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Seth Baumgartner and Jason Van Leuven open the mics for your crop steering and cultivation questions.
Kaisha [00:00:00]:
What's up, gromies? Welcome to AROYA Office Hours, your source for free cannabis cultivation education. I'm your moderator, Kaisha, and this is episode 110. Shout out to our live viewers on YouTube and Instagram, and to everyone tapping in on Spotify, apple Music, YouTube, or wherever you listen to your podcast. Thank you so much for your support. And if you like the pod, please do drop us a review. We really appreciate the feedback. Jason solo in the studio today. How are you?
Jason [00:00:27]:
I am doing well.
Kaisha [00:00:29]:
Yeah.
Jason [00:00:30]:
Feeling a little here without Seth, but I know.
Kaisha [00:00:33]:
Well, we're hoping Seth is on the road, y'all, but we're hoping he's going to be able to log in. But we've got a great question to start the show with. You ready?
Jason [00:00:40]:
Let's get it going.
Kaisha [00:00:41]:
Let's get it going. Okay, so somebody wrote in with this question about keeping ph in optimal range while stacking EC. During the first three weeks of flower, I'm feeding 3.0 ec and 5.9 ph in 70% water content. Pure coco. When I dry back to 35% water content, no harm comes to the plants. But when I check my ph runoff after ramp up feed, the next day, the ph comes out around 5.4 to 5.5. I can push more runoff, which eventually brings my ph back up, but then in turn, this drops my root zone EC back from about five ec closer to 3.5 ec. How can I properly stack EC to about seven at least while still hitting these deeper drybacks and still keep my ph in check? Currently ending week one of flower 900 ppfd, 1150 ppm CO2.
Kaisha [00:01:38]:
I've tried feeding 3.5 to four ec, which helps stacking. But doing this while combining with big dry box has never helped bring the ph back up. It simply compounded the problem of lowering ph because of the extra dried out salt from increasing the input. EC is the only real solution. Maybe feeding three to 3.5 ec and not drying back as hard. I know coco can bounce back from even harder dry backs than I'm doing now. Thanks. It's a lot to take in.
Kaisha [00:02:07]:
What do you think, Jason?
Jason [00:02:08]:
Yeah, it's a great question. Pro shade, all the details there to help us get started. I would probably, you know, think that, yeah, going to 3.5 in your EC, maybe not pushing quite as hard of drive backs might be an optimal solution for you. So obviously, as we've talked about quite a few times in the past, when we look at what happens with our ph is it's going to be an indicator of balance of cations and anions in solution. So what that means is certain elements that we have in there are going to be natively charged. Certain elements are positively charged. And as that EC, or, excuse me, that ph fluctuates, it can be an indicator that we've run into a nutrient imbalance to some degree. Meaning that our nutrient composition isn't necessarily exactly as we had inputted.
Jason [00:02:57]:
Meaning that the plant is possibly uptaking specific anions or cations in this case. Yeah, that's what, that's what I do is probably start working off of 3.5, you see, and only pushing your dry bags down to say, 40%. My guess is you are in a one gallon coco if you can push those big of drybacks, correct us if we're wrong there, but, but there's a good chance that you could benefit. Bye. Going into a one and a half gallon and, uh, that'll give you a little bit more water holding capacity and give you a little bit easier time crop steering with that large of plants. And as you stated, you know, going down to 35%, no issues with the plants. And that also might be, you know, something that you consider here too is, all right, are we just getting too detailed with that, that ph change? So when we talk about this, I usually think that, all right, that's probably borderline, right? 5455. That's kind of at the point where if I don't see any negative impacts in plant growth, then, you know, I may just keep running the way that I'm running.
Jason [00:03:57]:
If we're being very successful, uh, that's, that's right at the edge of where we probably need to make sure that we are correcting that ph change. So there, there's a chance that, uh, you know, making just some small adjustments to your substrate size and or feed levels is going to get you right in that perfect spot for the whole run. Um, and like I said, if you're really happy with your yield, you're not seeing any negative impacts, then you're right at that edge where it may not even be quite worth digging in too deep. And, you know, if, if you are that detailed, awesome, good for you. Give, uh, give these things a chance and see, see how it goes and let us know.
Kaisha [00:04:39]:
Awesome. Jason. Yeah. To the person that submitted that question, we love it. Thank you so much for the detail. Keep us posted, give us a little follow up and let us know what's happening. All right. We're going to keep it moving.
Kaisha [00:04:49]:
We got this great question from Loki Turner. They wrote, hey, I have another question for Office Hours this week. In a commercial grow, we have limited resources to achieve desired plant maintenance in the flowering room, which holds multiple strains. If we can only afford to have one prune per run, what age and severity of skirting or defole should our sop be if we're trying to produce a grade flower across multiple strains? Thanks so much.
Jason [00:05:17]:
Yeah, you know, that's gonna be a little tough. Cause usually we shoot for basically two main delevings. Um, maybe, maybe I'll cheat your question here a little bit and say, well, can you do a deleving at the end of edge? And so if that's the case, you know, if you only have the chance to do it once in flower, I do it around week three, right around day 21 per se. Um, so I'd be in week three. And you know, the reason here is thinking, well, hopefully if we have optimal light conditions, um, hopefully if our generative stacking worked well, then when we go back into bulking, we're going to basically start to be able to get the most light exposure and really have good consistent airflow throughout the canopy for the development of those buds. All right, so those buds have been established and when we go through bulking, then we're going to be developing those buds. And so that's a really important time to have nice consistent canopy, be able to get good light throughout the plant height and stuff. And, you know, kind of one of the advantages that I've seen of under canopy lighting as well is the ability to start decreasing some of, some of those labor inputs as far as how much skirting needs to get done.
Jason [00:06:29]:
Another option there you have is thinking about plant spacing. If you can optimize your plant spacing, there's a good chance that you can start getting away with only that single pruning, deleafing application through flower. Uh, last question, as far as you know, how, how intense do you want to do your skirting and deleafing? Um, you know, obviously, ideally it's nice to have, have some amount of lollipop on there. We are pulling the, the lower fan leaves off. Uh, and it is going to be strain dependent. I don't have quite enough answers or questions, excuse me, answers to the questions. As far as lighting intensity would be probably the, the most important one here in planting density. So just get an idea of how thick your canopy is.
Jason [00:07:13]:
Um, you know, usually, you know, I'm trying to think of a reasonable number to give you 50% to 60% of better light penetration. It would be kind of a rough number to shoot for. And so how much leave material does that depends on some of those other things that we talked about as far as what's the strain, morphology and how much lighting intensity do you have?
Kaisha [00:07:38]:
All right, to the Grammy Loki, we appreciate your question. Thank you so much. Post some follow ups. We like to hear from everybody. All right, questions are starting to come in. Jacob dropped this one on YouTube. They want to know what are your thoughts about calcium formula for ripening to cut off nitrogen. Any other products for calcium without nitrogen except calcium chloride?
Jason [00:08:05]:
What was the calcium for?
Kaisha [00:08:07]:
It might be a typo. They wrote calcium formia. I don't know, maybe they meant calcium format.
Jason [00:08:12]:
Oh, I got you. Calcium chloride is actually not a bad option as far as those supplementations. That's what's commonly used by a lot of nutrient manufacturers that do provide a nitrogen supplementation there towards the end to reduce amounts of nitrogen. I guess, for me would be trying to understand what, what your goals are as far as using something other than calcium chloride. It's obviously fairly inexpensive and very available. You know, most any of those calcium based nutrients are going to be a reasonable replacement for calcium nitrate, which is what we're trying to reduce our nitrate by getting rid of, is cut out our calcium nitrate, supplement it with a calcium chloride. Maybe I'll do some digging in and see what's commonly used for other than calcium chloride.
Kaisha [00:09:18]:
I love it. Now Jason has a project. Cool. More to come. Appreciate the question. All right, we're going to keep it moving. Someone posted here, they wanted to, they asked if you could talk about night day differences and how you can keep the block water content through nighttime. I know you've covered this a few times in a recent episode, so.
Kaisha [00:09:37]:
Yeah, let's give a little overview.
Jason [00:09:40]:
Yeah. Maintaining block water content overnight, it. It, you know, kind of comes down to substrate size. Right. When we talk about where does, where does water go after application, there's really three places it can go. One is amount of runoff. Um, and that's pretty easy to track. Uh, the second would be transpiration, which is mostly only happening under lights on conditions, so not necessarily overnight, and then evaporation.
Jason [00:10:06]:
Right. And so, uh, as far as what's going on for nighttime water content in the block that's most related to evaporation. So we have probably, let's see, you know, two main factors in there. Well, three main factors would be, you know, temperature. Um, it would be airflow. And then I guess VPD is kind of, kind of the same as temperature. Right. So one of the first things to do is just make sure that your nighttime vpds are in a good range.
Jason [00:10:34]:
Obviously, if we have vpds that are too high, we're going to see an increased amount of evaporation from that substrate. If our temperatures are too high at night, then we'll see increased evaporation as well. And most of the time those are pretty regularly set parameters that we're trying to optimize plant growth with. So a lot of times if you are running into issues with how much evaporation is leaving the block overnight, and it might just be the fact that, all right, we're working off of slightly smaller substrate than we really need to. I've seen this quite a bit when we're trying to grow bigger plants in just Hugo blocks. So, you know, a six by six by six, a lot of times when we're pushing generative, especially towards the very end of the cycle, just don't have quite enough water holding capacity to support a four foot plus plant. And so I guess those are kind of things to check would be obviously, like we talked about temperature and the VPD. Do we just have way too much airflow at night and then do we need to make adjustments to our substrate size?
Kaisha [00:11:40]:
Awesome. Thank you so much for that question and that answer, Jason. All right, we just got this in the chat Jason just posted. How do you feel about a week six defoil?
Jason [00:11:53]:
Yeah, so let's say we're on a like an eight week cycle. Um, I usually like to do some amount of deleafing there during ripening. And the idea there is just to reduce how much work that we're, we've got to take during harvesting. Just kind of stretch out some of, some of that. And a lot of it depends on how much defoliation have we done earlier. And really, any of these questions that relate to defoliation, we're. We're just really talking about canopy density, right? Are we trying to increase our a to b bud ratio? Well, if we do a good deleafing to two weeks before the end of it, there's a good chance that we can end up with a little bit higher a to b bud ratio simply because we're going to get some more light to the larva under canopy of that, let that, let that bud develop into some nice solid nugs. So it's one of those things where we always talk about opportunity cost.
Jason [00:12:47]:
Right? What, what variables are we leveraging in order to optimize this plant? And if you do have some extra labor and it's going to help you achieve those goals that you need. Maybe you've kind of staggered out some of your deleafing practices and didn't go quite as hard there in week three, then. Yeah. Utilize that labor and do it. But it's different for every facility. It is a little different for different strains. Kind of comes down to like I was talking about, there's something better we can do with that time and money and. Or do we need to achieve specific goals for this strain? We need absolute quality out of this end product.
Kaisha [00:13:30]:
Fantastic. Jason, thank you for your answer. And Jason, thank you for your question. All right, we are moving on to YouTube. Indie Bud dropped this question. Lowering PpFD and CO2 in the last few weeks gradually. Thoughts?
Jason [00:13:44]:
Yeah, that's all right. When we think about what that's doing to the plant, it's not something I necessarily usually do until maybe the last just four or five days. So I really like the idea of doing it gradually. Obviously we've conditioned these plants to be growing as optimally as they can under pretty reasonably set conditions for the, you know, the last four weeks of flower. And so doing that gradually. Yeah, you can absolutely start to reduce, you know, how much carbohydrates and sugars are being built up through photosynthesis. Right. Just start to allow some of that chlorophyll to, um, be reduced in the plant.
Jason [00:14:25]:
So I don't, I don't think it's a bad option. Um, how much, you know, that's. That's one of those tricky questions.
Kaisha [00:14:33]:
All right, thank you, Andy Bud, for your question. Oh, I love it. We've got some live questions coming in. All right, we got this one. It's a lengthy one. This one came in from Instagram. Someone wrote if planting out a ten by ten table or canopy with grow down Hugo blocks in a sealed grow environment. All variables taken as nailed with under canopy lighting and full spectrum tunable leds with a strain cheese by diesel, which likes to have a reasonable stretch to x but quite lateral and bushy.
Kaisha [00:15:06]:
Would you go for an 18 or 24 plant count density for best, allowing yield and maintaining good drybacks for the ripening stage?
Jason [00:15:17]:
You know, unfortunately, it's been a while since I've worked with cheese and I don't know if I had the exact cut that you did, but, uh. But, but I guess that, you know, that's a question that comes down to a lot about what we were talking earlier. I guess that's the theme of the episode here is canopy density. Right. So when we're talking about canopy density, we're talking about, are we able to create consistent airflow throughout the canopy? Are we able to achieve the, um, lighting parameters that we want between the plants, within the plants, throughout the depth of the canopy? Of the plants. Right. And, uh, obviously, you know, if you're just in a hugo, there's, you know, there's a good chance that, um, hopefully you're doing pretty good stripping. Um, and there's also a good chance that, you know, by having those plants a little bit tighter, uh, you're going to be able to optimize the, the amount of bud produced in that space.
Jason [00:16:09]:
You know, most of the time, a lot of grows, I go into. I end up recommending a little bit less planting density just because then we can get away with slightly less deleafing practices. Um, we end up with a little bit better a to B Buddha ratio and that. And like I said, it all comes down to, all right, how many photons can we hit lower in the canopy? Obviously, if you have under canopy leds, that is, you know, also going to help you maintain a tighter plant structure or, excuse me, a plant spacing in order to get the structure that you want and still maintain high quality, less larvae under. Under canopies, lowers on that plant.
Kaisha [00:16:48]:
Amazing. All right. And this person, it's chili wolf. Sorry I missed your name the first time. Chili wolf. They had a second question. They wrote, I have a troll master hydro x Pro, full environmental control that I'm in the process of setting up, just waiting for AROYA to allow me to purchase for my UK room. Very soon, I'm told.
Kaisha [00:17:07]:
Yep, very soon. I have the ability to set temps to steadily fall and rise from night to day to mimic natural conditions. Would you say that it would be better on my equipment, dehumidifiers and air conditioners, et cetera, to step these temps and humidities up and down rather than in a direct linear fashion? I'm thinking about short cycling my compressors, etcetera. Ideally I'd like a steady drop over a few hours, but I just feel this will be hard on the. On my equipment. What do you think, Jason?
Jason [00:17:39]:
It can. It depends a little bit on what type of equipment that's being offered anytime. We're working with a VFD based h vac system, so that's variable frequency drive and that's what's really what it's doing is it's modulating the duty cycle. So it's actually changing how much power is going to the device. So for, you know, let's talk about a typical exhaust fan in a greenhouse, because those were probably the most I worked with vfDs. If we have a motor, let's say it's a two phase 240, that's not a VFD. Typically we only have two options, one on or off, right. And so we either have to give it full power or no power.
Jason [00:18:19]:
And then, you know, if we start to stagger a piece of equipment like that, we're going to have more starts and stops on a motor. Whereas any equipment that is operated off of a VFD variable frequency drive, it's not necessarily going to be harmful on that equipment at all. And actually it can be really helpful. And so this is where we can implement a few different strategies. I do personally really like to try and stage my environmental changes just because, you know, if we have big spikes of humidity when we turn the lights off or on, um, we can start to rectify any of those changes, right. If we mimic a little bit of nature, we can also use that to manipulate how generative or vegetative that response is from the plant. So anytime that we make bigger changes in temperature faster, uh, that's going to be a more generative response from the plant. And so I personally, I really do like to do that.
Jason [00:19:15]:
Um, uh, for indoor application. Yeah, maybe not quite, uh, not quite as common that we see this as we do in greenhouses. You know, in greenhouses where a lot of times, you know, there's the chance of, of hitting dew point if we make temperature changes too quickly, we'll hit, you know, we'll hit dew point right at the edge of the glass and we'll start to condensate that type of stuff. So in greenhouses it is, it is really important to start to implement that type of stuff. And we look at the holistic picture. If we can ramp some of these changes, a lot of times we actually have to make equipment work less hard to combat an instantaneous change as we do if we make, say, a ten degree temperature difference happen over an hour. So it depends a little bit on your equipment, but for most implementations, if you do have that option, I like to implement it or use it. I said implement it twice there.
Kaisha [00:20:12]:
So good. Thank you for your answer. Chili web. These are great questions. The grommets, y'all are coming through some awesome questions. We love that. Great conversations. All right, we're going to keep it moving because we've got a few more live questions to cover.
Kaisha [00:20:26]:
This one came from Ameriguero. They wrote, I've heard about this concept of spiking EC to help ripen finish. Can you elaborate on how this is accomplished and on how many days, weeks prior to harvest we would do this, please?
Jason [00:20:41]:
Yeah, I love it. We're talking about ripening instead of the other way to refer to the end of the cycle. That's great. Ripening. Usually I'll see one to two weeks. So in most strains, if I'm running a nine week cycle, I'll be at the last two weeks of the plant's life there. That will push ripening. And a lot of times that EC is going to spike on a daily basis just, just naturally, because the way that we're irrigating there during ripening, we usually recommend with a generative strategy, meaning that you have a short irrigation window.
Jason [00:21:18]:
We're really only just applying p one irrigations to get up to field capacity and then allowing it to dry back for the rest of that photo period. And with the photo period off, so we have a 1 hour p one, it means we've got a 23 hours dry back window. And what we're going to do is usually see that EC just naturally rise as the, that 23 hours goes past, because what's happening is a lot of times those, those salts are concentrating in the substrate. You know, even though we are starting to reduce the overall amount of nutrients in there, uh, you know, especially if we're not going to be reducing how much nitrogen goes in there, I like to be at like half strength nutrients, uh, by, by the end of the cycle. And even if we are replacing nitrogen with, uh, something like a calcium chloride that we were talking about earlier, I then I like to be at three quarters or full strength nutrients. But what, uh, you know, what's happening is just naturally, that plant has a pretty large amount of water usage by the end of its cycle. And as it's going through a significant dryback, because we are generative steering that that EC is usually going to do some amount of spiking. So, uh, it's one of those things where kind of a side effect of, uh, of the way that we're irrigating through that ripening cycle or phase.
Kaisha [00:22:43]:
Fantastic. Amara Guerra, that was a great question. Thank you for dropping it. All right, Tyler dropped a question on Instagram related to build outs. They wrote in room build outs. Are you seeing great differences between flower rooms utilizing redundancy in the H vac systems? I'm seeing greater emphasis being put on variable refrigerant flow systems and multiple H vac units per flowering room, often utilizing reheat units. Units override controllers to better control temp and humidity swings.
Jason [00:23:15]:
Yes, thanks. You know, anytime that we have the option to run, you know, twice as many smaller units versus one very large unit, I'm usually a fan of that. A couple side effects there. You know, if it is truly a redundant system, then if there is some type of mechanical failure or equipment failure, then at least we have half the capacity to still be able to adjust room parameters. The other thing there is if we have multiple smaller units, then we can typically have a little bit better control if we have to. We can only operate one. So we can have smaller changes in environmental factors. And a lot of times also ends up that we end up having a little bit more ducting, end up with more uniformity across the environment in that room.
Jason [00:24:08]:
So yes, I'm a huge fan of that stuff and huge fan of using, utilizing reheat, you know, might as well if we have the opportunity to do so. So that's. I completely agree with this question.
Kaisha [00:24:22]:
All right, Tyler, you heard it. Thank you for dropping your question. We appreciate you. All right, we are covering a lot around facility build out, which is really, really cool. Jocelyn, zero zero seven wanted to know what is your view on under canopy lighting? We mentioned it a little earlier. What do you think?
Jason [00:24:41]:
Yeah, so, you know, we think dove in pretty good on an episode 98 or something early.
Kaisha [00:24:50]:
Yeah, earlier this year is a good one. Yeah, we'll drop it in the chat.
Jason [00:24:53]:
So let's definitely throw a link in there. You know, for me, if. If you have the opportunity to run under canopy lighting, it's one of those things where I like it. Uh, you know, one of the questions that I asked during that episode was does under canopy lighting, you know, provide us with a better increase than just increasing the amount of lighting? Um, you know, and I think really what's happening there is we're spreading the lighting across a better area. So advantages of some of the under canopy lighting is I see improved a b buds, especially when we don't necessarily have the ability to do as much defoliation as we want. So there is some investment and it's one of those things where you have to make that opportunity. Cost evaluation. Is that the cost of under canopy lighting right now going to be a big enough improvement for your operation to justify the costs? And in many of the facilities that I've been into, the answer is yes.
Jason [00:25:59]:
For some of the growers that may already be above required levels, especially in mixed light applications, then that might not be the most valuable purchase for their next improvement.
Kaisha [00:26:16]:
Yes. So we dropped the link to the episode that we had with Bobby Baggs. Tim from Fabin. Great episode on under Canopy Lighting. Some people are finding great success with it. So it's always good to be on top of what's going on technology wise in the industry. All right, we're going to keep it moving. We got a couple questions related to VPD.
Kaisha [00:26:37]:
This one got dropped here in the chat. Someone wants to know, what would you advise for maintaining VPD levels on greenhouse the most efficient way?
Jason [00:26:47]:
Yeah. So very, very open question. Gonna end up being, where is your greenhouse? How much control equipment do you have in your greenhouse? So do you have gable vents? Do you have how many fans? What's the ability to adjust those fans? There's a lot of stuff here that's going to go in to how to accurately attribute the programming for a greenhouse to stay as steady as possible. Some of the things there I actually already mentioned, and that was make smaller changes rather than bigger changes fast. And that's going to help you combat any environmental stuff that's going outside of the room. I think when I was programming greenhouses, one of the most important things I did was start thinking about offsets. So rather than building my staging strategy off of specific set points, I ended up building it off of a calculation that used the outdoor temperature and then subtracting my desired indoor temperature. And so that would adjust how quickly my equipment reacted.
Jason [00:28:02]:
Obviously, if my target indoor temperature was, say, 75 degrees and it was 75 degrees outside, then, you know, I could do whatever I needed to achieve the accurate humidity. And that's a really important thought as well. I can turn on as many fans as fast as I want if I need to adjust my humidity. And also thinking about, all right, well, if I. The humidity outside is the same as I want it to be inside, then we could be completely open, flow, and have a great environment. Obviously, if there's a bigger differential between the outdoor parameters and my desired indoor target ranges, then I need to have equipment react much slower. Up here in the northwest, it was very, very important in the springtime and the fall times, especially, because we might have a morning that we're starting off at, say, you know, 32 degrees, 25 degrees, anything like that, and by midday might be 50 degrees, 60 degrees outside. And obviously, on.
Jason [00:29:06]:
On a good sunny day, we might see the greenhouse temperatures rise fairly quickly in the morning with that, with that sun coming up. And if we ended up opening the pad pump or the pad vent, excuse me, too quickly. You know, a lot of times the greenhouse differential temperature front to back, we'd see that cold air rush in and start to cause some issues in the front of that greenhouse. So that's probably one of the best things that you can do to start making sure that your VPD stays in range and as stable as possible is utilizing that calculation. You know, get. Get yourself an outdoor climate station that can be connected to your controller. Hopefully, your controller has the ability to implement some custom controls. So you can start writing, writing in some, some specific, you know, variable operations to.
Jason [00:29:58]:
To really combat what's going on out there. Like I says, you know, one of the, one of the probably biggest and most fun challenges of greenhouses, and this is also why I love them, is if you are in a seasonal area like we are up here, then really you get, you get to start doing this stuff right once a year. And I'll talk about this whenever we talk about comparing yields inside of a greenhouse. When we look at yields inside of a greenhouse, there's a couple things that we can do comparing directly to the last cycles. Yield isn't necessarily always a fair option to yourself because there's some variables that are going to change that you may or may not have really any control over, especially when we think about how much light or the spectrum of light that's available to these plants. So there's two things you can do. One is you can compare to that cycle of the same time last year, which is a really good way to kind of benchmark against yourself. And the other is to start making a DLI adjustment to yield.
Jason [00:31:02]:
Right. So since the amount of photons that are coming in, since light is a fundamental in our photosynthetic equation, we would expect that our yields would vary depending on how much DLI that we can achieve, especially if we're on the lower end of the spectrum or, well, the lower end of the levels. I shouldn't have said spectrum there, because, you know, if we only get 30 dli in the wintertime or 35 dli, we can't ever expect, even in the absolute perfect conditions elsewise, to at the same yields that we would at 45 or 50 dli. And so that's kind of an important consideration. Obviously, if we have supplemental lighting, you know, then we can start to offset that and then really get a little bit closer to the consistency of an indoor grow facility. I'm getting a little off track of EPD, but I think all of this kind of comes into play.
Kaisha [00:32:00]:
Yeah. Lots of considerations for a greenhouse. Thank you for that wonderful overview. Thank you to our friend, our girlmi who dropped this question. We appreciate you. All right, I. Here's another question related to VPD. We got this a few weeks ago.
Kaisha [00:32:12]:
First time getting to it. Stone throw Canaco posted on Instagram. What's the reason for botrytis in big, extra large cola buds? I have an AROYA climate station monitoring the environment. My VPD is always on point for the time period in flower.
Jason [00:32:28]:
Yeah, a couple of really important questions, and I love that you asked this question because so many times we just think it's obvious. Well, appropriate conditions for. For botrytis to grow is how it grows. Yes, cleanliness does help to eradicate any, any spores and stuff that happens, but it's almost impossible to completely eliminate that even in an extremely clean facility. There's just millions of that stuff floating around. So why does it happen in bigger buds? Well, it's going to happen in bigger buds because of microclimates. And sometimes things like you better airflow can help reduce how much botrytis that we see. Sometimes just bumping up our VPD a little bit can help with that.
Jason [00:33:15]:
Also, making changes to the environment a little bit slower can help with that. But really what's going on there is, you know, the amount of moisture that is in that bud is raising the humidity within that bud itself and in the immediate area surrounding that bud. And so even if we do have a, let's say a VPD at 1.4 or 1.5, we're really trying, trying to avoid any, any of that botrytis. Well, you know, at the surface of that bud and. And within it, that VPD is going to be significantly lower. Right. And so that's, you know, that's kind of the main reason that a lot of times we see it towards the end of the cycle. And if you, you know, pay close attention to what our recommendations are, you'll always talk, hear me talk about, you know, ideal VPD being like one two, um, one three, uh, you know, say one one to one three.
Jason [00:34:08]:
Well, with any clients that end up having issues with molds, mildew, botrytis, we always try to recommend, you know, keep it on the higher side that VPD, try to keep the rims a little bit drier. And, you know, any bit drier in the room is going to help either decrease the size of that micro climate around the bud or start to just make it drier within that bud itself. So those are a couple strategies, obviously, you know, and we've broken this down, I forget what episode it was, but we broke it down really into kind of like, the three main factors for, for, you know, reducing the likeliness of bud loss. And, you know, one of those also plant health, you know, making sure that we have established really healthy plants, because a lot of that stuff is attacking any dead cells, dead material that is near the bud or the leaf, any of that types of stuff, you know, and so you can do things like silica additives, and, you know, we can make sure that we've got some foliar sprays. And anything that's increasing the robustness of the plant cells is going to help reduce the likeliness that some of it gets established. And then there's always the strain dependent. I had a cut of green crack and it almost, at the time, didn't seem like no matter what we did with it, that we could avoid significant losses due to botrytis. So there are certain strains that are just much more susceptible to that type of growth.
Kaisha [00:35:43]:
Yeah, that was a great question, and I'm actually about to drop this in the chat. We have a wonderful education guide that I wrote y'all. Maintaining healthy indoor cannabis plants. It touches on a little bit of what Jason's talking about, but definitely click through our education guides. We've got a lot of resources for y'all. Good luck out there with those extra large colas and that botrytis. Okay. George dropped this question on YouTube.
Kaisha [00:36:07]:
He writes, I heard if I raise the MKP, it would make my flower finish faster. For example, my friend freed's MPK at week seven to finish at week eight. Is that true? And do you recommend. I'm assuming they mean NPK, first of all, but I don't know.
Jason [00:36:28]:
Yeah, I was just gonna look up NPK to see if there was something that I'm missing out on.
Kaisha [00:36:33]:
I feel like it might be NPK. George, if you're out there and can clarify for us, we'd appreciate you. We want to answer your question.
Jason [00:36:40]:
Yeah, let's just hit the question with the assumption that he's meaning NPK. So obviously that's nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, and these are our macronutrients. So if we said, all right, we need to raise NPK. That's what we commonly say here on the show of raising our EC, raising our nutrient levels. Right. So most any nutrient is going to be labeled with its amount of nitrogen, potassium and nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Excuse me. And, you know, those are.
Jason [00:37:13]:
Those are the three building block elements. That's why we call them the macronutrients. Macro being, you know, most important, large. And the nutrients are going to have some amount of micronutrients, our borons, our irons, molybdenums, that type of stuff. And so, yeah, if we do raising it, maybe ask a question one more time here.
Kaisha [00:37:35]:
Absolutely. So I heard if I raise the MKP, it would make my flower finish faster. For example, my friend frieds MPK at week seven to finish at week eight. Is that true? And do you recommend this kind of.
Jason [00:37:51]:
Comes down to a lot of what we talk about for crop steering. How are we utilizing the osmotic differential in the substrate in the plant so the concentration of salts and sugars to produce optimal growth? And sometimes that means, yes, we can cut some time off of the grow cycle by increasing the amount of nutrients that are available to the plant. And that's really kind of one of the things that we're shooting for in the early weeks of flowers. By implementing generative type of strategy, we can raise the EC in the substrate and decrease the osmotic differential between the substrate and the plant. That's going to basically begin modifying the hormone balance in that plant so that it's leaning a little bit more towards reproductive cell growth. And that's exactly what we want. Right. We want to try and combat how much stretching we get.
Jason [00:38:47]:
Make sure we're getting some amount of reduced node spacing, lots of bud sites, and activating progenitor cells, getting the plant to establish early bud sites as quickly as possible so that we have a longer duration to make those bud sites grow as large as possible.
Kaisha [00:39:10]:
Awesome. Thank you. Great question. Great answer, George. If we're missing something and should be talking about MkP or MPK, let us know. So let's get back into it. All right, y'all, we're going to wrap up a few minutes early, but I did want to ask this question. It's related to lighting, which Jason loves.
Kaisha [00:39:26]:
This one came from Chronos Chronic. They dropped it a few weeks ago. How would you optimize the dim setting on leds? My lights have been dimmed the whole grow. Should I undim late into flower? What exactly does it do or how will it affect the plants?
Jason [00:39:43]:
All right, dimming settings on an led. Yeah. So, you know, it's no different than some of the dimming settings on an HPS. Not all HPS has had dimming settings, but really, what is happening with the dimm settings? There is. It's reducing how much power is going to the leds. Kind of cool. Most of those leds actually run on a duty cycle as well. I could talk a long time about that because I will love electronics used to use to build amplifiers and stuff.
Jason [00:40:13]:
But what's happening there is by dimming the leds, it's reducing the duty cycle. So the total amount of power that's going to the lights, and it's obviously going to have less amount of micro moles, less amount of photons that are being produced from that fixture. And it's a pretty easy question to answer really, because the most important thing that we're looking at is the light intensity, specifically par readings at the canopy, right? So we always want to match the par readings with the age of the plant, with the plant's growth. And it's one of those important things that when we think about, well, what are my limiting factors? Well, when we look at photosynthetic equation, light and CO2 are some of the very first limiting factors for plant growth. So it's really important that we're getting the right amounts of light to this plant in order to optimize its growth. And that means that a lot of times throughout the cycle, you know, we're going to be up in that thousand to 1200 micromoles range through most of flower. And I think some of the most important kind of checkpoints here to make are that we can be at a pretty reasonable pPFD photosynthetic flux density when we're coming out of veg to be in the range of five to 600 micromoles at the end of edge. And then also making sure that when we reduce our lighting cycle from 18 hours to 12 hours, that we're adding an additional 33% lighting intensity to make sure that we're matching our DLI.
Jason [00:41:51]:
So DlI being daily lighting integral is the total amount of photons that hit that plant that day. And when we're on an 18 hours day, well, we have six extra hours of photons hitting that plant. So if we came out of edge at, you know, five or 600 micromoles, that usually means that our first day at 1212 cycle, we want to be, you know, up in that 800 range. And um, typically, you know, through the first week or so, especially if we're rooting in, in flower, then we'll start to just increase that lighting intensity slowly to match the plant growth and strain dependent. Some strains don't necessarily like to be too much higher than, say, 900 micromoles. Other strains out there will, will eat up 1300 as long as we have appropriate CO2 levels. Um, so to directly answer the question if they've been dim the whole cycle, uh, I guess it depends on how close you are to the end of the cycle. If I have three weeks left, I'd probably up them a little bit, try and try and get that last push of growth out of there.
Jason [00:42:56]:
If I have one week left, I'd leave them where they are.
Kaisha [00:43:01]:
Outstanding. Thank you, Jason. All right, just this just in, we got clarification. George's earlier question was pertaining to MPK, which is monopotassium phosphate. I'm going to reread the question. So I heard if I raise the MPK, it would make my flower finish faster. For example, my friend feeds MPK at week seven to finish at week eight. Is that true?
Jason [00:43:25]:
And do you recommend, you know, for most commercial facilities that are on standardized feed program from one of the larger nutrient lines? Don't necessarily like to make too many modifications. When we do talk about, you know, increasing the, you know, p and the ks, the potassium and phosphates that are available to the plant, then typically those are, you know, more, more developmental type of nutrients, more developmental elements to the plant. So when we are trying to build fruits and flowers, usually potassiums and phosphors are the more important ones. And that's one of the reasons that we do drop out nitrogen towards the end of the cycle. Will it necessarily make us ripen up faster? Maybe. It depends how much we increase it and, you know, how much left in the cycle. So is it a bad strategy? No, there's lots of traditional agriculture that utilize modifying that levels of the ratios of nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus. And so if we end up adding monopotassium phosphate, then we'll have higher levels of pk in there.
Jason [00:44:49]:
So, you know, there is a chance that maybe if we just raised our total levels of nitrogen, potassium and phosphate throughout the cycle and then cut nitrogen out at the end, we would be achieving better results even than adding additional potassium and phosphate somewhere through the cycle.
Kaisha [00:45:12]:
Good day for a nutrients overview. Fantastic. Thank you for that, George. We appreciate you clarifying for us. Thank you so much. We're going to end a little bit early, but not before I make this quick announcement. The MJ awards is accepting nominations until August 18. And if you love AROYA Office Hours, we would love for you to nominate us for content creator of the year.
Kaisha [00:45:31]:
We just were dropping the link to the nomination forum. Please do consider dropping us in there. Other than that. Jason, you rock. Thank you for holding it down solo today. Thank you, producer Chris for another great session. And thank you all so much for joining us for this week's AROYA Office Hours. To learn more about AROYA, book a demo at AROYA IO and one of our team members would be happy to walk you through the ins and outs of the ultimate cannabis cultivation platform.
Kaisha [00:45:59]:
If you have any crops during your cultivation questions you want us to cover. If we didn't get to your question today, drop them anytime in the AROYA app. Email us at salesroya IO. Send us a DM over Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn. We definitely want to hear from you. If you're a fan of the pod, please leave us a review on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. We so appreciate the feedback. And be sure to subscribe to our YouTube so you never, never miss an episode.
Kaisha [00:46:22]:
Thanks y'all. We'll see you at episode 111. Bye.