Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Seth Baumgartner and Jason Van Leuven open the mics for your crop steering and cultivation questions.
Sergio [00:00:00]:
Sactown. We are here.
Jason Van Leuven [00:00:03]:
AROYA.
Sergio [00:00:03]:
Office hours live. Thank you all for coming out on this Tuesday. I can't believe we're here, guys. So round of applause for indoors and hydro for hosting us, Kev team. Appreciate you guys. It's pretty wild. Like Tim and Kev, we were just kind of talking about where this event started. It was just a group of seven of us over bread.
Sergio [00:00:25]:
Big sexy brewing right around the corner from here. And to see what's going on tonight on a Tuesday night here in Sacramento at the hydro store. This is wild, guys. I'm incredibly humbled that all the people came out to support. I mean, you guys see the production that we're here now with. There's a lot of helping hands. So I just want to say thank you to everybody that put this thing together. This is not just me, guys.
Sergio [00:00:49]:
I'm just going to stand up here and yak around and ask great questions with experts that I look up to. So thank you, guys. Really appreciate you. Round of applause for putting this together.
Tim Crowell [00:01:04]:
Are we live? Can you hear me?
Sergio [00:01:06]:
I think we're live, man.
Tim Crowell [00:01:07]:
All right, cool.
Sergio [00:01:09]:
And with that being said, I would love to thank our sponsors for tonight. The AROYA team. And before we start passing the mic for everybody to get their introductions going, obviously these guys need no introduction, but we are super grateful that everybody came out. The AROYA team has been dumping so much knowledge in the industry. How many episodes have you guys put out on office hours?
Kaisha [00:01:30]:
This is going to be episode 91.
Sergio [00:01:32]:
Episode 91 wild. That's all I got to say, guys. This is just education at its finest with experts. These guys are doing it. We're running it. We want to hear perspective. We want to be able to share good thoughts and obviously challenging questions. That's why these panelists are up here, guys.
Sergio [00:01:52]:
We want to get the challenging questions out there. And ultimately, just so we can focus on growing better quality weed and set those numbers with better quality. So tonight's also special because we're doing a collaboration with grow world. And I'd like to say, shout out to Nick Morin. Thank you guys for letting us actually live stream this event on Grow World platform. I don't know if you guys have heard of Grow World, but it's pretty cool. It's a commercial based cultivation platform where you're a validated cultivator. You go on, you get authorized from Nick personally, and you basically get to link up with commercial product suppliers.
Sergio [00:02:27]:
If you want to do a trial of a specific program, that's your guy. This is the platform where you can do it. No more bullshit, no more marketing tactics. Just go in. If you want a trial sign up, check it out. There's no better way than to actually try something and just make sure before you start going full blown and actually getting that trial effort there. So, really stoked. Thank you, guys.
Sergio [00:02:50]:
So brief agenda. We're going to start off with some commercial trends or some current trends in commercial cultivation, and that's going to get the conversation rocking with these guys. Got some excellent discussion topics up here that I'm sure we're going to dive into some current trends. Really excited about that. So without further ado, I would love to talk about. Have Kaisha talk about the. Oh, 1 second. I missed a slide.
Sergio [00:03:19]:
Look at this. Gotta love live. So, Kaisha, what are we giving out tonight?
Kaisha [00:03:25]:
Yes. So tonight we are actually hosting a raffle at the AROYA table. Fill out a raffle ticket, get you some merch. But most important is you're going to be in the running to win an AROYA go or a solas. So we are giving one of each of those away to the live audience tonight and then to the grow world audience we are giving a solace to. It's the most upvoted question of the night, right? Excellent.
Tim Crowell [00:03:46]:
Yes.
Kaisha [00:03:46]:
So democratically chosen, the best question on Grow world will receive a solace in the mail. We're super excited about tonight. You want me to get the intro going, man? You ready to get this party started?
Seth Baumgartner [00:03:56]:
All right.
Kaisha [00:03:57]:
What's up, gromies? Welcome to office hours, your source for free cannabis cultivation education. I will be your co moderator, Kaisha tonight along with Sergio. If you have any questions, you logging into the live stream or you're on live on YouTube or Instagram, be sure to drop your question in the chat. We'll do our best to get to it today. The focus is, though, is going to be on the live audience. Right, Sergio? So let the conversation begin.
Sergio [00:04:22]:
Let's start off with some brief introductions. Mr. Tim Crowell lead us off.
Tim Crowell [00:04:29]:
Thanks for coming, everybody. We really, really do appreciate it. My name is Tim, kind of a cultivator in the Sacramento area, founder of Faven undercanopy, and just really happy to see everybody here and all the faces here. So thanks for coming out.
Kevin Crouch [00:04:46]:
Thank you, Serge. My name is Kevin Crouch. I'm the director of cultivation for delighted. It's a double stacked led here in Sac. We have 1170 flowering lights, about 1400 total with the veg and it's fun. Thank you for having us.
Seth Baumgartner [00:05:08]:
I'm Seth Baumgartner. I'm with AROYA, been with it for about two and a half years as an agronomic advisor. Love working with the people down here in sac. You guys are always on the cutting edge of everything. So I'm happy to be here.
Jason Van Leuven [00:05:21]:
I'm Jason Van Leuven. Been using substrate monitoring systems since 2017. Kind of jumped on with the company to get the industry going in cannabis and make sure that everyone's using technology to grow the best product that they can. And just wanted to reiterate, Sacramento is one of my most favorite places to work simply because of the people and the products that we're seeing coming out of here. So great to see everyone's faces in here today.
Kaisha [00:05:47]:
And I'm not going to answer a single question tonight because I am not one of the crop steering cultivation experts, but I am a consumer and I do love Sacramento cannabis. My name is Kaisha Diane McMillan. I am the senior content manager for AROYA. So in addition to seeing me on office hours every week, I write a lot of the long form content that you see on the website. So I'm going to be here maintaining the conversation with Sergio.
Sergio [00:06:10]:
Awesome. Appreciate you guys. Round of applause for our panelists. Super dope. All right, guys, so first thing that we're going to use to kick off is let's talk about some current trends in commercial cultivation. Obviously, a lot of different perspectives are up here. So I want to kick off the obvious one with under canopy lighting. And Mr.
Sergio [00:06:30]:
Tim, I would love for you to lead us off with this.
Tim Crowell [00:06:35]:
What do we want to know? You know, who actually did team me up with the best questions Thursday was Jason, because we did an AROYA live then and just killed it. Do you got any more questions for me?
Jason Van Leuven [00:06:48]:
Do you? I've burned up most of the good ones.
Sergio [00:06:51]:
Let me recap a couple of these because that was a fantastic episode you guys did.
Tim Crowell [00:06:54]:
If you haven't seen it, go back and watch it. He nailed just a ton of the key points when it comes to applying under canopy lighting in a commercial setting.
Sergio [00:07:02]:
And a big one was what people are not improving or adding onto in their grow room.
Seth Baumgartner [00:07:06]:
Right.
Sergio [00:07:06]:
Because you're adding an extra element. So dehumidification. Right. That was one of the things that you touched on, Jason, was like, what are some of these key things that they're missing? And if you're just slapping on more lights and if you don't adjust your plant count, Tim, what's going to happen?
Tim Crowell [00:07:20]:
Yeah, just a quick, quick background. I've been using under canopy lighting for almost four years now. And I was a part of a company here in Sacramento connected, who did a lot of R D on intracanopy and undercanopy. And so I was able to kind of use them and learn a lot about how to go about applying this new technology. One of the biggest yield and quality drivers was plant count. And actually seeing that lowering plant count when you're using under canopy lighting adds to your yield and it adds to your quality. And that really just comes from what I think is really giving each plant its ability to function at its most efficient level.
Jason Van Leuven [00:08:14]:
Right.
Tim Crowell [00:08:14]:
You're giving it the space, you're giving it what it needs. You're prioritizing airflow. Right. And so that was one of the biggest takeaways we had with applying under canopy. And when you are using undercanopy, you're going to have a greater demand on your plants. Right. You're going to need to feed them a little more and water them a little more. Well, that's going to lead to a little more humidity in your rooms.
Tim Crowell [00:08:35]:
Right. So if they're using it in the substrate, they're transpiring.
Seth Baumgartner [00:08:38]:
Right.
Tim Crowell [00:08:38]:
They're adding humidity at a higher rate. So lowering plant count is actually a really easy and cost effective way to kind of mitigate that extra humidity. And it also, like, I think every grow facility owner or cultivator wants to hear less plant count because that means less moms, that's less substrate, that's less clones, that's less everything, right? So that was one of the biggest drivers. And it's hard to quantify that savings alone. When you start taking plants out of rooms, like there's a savings there. So, yeah, that was probably one of the biggest because I was thinking, shove the plants in there and get more. I've been growing for 15 years now. I mean, it was always like, we have to have this many plants because then we can guarantee we're going to get 2oz of plant and we're going to have this yield.
Tim Crowell [00:09:23]:
And it's really hard to be there. It's a hard position to be in. But just try it with one bench. Like I tell everybody, try one bench and then you'll understand.
Sergio [00:09:34]:
It's a great conversation when you start looking at hard costs versus soft costs. Soft cost reduction is something that it's hard to measure. And so until you start really looking at these extra touch points, the extra time, the extra amount of labor that it takes to do these things to produce with that much more plant material, that's my curiosity is how much more efficiency are you saving and is it being quantified? Well, I think when you start to look at the finished product, yes, it's quantifiable. So reduction of soft costs is something that I'm really starting to see more of with adding supplemental lighting down below.
Jason Van Leuven [00:10:09]:
To continue on this one, I would just always try to take the audience perspective on a question here. How much do I want to change that planting density? Let's say I want to take the first step to doing that. What is that first step, and how do I know when I've optimized it for each plant or each strain? Even better.
Tim Crowell [00:10:27]:
Every facility is different, Jason. No, that's why I'm asking the question in my facility. So, man, it's been extremely difficult to kind of frame up very basic sops to kind of put on our website and give to customers because everything is so different. And some people are already at these low plant counts. Right. I think if you're around the nine ish plants per four x four, it's a good place to start. And then you may move a few plants up from that and you may move a few plants down. I think it's a really good place to start as a baseline if you're looking to change everything on your first run and your first trial.
Tim Crowell [00:11:10]:
But I do tell people that if you don't want to change anything and just change under canopy for your first run and just see how your facility changes and how that movement and that one variable changes everything, then it's probably.
Jason Van Leuven [00:11:27]:
A good place to start.
Tim Crowell [00:11:28]:
If you want to drop a little plant count. I understand that, too. What I would recommend is going three plants wide. Right. So if you're on a five foot wide bench, I can see you pushing a fourth plant wide. That's fine. If you're on a four foot bench and you're trying to slam four plants wide in there, you're really just choking out your plants, even without under canopy. But a local guy here in Sacramento, four foot wide benches, was running four plants across.
Tim Crowell [00:11:54]:
And I just kind of pleaded with him on his first bench, like, please just drop the fourth row down to three rows, two rows of favens in between those rows, and they dropped their plant count 25%, and they saw a 33% increase in yield. Right. With massive quality. Like, great quality. This isn't something with faven is like, there's been so much put into the design of the light and the lens of the light and how it's being applied to the plant that you're getting this extra yield and you're not sacrificing the quality. And we all know you can't just boof out five pounds of light right now. It's not going to sell. So has to come with it.
Tim Crowell [00:12:33]:
Yes, great question.
Sergio [00:12:35]:
That was a good question. And I want to encourage the audience, if there's any other questions, to tack on. Any of these questions. Anybody at the moment have a question?
Tim Crowell [00:12:46]:
No, it's cool.
Sergio [00:12:47]:
We're just warming up. We'll keep it going.
Jason Van Leuven [00:12:49]:
All right, I'll kick in here. Don't be shy, everybody. All right, so let's modify our plant spacing a little bit. We're working to optimize that. A lot of facilities. And I'm not trying to go into the next topic here, but one of the trends that I have seen with plant spacing is people starting to stagger their columns.
Tim Crowell [00:13:07]:
Right.
Jason Van Leuven [00:13:08]:
So rather than having a perfect row column segment, we're staggering like the middle column. Right. And if we think of that visually, obviously, we're getting a little bit more optimized. Circle. If we think of a plant as being spherical or round in a top down. What do you think about that?
Tim Crowell [00:13:27]:
I actually am a big fan. I call it the zipper. It just looks like you got the plant one. Like you got them kind of filling the space that the other two don't. And it just seems like a zipper to me. So I call it the zipper method. This is totally bro science. You can't kick the traditional roots out of me.
Tim Crowell [00:13:45]:
I'm so sorry. I actually really like that. I really like that. And I think it gives plants.
Sergio [00:13:53]:
A.
Tim Crowell [00:13:54]:
Lot of just extra area to breathe. And you're only dropping one plant. Right. So you're taking, say you've got rows of 20 plants down a 40 foot row, whatever it is, that middle row, three plants wide, that middle row has got 19 plants.
Jason Van Leuven [00:14:09]:
Right.
Tim Crowell [00:14:10]:
That's what we're explaining here. And I really like that application just because it does kind of open up a little more space for each plant to kind of hit its optimization. I actually really love that plant count, and I love that design. Doesn't work for everybody. I haven't tried it on double stacks, actually. But I do like the zipper method, especially people growing. If you're in, like, a one gallon, quick fill, full cocoa, and your plants are getting big. I'm a huge fan of doing the zipper method.
Tim Crowell [00:14:43]:
Yeah.
Seth Baumgartner [00:14:46]:
I think one thing we can definitely all agree on those for a lot of times or a lot of time over the years, we all thought maybe running more plants, more product, right? And there's definitely an upper limit of that. And going back to like nine to 12 per four x four, I'll agree. Pretty much everyone I talk to that tries that immediately has better success on their a to b ratio and a lot of times an overall yield increase. You say you staggered a little bit per plant, but once you really start to dial in the whole process. So for a lot of people, that begins in their flower room. We're all focused on that. That's where the money is made. But once you feel like that's dialed and you really start to dig into veg and prop, it's kind of amazing how much plant you can get out of such a small plant.
Seth Baumgartner [00:15:28]:
Flip. And I think that was something once I started experimenting with a lot of different irrigation strategies and then dialing things in the facility I was at, realized like, hey, we thought we needed to veg these things for so long and get this big plant. Like, no, this thing grows like crazy. We just got to take advantage of it.
Tim Crowell [00:15:44]:
And to that point, we talk velocity.
Seth Baumgartner [00:15:48]:
Right?
Tim Crowell [00:15:48]:
Growth velocity a lot. Right. So, like, if you put a plant in a pot, you give it a couple of days, you veg it. Well, there's a certain point in a plant's life where it's got so much growth velocity up top and in the substrate, the roots are going, that if you flip that plant when it's at maximum velocity, it will get to the same height as if you over veg it. There's something there where especially double stacks, and I'll use double stacks because you're at a height limit. So as soon as I see that growth velocity day on day, that's when I'm flipping. Like, I'm catching that plant in stride. And I think there's a lot to that.
Tim Crowell [00:16:25]:
And then even on the single tiers, people are running some really big plants. And I love big plant tech. Like, I'm a big plant guy. That's my favorite. But do some trials. Flip a row that's 12 inches tall and 16 inches tall and 18 inches tall. Just control that variable of flip height, and I think you guys will see that you'll end up at the same place and you can cut some days off your veg.
Sergio [00:16:53]:
Could we also touch on genetics? Like, just know your genetics, please. If it's a one x two x three x stretcher, if it's a glitter.
Jason Van Leuven [00:16:59]:
Bomb, flipper, if it's a glitter bomb.
Kevin Crouch [00:17:03]:
Or disease, I was going to speak to that, too. We do a lot of genetics. A big variety, and. Exactly the veg acceleration can differ depending on your genetics, so sometimes you can kind of counter that with your plant count. It's what we do. So some things that take a little longer to take off, maybe you do it a little higher plant count, and that's what we do. And that higher plant count will allow it to actually naturally stretch into the box. Because every plant is getting a little less oxygen, they're wanting to stretch up so you can get them to fill that box a little bit better.
Kevin Crouch [00:17:38]:
So I think genetic potential plays a big part in that veg acceleration and how you choose your plant count, too. But generally, the lower plant count, more light to each plant is the way, especially with under canopy lighting. There's no doubt about that.
Sergio [00:18:03]:
Got a question? Yeah. All right, Nick, I'm going to tap into you real quick here. We're going to get a question from grow world. Question is, can the undercanopy lights be daisy chained? If yes, how many on a 277 volts?
Tim Crowell [00:18:21]:
20 on 277 volts, and I want to say 17 on 240 volts and ten on a 120 volts. At 277, they're only pulling 0.4 amps. So very user friendly. We tried to make it cost effective because we know there's an upfront electrical cost with installing these, and so we tried to get as many to daisy chain as possible with maintaining the quality of light coming out of the units. So 20 is that answer. Good question, though. You can find this all on favenlighting.com.
Sergio [00:18:52]:
Nice question back.
Seth Baumgartner [00:18:55]:
Here's how many watts per four x.
Tim Crowell [00:19:05]:
Four or four x eight would you recommend with under canopy lighting and what height would you set it at in the canopy? So, per four x four, the way we design the faven lights is we put an optic lens on the top of it, right. And so with diodes, if you're running leds, you understand every diode is very intense and as soon as you're outside that diode, it's not intense at all. Right. There's no light. So we created this lens that actually kind of channeled that energy and through the light. So we did that because running three lights wide is one a strain on power two, it's a lot on the plants. So we run two lights wide on a bench. So on a four x four, you're looking at two plants, right.
Tim Crowell [00:19:47]:
Typical four x eight tray. Back in the day, you're looking at four lights. As for the height, you're looking to add about 2ft of canopy depth, two to 3ft of canopy depth with an under canopy light, right. So if you're on double stack, we have them. The lowest you want to set this light is you want the base of the light at the very edge of the plant or at the very top of the substrate. You don't want to blast the substrate with light at all. Right. You don't want to heat up the substrate.
Tim Crowell [00:20:17]:
But if you grow bigger plants, like we've been kind of talking about, you kind of want to edge those up a little higher. I think one of the best examples I have of really big plant tech is if you guys are following bear cannabis on Instagram, which you should. If you're not, he's a killer. He's actually got his favens, like, 14 inches off the table because he grows five foot plants and he underclears under them. Right. But he's just got such a big, voluminous plant that he has to raise it up a little more. Now, on our double stacks, we've got them, like, pinned at the very lowest we can because we're trying to optimize every little bit. So.
Tim Crowell [00:20:54]:
Yeah, but two good questions.
Seth Baumgartner [00:20:56]:
One more.
Tim Crowell [00:20:56]:
Is there a particular time you turn the under canopy on, or does it start from the day you go to 1212? Man, my faq is just like, this is perfect teeing up. This is great. Thank you. So I don't like doing anything zero to 100 in cultivation. I think that's not the way to treat the plant. Right. So back in the day, when we did these side by sides, whether to turn the lights on 100% at a certain day of flower or to slowly ramp them up, we saw slowly ramping them up not only alleviates any plant stress, you're going to have added plant stress from under canopy, and then also the yield was very comparable between the two. But turning lights on day one at a low intensity and letting them and increasing them by day, like 17.
Tim Crowell [00:21:47]:
1820, end of week three is, like, your real goal. We saw a two to 4% increase in yield compared to the row that turned on, like, day 14 or 15 at 100%. Right. And so it doesn't seem like much, but I think we all know in this room, if you're a cultivator, two to 4% on every room, every turn in your facility, that adds up at the end of the year, and that's strictly to your bottom line. That's just how you apply the technology. It's not adding any more costs. Good question. One more question, please.
Tim Crowell [00:22:15]:
Is there a particular spectrum that you found works better one another? A Kelvin or redder bluer that's working.
Seth Baumgartner [00:22:22]:
For your under canopy as opposed.
Tim Crowell [00:22:24]:
So Kelvin is a metric that doesn't really apply to plants. And I've had this conversation recently because people are putting out false information. It really applies to the lighting in your house, right? Like, if you want it bright or warm or whatever vibe you want in your home. And so, with HPS, we designed a spectrum that kind of brought in a little more blues and greens with some six hundred and sixty s and some 680 that kind of rounds out the far red spectrum of, like, an HPS bulb. But really, it's more going backwards and looking at the old metal halide and HPS rooms that were just really dank and just really high quality bud. And so adding a little more of that blue spectrum was really important to me. And then if, you know, there's a couple of people in this room that I know that are running mixed spectrum HPS and full spectrum leds, and those rooms are coming out incredible. And so that was kind of the thought process behind the HPS spectrum.
Tim Crowell [00:23:25]:
And then full spectrum led. I just feel like a lot of manufacturers went full on to full spectrum and white diodes. Most big manufacturers are about 40% red diodes. And really, if you're looking at the difference between quality of LED cannabis and quality of HPS cannabis, it comes down to the spectrum. Right. So what we did is kind of round out the or added to the lack of red for full spectrum. And so we have a very red, very high end deep reds, trying to really balance out the lack of that spectrum underneath the leds. Thank you, killer.
Sergio [00:24:09]:
Good questions. Thank you.
Tim Crowell [00:24:10]:
I swear he's on the faq right now on our website. That was awesome. Thank you.
Sergio [00:24:16]:
Any questions back here?
Tim Crowell [00:24:17]:
Keep Jason at bay.
Sergio [00:24:22]:
Right here. Name and where you're from, sir?
Tim Crowell [00:24:25]:
Vinny.
Seth Baumgartner [00:24:25]:
I just moved to.
Tim Crowell [00:24:27]:
So do you guys have any suggestions for IPM, like early flower sprays and using the undercanopies?
Jason Van Leuven [00:24:37]:
Yeah.
Tim Crowell [00:24:37]:
Did you have any issues when you were applying? No. So they're IP 66 rated. These are designed for the rigors of commercial cultivation. It's kind of how faven was born. I was kind of pissed off at everything else on the market that wasn't true under canopy light. And so it's IP 66 rated. You shouldn't have any issues if you want to go in there after and wipe down. Like, I'm a big sulfur guy, early in flower, right.
Tim Crowell [00:25:00]:
I think everybody is right. Sulfur is kind of our buddy at the moment. Makes us feel good. I just go in there with a damp cloth and just wipe down the lights if you want to. I would do that after every spray at least. Definitely your final spray, like your day, like 1314 final spray. But you won't have any issues with it. They were designed to handle it for sure.
Seth Baumgartner [00:25:26]:
Thank you.
Tim Crowell [00:25:26]:
Yeah, of course.
Jason Van Leuven [00:25:30]:
Spray into the power corner.
Sergio [00:25:35]:
Thank you. Sorry for the interruption, guys. I'm going to just make a quick announcement. The food truck is leaving at 08:00 so just want to be mindful. If anybody didn't get a chance to grab some food, you got until eight. Sorry. Thank you, guys. Other question, naming, where are you from, sir?
Jason Van Leuven [00:25:55]:
Hey, Jacob Nelson here at Sacramento north country farms.
Tim Crowell [00:25:59]:
So I guess this is more for the AROYA team.
Jason Van Leuven [00:26:02]:
Tim, also, what principles do you need to keep on the forefront of your mind when applying under canopy lighting into your grill? When incorporating.
Seth Baumgartner [00:26:14]:
Mean, I think there's a few things to keep in mind. Number one is can you afford it at the right? Like part of it is like a smart try, you know, just as Tim said, try it out, see how you like it, do some comparable research and try to minimize it to that variable to start with and see if it's going to be effective for you. And then another one is what you're doing is you're adding more energy in a spectrum deeper down in. Right. We're really trying to maximize where that spectrum is at on the plant and maximize the growing space that's within it. So if we're talking about where's your money better spent, is it better spent adding more square footage of lighting and growing space, or is it better spent in maximizing the space you have? And in some situations, well, if you're going out of business, you need to move somewhere cheaper. That might be something you try to go cheaper and get more square footage might be better for you if you're already at the limit of everything else and you've got the power availability, I think it's great to try, but realize that it comes at a cost, just like everyone going from HPS to LEd, not only do we have the spectrum working for us, but that plant temp. So right immediately going to led, harder to control humidity, harder to get that diff late in flower.
Seth Baumgartner [00:27:27]:
Those weren't always like the first things that jumped out when going to leds because they seemed more efficient. Everything else seemed great. But now there's these other challenges that mean, like, oh, we didn't just knock our electric bill down. There's a balance where we're spending more on DHU, more on environmental control, and then also later down the line potentially more on different types of supplemental lighting, just like the mix LED and HPS rooms we're seeing, or manufacturers coming out with more far red spectrum, trying to imitate that HPS spectrum, because going back to it, we all generally like the results we got. And I know for know now growing exclusively under LEd miss HPS because it had some benefits that just made life easier. Right. But that's just not the way the market's going and probably not what we can expect from the future. So I think try it out.
Seth Baumgartner [00:28:16]:
And like I said, like anything in your farm, you need to do an ROI analysis and see like, hey, what's it going to take to pay it off? And can I do that right now? And if you can, and you have a budget, this is probably one of the more effective ways to look at. For one, just changing that ratio of a to b buds, that's a big thing for all of us trying to look for that purple nug is immediately you go to the leds, you get a pretty shallow bit of canopy that's purple, and then you've got now your b, that's all green still. And just that alone, for better or for worse, is valuable in the market. We're at a point now where on certain strains, if we're looking at a two to $300 premium per pound, based on how dark purple you can get it, you can take a yield hit at that point at a whole room rate and really push what your goals are on that strain. And then on the backside, it's obviously good for your brand when you're hitting those goals reliably, not struggling to maintain that supply of really consistent flour.
Jason Van Leuven [00:29:15]:
Yeah, I think what we talked about last Thursday as well know if we're seeing an increased amount of transpiration from the plants because we have more light in the room, obviously we're going to have to increase our irrigation demands, and that is at the same EC as we were before we increased the irrigation demands. So you might have a little extra nutrients on hand and make sure that your irrigation system, your fertigation system can handle. What do you say? You said like up to 20% possible increase in irrigation volumes, water volume ten to 15%.
Tim Crowell [00:29:47]:
And then EC is. We see more of a positive increasing EC. When you introduce favens to HPS rooms, right. Because you're introducing led into an existing HPS room when you're adding it to an existing Led room, we're not really seeing that demand need, I guess you could say. But again, every facility is different. But yeah, all good points. And your main constraint here is just power. Do you have the power? Because the ROI is about.
Tim Crowell [00:30:18]:
One run under canopy is equivalent to Aroya dropping the TEROS 12 a couple of years ago. And how revolutionary that was for cultivation like this is here to stay. It's not a gimmick. It is absolutely revolutionary. And the sooner you get on board, the better the prices will be in the meantime, because under canopy lighting will be one of the catalysts that leads to the next leg down in the market. Like that is the next price down, which will come eventually. Don't get too comfortable. It's coming with or without undercanopy.
Tim Crowell [00:30:54]:
But undercanopy will help the catalyst.
Kevin Crouch [00:30:57]:
If I can add something to something I saw in our setup was. I talked to Tim about it. It was a more balanced VPD in the whole plant. Normally with top light, you might have a little warmer surface, leaf surface temp, and it gets colder as you go down the plant when you under light it, and that warmth kind of comes up.
Seth Baumgartner [00:31:20]:
You have.
Kevin Crouch [00:31:20]:
The whole plant is a little more balanced. So you have a whole plant transpiration, which is not what you normally see with a top lit. So I think that's something that's a real benefit.
Tim Crowell [00:31:31]:
Yeah. And Kevin. I was explaining it to Kevin, and then Kevin's like, dude, you're explaining it all wrong. He's like, you need to talk in VPD, because I was talking in sources and sinks. And what really comes down to it is there's no microclimate under there, right? We manage our VPD a foot off canopy, but we don't manage underneath. Right. So we're creating kind of this more even temperature throughout the plant. More even VPD.
Tim Crowell [00:31:58]:
And it really just makes the plant's efficiency increase. A lot of times I get calls and it'll be like week five or six of people who haven't run under canopy yet. And they're like, one, my room is so terpey. Like, this is crazy. Like, there's a huge difference already. But two, they're like, why does my weed already look better? And I really just think it has something to do with the more even VPD throughout the plant. Like, the entire plant does better, the tops look better. Even though that light's not getting there directly getting there, it's having a big impact on the entirety of the plant.
Kevin Crouch [00:32:32]:
Also. You would think that it wouldn't be as purple because it's warmer down there, but it's quite the opposite.
Tim Crowell [00:32:39]:
There's no gradient. No, it's color uniformity. We all need purple to stay in business, even myself, like, we all have to have color to stay in business. Density, maturity. The hashers in the room, the rosin guys in the room. We all know what mature nugs and mature trichomes do, right? That adds to your percentage of yield coming off when you do hash. So you're looking at an entire plant that's abud. It's going to put off that 90 u, whatever you're looking for.
Kevin Crouch [00:33:08]:
I don't think I told you, too. We ran an 80 and a 120 side by side, and even the 120 was more noticeable purple than the 80 and had a slightly warmer. We were at about a three degree temperature difference between no ender canopy and the 120, and it was about a two degree with 80. And then this is at the lower level of the plant.
Sergio [00:33:31]:
Kevin, a question about your nutrient program. Are you removing nitrogen at the end of week six or seven? Yes, you are? Okay.
Jason Van Leuven [00:33:37]:
Yep.
Sergio [00:33:40]:
Thank you. I'm going to look to the crowd here. What challenges are you guys having if you're crop steering with any sensors or anything that you're currently up against? Any current opportunities that we can pick the brains of these guys on?
Kaisha [00:33:53]:
Sergio, can I ask actually a common question that we get? It was submitted a couple of weeks ago. We just haven't gotten to it because we have so many live questions. But this is a common one. We get a lot. Are you able to get an estimate of your substrate EC by runoff readings? So that relationship between EC and Runoff, putting that to the panel?
Jason Van Leuven [00:34:16]:
Yeah, you can get an estimate how good your estimate is? Well, you're going to have to estimate how good that estimate is. So it's going to depend on a lot of factors. If you've got no other ways to do it, it's way better to work off some information. If your runoff you see is way too high or way too low, you know that you got to dig into it and make some changes. So it's one of those things where when people first start using substrate, I always recommend they continue the practices of looking at their runoff EC. And I do this because those are the numbers they're used to working off of, and they start to understand well, the EC and the substrate is what the plant is actually feeling. So this is the most important thing. So we're reading directly what the plant is interacting with, but they'll get an idea of.
Jason Van Leuven [00:35:07]:
All right, okay, what is that estimate like? Right. Am I usually seeing my substrate EC being one EC higher or two ecs higher than my runoff EC or vice versa. And then they can start to kind of get an idea of, all right, well, now that I can work off of what my EC is usually in my runoff, then they start to do that with the substrate, you know, we're thinking about. All right, here's what I'm used to seeing as far as runoff goes. And then this is what I'm understanding for substrate ecs and start to kind of recalibrate themselves to the numbers that are coming from the substrate.
Seth Baumgartner [00:35:45]:
Yeah, I think the first place to start there for me usually is making sure that I'm hydrating my media properly and getting a good runoff reading. If I'm putting water on really quickly just to try to get some liquid to go through the media, I'm not letting that homogenize in the substrate and I'm not letting any ph buffering happen, any real nutrient exchange. So everything's just channeling through at that point. So it's going to be more representative of my feed than what's in the EC of the block. So as long as I know that I can start to be accurate and then also down the line, even after you're using substrate sensors, it's still good to check because from a remote sense, when you're trying to manage a huge population of plants over many thousands of square feet, sometimes you have to rely on getting this data to draw conclusions. You can't go look at every single runoff test yourself and go watch every single p one watering and make sure, hey, we did hit full hydration, we hit saturation, and then we got runoff. We didn't get any early or, hey, we got some early on half of our plants, I can't pull it from the table. There's all these little logistics to it.
Seth Baumgartner [00:36:49]:
But once you establish those numbers that you should be seeing, when you see deviation from that, either way, if it's building, you can start to look into, hey, we're getting very little runoff, perhaps, or what's going on there. Or if you're seeing it just drop dramatically, there's probably a good chance you're pushing some pretty big shots, you're getting channeling, and that's not really giving you a good picture at that point of what's going on. So all data points are great, and it's another one of those things that you want to corroborate with different tools and start to find out, like, hey, what are more and more signs of when things are starting to go south with either my irrigation or substrate health and when do I need to start to take action.
Sergio [00:37:30]:
I want to pick your brain on low flow drip emitters. Zero point three s, zero five s. When does it make sense to have two? When does it make sense to have more? Should you have more? Just talk to us about that.
Jason Van Leuven [00:37:44]:
I like zero point three s. I like having at least two per substrate. And really, the thinking there is, it's been pretty well published by most of, specifically, maybe the one that's most popular right here in this long standing substrate manufacturers that say, hey, if we have less drip rate in there, then it's going to be a better homogenized substrate. As far as water contents go. I've used this simulate many, many times on the show, and that is if I think of a dry sponge, kitchen sponge, and I put it under a faucet that is running fairly quickly, a lot of times there's going to be water dripping through the bottom of that sponge before the edges are even soaked, even before they're wet. Substrate is not a lot different than that as far as in theory, what's going on there now, if I've got the sink just dripping, that sponge is going to become completely soaked before it starts running off through there. And so if our flow rate is too high, one of the things that we can do is one of the things we'll see is irrigation channeling. So you'll get areas in that substrate that are more wet, and then you can also start to.
Jason Van Leuven [00:38:56]:
Those channels will have a waste of nutrients, a waste of water. Right. We want that to all go into the substrate, and we want the substrate to be as consistent as possible one, because that's how the plant can use the most of it. And the more consistent pretty much anything is in a facility, the easier it is going to be to manage as well.
Sergio [00:39:17]:
Thank you. Any other questions? Back here? Right back to swag naming. Where are you from, sir?
Seth Baumgartner [00:39:30]:
Evan ECM, actually based out of Arizona. With your communication, are you guys ever going to open source that for your environmental that talks back with BMS systems and BAs systems?
Jason Van Leuven [00:39:47]:
Sorry, just having a little bit of a hard time hearing it as far as the yes.
Seth Baumgartner [00:39:51]:
So I work with a lot of people in this industry that base everything off of what AROYA goes off of, but your communication back on your changeover values is different from what actual BMS systems and BAs systems use. You guys smooth out your data a little bit different if you go from the live one to your actual graph. And so you'll get that run out of your systems and AC systems, and that's where a lot of the environmental impact comes into. So I'm wondering if you're ever going to open source that so that everybody can tap in like pretty much every other system in the world.
Jason Van Leuven [00:40:28]:
Great question. I love this because I help quite a few clients implement our open API. So we've had open API on the market for, I think, well over a year and a half now. And what the open API is basically, it's just a rest API, so you can write a little bit of code and call our API to provide raw sensor data to whatever system that you want. So whether that means that you have to have a little bit of a translator between the JSON file format that's coming out of there into whatever BMS protocol that you'd like, that is up to our clients engineers. Sometimes they do it themselves because they're super creative and they love doing that stuff even better than that. We are working on some integrations with popular controllers. Some of that's in oddbus, some of that's in a couple other formats.
Jason Van Leuven [00:41:22]:
So that thing is in the roadmap. And in the meantime, you do have that open API. However, for making some environmental controls, like making those control decisions, I would use some caution because the climate stations that we have currently are on three minute reporting intervals. And in my opinion, in many of HVAC situations, that's not quite quick enough. In order to operate HVAC equipment as efficiently as possible. The value that I put in there is that it's exceptionally reliable and accurate. Sensor that you can write some checks with. So not money checks.
Jason Van Leuven [00:42:02]:
I wish he was writing me checks. But what I'm talking about, what I'm meaning with that is with a BMS system, and it's different depending on what system you're using. If you're using Simmons, if you're using an Opto 22 that's open source, any of that type of stuff, Opto 22, it'd be pretty easy. What you do is say, all right, let's compare the values coming out of my atmos 14 from the Aroya API with the directly connected sensor. So say, let's say every three minutes we run a check between those two, and if they agree within 5%, let's keep operating. Now, if they disagree or they're more than 5% off, then let's throw a flag, let's send a message and say, hey, there's something going on in the room that's making this sensor malfunction, right? So it's like checking your equipment, right? That's one of the really good things that you can do. And another thing that you can do is make automated irrigation decisions. So obviously, the irrigation data every three minutes is usually fast enough to start to automate things like that.
Jason Van Leuven [00:43:03]:
So love that question. And if you want to know more about the API, love to get you going on it.
Sergio [00:43:11]:
You hit a sweet spot with the API, man. Any other questions on that?
Kaisha [00:43:16]:
Hey, Sergio.
Sergio [00:43:17]:
Yes.
Kaisha [00:43:17]:
We got a question in on YouTube that I'd love to ask the panel. Can I do it?
Jason Van Leuven [00:43:21]:
Let's hear it.
Kaisha [00:43:21]:
All right, this one came in from one of our regular viewers, iron armor. I love this question. They write, everybody likes to talk about their good harvest, but what to consider after having a bad harvest?
Jason Van Leuven [00:43:33]:
How bad?
Tim Crowell [00:43:34]:
Man, you didn't grow candies?
Jason Van Leuven [00:43:41]:
Did the room cut every fire?
Seth Baumgartner [00:43:44]:
Do you have any notes, pictures?
Tim Crowell [00:43:47]:
Look back at your phone every time. Okay, not every time. Let me restart. What's your baseline? Right? It's so easy to get away from your baseline, especially in a world where you can consume so much knowledge, right? There is so much education on Instagram or YouTube, and it can be like, oh, I'm going to tweak this one thing. It's going to be better. I'm going to tweak this and I'm going to tweak this well, now you're three moves away from your baseline. You need to make sure your baseline is written down. I don't care if it's on an excel spreadsheet or it's in a janky little notebook.
Tim Crowell [00:44:24]:
I do the janky little notebook still. I'm sorry. Napkin, napkin. Good one. I'm a janky notebooker. I'm sorry. I have some notebooks that are just worth more than gold to me right now that I go back on when I do find myself after having a few bad runs, and more often than not, it comes down to something small. You changed and you just didn't see what was going to happen down the road.
Tim Crowell [00:44:53]:
So getting back to your baseline, getting back to your abcs of irrigate it. When it needs more water, you irrigate it again, go back to as basic as possible, and rebuild. And that may sound like it's going to take a long time, especially if you're a home grower. You have two lights, one light. That's going to take you a while. In commercial, that only takes you a couple of weeks. Right? We've got rooms dropping once a week, twice a week, so you can get back to that baseline very quickly. But I myself, even with the experience I have, I actually just kind of pulled out of one of these down slumps, and I'm really feeling myself on the way back up right now.
Tim Crowell [00:45:35]:
And it really came down to stupid mistakes that we got away from the baseline. Right. So, yeah, find your baseline, write it down. That is everything. And then only deviate one variable from there is what I would say.
Seth Baumgartner [00:45:51]:
Yeah. In my experience, usually the worst things happened. We got too comfortable and stopped taking notes and trying to organize that. So then when it hit, it was such a project to go back and figure it out. That was all we could do is go back to baseline and then just go, okay, we have to probably just pay as much attention to detail as possible. And sometimes maybe we messed up bad enough that a series of things cause a disaster. So all we can pinpoint back to is like, hey, we got too comfortable. Generally, like I said, that's been my biggest problem in the past.
Seth Baumgartner [00:46:23]:
Especially, unfortunately, if you have a core awesome group of people have been working together forever, you all trust each other. Sometimes maybe too much. Sometimes a small slip up will really hurt things.
Tim Crowell [00:46:37]:
Yeah. And we've all been there. Everybody in this room has been there. It's a very terrible place to be when you don't feel like if you've been in it long enough, your plant health is tied to your self worth, and it's not healthy, but it's real. It's super real. So just take care of yourself. Make sure you're not a terrible grower ever. I found a lot of success ten years ago when I stopped jumping on the forums, because that's all we had ten years ago was the forums.
Tim Crowell [00:47:10]:
I stopped looking at forums, and I got better because I started looking at the plant. And I feel like today those forums are on hyperdrive on Instagram, scrolling, and you just have so much information being thrown at you. So just go on an information freeze and get back to basics.
Jason Van Leuven [00:47:28]:
Yeah, I want to reiterate that, don't beat yourself up unless you don't put the work in to figure out what your mistake was. If you put the work in to figure out your mistake, it was a learning opportunity. And, yeah, it probably cost you, but now you know how to avoid that next time. Maybe it's something in your facility you need to upgrade so that it could be more reliable. Your life can be more stable. Maybe it's a decision that you made that you know you probably won't make again.
Kevin Crouch [00:47:58]:
I also add as much built in redundancy as you can, so checks and balances every night. I have timers going off. I'm watering. I have always checking something and you just double check whatever it is. If you're watering your climate, dimming lights, raising lights. So you just always have, either be yourself or have somebody else double check what you do. That's nutrients, climate, irrigation, redundancy for sure.
Jason Van Leuven [00:48:33]:
Let's see. Raise your hand if you accidentally did am instead of pm one time.
Tim Crowell [00:48:40]:
Sometimes open sprinkler will do this thing where I'll want to drop 1 minute off and I'll go hit the down and all of a sudden it goes up for forever. And just like it's a glitch and I don't think it's even open sprinkler. I think it's my freaking computer. But it'll do it every once in a while. One time I saved it and I got a call from my buddy. He's like, dude, you've been irrigating for 5 hours. What are you doing?
Jason Van Leuven [00:49:05]:
And I was like, what do you mean?
Tim Crowell [00:49:07]:
He's like yeah bro. You have it programmed at this. And I'm like oh damn, that's me. So like Kevin said, double check everything. I love open sprinkler. It's a great platform. But man, yeah. Anyway, double check.
Seth Baumgartner [00:49:22]:
That's kind of one of the beauties of getting into commercial cultivation. You crank so many crops through, everyone's a learning experience. And one of the things you definitely learn is people and machines both break at certain points. There's going to be problems here and there. Achieving perfection doesn't happen when you see the most perfect picture. There's always at least one plant in that room that that grower is not stoked compared to the rest. Right. And it's painful because you pour everything into it and then you have to watch it after you hurt the plant because it doesn't get better and just remind yourself.
Seth Baumgartner [00:49:53]:
But that's why just really doubling down on sops and getting that data collection in is huge because I always tell people, I couldn't tell you how many pictures I have. That's just one really messed up looking plant with a white wall in the background and some yellow light on it and a date. And I'm like, ooh, that could be so many things. I need a little more. Like I remember kind of what was going on, but pulling out the particulars is hard.
Tim Crowell [00:50:19]:
Write it down.
Jason Van Leuven [00:50:21]:
I think one of probably the most disappointing crops that I was part of was not great notetaking. Obviously something that happened in the process that was goofed up and absolutely beautiful plants. They just weren't the plants that the label was.
Tim Crowell [00:50:43]:
That'S a good one.
Sergio [00:50:44]:
Which kind of leads me to my other thought of checking your mother stock.
Jason Van Leuven [00:50:47]:
Right?
Sergio [00:50:48]:
Did you have a bad run because your clone sucked? What happened? Maybe those moms are tired. Did you pathogen test to restart? Like, giving yourself the clean, healthy start that you want all starts in your mom room.
Seth Baumgartner [00:51:02]:
Oh, absolutely. I always say you want to put money in your flower room right away, and then the next thing is like, all right, how do I increase this uniformity? And eventually, you always chase it back to the moms. You've got to have fresh, healthy clones. You really can't keep moms for very long. And I always envision it like, I've kind of got this little business inside my business that exists to feed my business, the products it needs to work. But really, that has to be a really dedicated process that you can't slip up on, because we're all hitting a point where days matter. Any day that you're extending production cycle at all or you're spacing out in between, you're losing money. You have a cost of operation per square foot that you're down every day that a plant's not growing in there.
Seth Baumgartner [00:51:41]:
And unfortunately, sometimes it ends up costing more and taking a little more on the mom side to keep that fresh supply of clones going. And then as we're hitting an era where we're seeing more sharing of genetics, which has led to more disease proliferation, like hlv, coming into facilities. All right, if I've got 20,000, it's four rooms, but I can't afford to shut the whole place down and nuke it out. I've got to have a different solution, which nowadays is trying to bring in fresh clones that have gone through tissue culture, generally been cleaned up and brought back. But, okay, now that's a step you've got to take, and that's just where we're going with some of these things.
Sergio [00:52:21]:
I'd love to take a question back to the platforms. Kaisha, do you want to bring me back to YouTube?
Kaisha [00:52:27]:
Yeah, I got another one here on the topic of moms, actually. Tips for growing moms in one gallon pots. Could you cover irrigation to steer vegetatives?
Jason Van Leuven [00:52:39]:
A lot of them, I guess. Let's think about how big a mom they want to be growing there, and let's convert that into some mathematics that we can just simply break down. Right. So on a typical flowering plant, like a five foot, six foot plant, I'll usually see like, a half gallon of water transpiration a day.
Tim Crowell [00:52:59]:
Right?
Jason Van Leuven [00:52:59]:
So let's say we're growing six foot mom. We got lights on a little bit longer, maybe not quite as much. Not quite as much that's going into that plant, say 0.5 gallons a day. If we're in a six foot mom, maybe a little bit more than that, just because we usually have a lot of vegetation on there. So let's run p two s, lots of p two s, and let's try and make sure that we get like 0.6 gallons into there. And really what's going to happen is start running some substrate sensors in that mom and just outline what it's going to take.
Tim Crowell [00:53:37]:
Right.
Jason Van Leuven [00:53:37]:
If we've got an 18 six irrigation light cycle with that, then we might need to be on probably a 16 hours irrigation window. And really that's not going to be bad. So it might be something where we're irrigating 32 times a day. And let's just divide up 0.6 gallons by 32, and hopefully we've got 10% runoff on there. If you need more runoff to stabilize the substrate, let's just boost those irrigation sizes a little bit.
Seth Baumgartner [00:54:08]:
Yeah, you really just got to look at your moms as an individual crop. Almost like if you can have the same generations of moms on the same valve and then try to match your irrigations as best you can, that's going to make life a lot easier. And then, yeah, really realizing how big you want to get. Usually we're looking at taking moms out to three months at the very max. That's not that many cuttings. Water them a lot. And also we're running them low ec. If you're flushing your mom's back up to 3.0 every day, that's okay.
Seth Baumgartner [00:54:39]:
I think one of maybe the toughest things there is just staying on top of it in the one gallon. So depending on some people's cloning needs, we're looking at maybe a little more comfort and up to a three gallon just because it simplifies life. They can put some huge irrigations on every day. Hey, we got runoff. We're good to go. That supports our needs in situations where we've got a lot bigger flower space, we're trying to supply with a smaller mom space or veg space, trying to crank them through a lot faster. So we've got a lot more aggressive program with a lot more moms. It's like everything we do that's not the perfect way.
Seth Baumgartner [00:55:12]:
There's always an exception to the rule or but this or but that. Except for keeping your mom's too long I will say that's never, ever worked out for me once.
Sergio [00:55:25]:
Questions from the audience. All right, let's bring it back to grow world. What do we got here? Nick, I'm going to lean into you.
Jason Van Leuven [00:55:38]:
Yeah. And share some pics of those moms in the one gallon. I want to see the roots. I don't run into ones in one gallons very often.
Tim Crowell [00:55:44]:
Throw them in a four x four x four on a slab and you'll have much better results, like. And it'll take up the same space. Yeah. Because I actually just saw that tech for the first time a couple of months ago and I was like, that's brilliant. They also throw them out after, like.
Kevin Crouch [00:55:57]:
Six weeks, keeping them upright, too. In a one gallon pot, those things are going to be top heavy.
Seth Baumgartner [00:56:03]:
Yeah, that's the problem I've run into quite a bit. But if you're cropping them through in the same time, you'd be using like, a Hugo. Let's say it is reasonable if I have a room like that where I'm never clearing it out. Though I do prefer Rockwell a little bit just because it's slightly less cleaning.
Tim Crowell [00:56:19]:
I thought it was the craziest thing, putting moms in Rockwell, but I get it. If you're not keeping them too long.
Seth Baumgartner [00:56:26]:
Six to eight weeks, if that's all.
Tim Crowell [00:56:27]:
They'Re getting, burn them.
Seth Baumgartner [00:56:29]:
Yeah. Get rid of them before they're unmanageable. And then you're doing yourself favors. Just keeping that as fresh as possible.
Tim Crowell [00:56:34]:
And they're like solid on the slab. Like, they're not tipping over on the slab.
Kevin Crouch [00:56:39]:
Much more stable.
Tim Crowell [00:56:40]:
Yeah, way more stable.
Kevin Crouch [00:56:42]:
They're not playing dominoes when you spray them.
Tim Crowell [00:56:44]:
Oh, my gosh.
Jason Van Leuven [00:56:46]:
Yeah.
Tim Crowell [00:56:46]:
They're moving together like a hedge. Yeah. Supporting.
Sergio [00:56:50]:
All right, guys, we got a question coming back to under canopy, how much does the cost per gram change with under canopy lighting? Also, how much extra yield on average, do you get with under canopy?
Tim Crowell [00:57:01]:
Pretty much average is 25% to 35% on first time users. And that's been. I don't have any issue saying that in public multiple times just because it's been the feedback every single time. Like, Kevin, I'll tell you what was the first question. What was the cost per.
Sergio [00:57:21]:
Yeah, like the average cost to run.
Seth Baumgartner [00:57:27]:
He's looking for the price premium.
Sergio [00:57:29]:
Yeah.
Seth Baumgartner [00:57:30]:
Are you getting two to $300 more a pound? And maybe that boils down to, like, are you getting the purple mature bud? Is this more of an a versus b grade ratio?
Tim Crowell [00:57:40]:
Yeah. And there's a ton of metrics that I can't sorry, metric is a bad word. There's a ton of variables that I can't quantify because it's different facility to facility. And I can't quantify the difference between a pound of purple bee buds and the difference between a pound of purple or like green bee buds. Right. That's like green bee buds are like $500 purple like 700. Right. So that $200 difference, that's more than $200.
Tim Crowell [00:58:12]:
That is almost 40% increase. Right. That's massive. Especially because of bees are which you shouldn't have very many bees between five and 10% using under canopy, really closer to 5%. I can't quantify that because it changes every facility. If you're a brand, there's a ratio between. You have a bulk pound that weighs 454 grams with 128 eight in it. How many of those 128 eight actually make it into a branded bag or jar and sold for premium? I'd say the industry standard is about 70%.
Tim Crowell [00:58:49]:
75% of that bulk pound makes it into a jar. Getting premium numbers with undercanopy, you're seeing those numbers closer to 90% to 95%. So way less material getting sold at less desirable prices. Right. So it's hard to quantify just because yield is very easy, right. I get the yield numbers every morning. I have a couple of texts or a couple of dms. Like, dude, I just set my record way by far.
Tim Crowell [00:59:15]:
Or my two lighter did this, my 200 lighter did this every morning. I'm getting these texts now and it's great. It's the best feeling ever. But what really is another driver is the purple, right? Fetching that extra dollar running candy genetics that don't really yield, but they actually do really well with undercanopy because they actually throw a lot of bud sites. We just have to clear them up so high because if it doesn't receive light, it doesn't even turn into a bee bud. It's like Larf. It's like growing sour diesel back in the day. It's straight larf under there.
Tim Crowell [00:59:50]:
So if you add any kind of light, you're getting way more on these candy genetics. Like candy genetics are probably the ones that I've seen the biggest yield increases on like by far. Skittles. Crazy. That was crazy numbers. Crazy change. So it's really hard to quantify past the yield because it changes to facility. Facility or grower to grower.
Tim Crowell [01:00:11]:
But I can tell you it's not hurting your smoke quality and it's not hurting your look and it's not hurting your terps. It's only making everything better.
Sergio [01:00:23]:
Kaisha, what do you think? Another question from YouTube.
Kaisha [01:00:26]:
I do. This is actually for Seth and Jason. Somebody wanted to know the difference between our new sensors. So the TEROS ONE versus the TEROS 12, what are the differences?
Tim Crowell [01:00:37]:
Actually.
Jason Van Leuven [01:00:41]:
I guess everybody wants to know this. So, other than the name, obviously, we've got some physical differences with the sensors. The TEROS ONE, it's only got two prongs. It's using a completely different measuring method. The TEROS 12 is a capacitance measurement, and the TEROS ONE is a complex dielectric measurement. And so basically what that's done is allowed us to consolidate it, make the sensor a little bit physically smaller. It's round, so it's actually quite a bit easier to install the through hard pots, which has been kind of a challenge with terras 12 s. A lot of times when I go into a facility, maybe might be new with the system, they just got them stuck through the hard pot and there's air on the prongs.
Jason Van Leuven [01:01:21]:
Definitely not something we want to be seeing as far as getting accurate measurements. So those are kind of the baseline differences as far as when we're looking at the sensor, this is how it operates. The real big advantage of it is that TEROS ONE is going to be more accurate, and this is going to be especially important when we get into lower water connect. So when we see water contents in that less than 20% range, sometimes less than 25% range, every once in a while, we'll see those ecs start to really climb up. And some of that's basically a side effect of the terrors 12. Just trying to basically estimate what those ecs are. It's still been the best sensor on the market for the time being. And like most people that are very determined, the best keeps getting better.
Jason Van Leuven [01:02:10]:
And that's what's happened with the TEROS ONE, is we've developed a new sensing technology that even when we're at really low water contents, maybe we're pushing extremely hard, generative signals. It's going to maintain extremely high ec accuracy.
Sergio [01:02:26]:
Is there a rebate program if I want to trade in my terras 12 s for a TEROS ONE?
Jason Van Leuven [01:02:31]:
Yeah, there absolutely is. And it's super easy. Just go on the web page there in the web store and tell us how many you want to trade in and it'll get the process started.
Tim Crowell [01:02:40]:
I thought you were joking.
Jason Van Leuven [01:02:41]:
That's real true, yeah, it's any condition. Terrace 12, you can either do TEROS 12, only TEROS 12 with the nose. So there's lots of options, depending what condition your equipment is in, we'll take anything back as long as you're existing customer. And really, we want to do it because, one, we want to help our clients. We want to help our growers be encouraged to have the best technology on the market.
Tim Crowell [01:03:08]:
Right.
Jason Van Leuven [01:03:08]:
The reason that we do this is to help the people we work with become as competitive as possible in this industry and optimize the way that they're growing. They love growing. They want to be the best growers. And as humans, the reason that we're here is because we've evolved and learned to use tools. So as much as I love just reading what the plant does and says, I can't do it, as well as sometimes things like electronics can do it. One of my favorite things that I talk about when I first started using the TEROS 12, I looked at the graph and I thought, man, this is exactly like the electrocardiograph in the medical industry. And that's the good old tick, tick, tick of the heartbeat on the monitor. And I thought, man, I could have my ear next to the person's heart and see, like, all right, this is a fairly decent arrhythmia, or rhythmic action, whatever they call it.
Jason Van Leuven [01:04:05]:
I don't know, medical that good. Or we could set up a computer that's recording it, and it's catching. Anytime that it's unexpected, it's catching the highs, the lows, the durations, the differences in those beats. We can set alarms on it. So when someone's going into cardiac arrest, we can get some hospital staff in there, and it's not that much different as far as when we're operating cultivation facility. These are living plants, and their conditions are always changing. And so that was one of the things that kind of opened my eyes up, is like, hey, I can learn way more about this plant by understanding things that I can't see, rather than just the things that I can see. And a lot of times, the issues that we're dealing with, that we can see, they're actually showing up because of a problem that has already occurred.
Jason Van Leuven [01:04:56]:
And so if we can catch a problem earlier than that, we're way more likely to have a happy crop.
Sergio [01:05:08]:
What other questions? Right back here. And you guys, I am cognizant of the time. We're eight minutes past the hour mark, so we're going to wrap this up probably in the next 1015 minutes.
Jason Van Leuven [01:05:17]:
Cool.
Tim Crowell [01:05:20]:
My name is Josh. I'm the director of sales for Bioag. How many sensors do you recommend per how many square foot? How do you decide how many sensors you need?
Seth Baumgartner [01:05:31]:
Typically we go one substrate sensor per 100, usually around 1000 to 1500 sqft. On a climate sensor, it depends on how big your rows are. That's a general rule of thumb. We'll go plus or minus. If you've got a room that has really variable conditions in it, or like a pretty hard gradient front to back, like an old school, the greenhouse, then we might kind of up that in certain parts of the greenhouse to see like, hey, are we 10% different on average from the front of the room to the back of the room? And try to start capturing some of that and figuring out, okay, what are we going to do about that?
Tim Crowell [01:06:04]:
As someone who's never used one of these systems, is there one sensor that works for all mediums and substrates, or is there like one for Rockwell and one for cocoa, or one for organic versus one for mineral fertilizer? Or is there just one that does it all?
Seth Baumgartner [01:06:15]:
It's one that does it all.
Sergio [01:06:16]:
Cool.
Jason Van Leuven [01:06:18]:
And that's actually an advantage of the TEROS ONE that I forgot to mention. We are launching substrate specific calibrations for the TEROS ONE. So on the right dashboard, you can select what media type you have, which will actually slightly increase the accuracy because it's not a generalized soilless substrate calibration.
Sergio [01:06:39]:
With media specific calibration, it makes me think about genetic specific recipes and what we kind of tapped on earlier about this conversation. And Brad, I know we had that conversation as well, having a baseline for, let's just say, small bud trait cultivars. Right? Is that something that we can deploy at scale through the AROYA platform coming up in the future or maybe even today?
Jason Van Leuven [01:07:03]:
Yeah, absolutely. And actually, for years, some of our most advanced clients have been doing exactly know unnecessarily for the small bud traits that you're talking about. But in application, it's not much different. So when we look at harvest groups in AROYA, basically, that operates on a template that you can set up, and that template is going to dictate things like irrigation patterns, temperatures, at points that we want to hit. It's going to be talking about how long we're doing different steering strategies. It's going to be able to include any specific tasking or pest management that might be for that strain to optimize it. And those templates are awesome. You can copy and paste them, tweak them, be like, hey, this is version one.
Jason Van Leuven [01:07:48]:
You can get that baseline that we were talking about. Then you can start to go one different way with it, or two different ways depending on how many R D type rooms that you might be working off or how risky you. I always, always agree with Tim on the only try to change one variable at a time and do your best to document that both what your input variable change was and what your outcome difference was. Tying those two in together is very important. So really how that happens in AROYA is by grabbing the data for every run. Let's attribute it to how we tried to grow it. And I think this is probably one of the interesting things that is very special about cannabis cultivation, is there's always this template that this is how we wanted to grow, right? And yeah, we can get very close to that most time, but for the best growers, there's always just that one little thing that's like, that one didn't come quite right, and every once in a while it actually comes out better. And if you have it documented, you understand.
Jason Van Leuven [01:08:55]:
Well, when the one dehumidifier was off, we grew a little bit better. What was the difference in our VPD? Was it just slightly lower towards the beginning of the harvest cycle? Obviously, Aroy is counting what day of the cycle that you're in to try and keep track that you don't lose a day because it's written on a whiteboard, any of that type of stuff. For multi state operators, they're able to share those recipes across their different facilities. So we've got clients in the one dozen, two dozen facilities within AROYA, all the way across the United States, and they're able to one share what those templates are, and they can also share the performance of those facilities. So, are those templates working for the facility? What facility do I need to put more energy into? Hey, maybe this one's got a new grower that just needs a tad bit more education on the things that standardize our company.
Sergio [01:09:55]:
Standardization, right? Trusted by genetics, with irrigation recipes attached to that, you copy and paste that across your facilities.
Seth Baumgartner [01:10:03]:
Well, I mean, it's just a huge upgrade from when you used to buy a pack of seeds and it says 60 to 70 days heavy, medium light feeder. But the more information you can get, if you're a breeder or someone distributing genetics, even if the way you didn't grow it was some way you considered perfect, you can at least show them how to replicate those results. They can always improve from there. But just giving people that baseline, because right now there's so many genetics out there, and any information coming into your facility to really try to cut down on that learning curve and really reduce that time it takes I used to say it'd take like six to eight runs to really nail something if I was taking good notes and didn't have sensors. With sensors I can get that down to closer to two if I've already got really dialed sops in my facility. If all I'm really adjusting is my steering strategies a little bit and then obviously a few other things to monitor it. But generally I'm not doing anything too wild with my environment. If I had a strain that required me to grow it at 2.6 vpd the whole time in order for it to perform halfways decently, I know that's not like, can I grow a whole room of that? And if so, it better yield really well because I know everything else in the room is going to be awful.
Seth Baumgartner [01:11:17]:
We already have limitations in that respect that we work off of. I think what I've learned over the past few years is dialing specific strains is not only so much easier, but is so easy if you have good data where you can just say, look, here's what happened, you apply whatever theory you want to it, I don't care. But if you can do this, this should be your result. And it works more than it doesn't.
Sergio [01:11:38]:
Micro changes that was one of my biggest takeaways during the candy discussion we had in Vegas was instead of waiting until day 21 to start bulking, bring that back to like day 15, 1617 cultivar and facility specific. But now you're actually getting those bud sets starting to chunk up a little bit earlier and you're starting to hit 80 grams a square foot with these small fronts, crosses or whatever you might be dealing with on the candy.
Seth Baumgartner [01:12:01]:
Oh yeah, and I always say it, dude, every round is a learning experience. So even if you had one where you thought like oh man, the wrong person went away for the weekend, we started bulking six days early on this strain and we've never done that before. Just because you've never done it before doesn't mean it's necessarily going to be a bad result on some strains it might be, but every once in a while you're going to run into something that does contradict the rule a little bit and it's just really important to know that you have that exception on that strain. Like an old example I'd use is just a classic ice cream cake cut and you're trying to teach people to go prune in the greenhouse, like hey, don't hit this one as hard. Like why? Well, it still fills out really good down low for us. We don't want to throw all these other plants in here. Yeah, go really hard on them. But this one, leave it.
Seth Baumgartner [01:12:44]:
And you'd always get one. Whoever the newer person was trying to do a good job and copy the other ones. And you'd have to be like, try to edge them in and say, hey, there is always an exception to the rule. Hopefully not as many as you might think there are. But this is just kind of. We got to pay attention to this stuff. It's important.
Sergio [01:13:00]:
And one of the main reasons why I asked about that. Thank you for elaborating on the templates and they've been in system or available to us. It's derisking, right? When you're bringing on new genetics, when you're starting to copy and pastes across multiple facilities, it's derisking the understanding and the information that's already available for us. So small changes, right, Tim? Micro changes, macro results always. Guys, we're getting close to the time here. Any other questions from the crowd? Right back here. Naman, where are you from, sir.
Seth Baumgartner [01:13:37]:
My name is Jason. I'm from Icannic, based locally here in Sacramento. My question for you guys is, have you seen any salt? No, not necessarily salt, but like high EC stress resulting in herming. And at what levels do you start to see that? Because we're pushing pretty high Ec in our feed and I just am concerned.
Sergio [01:14:01]:
About some herming that may be happening.
Seth Baumgartner [01:14:03]:
Do you have any experience with that? I'm sure you probably do.
Jason Van Leuven [01:14:11]:
I've been astonished by how high of an EC that the plant can be dried down to. That being said, it is very important that that EC gets to certain level of reset on your irrigations. So the substrate EC ranges that I'm pretty comfortable with in vegetative stages, like flowering vegetative stages, like five decmens to eight decased semens per meter. And for generative, you know, I like to be floating in that six, seven all the way as the low point. And I'll see spikes in the 12 plus 15 maybe range, as long as it's not floating up in those ranges. I don't usually associate that with plant stressors. Yeah, typically.
Seth Baumgartner [01:15:08]:
What I've noticed is when we hit those high EC marks, a lot of times there's a few things that happen. Number one, we're pushing these drybacks really far. Depending on the media, we're doing a little bit of extra stress there. And then also, if we're not managing that correctly, we're also not managing ph. So when we're taking a plant, like, traditionally, if we had something with a little bit of CEC in it, cat and exchange capacity, kind of an old school soil, we would kind of want to flush out some of the residual nutrients that were bound up in there. If you do that in your hydroponic media too quickly, you're running, let's say, a 30, and you don't ramp it down and manage your ph down, you're really shocking those roots osmotically and possibly with a big ph shift. And that's a huge stressor on the plant at that point. It suddenly goes from having a nice, cushy life to an okay life to, all right, we're dying now.
Seth Baumgartner [01:15:56]:
And that's when I've seen late flower stamens popping out and those late flower herms. Now, if you're getting actual pollen sacks, like week two, we're talking about a whole different game here.
Tim Crowell [01:16:08]:
Yeah. And not every nutrient line was meant to run at high ecs. Just keep that in mind. Low Ec is. There's something to it. You need to dial in your rooms accordingly. Like, if you're pushing high Ec, if you're hitting some numbers, and it's a line that's not, like, on their feeding chart, like, hey, feed this. You're probably messing up there.
Tim Crowell [01:16:32]:
Make sure the line can handle being ran that high, because there are a lot of liquids on the market that you're not supposed to run that high. Just a heads up.
Sergio [01:16:44]:
Good question.
Jason Van Leuven [01:16:45]:
Definitely take my answer with a grain of salt, if you will.
Kevin Crouch [01:16:52]:
I can add to that a little bit, too. I've seen what I would believe would be herms from high Ec, but mainly on seed plants, not clones. So we run a lot of seed plants and clones side by side, and they'll get the same feed, and we'll have a bit more high likelihood to have herms, and sometimes that redo them in a clone sense, and I won't have the same problem. So I think the little bit of the instability of an initial seed, you could get some herming in.
Sergio [01:17:29]:
Kev, out of curiosity, how many seeds are you hunting per month in your facility?
Kevin Crouch [01:17:32]:
We've slowed down a little bit in the last few months, but for a while there, we were probably 200 a month, 300 a month, probably somewhere in there.
Sergio [01:17:41]:
Go ahead, Seth.
Seth Baumgartner [01:17:42]:
I was going to say that kind of highlights, too, why we're not all popping seeds all the time. It's just a nightmare to keep everything somewhat consistent and even really trial things. When you're hunting too many different phenos, you can't get even expression.
Kevin Crouch [01:17:56]:
No, not at all. And that's why I said I feel like it was probably the high EC, but there's so many variables with those.
Seth Baumgartner [01:18:03]:
Your plant heights are all over the place with the seeds. You've got way different leaf area indexes on different plants. Their needs are all so different that it's almost impossible to manage them efficiently together.
Kevin Crouch [01:18:14]:
Yeah. Although you put them in a commercial environment, which is kind of nice sometimes, because you can see what can handle your growing environment that the rest of the plants are getting. So that's kind of a plus. Obviously, you do have to have some herm assessment and have a good team because you don't want your whole room seated. But it is nice. You kind of get a jump on what plants can kind of handle your situation.
Seth Baumgartner [01:18:43]:
Yeah. Never build your r and b d room to be a Ferrari. Build it just as shitty as the rest of your facility.
Sergio [01:18:48]:
That's right.
Seth Baumgartner [01:18:49]:
That sounds negative, but you want to be able to stop. If you see something that I've seen, people now that are struggling with certain plants moving from HPS to led, like, hey, they're herming, and they're herming early. Now. It's like, do we know exactly what that is? Not always, but that tells you you can't run it the way you're running it, for sure. So take that off the list right away. You got to live within your limitations. It's not worth seeding out a room, and you're not going to be able to run the crop efficiently enough. You're going to lose yield at the end of the day, trying to accommodate this and put way more money in than it's worth to get it out, even if it is the most amazing heavy yielding.
Seth Baumgartner [01:19:28]:
If it ruins the room, it ruins the room.
Kevin Crouch [01:19:30]:
You're growing for the mass, the masses of the room. Like you said earlier, not one variety. That just kills it.
Seth Baumgartner [01:19:37]:
Yeah. And unfortunately, in the market, the grower's opinion, you got to go with what people want. You can try to spearhead that to an extent, but you got to let the numbers steer you, and then you got to realize the limitations.
Tim Crowell [01:19:48]:
Yeah, we don't matter.
Seth Baumgartner [01:19:49]:
No.
Tim Crowell [01:19:50]:
It doesn't matter what we think anymore.
Seth Baumgartner [01:19:51]:
Just because I like it doesn't mean anyone's going to buy it.
Tim Crowell [01:19:54]:
No.
Sergio [01:19:56]:
All right, guys, let's do a couple of roundups. Kaisha, let's get into the raffle. Right? Let's do that. So this is where somebody that entered the raffle for tonight, for showing up. Thank you, guys, for showing up Kaisha is going to pull a lucky winner for an aroya go system. Badass. Thank you, Aroya, for that. That's really cool.
Sergio [01:20:19]:
So while we're coming back to this, I also want to come back to the grow world platform because somebody that had the most upvotes on their question, if we didn't get that asked, anthony, can we check that out? They're going to win a solas.
Tim Crowell [01:20:34]:
Favin is on grow world as well. So if you guys don't know what grow world is, check it out. It's a really cool platform where companies can get in touch directly to cultivators, sign them up for a trial. Grow world kind of handles all of that and it's a really chill platform. I kind of didn't know about it at first and then sat down with the creator, Nick, and he's got a good vision fave in his oncro world.
Sergio [01:21:06]:
Oh, perfect. Oh, this just in. We're going to do a live solos winner tonight, too. Awesome. So, Acacia, why don't you go ahead and start us off and I'm going to work on grow world.
Kaisha [01:21:15]:
Okay, we ready? So I'm going to pull the winner of the solas. Actually, Jason, do the honor. Winner of the Solas.
Jason Van Leuven [01:21:28]:
Drum roll is Ignacio Garcia 5000 macro.
Kaisha [01:21:40]:
We're going to reach out to Ignacio, let him know he won a solas. All right, who's ready? Seth, you want to pull our arroya?
Kevin Crouch [01:21:47]:
Go.
Kaisha [01:21:47]:
Winner.
Seth Baumgartner [01:22:02]:
Mazatelli.
Jason Van Leuven [01:22:04]:
Mazatelli.
Seth Baumgartner [01:22:06]:
M-A-Z-Z-I-T-E-L-N. Sound familiar, Matt?
Sergio [01:22:13]:
No.
Jason Van Leuven [01:22:13]:
Matt. All right.
Tim Crowell [01:22:16]:
Mark.
Seth Baumgartner [01:22:16]:
Mark know he won.
Sergio [01:22:21]:
Okay.
Seth Baumgartner [01:22:22]:
Yeah.
Kaisha [01:22:24]:
Congratulations to Ignacio.
Seth Baumgartner [01:22:26]:
He's got handwriting like mine. You just got to own that.
Sergio [01:22:31]:
Okay, so you do Evan's information. We're good. Okay, perfect. This just in, we have another raffle going off tonight. Shout out to Athena for the tissue culture kit that they're giving out for one lucky winner that got to enter into this. So, Tim, would you like to do the honors? Got you.
Tim Crowell [01:23:03]:
Stephanie Shepard.
Sergio [01:23:05]:
Stephanie Shepard. What up, Stephanie? You just won an Athena tissue culture kit. Congratulations. Thank you, Athena. It pays to come to the connect, guys. That's all I can say. Perfect. Okay, so, Anthony, do we have the grow world winner? Let's see what we got.
Tim Crowell [01:23:27]:
We got another winner.
Jason Van Leuven [01:23:31]:
Bridger Morgan.
Sergio [01:23:33]:
Okay, and our winner for the best question on grow world, who will be taking home as Solas? Bridger Morgan with the question was. Oh, it was the cost per gram, square foot on under canopy. So, Bridger, congratulations, Bridger.
Kaisha [01:23:55]:
So they're going to grow worldless in a center.
Seth Baumgartner [01:23:57]:
Yes.
Sergio [01:23:58]:
Okay. We got it.
Tim Crowell [01:23:59]:
Beautiful. Excellent. Hey.
Kaisha [01:24:02]:
Oh, yeah.
Sergio [01:24:04]:
Yes.
Kaisha [01:24:05]:
We got a little bit of swag out in the front. T shirts and hats if anybody wants them. But, Sergio, thank you so much for having us here.
Tim Crowell [01:24:10]:
Thanks, sir. Amazing.
Sergio [01:24:12]:
You guys crushed it. Thank you, guys for coming out.
Kevin Crouch [01:24:14]:
Thank you, Serge.
Sergio [01:24:15]:
This has been awesome.
Kevin Crouch [01:24:15]:
Thank you, guys.
Sergio [01:24:17]:
Appreciate you. On grow world, on AROYA, office hours live. Thank you, guys. Let's grow together. Much love sunglasses.
Seth Baumgartner [01:24:25]:
Next time.