC and how we are irrigating, right. And also some of that is what the plant is doing with the EC that's in that substrate. Say typically our recommendations are running a fairly static or stable feed EC throughout the entire cycle, almost, right? Maybe last week, last ten days, we'll drop that depending on if we're supplementing calcium nitrate or not. And so that's also why I call it ripening because I personally don't like to ever go full ro unless maybe it's just like the very last day of flower, like the day that I'm harvesting. Sure his nutrients are just going to go to waste anyways. So yeah, let's say in Led room, if we're running a fairly consistent EC throughout the cycle, typically for Led rooms, we'll see it in the ranges of 35 as a feed EC, sometimes a little bit higher. It's really going to depend on the manufacturer. We see some different effects depending on the brand of nutrient, depending on what that feed EC comes out as a numerical number on what nutrient availability is for the plant.
Jason [00:17:23]:
So it's something where typically around that 35 range for feed EC up until say, ten days before harvest. And a lot of times if we are trying to reduce the amount of nitrogen or we can change up our feed so that we don't have nitrogen in the fertigation, a lot of times I'll be at three quarter to full strength newts. So running say around 3.0. If we are not supplementing getting rid of the nitrogen in the fertigation mix, then a lot of times we'll go to half to three quarter strength is kind of where I'm at. If you go to some of the earlier episodes when we dive into this stuff. It's one of those things where I think people in the industry are a little bit all over the board. Typically the goal is to get the most desirable smoke out of the product and it's the age old white ash versus black ash argument. And so really kind of the strategies.
Jason [00:18:25]:
And I think one of the reasons that there is a lot of people that are used to running that Ro at the end is just trying to reduce the amount of sugars and carbohydrate build up in the plant.
Kaisha [00:18:36]:
Okay.
Jason [00:18:37]:
Especially the buds because that's what's going to be smoked. That being said, with some of the higher quality nutrients that we have now with being able to reduce the nitrogen availability to the plant, from my experience, evidence that suggests that going with straight Ro for duration is probably not the best way to optimize quality and yield. And that being said, if we're switching to Ro very quickly from, say, two or three EC, especially in something like Rockwell, where the osmotic potential changes very quickly, it's a very reactive media. We want to make sure that we're staggering down from making that big a change in the nutrients. Changing that osmotic potential in the plant very quickly is never a good thing for the cells.
Kaisha [00:19:32]:
Okay, awesome. Great insight. Thank you for right, well, you know, y'all, we got we got some time in the show if you got any live questions and want Jason to answer them. I cannot, but I can moderate now's the time. We definitely want to hear from you, but we've got plenty of questions here that we were not able to get to from a couple of weeks ago. So I'm going to dig right into those. Hector wrote in what's the scientific reasoning on waiting an hour after lights on to start p ones? Any publications you recommend to read? I know Doc Bugby and his colleagues stated they don't need much time to ramp up. Big fan of Dr.
Kaisha [00:20:09]:
Bruce Bugby over here.
Jason [00:20:11]:
Yeah. From the materials that I've read a lot of times, cannabis is going to take half hour to 45 minutes to begin to be up to full photosynthetic rate. And so I think one of the things that we're doing there, waiting an hour before irrigation is just allowing that plant to ramp up its appetite before we're trying to feed it. As those plants begin photosynthesizing, what's going on is those cells are getting to be active. Right. They're going to be applying more suction to the substrate. And so rather than making sure that plant has all available water right off the bat and it kind of wakes up slow, we're getting it a little bit of a jump start as far as how it's going to pull up those nutrients. So basically allowing the cells in the plant to produce some amount of vacuum and then giving it its first fertilization of the Day publications to know.
Jason [00:21:17]:
I think Dr. Justice with the hemp mind did some recent studies on Photosynthesis and the time of day. I don't remember specifically it was hemp or cannabis, but yeah, check it out. It basically talks about they used a licore to basically document how much Photosynthetic rate was happening at different times throughout the photo period. Pretty cool stuff. And yeah, it's a good read. I know. It was published in one of the marijuana magazines probably about a year ago.
Jason [00:22:01]:
A year and a half ago.
Kaisha [00:22:02]:
Dr. Justice is awesome. I know. For me when I started plan empowerment was required reading. Just saying.
Jason [00:22:09]:
It is. Some of us have struggled with it's. Great educational material, and you definitely can read it a little faster. Sometimes it's in depth is what I'm trying to.
Kaisha [00:22:23]:
It's thorough. I'm still working on it, and I've been with the company two years, but.
Jason [00:22:28]:
I got time get started right off the bat. That's right.
Kaisha [00:22:33]:
Thank you for that question, Hector. All right, Jason. Jason has a question for you. Jason, what can you expect when running Vegetative the entire run? I've noticed that my winter crops in a greenhouse don't burn nicely with black ash. The same genetics in autumn burn white ash and clean. So back to the ash question.
Jason [00:22:55]:
Yeah, kind of. What would we expect if we're running Vegetative the entire run? Typically, what is going to happen is we're going to have larger node spacing, maybe not quite as much nodes. Flower development is going to typically start later in the plant cycle, and so we may have to run a longer cycle in order to actually get to ideal ripeness of the plant. I think this is one of the reasons that pretty much any of the traditional indoor horticulture crops, anything about tomatoes and peppers that are running greenhouses, they've all been crop steering for decades. And really the goal here is that in order to optimize what's coming out of that plant, we need to make sure that we get bud set early in the reproductive cycle. Basically, let's give that thing some cues in order to build reproductive cells, start initiating the growth of fruit or flower in this case. So what would you expect if you're on vegetatively the whole time? It depends what you consider vegetatively. Right.
Jason [00:24:10]:
Are we talking about six hour irrigation window or are we talking about, say, ten hour irrigation window? And I actually was watching a webinar the other day that you always hear me talking about, like, hey, it's a spectrum of how vegetative or how generatively we're running these. Right?
Kaisha [00:24:30]:
Right.
Jason [00:24:31]:
And so it's like the needle on the gauge. Right. When we talk about vegetative or generative, it's not always just Vegetative or generative. It's like, well, how much is the environment and how much are the irrigations sitting? Are we leaning a little bit more vegetatively? And so that's why I mentioned what kind of irrigation window. Are you considering that, say, if we're running a six hour irrigation window, that's going to be more balanced? Right? So we're going to end up with a product that probably is closer to a well steered product than if we were running, like, ten hour irrigation window the entire cycle. Those things are going to probably be fairly leggy.
Kaisha [00:25:09]:
Okay. All right. Well, Jason, thank you for bringing a question over to Jason. We appreciate you. All right. Going to keep it moving here. Instagram Live has some questions. What's up, y'all? Thanks for your patience.
Kaisha [00:25:21]:
We've got a lot of questions coming in. We have a submission here. Somebody wrote, does runoff EC matter, or will PH tell you more on what's going on in coco medium?
Jason [00:25:34]:
Great question. So if you don't have RET zone sensors for looking at EC, then runoff EC is extremely important. It's really kind of one of the only insights that you have to understanding what nutrient concentration is in that substrate. And so, yes, they're absolutely EC is vital if you don't have runoff EC is vital if you don't have root zone sensors. PH is also vital regardless of whether you have root zone sensors or not. So in general, most of the clients that I work with that are used to taking runoff EC and PH, a lot of times, basically, I'll encourage them to keep taking runoff EC for two weeks, three weeks, a month, while they get used to looking at root zone EC. And so the reason I do this is because if they're used to looking at runoff EC, I want them to start building a mental correlation between, all right, here's what we typically see with our runoff EC. Now that we have real time root zone EC, how do my observations match with that? And how can I use that time series data to get a little bit more strategic or even just more detailed with how I'm irrigating and at what levels I'm irrigating? Runoff PH still critical if you have red zone sensors or if you don't have red zone sensors.
Jason [00:27:00]:
The thing that's going on with PH is we're just trying to monitor, obviously, the incoming PH's interactions with the plant and the substrate. So if we're feeding at, say, five eight and we have a PH that's coming out at five eight, then things are probably all good. The plant is eating a balanced composition of nutrients in there. So when we mix up a fertigation solution, those micronutrients macronutrients are all going to be dissolving into solution. So when the plant is interacting with those, it's pulling specifically charged either cations or anions out of solution. And that's why we're looking at PH, is because we want to know, did the composition and nutrients change? And sure, if the plant ate the same amount of negatively charged and positively charged nutrients, then we wouldn't see that PH change. But most of the time, it's like the easiest way to get an understanding. Hey.
Kaisha [00:28:03]:
All right.
Jason [00:28:03]:
This plant is running out of specific components to the fertigation mix. Obviously, if you run into issues and your PH is the same and you think it is a nutrient thing, then you're going to have to send in for leaf tissue analysis or substrate analysis. In most situations, you will start to see the PH fluctuate. It's just not super common for components of negatively and positively charged ions to get pulled up by the plant. That being said, it's just going to depend on the nutrient manufacturer and what's going on in your plant's biology.
Kaisha [00:28:43]:
Yeah, well, similarly, we actually got another question on IG live along these lines. Trichome Valley wrote, when I check runoff from brand new cocoa, it's coming in at a very low PH, like 4.6 to five. No matter how much nutrient solution I put through, the PH doesn't move, and if it does, it's a very small amount.
Jason [00:29:06]:
Try and find a new cocoa supplier. One of the things here as well is you probably don't have to be what's going on is we're talking about how buffered is that cocoa, how well have they washed it, where is the originating source of it? And so when you are trying to change the PH of the substrate, you don't necessarily even have to use nutrients in your fertigation. We can just try and wash it on your own using a more basic amount. So if we're at, say, what did they say, four, six for PH?
Kaisha [00:29:50]:
Yeah. What did you say? Four six to five? Yeah.
Jason [00:29:54]:
So let's say if we're at five and we're trying to be at, say, a feed of five, eight to six, we definitely want to just try and wash that substrate with around seven PH, right? Try and just get it up to par. And then an important thing to do would be to wash it afterwards after we go back down to our fertigation. Obviously, don't be washing it while their plants are in there. Make sure that you're trying to prep it. And I guess all of this comes down to is you have a ton of options for cocoa suppliers right now. And so it's probably, in the end, just going to be cheaper to find a cocoa that works off the shelf or out of the pallet than it is to try and do all this work washing it and prepping. It on your own because some manufacturers are doing that at their facility or they're using a product that originates from somewhere that doesn't need that type of post purchase processing.
Kaisha [00:30:51]:
All right, cool. So many good questions coming in. All right, I'm moving on to YouTube here. We got a question from Tom along the same lines here. Can you go into a little detail about watching runoff PH to indicate the proper time to cut nitrogen after stretch? Give a little bit overview?
Jason [00:31:13]:
Yeah, that's a great question. Looking. At PH to cut nitrogen. Most of the time when we're thinking about it, we're going to be doing it on kind of a strain specific ripening program. A lot of times towards the end of the cycle, we're letting that PH rise up just a little bit to reduce nitrogen solubility. As far as how that would reflect when to cut nitrogen, that's a great question that I will actually have to research myself before I can give any good advice on how to do it that way. For the most part, what I'm looking at for that ripening is, all right, when do we really need to reduce how many white hairs are popping out of that plant? When do I need to induce some type of finishing environmental and irrigation strategies in order to meet my harvest deadline?
Kaisha [00:32:14]:
So we're looking at some plant cues in that situation.
Jason [00:32:17]:
That's what I'm used to using, but that's a reasonable idea to look at runoff PH.
Kaisha [00:32:23]:
Cool. All right, Tom, thank you for that question, and we'll look forward to some follow up because Jason's going to dig into it further. Awesome. All right, we got this question here from George. Hey, guys. How do you properly water clones? I used to soak Rockwell cubes and let them, I think, sit like that for seven to ten days, and then soak if needed. Is there a better way?
Jason [00:32:48]:
So my favorite way to figure out how often I need to irrigate my clones is by using a kitchen scale as the most simple way. If you have a way to log measurements from a load cell, it's a great way to keep track of how much water content is in those cubes. As far as when exactly you need to do that, just keep an eye on what that water content loss is. Typically, it's going to get a little bit faster and a little bit faster every day as those plants begin to develop some amount of root mass, the early root mass in there. And so I think for most of the rockwool manufacturers, they're looking around, like, 40% when you want to first irrigate those things. So, say if we're at 65% for field capacity after the soak, we'll take that weight on the scale and then maybe just take a measurement every day and chart it, and that'll give you a good idea. As far as with the specific environmental parameters, with a specific strain, we're usually seeing, say, five and a half days, for example, and that'll just help you optimize your SOPs, right? Rather than saying, hey, we do it at six days for all strains, six days for all of our clone rooms, we can say, hey, these are the parameters that you need to meet irrigate when it's at x water content or X grams.
Kaisha [00:34:17]:
Okay, cool. Keeping it moving. We're about to round out the hour here, and as you know, the last few minutes of the show, we got a big announcement, so stay tuned. All right. But I'm going to keep going. Coastal Ripper wrote in, how bad is it to not maintain zero diff first few weeks of bloom? Should I get a heater or am I good as long as I maintain the VPD of 1.0?
Jason [00:34:41]:
Great question. I wouldn't get too concerned about it. As long as you can maintain that VPD for the first few weeks, if you're zero to five, then that's probably a great place to be as far as keeping your nighttime temps up. If you're really trying to push generative, you you might actually be in a good situation to have an increased night diff. Kind of the strategy that we go behind when we give a very generic recommendation of night day diffs is just keeping that temperature up to help plant metabolism. Right? So in most circumstances, we're talking about a pretty hard generative push the first two, three weeks of flower. And what is going on is we're doing that push using irrigation techniques. A lot of times the environment is still in a more vegetative state.
Jason [00:35:37]:
So we're giving it kind of actually mixed cues. And the reason there is because we want to maintain or encourage as much plant growth as possible with some of those vegetative cues in the environment. But we want to make sure that we're getting a physiological change in the plant. We want to make sure that know indicating that plant that its hormone balance should become more reproductive.
Kaisha [00:36:02]:
All right, thank you for that question.
Jason [00:36:06]:
Keep on going.
Kaisha [00:36:07]:
Thomas dropped this one on instagram. Struggling to bring up my PH. Pushing more runoff now as we have finished week three, runoff EC is good, but runoff PH is not rising to where I want it. Could this be because of algae buildup on top of my medium?
Jason [00:36:29]:
Probably not due to the algae. I guess my questions would be what exactly is your feed EC or feed PH? Excuse me? If your feed PH is different than what you'd want to see coming out of the runoff, then you might just need to alter your feed PH, especially if pushing more runoff is not helping balance it. That being said, if you are inputting with a corrective PH and you're still not seeing the runoff PH numbers that you want, it's probably a good time to send in for a leaf tissue analysis and try and get an understanding of what types of excesses or deficiencies are we seeing in that plant. And there's a number of companies that also do substrate analysis so you can just get a jar going from them and send in for some samples. A lot of companies these days are looking at two to three day turnaround right and so on that kind of timeline. If you're in week three, you're in probably a pretty good spot to try and salvage some of what you're doing. And it really kind of dumps down to how much off are you right? If we're 0.1 or 0.2 off, we might not get too stressed. We may not see a huge decrease in output from the crop.
Jason [00:37:52]:
That being said, if we're looking at 0.5.6 higher than that, as far as number of tents in the PH scale that need to be adjusted, then it's definitely a good time to make some decisions, take action.
Kaisha [00:38:09]:
All right, Thomas, good luck out there. All right, we got a follow up from Trichomballey. They wrote earlier they were having issues with their brand new cocoa coming in a low PH. So they wrote thank you. I appreciate you guys so much. Just to ask one other question, I unfortunately already transplanted a bunch of plants into this medium and I'm getting a rust covering on the surface of the big fan leaves on some of them. I'm assuming it is a PH fluctuation. That's what made me look into this.
Kaisha [00:38:37]:
I can send you a picture if needed. I was just wondering what you would do if you're already in this situation.
Jason [00:38:45]:
Yeah, gosh. I would probably feed with a little bit higher PH than you really want to be feeding. Just try and offset that because if we keep seeing low runoff or low PH in our runoff, the substrate is probably even lower than what your runoff is. And if you are seeing deficiencies early right now, it's not going to probably get better really fast unless you are trying to offset and maintain a corrected PH in that substrate. So what you might end up doing is doing a larger amount of small irrigations just to try and help refresh and stabilize that PH.
Kaisha [00:39:34]:
Trichomb Valley, we're rooting for you. Good luck. Keep us posted. Tell us what's going on. OK. All right. I love this question. I am so excited to ask.
Kaisha [00:39:43]:
It mortal. Mikey dropped this on Instagram. Shout out to Keisha for being in the driver's seat today. Thank you for noticing. And what strain are you growing at home these days? I'm so glad you asked. I'm not growing any strains because I killed one plant a few months ago, but I did succeed in the other one, a single cola, and it is drying in my home right now. And when I get back home, I will be putting that in a jar and curing it. But luckily I have plenty of stupid fruits from last year.
Kaisha [00:40:15]:
I grew that and it's awesome. Thank you for that question. I'm so glad I could contribute to the program today. All right, we're going to keep going here. We got a question here from Coastal Rips. Let's see. Hi. Thanks for all the great knowledge you share heading into cooler days in SoCal.
Kaisha [00:40:34]:
How important is it to maintain zero diff during the first few weeks of Bloom?
Jason [00:40:39]:
I think we did talk about that from someone else.
Kaisha [00:40:42]:
It was a little bit yeah, it's a little bit phrased differently. I think we got it covered, we covered it. If you're watching it on YouTube, just hit the rewind button. We'll get back to you on right. Cool, cool. Keep it moving. All right, we got this question from OG Cush not too long ago. Just didn't get a chance to get to it.
Kaisha [00:40:59]:
Hi, I'm having dripper clogging issues. They've got netafilm 0.5 GPH emitters when increasing the feed EC to around 4.0 EC due to precipitation of calcium caused by high level of phosphorus. When I reduce the EC to three, the problem goes away, but my plants remain hungry. 2.5 root Zone EC even with reduced runoff to help stack EC in the root zone, running Led fixtures around 1000 to 1200 PPFD. Any suggestion?
Jason [00:41:36]:
Yeah, the places that I would start is making sure that I have sufficiently sized and number of mixing chambers in between my injections. And that is assuming you're using a mechanical or pneumatic injection system for your fertigation. If you're hand mixing into a batch tank, you might actually think about making concentrations, nutrient concentrations, and then mixing those in the batch tank. Basically what's happened in chemistry when we're looking at a precipitate, certain nutrients, certain chemicals of any kind. What happens is if their concentrations are too high, they bind into a solid and fall out of solution. Right. And that's what he's talking about with all right, that's what's causing his drippers to clog. So he's got little precipitate chunks floating down his nutrient system.
Jason [00:42:36]:
So if you are using an injection system, making sure that our stock concentrates are mixed well, making sure that when they are being injected, they're mixed into solution individually. So making sure that they're lined up in your injection in the correct order for that manufacturer of nutrients. And then if you are in something like a batch tank, like I was talking about, just making sure that these things are in solution before we are getting them mixed together. And this is exactly why pretty much any dry salt nutrients are coming in two part simply because if we put A and B in the same bag and then we add a little bit of water, they're going to clump together and effectively cause have a precipitate.
Kaisha [00:43:26]:
I actually did not know that. Yeah.
Jason [00:43:29]:
So I guess some of the solutions that we're talking about there also downstream from how things are being mixed, would be just making sure less of a solution, I guess more of a Band Aid would be making sure that you have good mesh filters installed. And that's usually going to be before each room, sometimes before each valve on a zone. Making sure that we're keeping those mesh filters clean. You can do backflushes on them if that's an option for your fertigation system. And then last off, you're probably going to need to replace your drip stakes anyways. And a lot of times I think cultivators or business owners that aren't listening to their cultivators, that know better, don't plan out some of the equipment maintenance costs in their business plans. And the real thing is those derpers are working every day in high intensity cultivation like cannabis, like indoor cannabis is. We do we need lots of nutrients to those plants.
Jason [00:44:38]:
And so kind of just having it in the financial plan to get these replaced once a year would probably be, at the minimum, the type of infrastructure that's needed. When we look at the value of the crop, really what it comes down to is, hey, if we are having clogged emitter problems that aren't letting us optimize our yield and quality, then our opportunity loss, how much value do we lose? Typically makes the cost of replacing drip miners fairly insignificant.
Kaisha [00:45:11]:
Actions and inaction have consequences.
Jason [00:45:14]:
Yeah, and there are a couple well, there's one other company in specific that has come out in the market in the last couple of years with pretty good drip emitters as well. Netflix are historically kind of unanimously the best product on the market. But there is another company that's coming out with a fairly comparable quality of emitter that you might give it a shot. I don't know. Not trying to hate on Netflix here. They make great products.
Kaisha [00:45:42]:
Yeah. Maintenance, sometimes you got to replace things. All right, thank you for that question. We got a couple of questions here on Instagram Live. Let's get to those. We've heard this one before. Let's talk about it. Do untopped plants yield more than topped.
Jason [00:46:01]:
When managed correctly?
Kaisha [00:46:02]:
Yes.
Jason [00:46:05]:
I can dig into this too. I love an overview. It's always just nice to give it straight answer right off the bat. Basically, when we think about what is topping doing to a plant? Well, it's removing some of the energy, some of the mass that this plant has put into growing. All right. And so when we think about, all right, well, what are our goals of topping? Is it to make all the plants the same heights for better canopy management? If that's the case, maybe we just need to do a better job with our clone and environmental parameters, making sure these get the same treatment. Because when we're looking at cloned crops for cannabis, they are very genetically similar to one another. And so when we take a look and actually see any significant differences in plant heights, that's actually coming from something else.
Jason [00:46:57]:
It's coming from maybe clogged emitters, maybe from a microclimate or inconsistencies in environmental parameters in the room. Maybe it's coming from light, hotspots or dark spots. Maybe it's just always at the side of the room. And so really all we're doing is, one, putting labor into topping them, two, increasing how long we have to grow that plant to get the same amount of biomass out of it. And yeah, three, we're basically just throwing some of the investment into this plant that we've put away that includes both material and time, energy, all of those. From my perspective, using alternative ways to manage canopy and optimizing crop growth means that we're taking advantage of all of the inputs for the most output on that plant.
Kaisha [00:47:54]:
Okay. There you go. I love that answer. Cool. All right, we got this question. Somebody's looking for max runoff EC for rockwool 5.5 to 6.0 through gen flower.
Jason [00:48:10]:
It's great. Keep doing what you're doing there.
Kaisha [00:48:13]:
Bam. Okay, awesome. Yeah, we have so many questions. Okay, here we go. Bear with me. All. Here we go. And I'm going to move on to this one.
Kaisha [00:48:24]:
We got this a few weeks back, didn't get a chance to get to it, so let's talk about it. Any tips on searing when hand watering in soil with organic inputs? My limited understanding with organics is that we are not able to sear using osmotic pressure like we do in cocoa with synthetic nutrients. I think last week we actually talked quite a bit about or not last week, a couple of weeks ago, crop searing in soil. So, yeah. What do you think? Hand watering in soil with organic inputs?
Jason [00:48:53]:
Yeah, it's definitely going to be a lot trickier to do some of the crop steering. So when we break it down to how plants are absorbing nutrients from the substrate, it comes down to basically the elemental components in that nutrient. And that's basically the major difference between organic and synthetic nutrients, is in a synthetic blend, those elements are directly available to the plant from the solution immediately. When we look at an organic, hopefully, like a living soil situation, what's going on is these components, other more complex components, are being broken down over time by biological factors in that substrate. Right. So that's what makes it a living soil. You got bacterias in there, you got funguses, you got mycorrhizals, any of those components that are breaking down a more complex chemical into things that are available for the plant. And so what happens is that release of breakdown has to be timed in order to hopefully optimize when the plant is using them.
Jason [00:50:12]:
And so it is exactly right. It's a much more complex scenario where an understanding of how the soil is processing its organic feed, how long it takes, how much that results in, it's all going to change when your amendments should be applied for best output.
Kaisha [00:50:34]:
All right, thank you for that question. All right, we got one more question in here, and I'm going to rephrase it. So somebody is looking for they wrote, what's the best pot size for crop steering and what's the best substrate? Maybe what we could do is give some considerations. If you are looking to grow cannabis in a pot, what are some considerations that they can keep in mind if they're looking to do some crop steering? So they'd be working with cocoa rockwool.
Jason [00:51:01]:
Yeah. And really kind of the first things that you want to ask yourself when evaluating what is the best substrate size for your application is. How big of plants do I want to grow? Am I reduced on ceiling height? Do I have multiple tiers in the facility? How much biomass am I trying to support with this substrate? A lot of times for indoor scenarios when we're in a typical cultivation facility, I guess I hate to say typical, but the majority of larger plants being grown, a two gallon cocoa is a pretty good place to start or running four x four Rockwell blocks on a slab. Sometimes if they're really big plants, they only run two on a slab. For medium to large plants, typically we see that three on a slab based on manufacturer recommendations. If you're in a multi tier system where maybe you've got only four or 5ft of head space from growing surface to the lighting surface, a lot of times you might be able to get away with a six x six x six or like a one gallon cocoa bag.
Kaisha [00:52:25]:
All right, that's a quick overview, but yeah, get the party started and then hit us up when you're ready to get into the details.
Jason [00:52:33]:
The easiest way to know is run some plants with what you are anticipating will be the best size media for you have red zone sensors in there so that you got time series data to know whether you've got enough capacity to steer, but not so much that you don't have control over how you're steering.
Kaisha [00:52:56]:
That's it. And we know a little something about root zone sensors. So, yeah, we'll look forward to hearing from you. All right, we got a few minutes left in the show. We're going to just get right to our big announcements. So first and foremost, Aroya is going to be at MJ BizCon next month. And the moment the exhibit floor opens, we'll be dropping the biggest launch ever seen in cannabis cultivation. So now you know.
Kaisha [00:53:18]:
But there's going to be three days of programming. You are not going to want to miss it. And it's all going to be happening in booth 51005 during MJBizCon week. But Jason, what's the really exciting part?
Jason [00:53:31]:
Really exciting part is we are doing office hours live from the floor at MJBizCon. So we'll be there at the booth. It's going to be Seth and Keisha and I and the crew. I think we even have a guest visitor.
Kaisha [00:53:47]:
We're not telling you who yet, though.
Jason [00:53:49]:
To highlight on the show. Hopefully it's a super busy show and might have struggles hearing us, but we're going to talk loud and clear. And looks like our producer over here, Chris, is shaking his head. He says he's got his handled here. Yeah, it's going to be a great show.
Kaisha [00:54:05]:
It's going to be epic. It's going to be happening on that Thursday, November 30, from starting at 01:20 p.m. Pacific, 04:20 p.m. Eastern, just like normal. And there's going to be two ways to tap in. You can be a part of the live audience, which will be amazing. We're going to actually have a live audience for the first time ever. So if you're at MJBizCon, just come to booth number 51005 or you can tap into the free live stream.
Kaisha [00:54:28]:
And way to get to that is you want to visit cloud Adium IO MJBizCon 2023. You want to claim your spot and that's going to let you ensure that you are informed because there's going to be a lot more updates in the coming weeks. So we're really excited about this. Just a real opportunity to bring the Office Hours experience live from the show floor and yeah, it's going to be epic. I can't wait.
Jason [00:54:55]:
So if I'm bad at typing or I don't have a very good memory, how else can I find that link?
Kaisha [00:55:00]:
Oh, I'm going to drop it in the chat right now. We're going to have it in the YouTube description.
Jason [00:55:07]:
Yeah, check the YouTube video later. It'll be up near the end of the video.
Kaisha [00:55:12]:
Yes, you're going to want to tap in.
Jason [00:55:14]:
Thanks y'all.
Kaisha [00:55:15]:
Like right now, just as soon as the show is over, just go to that link and sign in because you don't want to miss it.
Jason [00:55:21]:
Spaces are limited.
Kaisha [00:55:22]:
Spaces are I mean, sure. No, but for real, you want to tap into that? Amazing. All right, well, we had a lot of questions. If we did not get to them, don't worry, we've got them in a little bit of a bank know. Just come back every what? This is what we do. The best way to get your question answered is to join us live. Jason is so fun sitting next to you at the table. It feels a little weird.
Kaisha [00:55:44]:
Yeah, kind of strange, but good show. I'm used to it. Yeah, I like it. I might have to move to Pullman. We'll see what happens. All right. Thank you, Jason, for another great conversation. Thank you to our producer Chris for helping us hold it down and make it happen.
Kaisha [00:55:59]:
Thanks to all of you for your patience and for joining us today. We do this every Thursday. The best way to get your answers, your questions answered is to join us live. To learn more about Aroya, book a demo at Aroya IO and one of our experts will walk you through all the ways the platform can improve your cultivation production process. While you're there, sign up for our newsletter. Register for MJBizCon. I mean, just hang out on the website and just do it all. If you have a topic you'd like us to cover on a future Office Hours episode, post questions anytime on the Aroya app.
Kaisha [00:56:30]:
Drop your question in the chat or on YouTube. Send us an email to sales at Aroya. IO or DM us. We are on all the socials instagram TikTok YouTube Tube, LinkedIn and Social Club. We want to hear from you. We'll send everyone in attendance a link to today's video and post it in the Aroya YouTube channel. Be sure to, like, subscribe and share while you're there, and we'll see you at the next session and in Vegas next month. All right, thanks, everybody.
Kaisha [00:56:56]:
See you next time.