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Seth Baumgartner and Jason Van Leuven open the mics for your crop steering and cultivation questions.
OHL Ep 84
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[00:00:00] Kaisha: What's up, Grommies? Welcome to Office Hours, your source for free cannabis cultivation education. I'm your moderator, Kaisha, and this is episode 84. Here's how we do it. I'll keep an eye out for questions in the Hangouts chat. Drop them anytime. And if your question gets picked, we'll get right to it. We're also going live on YouTube and Instagram.
[00:00:24] Kaisha: So if you're logging on over there, post your questions and we'll do our best to cover it during the show. Y'all headed to [00:00:30] MJBizCon. So are we. I was going to be coming in live and direct from booth number 51005 on Thursday, November 30th. As part of AROYA's three days of programming, there's two ways to tap in.
[00:00:41] Kaisha: You can join our live audience or watch our free live stream from anywhere in the world. You just have to scan this QR code and sign up to claim your spot. All right. Southern Jason in the house today. How are you guys doing?
[00:00:54] Seth: Pretty good. Doing well. Pretty good.
[00:00:57] Kaisha: Alright, well we're going to start with a follow up question.
[00:00:59] Kaisha: We did a [00:01:00] segment a couple weeks ago on optimal EC, and someone posted that the 3 4 EC range we suggested seemed a little low for a hydro grower. So they asked, is this range measured in the substrate? And if so, are we talking while at field capacity? So maybe we could break this down a little
[00:01:16] Kaisha: bit more.
[00:01:18] Jason: Most of the time, if, you know, we're talking about three to four, we're probably looking at our feed EC you know, typically for something like HPSs, we'll be in that three, three, five range, [00:01:30] maybe pushing a little bit harder, just depending on the rest of the room parameters and the nutrient manufacturer, and then.
[00:01:35] Jason: For a lot of LEDs, we'll be doing 3. 5 to 4. 0. Again, sometimes pushing a little bit harder depending on those factors that were mentioned.
[00:01:43] Seth: Yeah, I mean a big part of it's what kind of light intensity you can deliver to your canopy. So with like the HPS, we don't quite have as much even coverage with that light intensity and generally not quite as high a total light intensity compared to the LEDs.
[00:01:57] Seth: Those higher light levels just require the [00:02:00] plant to have more nutrients to continue to build tissue. So. That's got to be in place. Like Jason said, three to four, typically a feed range. And then when we're talking about root zone measurements, so we'd be trying to measure at field capacity right before morning irrigations, then kind of towards the end of the day to see what we're doing.
[00:02:17] Seth: But typically like in HPS, we'd be looking at usually like a five to a seven at the wettest, but some people can go higher as long as you're watching your media EC and slowly building it, not going up and down too much not so much throughout the day, but [00:02:30] that baseline EC. Raising and lowering. And when I say baseline, I do mean the wettest point of the day, field capacity.
[00:02:37] Seth: And then on our drybacks and generative, we can see swings up to 10 and above without any problems. But, you know, like we've talked about quite a bit before, a lot of it has to do with that progression throughout the plant's life cycle. If we're not building it evenly and we're having a lot of dropouts, then we're not ever going to be able to achieve a high EC baseline.[00:03:00]
[00:03:00] Kaisha: Fantastic. You guys, thank you for that. All right. The questions started rolling in on YouTube. So let me get to this first one from Iron Armor. They write, how would irrigation strategies differ when growing in a coco perlite mix compared to a peat based medium? Something like tupper versus sunshine mix number four.
[00:03:18] Kaisha: Let's start with that.
[00:03:19] Jason: Yeah. So, you know, perlite mixes are usually going to be a little bit more airy. A lot of times that peat moss is going to hang onto the water slightly better than a perlite mix would. And so when we think about, you [00:03:30] know, how much our dry downs are going to be, what our field capacities are going to see a little bit of variation in coco verse or coco perlite versus a peat perlite or peat coco mix.
[00:03:41] Jason: Sorry. And so, you know, when we think about, all right, how does that affect crop steering, most of the strategies behind what you're going to be doing are going to be very similar. You're just going to see some differences in that actual implementation, as far as what the numbers coming out of the system are.
[00:03:55] Seth: Yeah, we're looking at slight differences in field capacity, and I can tell you from using [00:04:00] both of those particular two products it really does just come down to the per light ratio. coco and peat are fairly, I mean, they're pretty much completely interchangeable in application. Coco is just a better way to meet this bigger market demand now that cannabis has become a big commercial product.
[00:04:14] Seth: Let's say, you know, 10 years ago, 10 plus, we look at ProMix Sunshine Mix, a bunch of different things were made with peat moss based products. It's just not as environmentally friendly to harvest peat moss out of bogs over and over that take thousands of years to build up versus coconuts [00:04:30] are growing constantly.
[00:04:32] Seth: That's really the main difference. I think, you know, there's certain growers out there not even so much in cannabis in the rest of horticulture that stick with peat because it's been around forever and basic. They know how it works and it's more of a habit thing than for any particular.
[00:04:49] Seth: Quality that people have. That being said, those are both great products to grow in. I mean, more perlite, you're probably going to want a bigger pot to achieve the same kind of steering [00:05:00] strategies. And that's about it, you know?
[00:05:04] Kaisha: That's a great overview, guys. Thank you for that. We got this question, and it's one I'm going to answer, actually.
[00:05:10] Kaisha: This came in from Charlo. They are following us on YouTube. They're learning a lot, and they want to know if we offer any online school. You're looking at it, friend. Every Thursday, office hours, 1. 20pm Pacific, 4. 20pm Eastern. Come by. We look forward to hearing from you. All right, back to the program. This [00:05:30] question came in from Indiebud.
[00:05:31] Kaisha: Indiebud. Indiebud. They're asking, how many disc filters would you use in your irrigation lines and where? Are there different types of disc filters and how how should they, how should we set it up? Thanks guys. Got some advice?
[00:05:46] Jason: Yeah. Hopefully Seth and I are going to be on the same page here. But usually what I'm going to do is like have at least two in line.
[00:05:52] Jason: So the first one is going to be after my injection system if I am like a Dosatron, we've right after the mixing chambers and. That's [00:06:00] a good one to maintain extremely regularly. It's going to be catching, hopefully, the bulk of any of your precipitate or stuff that didn't fully dissolve. Other materials that we don't want having to be forced through our drip system.
[00:06:12] Jason: And the other place I like it is in the room. So, yeah, most of the time, I personally like to have one at each valve. So usually right before the irrigation valve. In the room. And as far as are there different types? Yes, they're different types. There's different sizes. And then there's also different [00:06:30] mesh.
[00:06:30] Jason: So that's the porosity of that. Typically the higher the number with that is going to be the finer that filter is.
[00:06:40] Seth: Yeah, we're right on the same page there, you know, you're going to want one right after your pump essentially coming out of your furnitigation system to take care of a higher volume flow and a lot more particles.
[00:06:50] Seth: And then personally, every valve or I like to have one on pretty much every table, ideally if I can and part of that is because if you set your system up correctly, [00:07:00] it's not too difficult to go service those regularly and that really is one of the keys with filters. The more filters you put in your system the better filtration you're gonna do, also you have more points to reduce flow, and have clogging things, so, anytime we are talking about that, getting a high quality filter that you can clean easily is pretty key, and then, part of the reason, or the main reason, really, for the in room filters is just a last chance to catch stuff right before they hit the emitters.
[00:07:27] Seth: cHances are you're probably, and most [00:07:30] people do depending on their irrigation system, clean the lines at the tables and in the room more often than they're cleaning that main line. So pending your pumping capacity, having one coming out of your fertigation room, one before you go into the room, and then that last layer right on the table is where you want to be.
[00:07:47] Seth: But also, you know, look at logistics, what can you accomplish, and make sure, you know, I think that's something that often gets overlooked is filter cleaning. You know, even if you clean them once a week and you're like, Oh [00:08:00] they look kind of acceptable. Of course, they're going to be dirty. Probably start checking them every day and see what kind of accumulation you have, or if it's accumulating faster and faster over time, telling you that you've got a biofilm or sedimentation buildup farther upstream than right in the room.
[00:08:15] Jason: Yeah. And, you know, after you're operating for a little while, you'll kind of get a feel for how often it is necessary to clean these things. That being said, if you do make any upstream changes as far as what's going into your lines or how it's getting into your lines, [00:08:30] it's probably a good process to implement a check on those more regularly.
[00:08:34] Jason: So you know, if we switch nutrient brands and maybe we're not familiar with it or we're just trying something out, probably good to go in and check those filters at least every other day, maybe every day for a week or two while you're making those changes to make sure that those modifications to what you're used to don't require higher maintenance.
[00:08:52] Seth: Yeah, and you know, I think it's also just important to remember that over time, we're pushing salt based minerals through the system. We get a certain amount of [00:09:00] concretion and build up inside the pipes. So, even if you're running super clean, chances are your irrigation water does have times where it sits for a little while in the pipes.
[00:09:09] Seth: And over time, that's gonna build up to a greater and greater extent. So, making sure you've got, you know, Either a strategy for being able to take that apart and clean it, or figuring out, hey, how long do we get out of the system before it's starting to get so built up with mineralization that we're having trouble getting anything through it, or we're always getting, you know, [00:09:30] particles coming out and things like that.
[00:09:31] Seth: So that's, I think, one thing You know, like in everything we do to be aware of is there's always this process of continual improvement and irrigation is one spot where you should be planning to be replacing, you know, maybe not always your pumps, but pretty much everything every few years. Not only is better technology coming out, but also these are plastic parts that just, you know, have an expected end of life.
[00:09:54] Seth: That's the way it works.
[00:09:55] Jason: Yeah, you know, and another thing kind of just to think about is [00:10:00] most of the best equipment that we're using in our irrigation systems come from traditional horticulture companies that are covering a very wide range of types of crops. And among all those crops, our cannabis feeds are usually a higher concentration than our standard traditional horticulture applications.
[00:10:18] Jason: And so it is a little bit more of a challenge when we are running in that four EC, that's substantially more than.
[00:10:27] Seth: Absolutely, you know, I mean, I'm sure if we [00:10:30] eventually created enough market demand, we might see companies develop emitters that are going to be catered a little more to these higher PDCs, but I would expect that would come at quite an elevated cost as it's going to be more expensive to manufacture parts that are rated for that level of salinity and pH exposure over time.
[00:10:48] Jason: Yeah, and you know, I think one of the things that. I personally like to do is also have a little bit of hypochlorous acid injected in my system. You know, it's not necessary if you have an extremely clean system, sanitary[00:11:00] nice white roots and you don't need extra dissolved oxygen in there, but it seems like just a little bit can go a long ways on it.
[00:11:06] Jason: injection basis, you know, all the time.
[00:11:09] Seth: Yeah, you typically see less mineral fallout as a result of that and less accumulation in places. It helps things stay in solution, which is really beneficial. And at smaller application rates, there's not, I mean, even fairly steep application rates I've seen in use don't seem to have a huge effect on plant health.
[00:11:27] Seth: And you know, that's another thing when it comes to irrigation too, just that [00:11:30] continued cleanliness. Just because your system may, you know, I mean, all of our emitters are pretty low flow. It takes actually quite a lot of clogging for you to start to see issues on the tables. So making sure that you're cleaning your system out entirely on a regular basis is important as well, from the pump all the way out to the tables.
[00:11:48] Seth: And that's kind of where some of that, you know, redesign, continual improvement comes in every time you know, as you're using the system, you're going to learn points and go, Hey, I wish I had a dump out valve here, there, and individual, you know, ways to [00:12:00] clean and focus on sections of the system without interrupting your irrigation flows.
[00:12:08] Kaisha: A lot of great insights in that answer. Thank you guys. And Indybud, keep us posted. All right, next question. Is it possible to do crop steering by hand watering? I plan to buy a terrace, but since I will move in some months, I cannot install an irrigation system right now. Let's talk about it.
[00:12:25] Seth: Sure.
[00:12:26] Jason: I mean, that's the interesting thing about crop steering is [00:12:30] we're always doing it, whether we're doing it intentionally or have a desired result.
[00:12:35] Jason: Based upon our inputs or basing our inputs upon a desired result, excuse me that's another question, right? And the challenge is with hand watering, it's just the availability of labor, the availability of detailing your irrigations based on what plant growth you're shooting for. And so, sure, if I'm watering one plant and I stand there all day long, I can irrigate just as good as a drip system.
[00:12:59] Jason: Now, if [00:13:00] I'm in a room of 1000 plants or 1500 plants, it might take me, you know, two or three hours, maybe even more than that to get through one round of irrigation of hand water. And you know, if that's what's going on, then a lot of times we're only irrigating once a day.
[00:13:14] Seth: Yeah, absolutely. I've crop steered plenty by hand at home and it was most convenient when I, you know, especially during like COVID times when we're all working from home, then it was pretty easy.
[00:13:25] Seth: Just had a little reminder on my phone to tell me to go water. 10 times a day. However, [00:13:30] yeah, it just depends on your capacity to get in there and do that, you know, going generative all the way, keep it simple, is pretty easy. That's watering it once in the morning to field capacity, making sure you've got a media that's usually in a forgiving size range, you know, two gallons or so, and allowing that plant to just dry back that entire time.
[00:13:48] Seth: And the nice thing about that low effort approach is yeah. If you're at a scale where hand watering is manageable or available to do it all the time you still can get great [00:14:00] results with low energy inputs, but you're definitely steering more towards quality and less for yield at that point. But it's still a valuable experience because you'll probably notice if you go from hand watering with one big shot in the morning to being able to apply 10, 12, 18, 20 shots a day, you're going to see some very different growth habits in these plants, which is a really cool experience itself.
[00:14:23] Jason: Yeah, you know, and I think one of the things for me, and I guess I always love setting up automation systems [00:14:30] You know, if you are doing a small setup, a lot of times you don't have to invest that much for a decent irrigation system, you know, just get on maybe like a low voltage pump. Get a small batch tank.
[00:14:42] Jason: I, I've used 55 gallon drums as my batch tanks and in small grows. And there's not a lot of input, especially with the cost of like sprinklers these days. And yeah, you might have to get a little A little DIY with the setup, but you don't have to spend that much and then you can really get [00:15:00] tailored control You can start being doing other things with your time like working with the plants on the plants studying about how they're growing And then you start to run some side by side comparisons.
[00:15:09] Jason: Maybe you're really trying to optimize per strain So for me, it's one of those first steps and to What is fun about growing cannabis?
[00:15:18] Seth: Yeah, and I mean, I think one thing to highlight too here, especially if you're growing at a small scale, there are plenty of products out there that are actually the cheaper part of the irrigation system.
[00:15:27] Seth: If you're going out and shopping and saying, hey, I can't [00:15:30] afford to spend a couple hundred or a couple thousand on a controller down the line. All you really need is your basic lines for the table. You need your emitters, your drippers, and then you need a pump and some fittings. yoU know, personally, if I'm only growing under, say, one light with nine or twelve plants that are all the same strain, there's no need to have a valve.
[00:15:49] Seth: You can go super cheap, even, and go get a smart outlet or a good old light timer. I, long ago, used to do that in the past, just bought a digital light timer that I could turn on a few minutes at a time [00:16:00] and water for me, but... If you have a small scale, you don't necessarily need the valves. You don't need the expensive controller.
[00:16:06] Seth: You just need the lines of the pump, the emitters and the stakes, and you're good to go. And, you know, you can also scale this. There's some pretty simple things. I know, like Jason was talking about the 55 gallon drum. I use a pretty great rule in my little basement grow where my runoff reservoir capability is bigger than my reservoir.
[00:16:22] Seth: So even if something did get stuck on, it can't overfill that runoff spot or that runoff catchment. So. There's some easy [00:16:30] ways to set it up and you know, that's just using plastic Rubbermaid totes even or a good old five gallon bucket. So there, there are ways to do this, but if you do have the time, you can absolutely crop steer however you want with hand watering.
[00:16:42] Seth: One thing that I would recommend if you're going to do that is make sure you've got a wand with an extra valve on it. So you can turn that water flow down pretty low. That way you can really get a feel for how much you're able to put on over time. Yeah.
[00:16:55] Jason: And you know, if you're worried about investing into the monitoring equipment, like.
[00:16:59] Jason: You know, [00:17:00] pH for monitoring the batch tank or EC meter for knowing what your feed inputs are. Those are probably things you should be thinking about even if you are hand watering just to make sure that all the energy that you're putting in isn't going to a little bit of loss. It's like opportunity costs.
[00:17:16] Jason: It's like, alright, if I put just a little bit more in to make sure that my pH is corrected before I'm watering the plants, then all that time that I'm putting into this growth cycle,
[00:17:26] Seth: yeah, absolutely. Make sure all your [00:17:30] inputs are balanced. And if you know, are looking at spending money in your grow, there is some very basic points before you ever get to using the internet to crop steer.
[00:17:40] Seth: I guess that's a good way to put it, you know, make sure your bases are covered. Making sure you take runoff samples, get that pH on a regular basis, look at your runoff EC, especially if you have access to something like the SOLIS, because you can start to equate, okay, over time when I see certain runoff numbers at these points, what am I seeing in the EC?
[00:17:57] Seth: You can start to draw some relationships there. [00:18:00] And then, you know, once you've got that in, in root zone, you see data to NPH, you can start to decide, okay, my plants feeding more, it's feeding less. What am I going to do in terms of how to treat that? I got to say,
[00:18:13] Kaisha: I had a moment while you guys were talking and I just, the information just blew my mind.
[00:18:18] Kaisha: If we could just like hop into DeLorean and go back in time and share this, it's just amazing. Great overview. Thank you guys for that. All right, Gil dropped this question. I'm going to read it.[00:18:30] Hopefully it makes sense because I'm not quite, I'm not, I haven't heard of this, but they write, what's this secret foliar apart for veg and flour?
[00:18:39] Kaisha: Everyone's talking about. Do you know what Gil is talking about?
[00:18:44] Seth: Foliar apart as a product?
[00:18:46] Kaisha: Yeah, and I don't know if that's, if that was the word they meant. This secret foliar apart for veg and flour. Gil, we might need a little bit more information on that one, alright? So drop it in the chat and we'll come back to you.
[00:18:59] Kaisha: Okay, I'm [00:19:00] gonna keep it moving here. We got this question on Instagram. Somebody writes, I am going from a 2 gallon coco to 1 gallon on my next run. What would I need to do different? Any tips, welcome. Thank you.
[00:19:13] Jason: 2 gallon to 1 gallon, so just make sure that you're able to get enough irrigations in there that you do have the details because, you know, if we're running half the media volume with the same media, we're going to have half the water holding capacity.
[00:19:28] Jason: You know, typically if we are growing [00:19:30] big plants, Most one gallons can be right at the edge of not enough water holding capacity to steer generatively later in the cycle. So do keep that in mind. You know, if you are running a little bit smaller plants, or just a genetic that's not as thirsty probably going to be a little bit easier to control your drybacks and really get a fast start on those plants.
[00:19:52] Jason: With a one gallon, it's typically a little bit easier to transplant into medias that aren't substantially bigger than the media that you're in.[00:20:00] That being said, if you do get good at transferring to a large media, a lot of times you can cut some of the labor costs some of your, um, substrate costs and and achieve that.
[00:20:09] Jason: But yeah, just keep an eye on what your lowest water contents are and you know, make sure that you have enough control that you can irrigate throughout the day if you run into issues.
[00:20:18] Seth: Yeah, I'd say if you're, you know, make sure you're flipping your plants 18 inches and under, most likely be the biggest thing I know.
[00:20:24] Seth: Thank you. If you're used to growing in a certain size pot, you might have it dialed for a specific genetic, whatever your flip height [00:20:30] is, but if it's over about 18 inches, you're not necessarily going to overgrow the pot, that one gallon, depending on genetics, but it's going to be some good insurance to make sure you don't end up in a point where You've just got to really water it all day because the plant's really massive for that one gallon, and that's about it.
[00:20:47] Seth: Otherwise, you know, we continue to have the same basic goals, and if you already were flipping plants that were in that size range you can probably expect to see quite a bit more vigorous growth as you're able to water more [00:21:00] often and not have to push it as, you know, so generatively for so long to get the dryback you're looking for in that two gallon.
[00:21:09] Kaisha: Awesome, you guys. Thank you for those tips. All right, we also got this question in from Instagram. Someone is looking for your root in process for a slab.
[00:21:20] Jason: Yeah. So one would be doing a good job hydrating them. You know, if you are using grow dance labs, kind of follow their recommendations as far as getting [00:21:30] those hydrated up usually the typical process that works fairly logistically well.
[00:21:34] Jason: is get your get your flower room all set up, which means putting the slabs down on your benches if they're not pre cut, make sure you cut them. Most everything I've seen in the last year or so was all, was all pre cut.
[00:21:47] Seth: Yeah, the industry's gone that way. If you do happen to get some non pre cut ones, then is the time to make your top cuts specifically and not the bottom ones.
[00:21:53] Jason: Yes. Thanks for specifying that. Yep. Get your drippers in there. You know, If it's easier for you to go through and hand fill [00:22:00] those, that's okay too, but for the most part, it's, you know, pretty easy. Just stick your drippers in that bad boy make sure that you run the irrigation long enough to fill the slabs up.
[00:22:09] Jason: I personally like to feed it a little bit more acidic the first time getting those slabs. The reasoning there is to help wash out some of the surfactant that's in the rockwool from the factory that just helps it stay, helps it wet out. So that's what, that's why you can get factory dry rockwool all the way up to [00:22:30] field capacity without worrying about too hydrophobicity.
[00:22:35] Jason: Simply because that surfactant is impregnated into the fibers, and that's what's going to help the the irrigation wet out those fibers. It's a surfactant is a wetting agent. If if you want a little easier term there. Yeah. I would typically advise that you have those at least soaked for an hour.
[00:22:53] Jason: You know, overnight's fine as well. But at the very minimum, I, yeah. Would go no less than an hour before you [00:23:00] go in and cut your drain slits. You know, a good thing here to do as well is do a quick check around the room. Are all the bags filled up about the same amount? This is like a super simple way to see.
[00:23:10] Jason: All right, maybe I've got serious irrigation issues over there. Maybe we haven't been doing a good job checking our drippers. Maybe. We didn't do a good enough job purging, cleaning the lines after the last run. So yeah, go around and poke them. They all should be like, kind of like a water balloon, right?
[00:23:24] Jason: Because we want that bag full of water. Making sure that it is ready to slit. [00:23:30] And this is really important that we don't slit them before we do this, simply because that bag is acting like a soak bin, if you will, for all those fibers. And what's happening is if that slab is in a big balloon, in a big bag of water, Those little air pockets are all going to be pushed out of there and it's going to be fully saturated after you make those cuts you know, it's a good time to get your terrace 12s in, good time to get your plants in, um, and usually what we should be seeing field capacity in [00:24:00] that say 65, 70%, sometimes a little bit higher depending on the manufacturer of that rockwool.
[00:24:05] Seth: Yeah, and you know, that's a great hydration tech, by the way, Jason. My only thing I'm going to add is. I always like to plan my day around making sure that hour soak happens, whether that's load up the room, go to lunch, then come back and keep working, or do it in the afternoon, and preferably do an overnight soak, and then get a chance to go look, just like Jason said, look around the room, make sure all those bags are actually full of water whether it's irrigation inconsistencies, or maybe you got a weird batch, [00:24:30] that doesn't happen all that often, but what can happen is if you can put enough water on fast enough, you might come back in an hour and see that the bags are no longer, you know, filled with water like a balloon.
[00:24:40] Seth: They have a little bit of water in the bottom and we want to see that all the way full and get a substantial amount of water draining out. Once you bring your plant in though, you're gonna go set that 4x4x4 or 4x4x2 right on top, that's, there you go, install your drippers, go to town, and basically what we want to see is over that next like [00:25:00] 3 7 days, looking for a 15 20 percent overall dryback from field capacity in that slab before we ever bring it back up to field capacity, and the art to this is During those first couple days, making sure that you can put on at least one tiny irrigation every day, and by tiny, we're talking about 1 percent or less of slab volume.
[00:25:19] Seth: All we're trying to do is get some water movement through the upper block down into the lower block to stimulate that root growth. One of the things that's very difficult to do without sensors... [00:25:30] is put on that small shot and let it dry back enough each day to get that, that actual total dry back.
[00:25:36] Seth: We need the root space, we need the pore space to open up so the roots can actually penetrate it. And if we're looking for that 15 to 20 percent, and the more the better, as long as you're not dipping down below our good 40 percent guideline on rockwool, um, the better success you're gonna have. If you can manage that, like I said, without any kind of monitoring and also having eyes across the whole room, it can be tough, and especially if you're [00:26:00] just going in and looking at your plants visually, you might easily end up with some that are way over watered and some that are under watered, and I think if any of us have grown with rockwool a handful of times know that if you can't get that root in right, you're just not going to get as much yield out of it, and it's usually pretty evident if you go in, you know, even two weeks later and just cut a slab, peel it up and look at the root mass inside of it.
[00:26:23] Seth: We want to see that root mass really taking over that slab with thick, healthy white roots. If that's not the case, [00:26:30] then we've got to look at, hey, was it overwatered in the beginning? Was it severely underwatered? Or did we even have, you know, healthy plants coming in from veg? That, that can also be another challenge for some growers depending on how they do their veg.
[00:26:44] Seth: If we don't have really aggressive, healthy roots coming out of there. It's going to be much more difficult and take more time to root it into the slab. And part of the, I think one of the keys to getting yield out of the slab system. is nailing that rooting process so that the [00:27:00] plant can start growing as vigorously as possible, as fast as possible.
[00:27:04] Seth: If we've got to take a long time in the flower room to get that to root in, if we wanted to experience similar yields, we basically have to veg on the slab for a while trying to get that to root in, and now we've got a problem with production time.
[00:27:17] Jason: Yeah. And, you know, I think one of the, you know, the things to do it also is make sure you're getting a pH measurement on some of your runoff early.
[00:27:25] Jason: And I did want to mention, you know, I, I kind of went to the assumption that the slabs were rockwool. I've [00:27:30] been seeing some manufacturers now come out with, you know, Coco slabs as well. So some of the similar application there, if you are trying a new media or a new manufacturer, or you have some concerns about the consistency there, make sure you are checking that pH as early as you can.
[00:27:44] Jason: Because we want to make sure that we have that dialed in for those new routes to, to take vigorous growth.
[00:27:50] Seth: Yeah. You know, you brought up the surfactant issue before. I've definitely seen batches of rockwool that seem to have quite a pH swing on that initial hydration and yeah. You know, [00:28:00] sometimes when that's the case, if your initial pH comes out, if you watered in at a 5.
[00:28:03] Seth: 8, 5. 9, and it's coming out at a 7. 5, it's not necessarily a bad idea to push a little more nutrient solution through there and flush out some of that surfactant and get the pH back in range before you bring the plants in. So, that, that is power. Be aware.
[00:28:22] Kaisha: Also, knowledge is power. Y'all dropped a lot of good information in that.
[00:28:25] Kaisha: I mean, so good. So there it is. Root in process for slabs. Good [00:28:30] luck out there. Keep us posted. Let us know if you have any more questions. Okay, we got this question on Instagram. I got to say the handle because I love it. Gandalf's Greens has a question here. They want to know how would you recommend ramping lights in VEJ to push past 550 UMOLs?
[00:28:47] Kaisha: 35 DLI while maintaining plant health, I tend to notice most of my strains tap out at this point within our two week veg period.
[00:28:59] Jason: I mean, [00:29:00] yeah, but traditionally that's where I've really kind of wanna be at by the end of veg. I'm not sure that I'm gonna go much harder than that simply because I am in an 18 hour light cycle.
[00:29:10] Jason: And so we are getting pretty reasonable DLI, you know, being at that 35 is. We're getting close to that optimal, that least of 45, 50, when we're getting through the middle of flower. So it, you know, it's for me, micromoles into veg, getting ready to go into flowers is a [00:29:30] great place to be, because otherwise I have to have my lights really pretty high when I go into flower in order to match that DLI.
[00:29:38] Seth: Yeah, I mean, you're looking at, I mean, if you want to really break it down to 50 micromoles a day or so, instead of a 10 day veg, that's totally possible. But basically you kind of got to judge it by light. And go in and start gauging what a percent equals in micromoles, and usually that's also not linear when you're going through that with your lamp, so.
[00:29:55] Seth: But again, as Jason said, if you're actually hitting 550 evenly across your canopy and you're not having any [00:30:00] problems with your current progression cycle, whether that's jumping it up, you know, 100 micromoles at a time, or it's 75, or it happens to be 12 percent on your actual light setting, basically that's the goal.
[00:30:12] Seth: 550, if you're already hitting it, man, good job. You know, that should allow you to come in at 750 to 800, no problem, and flower. And then from there, you're progressing up to 1100. You can do that within the first week and a half, no problems.
[00:30:28] Kaisha: Very thrilled to say this, but Gandalf, you're [00:30:30] doing a great job, so thank you for that question.
[00:30:33] Kaisha: All right, moving on, we got this question from Tyler on YouTube. They write, does using cooler temps during stretch help shorten intranodal spacing? Furthermore, using a negative differential during night and day would be better. Having some strains hit light despite EC stack. Yeah, what advice do we have for Tyler?
[00:30:55] Jason: So an inverted night day, we're gonna, we'll start with that one just because. I [00:31:00] I've seen it implemented in some traditional horticultures. I personally haven't seen a lot of success with it in cannabis to kind of move on to the next question as far as, you know, decreasing the nighttime temps that should help reduce.
[00:31:13] Jason: Some of your note spacing as long as the environmental parameters, VPD is still in check. You know that we're not making an unhappy condition for that plant. Otherwise and make sure your lights, to tie in the last question, make sure our lights are up Up where we need them as far as intensity goes not physically up, they might need to be [00:31:30] down.
[00:31:30] Jason: Sorry to put it that way. Make sure the intensity is at a level that keeps that plant from stretching. So, when we talk about apical dominance, it's a trait that we see in the forest. It's a trait that we see in a plant. Very large number of plants and especially in cannabis is if they're not getting enough light, they're going to stretch towards that light.
[00:31:49] Jason: So making sure that our lights are up is a great way to reduce that internal spacing and
[00:31:53] Seth: I forgot the last question there. No that's okay. I guess where I was going to come in and say a good way to think about it is, you [00:32:00] know, we're typically targeting that plant temp of 80 to 82 degrees.
[00:32:03] Seth: When we're talking about, you know, most, most healthy plant growth in a controlled environment, part of that is because that's where we actually see the best metabolism in the plant. That's when it has the capability to grow the fastest. That's the right energy state for the plant to be in. So by lowering that, we're definitely lowering down total plant metabolism and the thing to kind of be aware of when we're trying to crop steer it generatively.
[00:32:25] Seth: Part of the reason we are running that higher temp is to try to Increase cellular division, [00:32:30] but slow down stretch by reducing cellular elongation. So what that means is we're trying to stack more buds on a shorter branch. If we just lower the temperature and lower plant metabolism completely we're gonna see a smaller stature plant, but it's gonna be an overall smaller stature proportionately.
[00:32:46] Seth: We're trying to change that proportion now. The best example I can think of this in application that I actually see quite frequently is growing in a double stack situation with LED panels. And here we're looking at, you know, hey, maybe we only [00:33:00] have four feet from the tray to the lights. We're trying to grow as short of a plant as possible.
[00:33:05] Seth: And maybe more, maybe five. But, just as Jason said, light intensity becomes a factor too. So on one hand, we're trying to go super generative, do everything we can to keep this plant height down. But then if I've got a 4x4 LED panel that really needs to be 12 inches or less from the plant to actually hit my PPFD numbers, if I have that strapped up three feet away from the plant during generative, I'm not getting that light [00:33:30] intensity.
[00:33:30] Seth: And when we're talking about that plant growth and apical dominance, basically those marrow stems at the tips of all those branches are the primary source of auxin in the plant. Auxin is what causes the plant to stretch. Light breaks down auxin. So. More light equals less stretch. And I mean, you can see it on a whole number of plants.
[00:33:49] Seth: Anything grown under a small amount of light, what do we see? Just total plant elongation. It's trying to stretch for that light. It's trying to put its resources into being the most efficient at harvesting that energy, [00:34:00] which logically, you know, the plant may not be thinking, but it's evolved to stretch towards it.
[00:34:07] Seth: So that's a huge part of that, I think. And pretty often we see that, you know, especially with strains that are prone to stretching. You know, we talk about 2x, 3x. Well, anyone who's grown long enough or enough different strains knows that some plants are more like 5x, 6x size. And then at that point, you're looking at, okay, even if I've thrown everything I can at this for producing generative [00:34:30] growth trying to keep this height down, some plants might still want to outgrow that.
[00:34:34] Seth: And at that point we're looking at, hey, do these need to be flipped? Way smaller, you know, are we going to have almost no veg time on these? Are we going with an alternative growing strategy, be it a lot of small plants, like classic Sia green? soMe strains are going to be very difficult to adapt to certain growing styles.
[00:34:52] Seth: And that's something that a lot of producers out there, specifically in the double and triple stack setups, are really running into. And, you know, [00:35:00] one way they commonly get over it? is they try to look at the market. As a producer, you're always trying to get the strains that you guys think will be popular.
[00:35:08] Seth: As a grower, somewhere everyone has to come together and say, okay, we spend too much money trying to make our facility accommodate this plant. We're going to have to maybe not try to grow that for commercial production for a while and make some of those choices that are sometimes difficult because a lot of us are passionate about specific strains.
[00:35:27] Seth: But, you know, the other side of it is [00:35:30] some strains just need to go through some breeding prospects. You know, that's what we're seeing more and more in the market. With legalization, people are able to take some of these strains out to generations and do some more selection to try to find that one pheno that actually is easy for you to grow in your facility.
[00:35:49] Jason: That reminds me of a conversation that I had almost seven years ago when I was cultivating and working with some of the scientists at meter group at the time. And I just thought of [00:36:00] this idea. Hey let's try and build out a strain scorecard. Right? And basically what it is the collaboration of what's good and what's good.
[00:36:08] Jason: And what's bad about a certain strain. So, a lot of times from the cultivator's perspective, we're going to have. Yeah. You know, things like yield things like potency, things like ease of processing. And, you know, depending on how detailed you want to get in there, you might be like, all right, well, this one's easier to limb, or this one makes more discreet buds.
[00:36:28] Jason: So it's easier for [00:36:30] our processing teams after cultivation. And then, you know, make sure that your sales team's involved as well. You know, what type of bag appeal does it have? Is it highly desirable by. The source that you're distributing to and kind of break that down. And really, I think one of the most important things here is a lot of companies that I work with have a very big library and it.
[00:36:55] Jason: It's challenging to have that kind of complexity. A lot of times it actually means that each of your [00:37:00] products is suffering, right? And so if we can do a screen, a strain score for everything and come to an agreement as a company and say, all right, well, let's cut 25 percent of our library to help achieve better optimal products.
[00:37:14] Jason: And it usually ends up working.
[00:37:17] Seth: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, let's choose run length, for example. There are certain people out there that are doing that and they're saying hey, we're going to take one or two rooms and have a 10 week run in these. Why? Because we want to grow some of these 10 week strains, but we're not [00:37:30] willing to sacrifice the quality and price premium that comes with chopping them down at 8 weeks versus 10 weeks and that just kind of takes everyone to be in agreeance.
[00:37:38] Seth: You have the marketing or sales team has to go, okay, so we're not getting as many harvests this year. That's going to be less weight, but As long as we're confident that we'll get a really good price premium on this, it's probably worth it. And when you look at that perspective, just purely even on that, there are a bunch of strains out there that we just don't see very much in commercial production because of that.
[00:37:59] Seth: [00:38:00] So, for certain companies that want to take the risk and do it, sometimes it's quite rewarding. And then also that can, Oh, sorry, I was going to say that can also kind of help you steer, well, and help you steer your future planning. You know, let's say you are in a situation like that double stack, you might go, okay, well.
[00:38:17] Seth: Now that we've been in business for a few years, we've got an idea of what kind of market we're dealing with, what kind of revenue we're looking at. We can actually start to make some educated guesses, [00:38:30] essentially, but we can start to guide it and say, okay, well, looking at this market, we need to build a room that is for these exotic strains that stretch a bunch.
[00:38:38] Seth: You know, if we're talking about runs or a bunch of candies and stuff that kind of have some odd growth characteristics for certain producers that go, yeah, we're going to step away from this system that constrains us with hype because. That's our biggest enemy right now, and this is the product we need to be able to put out to continue to make money, and that's more important, uh, than our, [00:39:00] you know, us being dead set in a particular cultivation style.
[00:39:06] Kaisha: Yep, gotta make those big business decisions. Thank you for that, you guys. Alright, we got this question in. Somebody has asked, what phases of flower do you want to push prosperous? And when do you want to push potassium you guys think
[00:39:23] Jason: well, I mean, usually we want some availability across the board of both phosphorus and potassium.
[00:39:29] Seth: [00:39:30] Yeah, so that's one of your biggest differences between veg and flowering. That's right. So what we're looking at is when we're going into that flowering time, we're still feeding a mix that has a little higher nitrogen ratio. You know, higher end to PK, usually something around the range of 2 to 1, or sometimes even greater, and then obviously all your micros included in that.
[00:39:50] Seth: Once we flip over into bulking, that's typically when we're going to start lowering that nitrate ratio and picking up the PK ratio. One of the great things about growing these [00:40:00] plants hydroponically though is Most of them, with the exception of some that are fickle or have some pretty bad characteristics, are not going to take up, aside from nitrate, anything extra you give them.
[00:40:11] Seth: That's why we kind of see success with you know, products like Athena and HGV that are a fairly single mix all the way through, because yes, we're giving them maybe more phosphorus and potassium than we need, but in any kind of ratio that we're feeding, we're not giving them something that's going to be toxic to the plant.
[00:40:26] Seth: It's just going to run out of the bottom of the pot, so. Simple [00:40:30] answer is once your buds start building, you're going to need more P and K to start producing all of that oil content. However, unless you're trying to formulate your own blend, most commercial products out there have pretty good guidelines on when to schedule that.
[00:40:47] Seth: It's up to you as the producer, I guess, to start to map out what the strain's growth look like and when you need to make those changes. Because... I think that's one of the big things that [00:41:00] the whole conversation around crop steering or agronomy and cannabis is brought out is these plants are so diverse in their growth habits and the amount of different traits that we see in just the population that's in production right now.
[00:41:14] Seth: We need a pretty general product that's easy to use and that totally exists. And also just The older instructions are trying to be as general as possible, right? Is it an eight or a nine week run and here's what you do. And now it's we have the technology and [00:41:30] producers are starting to do more documentation and more studying and really mapping out what that growth cycle looks like and allow them to really pinpoint what's going on.
[00:41:39] Seth: Whereas I think we're having the same conversation five or six years ago. By and large, a lot of the cannabis community wasn't quite as interested in that.
[00:41:49] Jason: Yeah I'm really glad that you mentioned that last part because. What I think about making those decisions as a company is, I mean, unless I am using a lot of nutrients, you know, [00:42:00] possibly at the level of an NSO, then a lot of times I can be better off and safer bet by using commercially available two part salt.
[00:42:08] Jason: And, you know, if you are a huge MSO probably worth investing in getting a chemist involved and making sure that they have some familiarity with the suppliers of those those individual nutrients, make sure that you have either a really good trusted processor that is combining, storing, and shipping those nutrients Or you know, just get ready for some [00:42:30] challenges.
[00:42:30] Jason: Most of the people that I've worked with that do custom nutrients it takes a little bit of time to build those relationships, those sources and ensure some reliability over time. So, and then on the other side, you know, if you're a scientist and you're trying to do the chemistry. Love, love to hear what you're doing.
[00:42:47] Jason: Give us a shout out and I'd be interested.
[00:42:49] Seth: Yeah, I'll definitely comment and say if you're unless you're wanting to experiment with those nutrient ratios by yourself and see what the outcomes are, you're either going to pay the price for the commercial [00:43:00] formulation or you're going to pay someone for their knowledge to help you get it right without losing, you know, a massive amount of production.
[00:43:07] Seth: So definitely things to keep in mind. Learning about nutrients is awesome, but we always got to like kind of look back and say okay crop wide decisions We need to make slowly and not try to mix anything up too much And that's why you know like any nutrient supplier you talk to you if you were to call a mid run And they said I'm gonna offer you a smoking deal my nudes are better and they're gonna be half off a [00:43:30] lot of them will tell you not to change until the next run because It's tough to say what exactly is going to be different when you throw in environment, water quality how you're used to mixing your nutrients.
[00:43:42] Seth: I know different product lines, I've seen different ease of getting it to dissolve into water. And then with different water quality, that's another issue as well, so. Always play it safe and go more conservative on that.
[00:43:55] Jason: One of the things that has surprised me is you know, we'll mention some of the bigger [00:44:00] brand names of two part salts in the industry and a lot of times you'll see vastly different P and K ratios in these from each other and not necessarily vastly different results.
[00:44:09] Jason: And I think that comes down to what you were talking about in the beginning as far as nutrient uptake and In general, it's usually going to be better to have too much available nutrients because that plant may just ignore some of them rather than going too low, in which you're going to run into some deficiencies, possible lockouts.[00:44:30]
[00:44:30] Kaisha: Excellent, you guys. Thank you so much for that. All right. So, Tyler dropped a question earlier, speaking about using cooler tents during stretch they posted a follow up here, wondering, should I also reduce light intensity, PPFD, when I lower temps?
[00:44:46] Seth: No. No. Nope, that would be, yeah, going back to it The lower temps are decreasing stretch, lower light is increasing stretch.
[00:44:59] Seth: Lower light [00:45:00] intensity. Lower light intensity. Yes, you're right. Definitely. Lowering your lights will be good potentially in this situation especially if you do have LED panels particularly ones in, you know, like the 5 to 700 watt range, they just don't project quite as intense a light that travels, travels as far as we're used to with, say, an HPS, and then also there's not the heat limitations, so you might be Depending on what light you're running, surprise at how close those plants can get and not get burned.
[00:45:28] Jason: Yeah, and also think of [00:45:30] just of tips that might help them here as well as good canopy management. So, you know, making sure that you are getting the optimal level of leaves in there. That plant's not getting too bushy, getting low levels of light and in a lot of those leaves. So good crop management can also help reduce stretch in there.
[00:45:45] Seth: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, if you're currently doing a lot of topping and you're coming in with plants that are extra bushy and your canopy is incredibly filled out early, that can be an issue. One thing I like to do throughout a run, especially if I'm working with a new light, [00:46:00] is map out, you know, what my like, light intensity is like at different levels in the canopy throughout the run, so that after a few runs, I can look back and go, okay, if I pruned it up to this point, here was my ratio and yield of good buds to, you know, A to B buds if I did nothing, what did it look like, and then start to establish and say, hey, Like for me, growing under like LED panels, I've experimented with it a fair bit now and, you know, 18 inches or so is about my effective canopy depth with the light that I'm using.
[00:46:29] Seth: Can I get growth [00:46:30] lower? Absolutely, but after that point, the light intensity is typically so low that I'm not seeing any, most plants with the ability to develop desirable buds at that level. So, that helps me fine tune it and say, okay, here's how much I want to clean up early on, here's how much I want to clean up after stretch.
[00:46:47] Seth: And make sure that my plants are getting that good light penetration and that I'm also not necessarily sacrificing growth up high, just trying to save these smaller buds down below.
[00:46:58] Kaisha: Excellent. Thank you guys. [00:47:00] Tyler, thanks for the follow up question. All right. We got this question on Instagram. I got a 5 foot mother plant and 2 gallon coco.
[00:47:08] Kaisha: If I want to throw it to flower, what pot should I transplant to? I guess they're looking for recommendations on the pot size.
[00:47:16] Seth: A field
[00:47:19] Kaisha: outside in the garden.
[00:47:21] Jason: I mean, that thing's gonna be a monster. Yeah, make sure you got plenty of light, plenty of nutrients. I mean, 15 gallon. If you got some [00:47:30] automated irrigation
[00:47:30] Seth: yeah, big 15 plus.
[00:47:33] Seth: I mean, it's going to be difficult to steer that plant super hard. You're going to want to have a pretty big media so it doesn't topple over, that's going to be part of it, but I will definitely say having tried flowering moms in the past, outdoors, number one, yeah, outdoors, you know, if we talk about a 2 3x plant, like you could have a 15 foot tall plant, no problem, uh, the other thing is, how long is the season, when are you putting it out, You know, what [00:48:00] are the goals?
[00:48:01] Seth: And, you know, if you're just having fun with it it can be fun, but they usually turn into monstrous plants, typically with not the best bud formation. Just because they get so big.
[00:48:12] Jason: Send in some photos when it's done.
[00:48:13] Seth: Yeah, it was good. I would just hope that you live somewhere far enough south where you can get a good long growing season outside or have an aircraft hangar or something.
[00:48:23] Seth: That's your growth space. I don't know.
[00:48:26] Kaisha: It sounds like adventure awaits this farmer. So, definitely looking [00:48:30] forward to you keeping us posted.
[00:48:31] Jason: Fantastic. When I think of those monster plants, I'm always thinking about some of the humble Instagram stuff. I think most of those guys guys and gals have have closed up the season for the year.
[00:48:43] Jason: I was down there last week in Humboldt and the Knights were getting down in their, you know, 40 degree range. And that's good. About the time, unless you're in some coverage.
[00:48:55] Kaisha: Awesome. I look forward to hearing the progress of this grower's situation. [00:49:00] Okay. Got a question here from Johnny on Instagram. I love it.
[00:49:03] Kaisha: The questions really are flowing in today. They are asking, do LED lights provide the same range of photons and red, blues, et cetera, at lower levels as they do at 100%?
[00:49:16] Seth: Oh, that's a great question. I don't know how linear that is on LEDs as you ramp power up and down. I think theoretically it's... a lot more linear than like an HPS where your spectrum does differ quite a bit depending on how much, you know, voltage or wattage you're putting [00:49:30] into that light where you have your ballast set.
[00:49:32] Seth: And I mean, you even see more of a difference in older like magnetic ballast versus the newer digital ballast. Not that hopefully anyone's using magnetic ballast anymore, but on LEDs, I'm not sure. I do believe they're supposed to dim and raise brightness with pretty even levels. However, I'm sure a lot of it depends on the particular LED you're using.
[00:49:50] Seth: And what it's capable of in terms of spectrum.
[00:49:55] Jason: Yeah I mean, I guess to answer that [00:50:00] specifically if you have a, what is it, a spectrometer turn it up and down and take different different wavelength measurements at what you're looking at that, or you could look up the specs on the individual diodes themselves, typically.
[00:50:15] Jason: Most of the grow lights these days have two, three, maybe a few more colors of diodes, and those are actual different models of LED diodes they use. So, when we say LED, typically that light is an array [00:50:30] of a lot of times a few hundred little diodes, and those are basically it's a diode is a electronic junction with a doping agent in between a cathode and an anode.
[00:50:40] Jason: And we run electricity through there. makes a specific color of light specific wavelength. Now in the last few years, the doping agent that makes white light has become a lot more cost efficient. And so that's why we see the good old purple, purple days have [00:51:00] passed yet still most manufacturers are going to include some red LEDs.
[00:51:05] Jason: And so yeah. You got the chip number on those? You could look up some of the specs on it as far as its response at different voltages.
[00:51:13] Seth: Yeah, and I think that's the important thing here. These diodes, you know, regardless of charge, typically are designed to only put out a certain light wavelength where, like we said, with high intensity discharge lights, that does vary a little bit based on input, but if you get good documentation from the [00:51:30] manufacturer, usually at least any light that I've ever bought, they have that information readily available as to what the spectrum of the different diodes is.
[00:51:37] Seth: And then you understand that, hey, if we're changing the spectrum, the biggest thing we can vary is how much of each color is being put out. And then at the end of the day, just as Jason said, we're going to mostly white LED diodes because they have all of the spectrum we can get out of there.
[00:51:51] Jason: So, and I should be more specific there.
[00:51:54] Jason: I said at the voltage, it's actually going to be at the duty cycle. So for all the nerds out there, [00:52:00] when we think about how LEDs are run, the most of your LED drivers are what it's called a pulse width modulator. And so LEDs are pretty much always instantly on or instantly off at a specific frequency.
[00:52:13] Jason: The faster or the longer that we turn them on and off, it's going to vary the intensity of the light. That's why I like the biggest lighting nerd I know. Yeah, when you take videos in a in a grow room, sometimes they're like flickering. I mean, that's coming down [00:52:30] to.
[00:52:31] Jason: frames per second that the camera is capturing in relationship to the duty cycle that the LEDs are running at.
[00:52:41] Kaisha: Awesome, you guys. Thank you for that. Just really quick. We did a quick little YouTube poll here and 83 percent of the respondents have a rec license and 16 percent of them have a medical license, but we welcome all the growers.
[00:52:55] Kaisha: We're happy to see you're glad y'all are here. Thank you all for submitting so many questions. All right, we got five minutes [00:53:00] left. We got a really juicy one here from William, I believe. I want to make sure I get the name right, but we're going to get right to it here. So William writes, love you guys content.
[00:53:09] Kaisha: Thanks, William. I work for a licensed producer in Nova Scotia, Canada. We've got your Terra sensors and weather stations in our rooms. During rooting in coco 1 gallon, 60 percent water holding capacity, I've historically let the VWC go back down to 35 percent while providing short shots to achieve the net negative dry back.[00:53:30]
[00:53:30] Kaisha: I've noticed an inability to get back to the 60 percent VWC after this point, landing around 45 to 47 percent capacity. When trying to bring back to field capacity and wondered if you guys had any advice more recently, I've started to try and bring the media back up to field capacity at like 45 percent BWC during reading in and I have been able to gain some percentage landing around 51 percent of field capacity seem to help maybe allow to [00:54:00] drive from 60 percent down to 50 and bring back up to field capacity.
[00:54:04] Kaisha: Not sure. What would you guys? I'd like to advise
[00:54:07] Jason: William one of the things actually ran into last week and I probably haven't given enough attentions. Make sure you're not sticking your drippers too far down in that that substrate. I really never kind of thought about the effects of how much.
[00:54:20] Jason: top part would dry out if it's just channeling down the stakes themselves, so it might be one thought I'm just throwing that out there there's a few other reasons that, that it could be doing it here. [00:54:30] Yeah,
[00:54:30] Seth: I mean, the two things that stand out to me right off the top of my head is number one, you know, what kind of shot size are we looking at when you're trying to rehydrate, hydrate that back to field capacity once you let it dry down that far.
[00:54:40] Seth: If you're trying to put on too big of a shot, uh, we might see runoff, you know, at that point, channeling before you actually hit field capacity. So that could be some of the challenge you know. Another one that I always like to point out to anyone who's growing in coco and actually getting good root development is that once your plants are rooting in, we should never actually see it [00:55:00] be able to achieve that total peak field capacity again, because the roots are going to start occupying some of that pore space.
[00:55:06] Seth: That would otherwise be taken up by water. So, having it be that immediate does point a little bit towards maybe not letting it dry back as far. Another one to look out for is that initial hydration. You hit 60%. How long did they soak, and is every block 60%? Or is, you know, the handful you tested, yet if you go around and feel them, do you feel any that are stiff at all?
[00:55:29] Seth: Yeah, that is one [00:55:30] thing I do like to point out to people. If we started at 65 percent VWC on my little one gallon coco pot, after I'm rooted in, I'm typically seeing, you know, more in that 50 to 55 range, the end of that root in period, once I have some volume occupied by roots, and a lot of times, by the time we hit ripening, might be looking down into that 45 to 50 range, lose another 5 to 10% but when that does happen, typically, when you go to harvest the plant at the end of that run, that pot is so overtaken by roots, it's, I always used to joke, like, where'd the [00:56:00] coco washout go?
[00:56:02] Seth: But so that is something to definitely be aware of, and then also, if you're using like the solas, for instance, if you're, if they're not in situ, That's going to be a dip shit too. So if you have a bunch of AROYA gear around your room, and then you're also taking your SOLAS and spot checking because the plants are sitting in there growing around, around the probes in the other pots, it's not quite a direct comparison.
[00:56:26] Seth: Usually we see just a little bit of difference, a couple percent. [00:56:30] Between the solace and the regular readings and it's not because of anything to do at the sensor. Like I said, it's just in situ versus recently installed and the fact that you're reinstalling that solace over and over at a different pot.
[00:56:41] Seth: So there's more room for error and the reality.
[00:56:45] Jason: I mean, if you're in a 2 gallon with a usual 60 percent field capacity, unless you're growing really big plants, yeah. I wouldn't think too hard about, about what you're running into here. Yeah, check some of the things that we're talking about, but if that doesn't fix the issue and you're still [00:57:00] having great success with the plants yourselves you know, the plants don't really know much of a difference between that, say 40 percent and 60 percent water content in coco.
[00:57:09] Seth: Yeah, at the end of the day, we're just looking at equating a volume of water to how much time that, does that allow us to dry back safely? Yep. When we're talking about crop steering in general. That's why, you know, we can still do this with high water holding capacity medias, we can also do it, you know, we have clients that will run a one gallon or even smaller with a coco perlite mix and still [00:57:30] have success just because they're able to moderate their plant size to fit their media correctly.
[00:57:37] Kaisha: In this last couple seconds, you guys, somebody did post, how far down should the drippers be in COCO?
[00:57:44] Jason: So, it does depend on the manufacturer. The most common ones that I see they've been around for quite a while black ones, yellow, probably used to them or have used them at some point. The manufacturer recommends that they only go in a quarter inch, which is a struggle because [00:58:00] sometimes that means that they get pulled out easier so it's kind of, probably not my favorite to be at a quarter inch simply because it's not as reliable, but it's also what they suggest so that you get everything wet and the water starts to disperse it as fast as possible, so.
[00:58:15] Seth: But I've had a lot of clients that was kind of a side effect of migrating to 2. 5 or 3 gallon emitters was going to since they have two emitters per plant, they can have an open ended drip. Yep. So the stake just holds the tube and it can drip right out of there. You don't have any pressure [00:58:30] compensation maze or anything to clog right there.
[00:58:32] Seth: And then you're also elevating that drip point up and a little over, so you're not necessarily running it right down the channel. But like Jason said very shallow. I've certainly seen that where You have some new employees, you go in post transplant, didn't think to tell them, and now all of your long stakes are basically sticking through the bottom of your coco pot.
[00:58:50] Seth: Or, even if they're only a short stake, if they're buried right up to the 90 degree bend, for instance, yeah, you're still gonna channel water down lower. And affect how, you know, right [00:59:00] away, if your stakes are in that deep, it's gonna channel that water down lower and really top off how big of a shot you can put on, how quickly.
[00:59:08] Seth: If you're injecting water halfways down, it's a lot harder for that water to wick upward than it is to flow downward with gravity, so, you know, that's a real good one to look at, for sure.
[00:59:23] Jason: We lost Keisha, I think. I don't know. She might still be live.
[00:59:27] Seth: There she is.[00:59:30]
[00:59:31] Kaisha: It's been a long day, y'all. Thank you so much, Seth and Jason for dropping some serious knowledge today. Y'all, we are dark next week for Thanksgiving, so I'm glad you were able to get in all these excellent questions, but thank you to the, to our two hosts and to our producer, Chris, for another great session.
[00:59:49] Kaisha: Reminder, we're going to be at MJBizCon live and direct from booth number 5110. 5 on Thursday, November 30th, we're going to have an office hours live. So you [01:00:00] want to tap in, you can scan the QR code, be a part of our live audience or sign up for our approved live stream. Either way, we look forward to seeing you there.
[01:00:08] Kaisha: Thank you all so much for joining us for this week's AROYA office hours. We do this every Thursday and the best way to get answers from the experts is to join us live, remember. No show next week because of Thanksgiving. To learn more about AROYA, book a demo at AROYA. io. One of our experts will walk you through all the ways the platform can help improve your cultivation production process.
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