Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Seth Baumgartner and Jason Van Leuven open the mics for your crop steering and cultivation questions.
OH TX 70
===
[00:00:00] Kaisha: Growing friends, welcome to office hours, your source for free cannabis cultivation education. I'm Kaisha, and I'm one of your moderators happy Thursday, Mandy.
[00:00:08] Mandy: Hello, my co-moderator Kaisha and hello everyone. We're. Episode 70. Wow. Can you believe it? We're also going live over on YouTube. So if you're logging on over there, make sure you send us your questions and I'll get those to the team.
[00:00:22] Mandy: I'm here to remind you also, if you're active on social media, be sure you're following us on all the platforms. So we're on Instagram, Tik, TOK, YouTube, [00:00:30] LinkedIn, and social club. But all right, you guys let's do this. We got a ton of cross-training questions this week, so let's get right into it back over to you, Kaisha.
[00:00:39] Kaisha: Thank you, Mandy. All right. If you're live with us here and you have a question type it in the chat at any time, and if your question gets picked, we'll have you either unmute yourself or one of us will ask for you, Seth and Jason in the house. Gentlemen, how are you?
[00:00:51] Seth: I'll do it again. Yeah. Good. It's a beautiful day out.
[00:00:54] Seth: Can't ask for much more.
[00:00:55] Kaisha: Yes. Hey, I know. So grateful, happy summer. Y'all that's why it's officially summer. [00:01:00] All right. You ready for our first question? We've got a lot. This one came in. We didn't get to it last week, but I want to know the answer to this question. GALF was wondering, what are the benefits of having an oscillating fan blowing on your
[00:01:13] Seth: plants?
[00:01:15] Seth: Airflow. Yeah. We want to keep fresh air moving around the room. Obviously we've got gas exchange going on. We want to get, All that. Oxygen that's being produced out of the canopy and move it out and replace it with CO2. And then also that air flushed on strongly affects.
[00:01:29] Seth: The surface [00:01:30] Tampa and the BPD right around the lead surface. So that's, at the end of the day, everything we do in the environment is really targeting optimal conditions in that first few millimeters around the plant surface. So that's where looking at airflow can massively change that. That's how we can take a.
[00:01:45] Seth: A plant that's got to lead surface temp that's plus five degrees over ambient room tab and bring it back down into a reasonable range and also promote good transpiration.
[00:01:55] Jason: And again, another reason as well as, And get uniformity in the Air temperature of the room. [00:02:00] So typically, in one corner we went on the HVAC system. We need to make sure that air gets dispersed.
[00:02:04] Jason: Throughout. The room with that being said other than us letting fans, I really like HVAC socks. Is there one of my favorite ways to get good air movement throughout the room? Dispersed to the temperature AC or heating. Air and they don't push too hard on the plants as well. So you don't have to worry about like fan burn. If your plants are getting pretty close to the air
[00:02:23] Seth: socks,
[00:02:24] Seth: Yeah. A good way to look at it is if you've got any source of air movement, whether it's a fan, a. Then [00:02:30] register coming in, anything like that? You can put your hand in front of it and walk away. You pre-seed pretty quickly see a diminishing, diminishing amount of air flow going across your hand. If you can use a sock to help direct that airflow in the appropriate places, we'd seen people using both overhead and underneath the benches from time to time.
[00:02:46] Seth: To push air flow around to the right place. And it actually becomes really important when you've got a very big room. If we're in. A 400 square foot flower room. That's not very big. We can actually get some good air movement with just regular oscillating fans or [00:03:00] lift fans. But once it gets bigger, we want to try to work as hard as possible to eliminate any of those microclimates situations. Then the oscillating fans are a great start, really, especially for a small space and where you have enough access to put them evenly distributed.
[00:03:14] Seth: And if they blow far enough in you're going to get some good air.
[00:03:21] Kaisha: Excellent job already blowing minds. All right, condom popping on YouTube already. What's happening, Mandy.
[00:03:27] Mandy: Thanks Kaisha. Yeah, poppy gross has a [00:03:30] question about high pH. I'm growing in one gallon pot with 6.0. P H my Rez is at 2.7 AC. And my terrace reads 4.828 in between feeds drive back overnight hits 11 to 12. ISI runoff. ISI is at 5.6 pH.
[00:03:51] Mandy: Let's see is it way too high? Yeah. Do we have some advice about pH in a
[00:03:54] Seth: situation? It sounds like he's getting pretty good results, honestly, with Coco watering and at [00:04:00] that five, nine to 6.0. It's pretty standard. And we actually do want to see a small drop in that ISI when it comes out in terms of runoff.
[00:04:07] Seth: Especially if you're getting proper runoff, you're not having any channeling or anything going on. That's telling us that the plant is pulling nutrients out. Which you know we've discussed this before. Basically you're pulling negative ions. Ions out a solution. The more positive ions you have, the lower the pH is. So basically if your pH was coming out higher,
[00:04:27] Seth: That's embarrassing. Bad plant health. We [00:04:30] would go ahead and say, Hey, this plant is having problems. Uptaking these nutrients, but because we're putting it in at an appropriate pH and pulling it out at an appropriate pH. We know that the root zone pH and stable in the range that we want to be.
[00:04:46] Seth: And what you're doing. Yeah. Yeah. Don't question yourself too much in. You can also remember guys, like sometimes, when you drift a little bit outside of these norms, like we always say 5.6 to 6.0 is a sweet spot. And that's just because that's where you get optimal [00:05:00] uptake of All the plant nutrients we want and the right amount of restriction on things like nitrogen that are pulling up a drifting outside of that range a little bit.
[00:05:08] Seth: Isn't a huge reason for concern. Like everything. We're always playing a game averages here. If we took runoff from every plant across the whole table. Some might be five, six, so it might be five seven. So it might be five, four. What we want to see is a stable trend. In close to that range. If we're seeing a downward trend.
[00:05:26] Seth: We're going to run into some severe plant nutrition issues because the plants [00:05:30] basically deficient of everything at that point. And then. Same on the other end and you've got too high in pH the plant can't take up new transit, appropriate fashion. So that's why we're really targeting that five, six to 6.0.
[00:05:41] Seth: And yeah just keep rolling. Watch it to make sure you don't get too far outside the range and then recognize that If your pH is drifting down the plants, pulling out, Negative ions to point food out of solution. Number one, that's a good thing. Number two. We always want to balance that pH because again, if it goes too low, we're going to have some severe [00:06:00] plant health issues.
[00:06:01] Seth: Really keep an eye on that. And then. Yeah, keep doing what you're doing. Sounds like you're pushing the right amount of runoff. You're not letting things get too stagnant in there. I just keep on rocking, like Yar. Yeah. If you
[00:06:12] Jason: want more resources on specifically what the nutrient solubility is at different pages.
[00:06:17] Jason: A Google search. In translatability pH chart. There's going to be different charts for different types of media. It's just a great way to get a visual on where the different macro and micronutrients [00:06:30] are
[00:06:30] Seth: most available to the plant. Yeah. And if you're, especially because you're already taking, actual substrate data readings, like even if you're not using a time series graph, but you do have access to time series data and real numbers from the root zone.
[00:06:42] Seth: You can also stretch to determine whether you actually have that. Hi-C lockout situation, a lower high pH situation that's causing the plant to not uptake nutrients. So you can really navigate those waters of what the heck is going on with my plant with a little more clarity. Cause you can eliminate certain problems just by knowing [00:07:00] like.
[00:07:00] Seth: I can't tell how many times I've talked to people who are really concerned that their UC is getting super high. And we have to say, Hey, no, It really isn't compared to everything we see out there, but what's your pH doing? And if they're PA runoff, pH is at 5.2. No amount of over or under fertilizing is going to fix that. We've got to solve that pH problem to get the plant back into a zone where it can uptake nutrients.
[00:07:24] Mandy: That's great advice. Poppy gross did come back with a little bit more information. Basically my question [00:07:30] is why is my pH hitting 10 and up, but my plants are still healthy. You guys having an advice.
[00:07:37] Seth: The H is it in 10 Patri, C.
[00:07:42] Seth: It says P H. I would calibrate my pH meter. Yeah.
[00:07:47] Jason: I was going to. I was going to say, that's it. What's that high. We'll definitely see some deficiencies going on with plants
[00:07:52] Seth: very quickly. If the BH was 10, you could stick your finger in that we're an often get. You kill it. Crispy layers of cells on your finger skin. So I would [00:08:00] really look at calibrating that
[00:08:01] Seth: For reference. The higher end pH meters. Like Jason, I like to use as reference points. You calibrate every single time you use them, even if that's 10 times a day. With set standard solutions that you can rely on.
[00:08:15] Seth: And if
[00:08:16] Jason: you don't have a high end pH meter,
[00:08:17] Seth: it's worth investing in one. Absolutely. At the bare minimum, do your redundant checks, Get a good standard solution. Do a multi-point calibration, not a single point. And then those little paper strips is old [00:08:30] school tech as they are always pretty nice. If you find yourself with an unbelievable number, it's a same thing. We'll see some outrageous ISI numbers, is that thing really 30. And then we go look at it and there's actually just a different problem with the sensor where it hasn't been cleaned and it has salt buildup all over it.
[00:08:44] Seth: Any time he gets wet at all. It's reading a really high reading. The good old litmus paper. Yup.
[00:08:52] Seth: Yeah. Yeah. Science class. Yeah. They're everywhere. They're very available. It's not [00:09:00] quite as. Precise. It depends. If you're color blind, that's going to be a rough one.
[00:09:04] Seth: Otherwise they're there. Good. A good mark to see if you're close at all. Cause. I know myself. I'd chased. Several problems that just turned out to be a bad reading. There were, we're looking at a lot of different sensors to control everything in these systems and. Once you've got let's say four pH pens running around in a facility and.
[00:09:24] Seth: Each person owns that, but not everyone's calibrating every day. Now we're all disagreeing about who's mixing their [00:09:30] tanks correctly. So it's important to make sure everyone's on the same standard when it comes to units measurement.
[00:09:35] Jason: I have a kind of a fun anecdote back when we were growing the.
[00:09:38] Jason: We're working on looking at climate systems, doing some HVAC modifications in the greenhouse. And I noticed that, Hey, my light levels are super low and ended up going into the greenhouse and someone put the climate station on its side. So the light sensor was. They said thank you to decrease off.
[00:09:55] Jason: And the next year.
[00:09:58] Mandy: Oh, my gosh. It's like something that [00:10:00] you don't even think about, but yeah. Calibrate those sensors, growers. We are getting so many questions over on YouTube. So I'm going to go on to this question from John. Or home grocer. John wants to know. For home growers using LEDs and no supplemental CO2. Is there a standard PPFD number or formula that we should shoot for at the various stages of grow? So example PPFD and early vege.
[00:10:24] Mandy: Badge flower, late flower. What do you guys think?
[00:10:27] Jason: I personally, you're using LEDs [00:10:30] and you don't have CO2. You probably don't have a huge operation. Probably don't have a lot of overhead cost and the lights,
[00:10:35] Seth: I would run them pretty high. Yeah. The tough thing is, we gotta look at your ambient CO2 depending on where you're live, that can vary a little bit, depending on what's going on in your house that can vary a little bit.
[00:10:46] Seth: You can run them fairly high, Personally what I do since I'm not supplementing CF two in my home. Is I Mount my big LEDs way up at the ceiling. And then I can just adjust intensity a little bit while they're growing, because I'm so over with. For the amount of [00:11:00] CO2 that I have that.
[00:11:01] Seth: If I crack over 800, PPFD at the canopy, I'm not, I'm passing that point of diminishing returns. I'm just not seeing. A lot of yield or quality increases. And because it's led, I'm not necessarily torching the tops of my plants that leave surface temp, isn't getting so high that it's putting that plan into drought stress mode. We're just wasting photons at that point.
[00:11:22] Seth: So I call it about 800, 800 PPFD at the canopy. You're not going to see a whole lot of benefit of that. [00:11:30] And if really accurate CO2 sensors are quite expensive. If you are looking at a home grill, I would probably count on about a three to 500 PPM baseline. Of CO2 in your ambient environment. And then, pop that on the fact do you have a w what is your space, do you have a tent in a sealed room?
[00:11:48] Seth: How often are you exchanging that air? So you're not just running out of CO2 during the daytime, because that's a very easy thing to do. If you just seal up a room and have no CO2 input, you're going to slowly ride that PPM line down. [00:12:00] Over the days.
[00:12:01] Jason: Oh no. How do we get more CO2 for pre we get.
[00:12:05] Jason: Get more pets or have
[00:12:05] Seth: more parties. Yeah. Breathe. And then there's a bunch of products out there that hungers can use usually inoculated grain bags for different types of mushrooms and things like that to increase. CO2 in your little home grow tent or groom. Personally I've always wanted to play with grooming.
[00:12:23] Seth: And in a room, roughly the same areas as my plants are, that way I can circulate air and exchange it. Because [00:12:30] yeah, CO2 systems are spendy and. If you are, if you do happen to be growing in a building, that's habitated, I was wanting to run the risk of just pumping your CO2 up to 10,000 PPM in the house.
[00:12:40] Seth: Not necessarily waking up in the right state of mind.
[00:12:44] Mandy: Hey, that would be a cool experiment though. Brewing beer
[00:12:46] Seth: in your grow. Oh, yeah. There's several companies out there that do sell the mushroom inoculation bags. You can grow edible mushrooms. Inside of your little cannabis grow. If you want to.
[00:12:57] Jason: We could do a aquaponics and brewing.
[00:12:59] Jason: Yeah, [00:13:00] it's flat. Flavia and beer.
[00:13:02] Seth: But. Maybe you'll wonder.
[00:13:08] Mandy: Mutualism at its finest. Awesome. Thanks for that. Andrew's has a question. A high EEC and bulking, for example, an average of seven to eight. With a nine hour irrigation window cause early ripening in the end of week five. Thanks. Let the show.
[00:13:26] Mandy: Or
[00:13:26] Jason: most strains, probably not. That's still within [00:13:30] a reasonable range that I don't mind being during during your booking stages. So you might see certain strains, not like to be up there. I'm just going to take notes on how they perform when they finish up and
[00:13:42] Seth: document it all. Yeah.
[00:13:44] Seth: A big thing to look at. That. The crop registration and time series data is insanely important when we're talking about ECE building. Because if we're looking at bulking being in a six to a nine range, What's really going to dictate whether that's appropriate is how your buildup was to that point.
[00:13:59] Seth: If you only ever [00:14:00] hit a four to a five range. In generative. And then suddenly we're trying to really stack it up in bulking that might give us some unwanted stress. We want to have our baseline for ECE set. By the time we roll into bulking. Otherwise, yeah, usually we're looking at other cues to really help those plants finish up. Once you go to 12, 12, they're on a determinant timeline. So they've got X amount of days at the plants. Mon wants to go.
[00:14:22] Seth: And it's not necessarily just days. We're looking at energy inputs. And overall basic goals in plant development, [00:14:30] but.
[00:14:32] Seth: Usually. Yeah. Something environmental. Something. I always like to check just because I tend to struggle with this from time to time check your drippers. Sometimes I look out. And I see some plants that look like they're trying to finish early. I'll go find that. This one's only been getting about 60% of the water that I put on everything else.
[00:14:48] Seth: And I'm subjecting it to the same environment. So it's behind. Maybe developmentally or advanced because it's trying to cope with that little bit of drought stress that you're throwing at it compared to everything
[00:14:58] Jason: else. Yeah. And if [00:15:00] we need to bring our AC down just a little bit it gives a tad bit more runoff, either increase your P.
[00:15:05] Jason: slightly or just trying to get a little bit more runoff when we hit field past the interview
[00:15:10] Seth: on. Absolutely. It always goes back to crop registration. When you're trying to figure out, you're trying to relate your ECG changes to your runoff amounts. So always write that down and then. Excuse me as you do it more and more. Eventually it becomes fairly intuitive to go. Okay.
[00:15:27] Seth: With my setup, I push a. [00:15:30] I add 40 seconds to an irrigation cycle. I know that's going to give me, let's say 35 seconds to run off based on what I had before. And now that I've done this a hundred times over, I can usually predict how much easy drop I'm going to see after that runoff event or if that's going to be what it takes for me to maintain.
[00:15:46] Seth: And not raise your lower.
[00:15:49] Seth: Awesome. Solid advice
[00:15:51] Mandy: hill. It cannot let us know if you have any followup questions. Lou has a question and it's a little bit long. So bear with me, you guys, as I get through all of this information. [00:16:00]
[00:16:01] Mandy: Would you recommend a freshwater reset once a week when irrigating for desire, dry backs while not pushing runoff in order to help regulate pH. Do you recommend pushing more amount of runoff, each irrigation of it and allow for an increased dry back period to allow pots to go from 60 to 65 reading down to desired water content. We have found an irrigation strategy of one large P one shot during stretch up to three P one shots and book back to one large P one [00:16:30] shot during ending generative with no Picchu other than emergency shots.
[00:16:35] Mandy: Works for us, basically increased runoff to regulate pH and increase longer. Drive back time or limit runoff during the week and do a fresh water flush once a week to regulate routes on pH.
[00:16:48] Seth: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:16:49] Jason: Public, we've got two questions in that one. First off the question was.
[00:16:54] Jason: Freshwater flush. And then the second question would have been irrigation strategies. So let's hit the first question [00:17:00] real quick and. My answer is going to be, I don't like to do that. And if I need to regulate my pH, then usually I'll just pairing. And find what the cause of my pH issues are. Is it a nutrient imbalance?
[00:17:11] Jason: Is the nutrient composition not appropriate for what that plant is eating? And yeah. To address that, we can always send in for leaf tissue analysis and then we'll give him this idea of what nutrients are high in concentration in the plant. And it's not that big of an issue, then let's just put, push slightly more runoff [00:17:30] with our standard.
[00:17:31] Jason: Fertigation units. Won't be up. We have three to four ECE typically, and just run around that and see if that helps correct your pH problem. But as always any type of freshwater, no nutrient levels those are going. Drastically effect. What's our sole concentration in the block is what our nutrient concentration.
[00:17:49] Jason: And we don't want that to change drastically fast. That's going to cause some issues as far as house. The osmotic potential. What those plants are used to. They get accustomed to the amount of nutrients in the [00:18:00] block, and we don't want to change that really quickly. Obviously we can alter it over time.
[00:18:04] Jason: When we're stacking or when we're doing some some ripening and.
[00:18:09] Seth: Answer's no. Yeah. I don't. All agreed that if you're having, if you're finding yourself feeling you need to reset with like a. My strong guess would be if you're trying to maintain pH or resetting with pH 6.5. Freshwater with not assaulted it. That's a band-aid situation.
[00:18:24] Seth: When we're watching that ECE creep up, there's two things, one we're putting osmotic stress on the plant. The other one is wanting to think about what the [00:18:30] composition of that you see this. So if I'm getting run off and at that pH is creeping down, that means my nutritional balances off. So even though my ECE is high, it doesn't have the ISI that I actually doesn't have the salt that I actually want.
[00:18:43] Seth: In the block and that's where pushing more runoff and, It seems counterintuitive sometimes, but actually running a little bit higher. FIDI C just like Jason said, running between a three and a four, over the years we've seen this baseline VDC creep up from back in the day at 1.8, 2.0 2.5. [00:19:00]
[00:19:00] Seth: 2.7. Now we're creeping up to 3.0. And a long time ago it would have been crazy. To feed that high, but now we're discovering with once we take control of plant nutrition and we're really controlling everything going on in the substrate, sometimes feeding more than the islands we want into the blocks so that we can push out some of the ones we don't want is a better solution than just chasing the higher you see.
[00:19:22] Seth: A good thing to remember is we're always looking at that ECE baseline. If I, during my dry bag, I see that ECE creeping very high. Again, if my [00:19:30] pH is off, that's not the ECL. I want so. I want to make sure that's a good balanced approach. And again, if it, if you're pushing that.
[00:19:38] Seth: Freshwater pushed to try to maintain pH. I would guess you really need to push a little more, run off maybe up. That feed EDC and yeah, just keeping it, keep an eye on your runoff. pH you know, I would any day rather save my pH than try to push higher ISI as my pH is creeping down. I want to keep that plant in a healthy zone.
[00:19:59] Seth: And [00:20:00] then understand that if it's week three of stretch and I haven't hit the ISI goals that I wanted to, if I wanted to be at a six to 11 and I made it to a four to eight. It's going to be better for plant health to maintain pH and stay in that lower ISI. And then next round, come back and go look at it holistically and say, Hey, what was my stack? Looking like?
[00:20:20] Seth: And where was it? And that's where again, proper registration, runoff notes. Having as much of a picture. So when you look back and say, Hey, we're pushing Too much runoff for our first week and [00:20:30] a half. We need to dial our irrigation strategy to be lighter. During that time so we can build it up.
[00:20:35] Seth: Steadily, not just have it. Flush out to the plants. Get big enough. That we're actually not getting as much run off. That's a great
[00:20:42] Jason: point as far as Trying to just adjust your easy in order to do that. Anytime that we're under feeding the plant. Paige is going to be really hard to control.
[00:20:50] Jason: Obviously with good nutrient balance, we're always trying to have the right amounts of each nutrient and solution that are being fed to the plant. If we're under [00:21:00] feeding, a lot of times it's going to run out of one of the specific nutrients that it prefers. And that's a lot of times going to be shown as a deficiency in the plant and hard to control pH.
[00:21:10] Seth: Yeah. And if you're, if you're new to using things like desk Siemens to look at ISI rather than just PPM. Understanding that. With the systems we're using. And with this level of control that we. Not just Roy. In general has been introduced into horticulture.
[00:21:25] Seth: We are pushing these plants a lot harder and discovering that our [00:21:30] baseline ECS. Can be a lot higher than a lot of growing tech 10 years ago would have told us, and that's just because. We say cannabis is pushing the envelope. It's a high value, high performance crop. We're looking to get the most out of it.
[00:21:44] Seth: And not terribly worried about him, everyone has a budget, but Cannabis farmers are generally willing to up their inputs of the cost going in to get a higher quality and higher yielding product out of the other side. Whereas if I'm in the wheat field, just outside of this building, I'm looking at what's the [00:22:00] minimum I can put in.
[00:22:01] Seth: To get an acceptable yield.
[00:22:04] Seth: Yeah,
[00:22:05] Jason: Let's hit the second part of that question, as far as I would like through. Generative stacking doing one P one. Through bulking three P ones. So it sounds like maybe some of the strains that you're running are more. More vegetative, meaning type of strains, and that's what they might prefer. So it's going to come down to how far are we leaning on that spectrum? And so overall your crop string strategy is going to [00:22:30] be slightly more generative throughout the entire cycle.
[00:22:33] Jason: And so it might be a good strategy. I personally even if I'm just doing, one hour irrigation window for P ones, I like to have multiple shots to allow the capillary effect of that substrate to catch up with my irrigations. And that way that I'm getting up to field capacity before I'm getting ready to run off and I'm not wasting any, For irrigation solution.
[00:22:51] Seth: You got it. Another thing to consider too, if that's a few irrigations you are putting on and you're actually able to put on that one P one without a massive amount of channeling. That would leave you [00:23:00] to think that you're using a fairly large size media and like the two gallon plus range.
[00:23:04] Seth: And anytime we get to that point, especially with different coco mixes, we do have a small amount of cat ion exchange capacity that comes into play. So basically that coco can hold a small amount of ions, but the more coco you have, the more it can hold. Physically. So at that point, if we've got, say a 15% dry bag in a two gallon pot where we might have a 30% dry back with the same besides plan on a three gallon pot.
[00:23:29] Seth: I now have [00:23:30] less control because I have less opportunity to pull that lever called irrigation and adjust the ECN pH in that root zone. I don't have as many shots or as much volume. To really flush that out and reset that balance. That's part of why receding too, with hydroponic systems in general.
[00:23:45] Seth: I a drift over the years towards a smaller and smaller media size, Personally, I get the same size plan out of a one gallon coco pot that I used to get out of a three Nile bigger than I used to get out of it. Last gallon, Coco pot, six years ago or so, that's definitely something to [00:24:00] look at as well. If you've got this big battery, that's being charged up by all these ions and it just can't, you can't fully discharge enough of it to get a good charge back into it. That's certainly considered.
[00:24:10] Seth: The old irrigation or, huh? Yeah. Pull it. So you would
[00:24:15] Mandy: have great crops during advice. Y'all thanks for covering those questions and yeah. Lu. Let us know if you have any follow-up. We're still getting questions over on YouTube. So I'm going to get to this one from poppy grows. So just curious, assuming my readings were all correct, because everything else seems to [00:24:30] have been where they should have been. If my pH has coming in at that high nine above. So high nine.
[00:24:37] Mandy: Region, what do you suggest and why would my plants still be so healthy? I'm looking at. It just basically. The thing has them worried about pH runoff. And they've been monitoring it for a few days and it doesn't change. Do you have any advice for
[00:24:52] Jason: them? H coming in it nine, are we.
[00:24:56] Seth: That's confusing in the PHM thinking or in the runoff sampling. Oh, [00:25:00] gotcha.
[00:25:00] Seth: Can I just run off? Yes. Gotcha. Yeah, I would I would be slightly concerned about that. I would certainly watch plant health and probably not try to push the sea levels too high. Again, I would really invest in probably an alternative sensor. That's pretty unlikely. And then the next thing to look at is your substrate composition. Are you running straight? Coco? Do you have some amendments in there?
[00:25:21] Seth: And if you're running organics and a lot of biology in there. We're looking at a whole different host interactions than standard runoff, ISI and [00:25:30] PHS. So that's also something to consider if you've got a lot of calcium carbonate in there or some other buffer, that used to be a pretty standard thing to mix.
[00:25:38] Seth: The different types of calcium and other, carbonates for high pH and gear Coco to have some kind of buffering. A lot of times home growers, especially back in the day, didn't have a pH pen. So the way to deal with that was to buffer your media. If you're following a mixing tech that has some of that going on, but now you're actually pH in your input water and not putting in, let's say a.
[00:25:58] Seth: 4.8 [00:26:00] pH. Salt mix with pap water that you have unmonitored and you need buffering capacity for if you're putting that in. Correct that buffering maybe upping that and. I'm not sure that's for sure what's going on, but that's a, that's definitely another thing to look into, especially. Outside of commercial production, I know it's really popular to implement your own mix. You might get Rococo and add some bio char, some lines signs.
[00:26:21] Seth: Matt's mind, various different minerals to help offer. And while that is useful. It can throw off some of these smaller readings and that's part of [00:26:30] why we look at using, Basically straight Coco. Or rockwool on a commercial level because we're eliminating variables. Yeah.
[00:26:38] Jason: And,
[00:26:38] Jason: Like in most, any hydro. Soil is hydro system. I've worked in. If I get over six, five, I'm creeping up. Seven for pH D. I'm going to see that in the plants pretty quickly. So I would definitely investigate further to see what's
[00:26:52] Seth: going on there.
[00:26:55] Seth: Absolutely. Solid answer for you, buddy, but there's a few spots that it definitely could be. And I [00:27:00] just start. Eliminating any of those possibilities? One by one. Awesome. Thank you
[00:27:05] Mandy: for that. Puppy grows came back with Mike Romy is on the way. I think that means homie who grows. I love that term. That's new to me.
[00:27:13] Mandy: Is on the way with his sensors to check out what you said also. So I'm hoping it's my meter, like you said. Awesome. Thanks for that question. Happy, gross. Good to see you again. We had another question. Lou came back with a couple more cases of clarification. We do use two gallon pots, and we [00:27:30] actually have not seen any channeling pH is coming back way lower than feed pH.
[00:27:36] Mandy: Is it a bad practice to have to wait longer than 24 hours between irrigation events. And systems that steer a fairly heavy generative cues.
[00:27:45] Jason: I like to have a media size that allows me to irrigate every day. These plants are they're cyclical and we train them to start. Drinking after lights come on.
[00:27:55] Jason: Eh, we want to train him that every day. That's really, what's going to give us the belief to do [00:28:00] crops during is the fact that we're in a size media that allows us to control what type of irrigations are. Affecting that plant that day.
[00:28:07] Seth: Yeah, and I, a common thing. I see if people are struggling with some of these pH issues, especially with, if they're comfortable with their plant size.
[00:28:13] Seth: Andrew already had so few irrigations that we're talking about going, a whole day without irrigating and writing it now. Switching to a one gallon pot might actually make your life a lot easier because now that you can water every day, you have the opportunity to reset that ionic balance.
[00:28:26] Seth: So if I've got again one gallon pot, I'm replacing [00:28:30] 30% of that volume. That's going to have a bigger effect on what's going on in that media than if I have a two gallon pot and I'm replacing 10 to 15%. I want to be able to take advantage of every day. To control what's going on in that substrate.
[00:28:43] Seth: And the bigger, dry back we have. Also the more opportunity we have to put input water in and affect, what's going on in that red zone. So really balancing that plant and pot size sometimes is one of the easiest ways. To overcome this kind of challenge and, If we weren't, if we [00:29:00] look back, you go back a few years. That's where some of these texts come in, right? Like we're using a media that has some CC we're watering with fi every other day or three days in a row, then taking a day or two off or some combination of.
[00:29:12] Seth: Putting salts on expecting them to remain in the media and then putting water on to rewet it. And what we're trying to do is have a much greater level of control. Then doing
[00:29:22] Mandy: that.
[00:29:25] Mandy: Awesome. It's all about getting more controlled. I think that's it for the questions I need to pronounce. So I'm going to [00:29:30] pass it to Kaisha for our Instagram questions.
[00:29:33] Kaisha: Thanks. Grummy hobby growth. Appreciate you bringing that gift into my life. Okay. So it seems like pH is the theme of the show. I'm going to go ahead and bring this question here. Dave is having issues with low run-up pH. He writes around week six. I'm getting runoff at about 5.0 pH.
[00:29:49] Kaisha: My feet pH is usually consistent. It's quite one to 6.2 and 2.5 ISI. I'm in one gallon coco quick fill pots. I usually push a good [00:30:00] amount of runoff, 10 to 15% after the P one. And we'll get some runoff as well on the P. bulking shots. What am I missing here? Still? Not enough runoff. The environment is on point. I noticed a slight tip burn, and it made me check the runoff, which was five to 5.2.
[00:30:19] Seth: Yeah.
[00:30:20] Jason: Interesting one so tip burn, and it took me a while to figure this one out. But a lot of times tipper is actually not a nutrient excess. It could be a nutrient deficiency. [00:30:30] And if we're going in at two five, there's a good chance that plant is eaten up all the specific nutrients.
[00:30:35] Jason: And it's pushed that. That pH down. So I would probably pick two routes, one either. Give it a shot to take your ECE up to say three. Oh. Especially if you're in a well-rounded facility where you've got good troll and environment, you got CO2, you got good lights. I probably would be always above three.
[00:30:54] Jason: 2.0. In that. That timeframe. And then the other option would be leave tissue [00:31:00] analysis and get an idea of what what nutrients are either in excess or deficiency in that plant.
[00:31:06] Seth: Yeah, I would really look at that incoming. FIDI see a good way to think about it as if we have a. Two stacks, positive and negative that are the same size.
[00:31:14] Seth: If one of those, if that total stack pile is, let's say 10 inches tall, or 10 gallons, whatever you want to quantify it as, but if that stack is one size and then, that represents that 2.5 ISI. Now I make that stack three times as big [00:31:30] and go up to 7.5. If the plant's pulling out the same amount every day of each stack, when it pulls out of that smaller stack, that's going to affect my pH balance way more quickly.
[00:31:40] Seth: Then, if I have more salt built up in the substrate. So as counterintuitive as it may seem getting more salt in there might actually be your real solution there. That way. When the plants eating every day, it's not pulling that out balance out of whack. Nearly as much. And then the irrigation that you give it.
[00:31:58] Seth: It can be sufficient to [00:32:00] replace some of those negative ions and reset that pH balance.
[00:32:04] Jason: Yeah. And make sure you are getting a substrate easy readings. If you don't have a full risk system, Get a sensor that can go in there and take a few readings a day. And one for irrigation when right after irrigation and then one typically towards the end of the day. And just make sure that, Hey, I can see that the trend is my plants eat more nutrients than I'm putting in the substrate.
[00:32:23] Seth: Yeah. One thing I've noticed, even if I'm just using the solos, if I get my, before your gauge and after irrigation than before lights [00:32:30] off. Sometimes I'll see that my Before irrigation, ISI has not actually risen that much compared to my feet ISI. And if we were to draw a line, that line would be pretty flat.
[00:32:40] Seth: And possibly going downward, going down to below PDC. And if you've been watching a lot with 2.5. Running plenty or runoff. You're probably basically rinsing it back to close to 2.5 every day. So your real baseline has never been able to get up high enough. To be able to withstand that. That ionic swing basically [00:33:00] throughout the day.
[00:33:03] Kaisha: Thank you guys so much, Dave. Good luck out there. Keep us posted. All right. The live questions are coming in fast and furious. What's happening to. I need to Mandy.
[00:33:11] Mandy: Am I going to thanks for these questions. Y'all. Poppy gross has one. You said to watch my AC inputs. Can you give me some insights into how this affects pH and the
[00:33:21] Seth: relationship?
[00:33:24] Seth: Yeah. So if we go back to let's just say, we're going to deep water culture solution, and we've got a certain ECM there that [00:33:30] he sees 3.0, when it goes in, we have a balanced for pH He H is the negative log. Of the concentration of positive ions and solutions. So as the plan is pulling out,
[00:33:42] Seth: The food that it likes to eat, which is primarily negative ions. We're increasing the positive ion concentration. And that increased concentration is what causes pH to go down. So the plan's always pulling those negative ions out and we're constantly trying to replace that balance. So the only problem is because of the way [00:34:00] ionic salts work. We end up with cat ions and
[00:34:04] Seth: So the plant's not uptaking those antibiotics that's, what's boosting that pH down. Boosting that concentration up. So it's this constant battle we're in where. Let's say the plant eats up. 1500 PPMS of cat ions, but we had to put in. More than that. Let's say basically we're leaving an eye on. Behind and solution, which is causing that to creep down. That's what I was saying. If you get your ECE baseline up higher,
[00:34:29] Seth: That [00:34:30] small amount of cat ions that the plants taking out is not as impactful. To the overall salt concentration inside the block. Whereas if we're at a low concentration, We're changing that. Ratio and a much more meaningful way than the plant. The difference between two and three on an ISI scale is a lot more impactful than the difference between nine and 10. Let's say.
[00:34:51] Seth: In terms of plant health and PA treatings.
[00:34:54] Jason: Yeah, and I was trying to look up I think it was Michigan state as a really good article. About [00:35:00] the different nutrients and solution and how it's affection your pH. So check out some of the university extensions. They, a lot of times break this down into, 10 page articles.
[00:35:08] Jason: Specifying all the different relationships.
[00:35:11] Seth: Yep. And remember, like I said, going back to the salts, the way I Onyx salts work, you've got a positive and a negative components. We don't have a way to transport a lot of these ions or indeed aren't as them without having this other positive side to it.
[00:35:26] Seth: Positively charged side. It's actually a negative for us because it's this call thing [00:35:30] that we got to deal with messing with our pH right. And that's where, Y, when we look at a primarily soil, as hydroponics are trained to waste a system. That's why, cause that runoff is,
[00:35:40] Seth: I don't want to say totally useless to everyone, but we're putting it back into an unbuffered media without remediating it in any way. We're just going to see that pH creep down over time.
[00:35:51] Seth: Awesome. Thanks for
[00:35:52] Mandy: that. And probably grow says. You guys answered my question. God, I love this show. You guys are amazing. I strive every day to be the smart about the [00:36:00] plant on you guys. They went to school for this.
[00:36:04] Mandy: And they have a lot of experience. But yeah. Thank you for that. Just new, not a question. I was running six minimum six men shots up until 21 F switched to bulk and lower shots to four men, but added to maintenance shots, checking the moisture sensor in the morning. They're still drawing back the same.
[00:36:24] Mandy: Can I go back to six men shots and keep them maintenance shots. I know they say smaller shots at this [00:36:30] point. What do you guys think?
[00:36:33] Jason: I would, we just always break it down into P one. And P two irrigations Just to make it easier to talk about. And it sounds like you did change your P ones. And then just added more P ones, if you will. A little bit similar to what the guy earlier was talking about, where we're just doing some bigger geishas throughout the day.
[00:36:49] Jason: That's not our favorite strategy. That being said it does work well for certain strains. Typically when I go from. Generative stacking to vegetative [00:37:00] bulking. Also, I actually keep the same size P one and then just add P.
[00:37:03] Seth: Into maintenance shots throughout the day. Yeah. Keep it simple and.
[00:37:08] Seth: Look at your actual volumes too. When you're switching from, let's say several big. And generative and then, we generally go for is cut your volume in half and double your number of irrigations. When you're flipping over into a vege for P one. That's a simple way to look at, Hey, we know how much dry bag volume we need to replace on a daily basis to reach field capacity. And now we're going to maximize shots in that.
[00:37:29] Seth: The next step [00:37:30] is. The most difficult way to do this would definitely be with a scale that would take a lot of time, but go get something like the solace. And if you want to dial back those PTs in the afternoon, if I had to guess that your dry back is the same size roughly, now that you're in bulking is generative.
[00:37:43] Seth: If we looked at that graph. You're going upward and I wish we had a board behind us to jobs and it's fun, but a lot of times, once your plant starts, uptaking water really fast. You'll be putting on those
[00:37:55] Seth: It'll feel like you're keeping that moisture content up, but the reality is throughout the day you're putting the peaches. [00:38:00] Tucson and that moisture contents continuing to fall in the afternoon, some of those PTs are actually encouraging the plants and drink more and more essentially. And transpire faster, especially if your environment is pretty good.
[00:38:11] Seth: Although if you don't have access to a graph, in time series data, right now, you're thinking you're bringing it up and holding it up at high capacity. Like I said, it's probably going down. So you might think if you were hitting 55% field capacity that you were at. Let's say 48 or 50% at the end of the day.
[00:38:28] Seth: If you don't have a sensor in there and you can't [00:38:30] go confirm that your reality might be, Hey, I'm planning on doing all these shots throughout the afternoon, but.
[00:38:37] Seth: I'm actually ending my day at a much lower water concentration that I intended on. So I'm getting a pretty equivalent, total drawback compared to what's happening in general. I'm going to try
[00:38:46] Jason: and show the irrigation curves with my poor arms here to indicate what you were talking about. So my left arm is R P.
[00:38:54] Jason: And then my right arm is RP tos. So if we're in generative and we don't have [00:39:00] any PTs, we're going to be like a Peaky mountain, right? Yeah. Here's our aggregation to. Capacity. And then here's our dry bag. The next day. If we have hit field capacity and we have, keeping us at field capacity, we're going to be a little bit flat topped. And until obviously the end of the irrigation.
[00:39:18] Jason: If our P ones. Ones aren't getting to field capacity, then sometimes we'll see that actually, irrigation at that top level rise a little bit with B2C. And then the situation that Seth was [00:39:30] just describing where a PTO has may not be getting back into. Capacity. We're going to be. Yeah, no.
[00:39:35] Jason: Not always, it's still going to be a flat top, but you're going to have a fairly downward slope and the general trend
[00:39:40] Seth: of water content. Yep. Your jigsaw is going to be angled. Pretty sharply. And one thing to remember too is like, When we're talking about those specific graph shapes, that's what is optimal in larger plant populations?
[00:39:52] Seth: When we're talking about bulking there's. More than one way to skin the cat. Let's say you're still, even if your water you're losing water content in the [00:40:00] afternoon, as long as you're putting on those PTs, even if you're putting on 1% PTs and you're losing capacity, you're still effectively bulking the plan.
[00:40:08] Seth: It's just that you might start hitting a point where you're going back to far more than is what's safe and either spiky or ISI, or if you're in a lower water content coco, you could actually start going down below that 20% mark. And risking hitting welding point.
[00:40:24] Seth: Thanks for that
[00:40:24] Mandy: advice. And Jason, thanks for illustrating that. I told you guys, these guys will do anything to help y'all grow better. And [00:40:30] how many times have we said we need a whiteboard?
[00:40:32] Seth: For a second, I was curious. He is going to do over there, but it turned out pretty good.
[00:40:36] Jason: Sure it was going to
[00:40:37] Seth: work. I thought enough.
[00:40:38] Seth: If we get monitors or like Hudson dots on his arms.
[00:40:42] Mandy: I'm writing this down though. Oh my gosh, great questions coming in y'all and thank you for those over on YouTube. I think that's it for now. So I'm going to pass it back to Kaisha for Instagram questions.
[00:40:52] Kaisha: Awesome. Thank you, Mandy. Yeah, you just blew my mind. Just wanted to share this comment. Cipher. Glad to have you on today. Just wrote. Hi, y'all sorry. I'm late. I'm stuck [00:41:00] in trim jail today. We are thinking of you.
[00:41:04] Kaisha: Alright, next question again on the theme of pH let's just go for it. So Pang brags is wrote in, Hey, I'd to know how the plant would respond to a higher input. pH. Getting to the end of edge, say 6.2 or 6.4 pH. Assuming we've been hardening them off on 600 PPFD light intensity. And feeding bloom nutrients prior to flip.
[00:41:29] Kaisha: Could [00:41:30] this help maintain a good pH during stretch without dropping too low, a little insight on pH values for veg and flower would be appreciated. When you guys
[00:41:40] Jason: think. Oh that's definitely a higher pH earlier than I would prefer sometimes, once we get purchased the, at the end of the flour ripening we'll let that pH climb up a little bit.
[00:41:49] Jason: We want to keep that nitrogen solubility really good. Whenever we're coming out of edge and into flour, we still want some explosive growth to get as big a plan as fast as we can. So I would personally keep my pH [00:42:00] right check with the type of media that I'm using. At the end of
[00:42:03] Seth: message. Yeah. And. But raising and lowering pH.
[00:42:05] Seth: All run down to a 5.5. If my runoffs coming up, but coming off at 6.5. And I'll run up to a 6.5. My ROSC on the little low. And those are absolutely bandaids. In the situation. That means I'm trying to adjust that pH to actually bring me in and really the amount of sulfuric acid I put in there or phosphoric acid.
[00:42:26] Seth: Isn't the actual solution to my nutrition problems. That's just helping me [00:42:30] restore the pH. So any again it's just, it's using a bandaid to cover up a wound. That's just starting to open up. And usually you want to go back and look at do I need to push more runoff now sometimes we'll end up in a situation where.
[00:42:42] Seth: I am not pushing runoff for maybe three days. I personally, don't like to go out a lot longer than that because I start to lose visibility and you can start to get some pretty severe pH drops if you go too long, but plenty of people will go up to a week, maybe a little more with no runoff.
[00:42:57] Seth: And that's where. Like early gener [00:43:00] early generative, those first two weeks, we're really trying to crank up that ISI. That's sometimes where, a little bit higher pH input might help out. But again, Get in the mindset that anytime you've got to adjust that feed pH outside of, your desire Grange.
[00:43:14] Seth: We're really band-aiding it. We're not actually solving that ionic concentration problem.
[00:43:19] Jason: Yeah. And if you're gonna be playing with feed pH very much make sure you are taking runoff readings every day of VH. And if you're at the point where you're trying to do no runoff, I always [00:43:30] recommend still to have just enough for enough to take those
[00:43:32] Seth: measurements.
[00:43:34] Seth: Yeah. We're using technology to crop steer to a T here. If we go back one of the first coco tags I ever. Read about, I don't know, over a decade ago now. At this point. You know that the recommendation was like a pretty high perlite mix, some other amendments. So we didn't have to really worry about pH in our tap water.
[00:43:51] Seth: And then sometimes really texts came from this. Bridging the gap between deep water, culture and soil as hydroponics. And one of my funniest examples is a. [00:44:00] One of the solutions I heard early on was, we're growing small plants, take your one gallon pot and dunk it. In a bucket of nutrient solution till it's still at tops bubbling.
[00:44:09] Seth: And then put it back in your tent and what we were doing there was just basically completely replacing everything in the block. Every time we water, which the intent is like, Hey, I have pretty ultimate control when I can replace this volume of water. This completely in this quickly. It just turns out that's incredibly inefficient.
[00:44:26] Seth: It even sucks if you're growing in your closet, in the room that you live in, [00:44:30] because now you can. This whole complicated watering process, that's all messy. A pain in the butt, but that's where the strategy comes from. We're taking that same concept where we want to control exactly what's going on.
[00:44:40] Seth: We're just slowing down our ability at slowing down the rate at which we can affect those changes.
[00:44:48] Jason: There's some places that run flood and drain. I just, yeah. Sorry. A picture in my head.
[00:44:53] Jason: It's always
[00:44:54] Seth: that so works. Yep. But, as awesome as I love flooding grain, to be honest like that sounds like a [00:45:00] dream to be at a real benches in your greenhouse. And. Grab some, row. But roll it from zone to zone. It's really easy. Water's going in. It's traded out. I don't have emitters. I don't have all this stuff, but then I also have this huge volume of water.
[00:45:11] Seth: That I now have to deal with. That's constantly drifting out of my desire range. So if I have. 5,000 gallons research relating water and in seven days now, Half the nutrient capacity that I wanted to be in. My pH is drifting. I've got to do a half dub, a full down, I've got to deal [00:45:30] with all this excess water and.
[00:45:32] Seth: Yeah. I can get expensive. Especially in a city setting or, if you're a real greenhouse, that's another thing to keep in mind At least here in Washington, for instance, the water running off of your property can't be any higher PPMS and the water coming out of your well are running onto your property.
[00:45:47] Seth: There's a not just, all of us want to have a little bit cleaner world. In terms of the environment, but you've also got to look at what your local regulations allow to some systems. Are very cost prohibitive, or just simply not [00:46:00] practical in certain situations.
[00:46:04] Seth: I was
[00:46:04] Kaisha: standing guys. Thank you so much. Alex has posted a little note here and Alex you're welcome to mucosa would be like the plant IPM is intense with blood and drain. If what. If at one plant sick. Yeah. Messes up everything. Yeah.
[00:46:17] Seth: Yeah, I'll whine about slabs sometimes. I don't think we're having those problems. Ah, you lose one, you lose three.
[00:46:23] Seth: But yeah, when you go to flood and grand it's. If one sick, they all are. That's for sure. Yeah.
[00:46:29] Kaisha: Awesome [00:46:30] question and answer. So good luck out there. Paying buds and Mandy we got about 10 minutes left on the show. What's happening on YouTube.
[00:46:36] Mandy: Oh, my gosh, breaking news, we posted a poll and we just got the results. Oh my gosh. Thank you guys for boating today. Our question was, what's your favorite phase of growth? So beg gen flower or harvest, and I was surprised by this one.
[00:46:51] Mandy: Ben got 43% gen 0%. What's up with that? Y'all. Flower 57%. Okay. I get that and then harvest to 0%. Is [00:47:00] that because of all the extra work? I don't know. What do you guys think?
[00:47:04] Jason: It's got zero votes because it's the trickiest thing. Thanks to the most. Full feedback of analyzing how they're growing this time and making some irrigation changes.
[00:47:13] Seth: You asked a bunch of people who are growers and. Although they might be smokers. They're not just smokers and not growers. So I think it's definitely hard not to have some sort of passion for the process when you're involved in it. Especially if just enjoy watching plants and things grow.
[00:47:28] Seth: Personally, I love watching a [00:47:30] plant throughout like generative stretch. When I'm seeing that plant just take off and new morphologies happening a little bit every week. That's my favorite time. And then really flowering in general, I get to see so much happening with the plant and then see.
[00:47:41] Seth: The results of what I'm doing. And when. One cool thing about cannabis is it doesn't take that terribly long to grow. So every two months I get to see a. What changes I made? What kind of effects they have then if Couple that with running a facility, that's got five or 10 flower rooms. You get a lot of interesting things happening all at once.
[00:47:58] Seth: It's that can really yeah. Keep your [00:48:00] mind active and. I don't know, it keeps it interesting. That's one thing when we're all doing something super cyclical, right? The most you can do to keep your mind engaged the better. And also then your. I don't know if you're putting out a better product, you can have more pride in your craft when you're doing that as well.
[00:48:16] Jason: I really like individually, early flower. It's a time when we get to see all the writs popping out of the bottom and we get to give that plant. Sometimes more media. And so then we get to be hands-on. Going to get a move them and smell them. [00:48:30]
[00:48:31] Jason: The fresh plants that I think always smell really good.
[00:48:33] Kaisha: Oh, it would've been a weed nerds on this podcast right now.
[00:48:39] Mandy: Alex had a note here. Jen's most interesting for sure. I love watching that stack happening. Heck. Yeah. Love that. I think mine wasn't an answer, but it's consent. Consuming. But we'll add that next time.
[00:48:52] Jason: No, it
[00:48:52] Seth: falls under harvest. That's a close second for me.
[00:48:56] Kaisha: That process.
[00:48:58] Seth: You got to test it.
[00:48:59] Mandy: Yeah. [00:49:00] Yeah. To know the quality of course. Yeah. We're all here for that. We have a couple of minutes left in the show. So I'm going to get to this question from high cloud society. Can you give me some best practices for heat when home growing.
[00:49:14] Jason: As consistent as possible it's can always be tricky when home growings just depends on what kind of setup you have. And I, I've seen, if you're in a house, try to have a separate HVAC zone or for that area, if you're in a tent or something try to get it, get a heater or if you [00:49:30] need to get rid of a heat, then, some type of AC unit in there is going to be helpful.
[00:49:36] Jason: If you're in a greenhouse. Sometimes. I used to just put 55 gallon barrels full of water. Cause I didn't have a heat or electricity in my greenhouses. And that would hurt the sun's raised throughout the day and had enough mass and it would. I keep my plants a little bit happier overnight.
[00:49:51] Jason: No, there's a lot of kind of Jerry rigged ways that you
[00:49:54] Seth: can do it. That low cost. Oh yeah. One awesome thing. I think about our own growing as a. [00:50:00] If you're home grind for yourself, especially now you're growing you're on medicine, or just trying to have your own high quality product. We're not necessarily looking at trying to get, four plus pounds per light.
[00:50:08] Seth: In fact, if you, unless you've invested in CO2, Really nice lights. Unless you've really gone and built your Ferrari in your basement you probably don't even expect that without running into some serious problems. But one really cool thing that I like to take advantage of is a. Cannabis, especially really high quality high term flour.
[00:50:27] Seth: Is expressed very well at about [00:50:30] 65 to 74 degrees. So conveniently that's about where I leave my thermostat in my house. 65 to seven years where I'm most comfortable and yeah, I don't get quite as fast to plant growth. If I got that heat up, I'm not optimizing everything, but for my situation where I'm trying to grow my own high quality flour, and I want it to be.
[00:50:49] Seth: Grown by me. Queen. I know exactly what went into it and a generally better than what I see on the shelf for the average price range.
[00:50:59] Seth: I'm going to do [00:51:00] everything I can to try to keep my, just to keep it simple, set my HVAC for that level. And then if you've got a tent in a big enough room where it's not going to. Just heat up only that room. Maybe you got to leave the door open, maybe. Just some central air. You.
[00:51:13] Seth: Central air settings, but. I don't know. I think it's wonderful. I've had great times home growing, just not having to mess with it too much. As long as I have good air circulation inside of my little grow room. And the other thing too, just think about where you're actually comfortable at. If you like your house at 68 degrees.[00:51:30]
[00:51:30] Seth: You might have to get some humidity going early on. If you like your house at 68 degrees and 45% humidity, man. You're right in that deep purple ripening zone pretty easily there. That's definitely something to consider. It's a lot less of a challenge for the home grower to push quality than it is to blow it up to a huge industrial scale.
[00:51:50] Mandy: Awesome. Thank you guys for that. And real quick, I have one more question about pH. Okay. Should we be. Should we be up in pH the last few weeks of flower. [00:52:00]
[00:52:01] Jason: I don't mind. Button it rise up a little bit just to, reduce nitrogen solubility.
[00:52:07] Seth: Yeah. One thing to watch too is like at the end of flour you're playing with a an interesting pH balance, right? So as a plan enters senescence, we should see it stop. Uptaking not completely.
[00:52:18] Seth: But we're going to see a big slowdown on that nutrient uptake. So when you're pushing those big generative drive acts in ripening. A good thing to do is just pay attention to your pH. You might see it coming out a little [00:52:30] lower and then as the plant stops, feeding. It stabilizes a little more. It might go from going in at a five, nine or 6.0 and coming out of the five, six to, oh, we go into the five, nine and we come out at a five, eight to five nine.
[00:52:42] Seth: Across the board. And what that's going to tell me is I don't really need to pick that up too much. However, if I'm continuing, because it's strange to screen, right? Some streams really do semester inside of eight weeks. Some of them were pushing to mature. With that. Generative girl strategy at the end. So for those ones that are still trying to uptake [00:53:00] plants, if I've got a plant that.
[00:53:02] Seth: Usually I would want to run 10 weeks and I'm trying to harvest in an eight or nine. I might accept that, expect that plan to actually continue to have, some dropping pH during my ripening period. And that's where that's a button I want to hit for sure. Raise up pH just a little bit to adjust for what we're doing.
[00:53:19] Seth: Again, that's a little bandaid, but that is one of the things you can pull as adjusting that. Up to about a 6.5. I would not though do it as a rule. Across all of my cultivars.[00:53:30] And as Jason pointed out, though, there are some, With a lot of A lot of nutrient lines out there right now where we're staying pretty high nitrogen towards the end. So that's another thing to look at, as we go below 6.0 in the root zone,
[00:53:41] Seth: That's where we see peak nitrogen uptake. And if you're running. Calcium nitrates, most popular nitrogen to put in hydroponics right now. When we're looking at nitrate, the plant can't regulate nitrate uptake nearly as well as it can with Pretty much any other plant nutrient that nitrate has been preferentially uptaken by the plant. [00:54:00] So keeping our pH at that 6.0 or slightly above is going to help us out just a little bit. We're going to stay inside of a healthy range, but.
[00:54:08] Seth: Not quite be at where we're at five six, which is like Brian, super fast nitrogen uptake.
[00:54:15] Seth: Wow.
[00:54:16] Mandy: It's just the pH episode or what? Wow. That just happened organically. We did not plan for this. That is it for the questions on YouTube. Thank you guys for all of those and thanks for all the shout-outs. It's always a great show. Back to you, Kaisha, I think we have a couple more minutes left.
[00:54:29] Kaisha: Yeah. [00:54:30] Thank you so much, Mandy. Yeah. The questions were on fire today thank you all so much for submitting those i have one last question just to close this out from instagram and the folks who submitted questions over there we will get to them when we can but you know what if you're online that's your best shot okay adam wrote in wanting to know In 45% coco One going from stretch jen to bulk vege if i'm drawing back to far dream p three it is better is it better to continue p two shots? Osi shots 4% through p [00:55:00] three Or begin p one 3% shocks at lights on so that by three hours i'm really saturated 20 to 25% to full capacity Thanks for all the knowledge you guys get all that I
[00:55:13] Jason: stumbled over it yeah I think we can make it work with that and generalize for P ones typically all Her and get up to till capacity within one to two hours of my first-year edition. And in general that first year of nations to be one to two hours after lights on and so i'm always [00:55:30] talking about irrigation window if my dry backs are too big Before the next day's irrigation i'll just make that your engagement window a little bit wider with that being said if we're in the wrong size media or we're always going to be struggling because we might have to push too many irrigations to be steering generatively And for in large in media then. A lot of times we're just not going to see the drawbacks that we want in order to push
[00:55:52] Seth: vegetatively Yeah. Good spot to start as you mentioned and then B3. So that tells me generally we [00:56:00] talk about P one. morning and afternoon irrigations however We're the whole P thing comes from program That's back to old school controllers where you got to run a different program For different settings on your irrigation schedules so like brand sits my p one program one might be those 6% shots or 3% reaching field capacity whereas my program to. Is going to. be Smaller one to 2% shots in the afternoon now if i want to get real fancy or if i'm going like hey i need to [00:56:30] Have for people The ones at a certain size and i want my fifth one to actually be bigger What that's going to look like programming wise is for P one. Ones one. p two and then your, what we normally call P twos are going to be your P. Now when you mentioned p three if you're talking about watering Asked lights off That's going to be a pretty big sign that you probably have too small of a media You know what I. When Jason mentioned one thing to remember is that that dry bag is always related to plant and media size[00:57:00] Probably look at if you're overdrawing and feeling like you have to go to a p three say overnight we would look at trying to stay generative Hitting our And that one to two hour range and then not watering until about one to two hours before lights off. And then bringing it back up the amount we need to correct that so we don't over dry not necessarily pushing runoff but. If i was going to drive from 45% down to 15. I need to make sure that i get at least five if not two 5% shots on there before the lights turn [00:57:30] off so i'm coming in at a much more reasonable level And That's a band-aid but that's the best you can really do in that situation is really create two distinct irrigation windows and try to gab out as much as you can between them
[00:57:46] Jason: Anytime that we have to irrigate outside of the photo period it either means that we're not getting up to kill capacity in the substrate and or media size needs to be
[00:57:56] Seth: a little bit bigger Yeah back to the old flooding grain [00:58:00] issue And if you've never tried that The frequency increases a little bit as those plants get bigger and then finally to the point where you go okay we have to have quite a few more even overnight irrigations and we wanted Okay maybe we go from a four inch to a six inch block on this next crop Just to try to deal with that make our system a little bit more efficient than redundancy's huge I know anytime we're talking about irrigation systems i can't stress that enough with people they all fail Especially if not properly maintained [00:58:30] so if you can find a plant in pot size that gives you good controllability But not so much of a fast drive back rate that you back yourself into a corner and you start having plants drop if you miss one p two in a day because a pump fail or a solenoid failed or emitters plugged up i really like to keep myself in a zone I've got. I don't know at least six to eight hours of lights on before i'm hitting welding plants that gives me enough time to actually fix my irrigation You know [00:59:00] that in most sized rooms excluding some of our more massive greenhouse friends Most indoor grows if you time it out you can have backup parts on hand and build your systems. so unless something's inside a wall you can replace it In a short amount of time I go as far as keeping i have spare irrigation lines around that already have emitters in them so if my table starts to plug up unpredictably I go okay do i send someone around and have them spend 50 hours in the next two weeks [00:59:30] popping out emitters and fixing this or this stuff's cheap i'm going to rip it out and replace it not having to interrupt my run Wow
[00:59:39] Kaisha: Thank you guys so much for that we had to go over because we're just like Sarah knowledge and blow our minds today seth and jason thank you so much for a great conversation this week mandy thank you for co moderating with me and thank you to our producer chris For holding it down behind the scenes before we go if you're looking for any Arroyo gear Arroyo got shop is now open for business and we got [01:00:00] a new promo the roy hat trick is in motion if you put three hats in your shopping cart you're going to watch some magical savings appear so quantities are limited so as this promo get your emerge before someone else does All right. Thank you all for joining us for this week's episode of office hours we do this every thursday and the best way to get answers from the experts is to join us live To learn more about a Roy Booka demo at a rate that io one of our experts would be happy to walk you through all the ways it can be used to improve your cultivation production process do you have a topic you'd like us to cover on office [01:00:30] hours post questions anytime in the array app drop your questions in the chat or on youtube send us an email at support.aroya@metergroup.com DMI. on all the socials we want to hear from you We'll send everybody in attendance a link to today's video it'll also live on the array youtube channel like subscribe and share why you're there Steve at the next session thanks everybody
[01:00:50] Seth: No.