[AUDIO only] Office Hours LIVE Ep. 78: Flood and Drain Tables: A Preferred Method for Hydration

What is AROYA Office Hours LIVE?

Seth Baumgartner and Jason Van Leuven open the mics for your crop steering and cultivation questions.

OHL Ep 78
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[00:00:00] Kaisha: All right. What's up, Gromies? Welcome to Office Hours, your source for free cannabis cultivation education. I'm your moderator, Kasia. You are on episode 78. Here's how we do it. I'll keep an eye out for questions in the chat. Drop them anytime. And if your question gets picked, we'll get right to it. Excuse me.

[00:00:19] Kaisha: We're also going live on YouTube. So if you're logging in over there, same idea, post your questions. And if yours gets picked, we'll do our best to cover it during the show. Jason and Seth, how are you guys doing today? Good. We're doing great. [00:00:30] Good. Yeah. Nice to see you. We're just going to get right to it.

[00:00:34] Kaisha: We want to do a little bit of an overview on soaking substrates. Yeah.

[00:00:38] Jason: Jump into it.

[00:00:39] Seth: Yeah.

[00:00:41] Jason: So, let's start off with the good old rockwool slabs, right? Obviously, you know, one of the best ways to do that is get them set up in your flower room. If you're going to transplant your plants onto the slabs at the same time you're flipping, might as well just have those slabs in the final location.

[00:00:57] Jason: Most of them are pre cut at [00:01:00] the top these days. And then you just stick the drippers in there and run your irrigation with your furigation solution. Make sure it is fully saturated. Those bags should get nice and squishy and full. I personally would recommend, you know, leaving them.

[00:01:16] Jason: Uncut for at least two hours overnight would be preferred, not always an option logistically. And then when they have been saturated, two hours should be enough in most cases. So just make sure that all of your slabs are [00:01:30] poking, you know, they're like a water balloon basically, and go in and cut the slit on the drain side.

[00:01:35] Jason: Typically the preference is just under, or just right perfectly at the corner all the way across the width of the slab.

[00:01:42] Seth: Yeah, I think one of the key things there is patience, obviously, like, it's really easy to get into a production mindset and say, hey, we're going to accomplish this. It only takes us 40 minutes to move all the slabs in and place them, put the irrigation in, and then start filling, but it's Yeah, you got to fill up that bag, wait for [00:02:00] it and then go back and check it after two hours, you know, fill your bags up so you actually have water and like another key thing is Jason said, don't make your cut until after you're done with the hydration process.

[00:02:12] Seth: That's one of the things that having a fully enclosed media brings to the table is if we're talking about like something like a Hugo, a six by six that isn't wrapped, it's just got that outer casing on the sides. Really, we want to be able to flood that rock wall all the way to the top of the media to make [00:02:30] sure we have even saturation and have a chance for air to escape.

[00:02:32] Seth: So, patience. You know, whether or not you have to cut the opening on the top, one thing I like to do is just lay the drippers in there, you don't need to stick them into the media or pretend there's a plant in there and really, like I said, just be in the mindset, like everything we talk about, quality over quantity, make sure you do it right because when we're talking about rockwool and even a lot of coco, like if you've got some pretty packed or compacted coco, you know, If you're not patient, you're not going to get enough saturation, you're not going to get [00:03:00] good hydration, you won't have the water holding capacity for the rest of your run.

[00:03:04] Seth: That's why this step is so key, and honestly one of those really critical points where, well we say it, quality over quantity.

[00:03:13] Jason: And you know, we talk about it a lot of times, like, Hey, every day that goes later in the cycle, things get harder and harder to fix. Right. And so, the best thing that you can do to start a flower cycle is make sure your media is saturated.

[00:03:25] Jason: If you don't make sure it's saturated right off the bat, you're going to be fighting it the [00:03:30] whole way. You're going to get inconsistent drybacks throughout the room. You're going to have inconsistent from plant to plant. And really the worst part is once you get big plants, you won't have the water holding capacity and need in order to push some of those generative stirrings that are so crucial for quality and high yielding plant development.

[00:03:48] Seth: Yeah. I mean, if we're talking about a rockwool slab, for instance, we've got a pretty good volume per plant of media. And if we reduce that field con, that field capacity you effectively, we have a smaller pot, [00:04:00] you know, space for the roots matters. Of course, we need a certain amount of space to pack the amount of roots in, but if that media can't hold enough water it's the same reason we start to see like, you know, the ability to go from say, a three gallon pot to a one gallon straight coco mix.

[00:04:14] Seth: If you were running like, let's say 60 percent coco, 40 percent per light before that per lights. knocking down the water holding capacity. It is bringing some aeration to the game, but at a certain point, once this pot is small enough, we can control that aeration with irrigation, [00:04:30] not have to rely on something like perlite, which actually reduces our effective media size.

[00:04:38] Seth: And that's just rockwool, you know?

[00:04:41] Jason: Yeah. So maybe we'll chat a little bit about how to saturate coco. Obviously probably on the easier side would be, you know, loose coco. If you're filling up hard pots or if you are bagging your own loose coco it's going to be a little bit similar.

[00:04:55] Jason: Obviously you're not going to have to do slits. Almost everything I've seen on the market has already punched with [00:05:00] holes. I'm not sure I've seen one that doesn't have a punch in the bottom,

[00:05:03] Seth: but that not in a few years.

[00:05:06] Jason: That loose coco, we will want to make sure we get it charged up with some pertiguation solution, right?

[00:05:11] Jason: Out of the box, sure. There's some native EC to coco, but we want to make sure that we're supplying the right pH and the right nutrient levels for those plants coming in to start kicking right off the bat. Put your drippers in. Run your irrigation. You know, I'd probably do, what, six to ten irrigations over the course of a few [00:05:30] hours to make sure that the capillary effect gets...

[00:05:32] Seth: Yeah, we're treating it like our P1s. You want to space those out. We want to look at, like, our total volume. If, hey, we've got a one gallon pot, 3. 78 liters, and we know it's coco, about how much water do I think that's going to hold? Okay, probably somewhere between 45 and 60 percent volumetric water content.

[00:05:48] Seth: So what is that looking at? You know, two and a half. Right around two and a half liters, probably maybe up to three down a little on some, but I want to be sure I'm supplying that amount over an appropriate [00:06:00] time length. So we get that wicking when we're talking about the least coco. And another thing to remember is coco generally coconuts are kind of grown in a salty environment.

[00:06:08] Seth: So depending on the time of year that those coconuts were harvested and where that husk material sat before it was processed can kind of dictate how that incoming EC Jason was talking about that native EC. And. The problem is with coca, if we see that incoming EC runoff, if we hydrate with, let's say, RO, we see kind of like some red and brown coming off when we test that, and let's say it's [00:06:30] a 1.

[00:06:30] Seth: 0 or a 1. 5 EC, one thing we do know is because of where that's sourced is that EC is mostly sodium. And we do want to kick that out. So that's why, you know, when we're talking about coco as well, if you've got a new incoming batch, it's always good to take a few blocks, test, hydrate them with RO or straight water, and just see what that runoff looks like.

[00:06:50] Seth: So you can decide, okay, am I going to have to do an initial hydration and rinse with water and then go into my nutrient solution? And also if my EC is too [00:07:00] high let's say over a 1. 0, I know I'm going to want to rinse that at least twice with my nutrient solution, because I need to basically push out.

[00:07:08] Seth: Those sodium ions with fresh incoming fertilizer ions.

[00:07:12] Jason: Yeah. And I guess, you know, one important thing that we didn't mention with rockwool but is also important with coco. So in, in rockwool, the typically, a lot of times if you can, you might charge 'em with a little bit lower pH, then you actually are going to be fertigating with in the case of [00:07:30] rockwool, it's because there's a.

[00:07:32] Jason: a binding agent in there. And there's also wetting agents in there, right? Surfactants and some Coke. And basically by using a little bit lower pH, maybe going in at say five, three or so, it's going to one offset some of the pH modifiers in there. That's also going to help those Products dissolve and become residual that gets washed out of that substrate.

[00:07:54] Jason: Similar with coco it's probably best if you can get familiar with the coco that you have and [00:08:00] try and get an understanding of how much we need to drop that pH in order to offset the properties that are coming with that product.

[00:08:07] Seth: Yeah, ideally we want to optimize our whole hydration technique to really involve like, hey, we want that media to be at the right pH inside the solution.

[00:08:16] Seth: We want a right EC for transplant and we want to make sure it's fully hydrated. And least coco generally a little bit easier. As far as compressed coco bricks go. I really enjoy flood and drain tables, even if I'm running [00:08:30] drip irrigation on my deeper table, if I can plug off that end and run my drippers, hydrate them and then run it with a certain level of water in there, I can see how much it's wicking up and then I always like to go in, you know, if I think I've hydrated well enough, basically take a few of those pots and kind of turn them sideways, get my hand down in there and feel the bottom and make sure I don't essentially have like a little puck.

[00:08:51] Seth: of compressed coco down in the bottom still, because if I miss hydrating it at this point, and that, that would tell me I need to take more time and soak these with even [00:09:00] more water than what I had done already, but if I don't fix that then, just like the rockwool, I'm going to have a problem where I have a certain portion of my media that's not going to be at water holding capacity, and like with that coco, if it's down in the bottom of the media, now we have a dry shelf.

[00:09:15] Seth: Where we wanted to have our suspended water table in there and that's not good either because that cuts down the water holding capacity of the block and gives me like this solid layer on the bottom that's going to stop those roots from penetrating through it similar to like a plow pan [00:09:30] or a clay pan if you're familiar with bigger agriculture you don't want your roots to have a hard wall that they're going to hit at the bottom we actually want them to hit air you know the edge of the pot you

[00:09:40] Jason: Yeah, that's a great point.

[00:09:41] Jason: You know, some of the coco manufacturers these days actually have kind of a mesh sided bag. And in that case, it's doing a native air pruning on the, to the tips of those roots. So, yes, there's positives and negatives of that. Obviously we're going to lose a little bit more water content just to evaporation.

[00:09:57] Jason: And we may not see quite the [00:10:00] buildup of root mass in the bottom, like, you know, like you'll see on Instagram when people are taking pictures of their roots sprawling out or across the table. Very cool. You know, if they have white, healthy roots, it looks great, but probably not the ideal situation.

[00:10:11] Jason: So when when we are using like a mesh bag and those are air pruning, we're helping the plant get sufficient fresh oxygen to that root zone.

[00:10:19] Seth: Yep. And that's a big part of how we can run a high water holding capacity, good media density, and air pruning really contribute to getting a lot bigger plant out of a [00:10:30] particular pot size than what a lot of us have seen and experienced in the past.

[00:10:36] Kaisha: I love this so much. So basically, we got to get that these substrates soaking properly right from the beginning because that sets you up for success throughout the entire cycle, basically. So amazing. Thank you guys for that. And actually, we actually got a question specifically asking veggie.

[00:10:52] Kaisha: VEGETO 505 posted on YouTube. How long would you soak a 6x6x6 GRODAN block?

[00:10:59] Jason: [00:11:00] Ideally, and it's one of the reasons, probably one of the reasons that I love slabs and obviously one of the main reasons that I wouldn't be flowering in a 6x6x6 in most situations is like you fill up a garbage can full of water, or you fill up like a horticulture you know, one of those big 500 gallon things, and you dunk them all in there for 30 minutes plus, if you can.

[00:11:24] Jason: If you ever spend time watching a rockwool block in sunken water, you'll see that the [00:11:30] air bubbles will still be coming out. Typically 10, 15 minutes later, we want to make sure that even the air bubbles that we wouldn't be able to see have been pushed out of that block and every pore is as wet as it possibly can.

[00:11:42] Jason: So, you know, that would be my recommendation. If logistically you can have them soaking for at least 30 minutes in a water container, that's ideal. Not always a great option. You know, on the large scale, if we take a look at some of the Dutch nurseries and greenhouses, they a lot of times they'll actually have a built in conveyor belt with [00:12:00] a wetting system where all these blocks are running through and getting a continuous douse of water down, down them.

[00:12:06] Jason: And that's a good way to push that. Push the air out of the block as well. Not as common over here as we're probably usually not dealing with nearly as many plants as most of those 200, 300 acre greenhouses that they have a tendency to run. So it's just an idea. We do see it in some of the most optimized.

[00:12:27] Seth: Yeah, I mean, as, as far as simplicity goes, [00:12:30] getting a start with like your four by eight or whatever size you want, but get a six inch deep flood tray if you're going to be running six by six by sixes so that you can you know, some of the old texts that a lot of people use for those are right back to what Jason said, get a trash can, fill it up with new water and hold it until it stops bubbling.

[00:12:45] Seth: You can't fit very many blocks in a trash can. So having your veg set up with deep enough flood tables for that media so you can put it all out there. Run your drippers over it, fill that up to the point, like all the way to the top of your [00:13:00] cubes, let them absorb it, pull your run off after two hours, come back, and then one of the, I think, key steps in that 6x6 hydration is going back with the wand and topping them off after you've drained off that initial soaking water, because a lot of times we see just with manufacturing inconsistencies you know, if we're looking at that 6x6, Not always can you put that six by six into two inches of water and have it wick evenly to the top.

[00:13:24] Seth: So we want to make sure we basically get that flooding going on which forces a lot [00:13:30] of air out of the small pores in there. And that's really the thing. It's right back to patience and then okay, how do I transfer this? I know they need to soak for two hours. I know I need to fully flood 'em. How do I accomplish that?

[00:13:42] Seth: Because just laying 'em out on a regular rack with some drippers in it isn't gonna do that for me.

[00:13:47] Jason: Yeah. And you know, one of the things here that you can think about, obviously if we are doing a flood table we may not want to, you know, do that with nutrient water simply just because of the waste factor in financial.

[00:13:58] Jason: So after those are soaked [00:14:00] up in, in Ro and. I would probably do acid and a little bit of pH adjustment even at the original soak up just to try and get that at a baseline pH, but they don't necessarily have to have nutrients in that bath. That being said, you know, before you are doing any transplant, make sure that your drippers have added your fertigation solution to there so that you have available nutrients when that plant is reaching with its

[00:14:21] Seth: roots.

[00:14:22] Seth: Yeah, and in log, you know, and we've always talked about crop registration, but taking notes on everything, you know, I know in the last few years I've [00:14:30] certainly seen clients that I have that are either they switch a rock wool, like which brand of stone wool they're using sometimes I just run into a batch with some particular inconsistencies where They might water in at, you know, a 5.

[00:14:42] Seth: 6 to 5. 9, like a lot of us generally do, but then they're seeing those runoff numbers come back at like 7. 1, 7. 2, and those things you want to be aware of, you know, you don't want to be blind to it, that way you can say, okay, do I need to charge this rockwool block with 4. 0? At a 4. 8 [00:15:00] pH to have it be somewhat reasonable when I come back in, or am I seeing that, you know, like in some cases, hey, our initial runoff, the pH was way too high, but once we put plants on and started watering them in, over the course of about a week, we saw that pH number come back into balance where we wanted it to, once we've introduced a big enough load of ions into that slab or rockwool block to actually achieve the pH we want.

[00:15:28] Seth: So just be aware. [00:15:30] Notes, always notes. Get your notebook out. This

[00:15:33] Kaisha: is so good. This is a hot topic over on YouTube. So we let me let's get let me get caught up here So veggie toe is the person who just submitted that question. I asked wrote us some comments here. Love your channel I've seen them all great info.

[00:15:44] Kaisha: We appreciate you My question when working with rockwool 6x6 and can't get back up to full saturation 55 to 65 Would I want to keep my EC low?

[00:15:58] Seth: Yeah, I wouldn't push it too high just because [00:16:00] if you're gonna, if you're in a situation where you've already compromised your field capacity, that means that, oh, I can't remember off the top of my head how many liters are in a 6x6, but you've already lost that much water.

[00:16:11] Seth: At that point, if you're drying back far down into like the 20s pretty regularly, you're gonna see that EC spike, so you probably don't want to try to pump too much in as a baseline. 68

[00:16:22] Jason: gallons if I remember

[00:16:23] Seth: right. 68? Okay. So yeah, we don't have a whole lot of water capacity to work with when we're talking about [00:16:30] that and you know, unless you're finishing plants that are like two and a half to three and a half feet tall and fairly small that's part of why you hear us kind of, I don't want to say bash, but basically not promote trying to flower plants in a six by six media.

[00:16:44] Seth: Basically at that point you are running something that's very unforgiving later in flower, you'll hit a point where if you don't have. Some of those P2s go off later in the afternoon, you might walk into the room in the morning and see wilting plants because you're that low on water holding capacity for them.[00:17:00]

[00:17:00] Seth: And that's, you know, it's a logistical problem where we're losing plant population. Obviously that includes losing yield as part of that, but also it's more work now to deal with it. Now we have the possibility that I might have to pay someone to come in at 530 in the morning to fix the pump or fix a valve.

[00:17:19] Seth: Or do anything because or start hand watering because we know we can't make it for till 9am when we normally put on our first irrigation because yesterday the system broke. [00:17:30] So really, you know, looking at not only do not only are we looking at like high intensity horticulture here, but these are also a production environment.

[00:17:39] Seth: All of these grows are so part of it's balancing like, okay how do I balance my input energy costs and efforts? With my output. And if I have a system that requires too much maintenance you don't see Ferraris out there hauling lumber to the construction site, right? Why? Well, they're not built to do it and the maintenance would be hellacious way to do an engine out every few months [00:18:00] To do basic maintenance on our construction equipment.

[00:18:02] Seth: So starting to look at that and say, okay Am I setting myself up for like can I really steer a 6x6x6 with the perfect size plan in it? Absolutely What are the consequences though if any part of my machine breaks down? Do I have forgiveness in the system to allow me you know, to overdrive for a day and not lose my field capacity?

[00:18:23] Seth: Like typically, and I don't know, Jason, I think we're kind of on the same page here. My first recommendation to someone that's been really [00:18:30] struggling with the 6x6x6 Rockwool is to either, you know, number one, go to the slab if you're really obsessed with wanting to use Rockwool. Now go with the 4x4 in the slab so we can get better plant consistency, more even heights, and that higher water holding capacity in the slab.

[00:18:45] Seth: Or, if you're already set up with as many emitters and everything as you need to run the 6x6x6s, try a 1 gallon coco pot. You might find that there's a lot of similarities in the way your system can work as far as just throwing a clone into that 1 gallon, [00:19:00] rooting it in veg and moving it, which is on the surface.

[00:19:03] Seth: The six by six seems awesome for operations, right? We're throwing the clone in and veg it for like 10 to 14 days, and then throwing it into flour. It's simpler. I don't have slabs, but again, operationally now I'm backed into a corner where I'm really running the line with zero forgiveness in my irrigation strategy.

[00:19:20] Seth: So basically, as far as veg goes, you're looking at pretty much the same number of plants, same dripper setup. You're just switching to a media that is not going to punish you so [00:19:30] much if you have an equipment failure and let's all be honest here, unless you're growing just right outside in the straight full sun boy, I don't know, on the bank of a river where your roots can go touch wet water, you, there is an opportunity for something to go wrong, right?

[00:19:45] Seth: No matter how simple your system is. So minimizing the points of failure is like a huge key to long term success. And also I've seen it be the difference between someone wanting to continue a career in the business and also [00:20:00] getting in there two or three years and just feeling burned out because what they're doing is really high intensity.

[00:20:05] Seth: It's mentally and physically draining because they're dealing with all these systems that don't offer enough forgiveness if they break down.

[00:20:12] Jason: I think this is, you know, one of the reasons I've seen so many people get challenged running Rockwool. And for me, it's, you know, I'm always thinking about that math and the science side of stuff, and it's not to bore the whole audience here, but when we talk about you know, traditionally when we're growing out [00:20:30] in in the dirt, outside, soil, whatever you guys want to call it.

[00:20:33] Jason: I like calling it dirt because it makes it feel more alive to me. Yeah. But like, like this guy that's on the thing, he's got some nice, huge plants out there. Well, what's happening is the composition of that soil is, it's got some water holding capacity that actually holds onto the water as it starts to dry out, right?

[00:20:51] Jason: That plant actually has to push harder and harder and harder. And so it gets to, you know, let's say we, you know, didn't irrigate for way too long when we're out in dirt. Well, this plant is going to [00:21:00] gradually start getting to the wilting point, right? The thing with rockwool is that the matrix potential curve is is very linear.

[00:21:07] Jason: And realistically, when we have like, you know, five, 10 percent water content in a rockwool is plants can still pull that water out very easily. So what happens is it, basically pushes down to 0 percent water content. That block is absolutely dry. And that plant is going to just snap right into a wilting point, like instantly, right?

[00:21:28] Jason: It'll go from [00:21:30] not quite happy, but it's not going to have a gradual stressor that indicates that it's running out. There's very little time for a visual response in the plant. And this is one of the reasons that you know, some of the manufacturers of rock wool have been so successful promoting The sensors that we make it's simply because, Hey, we can't see when this plant is going to run into an irrigation stressor with our eyes.

[00:21:51] Jason: It's going to happen, you know, within, you know, maybe a 10, 15 minute period that thing will go from having some trigger pressure to wilting. And [00:22:00] obviously, you know, the coco does give you some barrier there. It's going to start applying up the plant's going to have to apply significantly more matrix pressure as we are, you know, metric vacuum negative pressure.

[00:22:10] Jason: As we start to get past that, you know, lower than 20%, lower than 15%, it's going to get harder and harder for that plant to pull the water out. So it's going to start maybe indicating some signs of of of drought before it's completely out of water. And so it gives you just a little bit longer to, to deal with those issues.

[00:22:27] Jason: If a irrigation's not working, a [00:22:30] dripper gets clogged, you just didn't have everything calculated out right, or you have huge plants.

[00:22:35] Seth: Yeah, I think that's important to look at when we're talking about rockwool and that, that is one thing that stumbles a lot of people up is you don't see that drought response in the plant as we're hitting those low water numbers.

[00:22:45] Seth: So, number one, as a grower it's not helping you out with your visual indicators. And then, you know, number two, for someone like me or Jason, we're always looking at sensors to try to get our data because we're not able to walk around gardens like [00:23:00] that every single day. And, you know, track them daily.

[00:23:03] Seth: We're doing time series data from a long ways away. So, one thing we won't be able to see is like, we look at these outdoor plants there. I can go take a series of targeted measurements with either a soil matrix potential sensor soil moisture potential sensor, or I can straight up stick a leaf parameter on one of those leaves.

[00:23:21] Seth: And as we're drying down, I can see the plant slowing down on transpiration if I were to take a microscope and look at those stomata, I would see them starting to close [00:23:30] up and the plant going into its normal drought response mechanisms, I guess for lack of a better word, and we, you know, we have that visual indicator and, like Jason said, when we're talking about rockwool, getting down to that point will push the plant so far, we actually go right past, so, you know, we're talking about low water content for plants, we have temporary wilting point, and permanent wilting point.

[00:23:52] Seth: Temporary wilting points when we've hit a spot where we can see visible effects on the plant, loss of turgor pressure, the stomata are basically closed[00:24:00] and permanent wilting point is the point it gets to where we can't bring it back from that. And typically in coco we'll see that temporary wilting point visually and be able to go recover that pot, bring it back up to field capacity, baby that plant for a day or two, it'll be fine.

[00:24:16] Seth: Rockwall, once we see that visually, it's done. We've lost the field capacity. We might recover up to like the low 20s, maybe up to 30 after we've been down to like 6%, and then also, once you run down into that, [00:24:30] that range on Rockwool, I'd love to say that our sensors tell you exactly when there's only 2 percent left in the media, but the reality is these sensors work best in a evenly saturated media, and once we start to hit those really low contents, we're actually looking at like, Kind of swiss cheese of air pockets inside the block, the media is still there, but depending on where that probe is stabbed through, if we've got two out of three probes stabbed halfway into dry pockets, we're not getting an [00:25:00] accurate representation either.

[00:25:02] Seth: So I think that's, you know, right back to keeping it simple. If you're going to run rockwool, you've got to have some hard rules on your water content ranges and where you want to keep it. Otherwise you're going to slowly slide into disaster and depending on when that disaster hit in your flower cycle, It's going to have more or less of an impact on your flower and also some of those late late flower problems, like let's say, you know, in the 6x6x6, finishing plants can be very difficult because we don't have a lot of water holding capacity to work [00:25:30] with.

[00:25:31] Seth: Personally, for me, it's worse to take a a whole run through and at 7 weeks in lose a bench or a half a bench because I couldn't keep up with watering than it is to kill them in like the first week because now I've dumped all that time and effort up to this point only to throw it away. It's

[00:25:48] Jason: Is it kind of funny?

[00:25:49] Jason: You just reminded me of a spreadsheet that I built out with a chart and my chart was comparing input costs versus output value. And you know, [00:26:00] until we cut that plant, there's almost no output value as far as a finished product type goes. And yet here we have these transplanting, you labor intensive, we've got media costs, we've got all that stuff that, that gets going.

[00:26:15] Jason: And so it was you know, gradually every day gets more and more expensive as far as what we've put into that plant, which means that the liability of loss increases every day.

[00:26:26] Kaisha: This is such a great conversation and right on time, too, because guess [00:26:30] what, you guys? We're on IG Live, Instagram Live right now, so let's say hi to everybody out there.

[00:26:34] Kaisha: We're getting some questions in from that. But loving this topic, Vegito505, I know I'm not pronouncing that right, but thank you for all your questions. They're shouting out from Albuquerque, so they're definitely not growing outside. But on the same topic, we've got a couple more questions related to like saturation and field capacity.

[00:26:52] Kaisha: So let's get into it. Matthew wrote, if my max saturation level is at 45 and getting consistent [00:27:00] drybacks, 10 percent on P2 and 20 percent on my nightly drybacks, is it good to keep my substrate rockwool EC lower than usual?

[00:27:11] Jason: That's, that field capacity is a little bit lower for most rockwool. We usually see it in that 60 to 70 percent range for full saturation.

[00:27:20] Jason: And so, you know, there might've been a little bit of loss of total water content there. And I, if I'm hearing right, that's a 30 percent dryback. And when [00:27:30] combined over a 24 hour period. So if we're at 45% and we're going to 30%, there's a good chance that's where we lost that field capacity simply because we're dropping significantly lower than where that rock wall can rebound it's proposed characteristics.

[00:27:44] Jason: Right? And so usually we talk about that threshold, about 35%. Water content is typically where we don't want to go lower than in rockwool if we can avoid it. So, you know, I think this kind of falls along the. lines of SES answer earlier. Yeah don't get too wild. You're [00:28:00] just going to have to, you know, make sure that you salvage what you've got going in this run.

[00:28:04] Jason: And Maybe listen to the token parameters that we just talked about again, making sure that you're starting in the right place and making sure that you're staying within the lanes of of rockwool.

[00:28:15] Seth: Yeah. And I think another thing that, you know, we bring this up almost every episode, but that dry bag number really is a sum of all the other factors that drive it.

[00:28:22] Seth: So plant height, how big is our plan? How bushy is it? How much basically leaf surface area do we have that's transpiring to pull water out? [00:28:30] What does the VPD look like in the room? So at the end of the day, like. Me, if I was growing in my garage and Jason was growing in his garage with the exact same setup, except that we have different strains, and maybe we, I put mine into flower three days earlier than Jason did, so his plants were like an inch or two taller going in right there we have enough variance that I can't, between two different strains and two different veg times, I already can't really compare those [00:29:00] dryback numbers, apples to apples, so what's important to look at is like, alright, What are we trying to accomplish with that dryback, which, you know, we go over here.

[00:29:06] Seth: It's basically spacing out time that you're introducing oxygen into the root zone. Okay. So within this range that I'm working with now with water content, let's say in your case, it's 45 down to 30. I've got to keep it inside that range. I know if I go too low, what's going to happen potentially, depending on your EC setup is my EC is going to start to spike.

[00:29:26] Seth: And when we're looking at any media, whether it's rockwool or [00:29:30] coco or Pete, any number of soilless mixes, that's what we're generally talking about here. There is a threshold where if I start drying back past a certain point, I'm going to spike that EC higher than the range that I've been maintaining for the plant for quite a while.

[00:29:44] Seth: And while some of that osmotic shock can be good, if you were in, let's say, a 6 to a 12 range, and starting tomorrow I'm drying back an extra 5%, except now I'm in a 6 to a 22 EC range, that's too big of a shift, that's [00:30:00] too quick. And also, if we're doing that too late, we can kind of have some unintended consequences in plant health because the plant isn't basically, if we're trying to take energy from what it's doing to adapt to this changing EC environment too much, we're pulling that from other processes inside the plant.

[00:30:17] Seth: And also, I mean, possibly really affecting root health EC up and down so far. outside of the range the plant can tolerate. So if you're drying bag, if you're looking at your dry bag [00:30:30] numbers and worried, look at that EC and just ask yourself if that's spiking way out of the range you've been trying to hold it in.

[00:30:37] Seth: Thank

[00:30:38] Kaisha: you guys. All right, Matthew. Appreciate your question. Good luck out there. Chad also is dealing with some rock wool, struggling to get his rock wool back up to 55 to 60%. How can I get more than 15 to 20 percent dry back if my volumetric water content is, say, mid 40s?

[00:30:57] Seth: You can't, responsibly. [00:31:00] Don't mess it up next time.

[00:31:01] Seth: Go back to that proper hydration and then, you know, over that first 10 days or so, that's where we see. A lot of people struggle either with rooting into the slabs or basically not updating their irrigation schedules almost daily as those plants are really taking off, then they'll miss that one crucial day where it dried back 5 or 10 percent more than it did the day before, and now we went from 42 down to 32 or 28, and at that point we crossed that 35 [00:31:30] percent line, field capacity's compromised, And right there we screwed up the yield potential for this run.

[00:31:36] Seth: So that's, you know, like we always talk about the simplicity of COCO right there. If that happened with a COCO pot, you could recover it that day. And yes, you lost some production time, but you didn't reduce your production capacity for the entire run. Yeah,

[00:31:51] Jason: I think really the thing that, you know, we keep talking about is that, you know, how much forgiveness do you have with a media type?

[00:31:57] Jason: And with Rockwool, it's very low, right? If we [00:32:00] miss an irrigation for one day. There's a good chance that, you know, just that mistake, whether it was a, you know, lack of power, whether it was a human error, was it you know, maintenance just hasn't been kept up on, on some of the systems in there, unless everything's running and rocking and rolling just exactly as it needs to.

[00:32:16] Jason: Sometimes Rockwool isn't the best option for your facility.

[00:32:20] Seth: Oh yeah. Even for people that have cause we worked with plenty of facilities over the years that run the six by six by sixes. Usually they don't by the time we're done talking to them, but even [00:32:30] changing up that hydration technique to make sure all their six by six by sixes are hitting that 65 to 70 percent at initial hydration and then maintaining that higher water content range.

[00:32:40] Seth: We've certainly seen plenty of grows go from that 25 to 45 grams per square foot at the end, all the way up to 65 to 75, even with the Hugos, just by making sure they have adequate water availability through the whole run. It goes back to that same old example, you plant two tomato plants in your backyard and you water one and not the other.[00:33:00]

[00:33:01] Seth: One will be smaller and one will be bigger. You'll still get fruit off of both of them, but the one that got less water will never get as big. It's missing that critical component. Are you saying

[00:33:10] Jason: I shouldn't put mycorrhizals in a talc powder into my injection systems?

[00:33:17] Seth: Yeah, organics, no matter how you want to do them, require elbow grease. If you want to play with bugs, you're going to have to go in and do it manually. That's the best I can say there. Get you a trash can and a battery powered sump [00:33:30] pump and start wheeling that sucker around and pump it right on with a hand application if you want to go with organics, which by the way, isn't a bad choice.

[00:33:37] Seth: Just realize the limitation of your fertigation system similar to you know, a big one I run into is nematodes. I love using nematodes in my IPM program. I just don't know how well they survive 70 PSI in those super tight tolerances and going through my 100 micron screen filter disc filters like It looks a little gunky after I run nematodes, so I find myself wondering, you [00:34:00] know, number one, how many survived, which they're tough little critters, but also, number two, how much money did I waste pushing all those little nematodes into every bit of my irrigation system and not getting them all the way out?

[00:34:10] Seth: I probably, efficacy wise, would be better. being conservative with that resource and making sure it all gets on.

[00:34:19] Jason: And number three, you think you might have applied a preventative or reactive treatment and possibly you didn't, so you still could be lost based on what you're trying to combat.

[00:34:29] Seth: Yeah, [00:34:30] absolutely.

[00:34:30] Seth: You could just be throwing money away and not solving a problem. And then right back to the talc powder you know, that's a common thing. It's been around for a long time in horticulture with horticultural products, making very dilute things easy to handle. Right? Once you put something in talc powder, hey, now it's a tablespoon, not a 0.

[00:34:47] Seth: 01 grams. of chemical in there. So, but again, those irrigation systems, you cannot put really anything that's not going to actually dissolve in the water, which talc will not, it's not a [00:35:00] salt, it's a solid item that stays a solid item. So really look at that and value like, Hey, this irrigation system is, you know, maybe not the most expensive piece of equipment in the world, but right next to the lights, it's super fundamental.

[00:35:14] Seth: If this thing doesn't perform well. Throw away pretty much everything else I'm trying to do in this facility. So keep that in mind and like place a lot of value On the integrity and operation of your irrigation system, even to the point of saying, okay, I'm going to replace it. Let's [00:35:30] say every four or five runs.

[00:35:31] Seth: That's a pretty reasonable turnaround time. A lot of people go less once you've established what your water quality nutrient program and then, you know, life expectancy is for your emitters and even other parts of irrigation system, pumps and tubes, start to build that into your production cost and say, Hey, Okay.

[00:35:46] Seth: If I'm growing a plant, that plant pays for a third of the cost of two emitters and one foot of pipe on the table, plus two stakes or whatever, you know, start building that in so that, you know, a year and a half from now, [00:36:00] since you just put in a brand new system, because Jason, I told you to you have the money saved up to do it again, because that's, that is, Going to happen.

[00:36:08] Seth: I can't stress that enough. All these parts that move and have water flowing through them will break eventually. They're not a lifetime type unit, and I don't think, I'm not aware of any that are you?

[00:36:23] Jason: And, you know, one of the things here that, you know, I think a lot of people are hesitant to be like, oh, well, I can just build that into my [00:36:30] production costs, right?

[00:36:31] Jason: Like it's not the initial investment that keeps running. Well, what they forget to think about is the cost of not. replacing it. Right. And so if we're consistently troubleshooting dripper issues or any of those other problems that can happen with what we've been talking about one that's labor and then two, it's you know, loss of production.

[00:36:49] Jason: And so a lot of times we stay proactive with that. We can actually. One, easily pay for to replace this type of consumables, and then two, be [00:37:00] more profitable because we're actually not having any loss of production. And what we've made up for is greater than the cost of replacing it preventatively. You know, and I, you know, I'm glad you brought up like the thing about lights versus, you know, like here's some really critical aspects.

[00:37:14] Jason: You know, the tough thing about like if a DE bulb goes out, it's pretty obvious, right? We're just looking at the ceiling when we're rocking the room. It's not always super easy to make sure that your drippers are all being consistent, right? And every once in a while we'll do spot checks with a volumetric flask or just use a [00:37:30] solo cup and throw it on a scale to get how much water you're getting through your irrigations and making sure that, Hey, let's go check a few spots in the room.

[00:37:39] Jason: Most of the good growers I know have at least. Two drippers that they just leave cups in throughout every irrigation cycle. And that's one of their daily checks. A lot of times they'll do a pH and AC check on that just to make sure that their fertigation skid is matching what they see coming out of their drippers at the plant, right?

[00:37:58] Jason: It's amazing how many [00:38:00] changes that we can see and, you know, especially like larger facilities where the temperature of the irrigation is changing, you know, we'll see that EC and pH actually. change if it's sitting in a large pipe for too long. How far down the

[00:38:12] Seth: hallway does it go? How warm does it get between the pump and the farthest room versus the closest?

[00:38:16] Jason: Exactly. Yep. And you know, there's a lot of things that you can help yourself do to gauge when it is ready to upgrade or replace that equipment, but it's not always obvious unless you are looking. Yeah,

[00:38:28] Seth: I usually tell people, [00:38:30] hey, between runs, what are you going to do? You're going to be running various cleaners through your irrigation system.

[00:38:35] Seth: You're going to run that thing after you're done cleaning and before you load up the room, go around and depending on the size of the room, I like to have anywhere from two to 10 cups per bench before I ever put plants in. I'll go do some test irrigations and run it for anywhere from one to three minutes.

[00:38:51] Seth: I'll pick a percentage shot that I want to put on for that media, get my target volume, run for the amount of time that I expect to run, and then go see what I got. [00:39:00] And if I'm over more than about 20 percent variance across the room that's usually where I tell people, Hey, replace it. But in the back of your head, and when you're planning for this, keep in mind that if we look at like, Hey, out of a hundred percent, some of them came up, you know, at only 80 percent flow.

[00:39:17] Seth: And actually I'm seeing a lot of differentiation across there. Some are coming back at 95 percent flow, some are coming back at 75. It's all over the place. I'm losing my ability to steer very effectively with irrigation control. [00:39:30] And any deviation from that mean across the room means that I'm leaving production potential on the table.

[00:39:36] Seth: So although I might tell you, Hey, if you're seeing a 20 percent reduction of flow rate, replace it. Well, if you're good at planning, do you want to set that at 10? If you've got, if you've really got your irrigation system dialed, you can start to call that and say, Hey, I'm not going to put up with these inconsistencies in my program because at a certain size, leaving even small percentages on [00:40:00] the table equates to a lot of money, right?

[00:40:02] Seth: You know, if we're, if I'm about to pull 800 pounds of dry product out of a room at the end of the harvest, And one mistake cost me 2%. That's a lot of money and project that across the years worth of production cycles and wow, suddenly you've got a lot of money you're leaving on the table. Yeah.

[00:40:20] Seth: I mean,

[00:40:21] Jason: that's a lesson that can pretty easily be taken from traditional horticultural looking at it, you know, 2 percent margin is [00:40:30] what can allow them to stay in business or not with any of the traditional crops that we're getting in our grocery stores. So keep in mind is, you know, as everything gets more and more competitive states open up and legalize that margins are going to drop.

[00:40:43] Jason: across the board. And unless you're optimizing all of those parts of the system, you might struggle. And, you know, might as well take advantage of it while margins are great and put that money into investment and your pocketbook and be happy about it. Actually. One of the things I meant to talk [00:41:00] about as well you know, we were talking about what we can put in our injection systems and and hyperchloric acid is one of the things that we can put in small doses that will help keep things keep a little bit cleaner.

[00:41:11] Jason: It's also going to help introduce a little bit more oxygen to the root zone. Just make sure that you're following manufacturing directions when you are injecting at that so we don't get too much in there. And another thing is nutrients from manufacturer to manufacturer might have a little bit different mixing instructions.

[00:41:29] Jason: Some of them are going to want [00:41:30] to make sure that, hey, we're going in with you know, part A and then a pH adjustment and then part B or vice versa, pH adjustment first. So make sure that you are most of them are pH adjustment last, but that I have seen actually just recently a couple of them that weren't exactly as I expected.

[00:41:46] Jason: So, if you are going with a different nutrient Don't assume that it's going to be exactly the same as far as your mixing techniques. If you're going in on Dosatrons, you might have to flip stuff around a little bit. And make sure your disc [00:42:00] filters are clean. Make sure that you're you're mixing.

[00:42:03] Jason: cartridges are big enough for the flow rates that you got. These are all things that, you know, probably should have been right when the facility was built, but as most of us know, a lot of us are just trying to get these things running in time to stay stay afloat and return on some investment.

[00:42:18] Jason: And so every once in a while, you know, we'll Band Aid something and maybe a head grower got changed out and the new guy's just starting to look at this stuff now. These are all things to consider if you're in that situation. Thank you.

[00:42:28] Seth: Yeah. And that's why we're seeing too, you know, in [00:42:30] the industry kind of standard, not totally standard, but it's becoming more and more instead of running direct injection systems that go straight to the plant, automating your batch tank filling, that way you have some redundancy in your system.

[00:42:42] Seth: If your injectors aren't working correctly, you can identify that and either sometimes remediate it at the tank or dump and refill. with the correct solution. You know, again, we're always talking about these small percentages. Well, on a certain scale, if that small percentage is a couple hundred grand I'm throwing my ego aside for that few [00:43:00] hundred grand.

[00:43:00] Seth: Sorry.

[00:43:02] Kaisha: Every decision matters in this business. Oh my God. You guys just dropped so much knowledge on that. I hope y'all were taking notes. Don't worry about it. It'll be on YouTube later. We are going to get to a couple more live questions. I wanted to get to Cypher's here, who's on the chat. Cypher, I'm going to read it and you're welcome to unmute yourself if you like.

[00:43:19] Kaisha: They wrote in a previous episode, you touched on using GenSTEER in BEDGE to control height on stretchy, on a stretchy strain. In that case, would we be trying to also stack [00:43:30] EC or would we apply more runoff to keep the osmotic potential lower? And he wrote here, generative STEER in 18 6 photo period to clarify.

[00:43:39] Seth: What do y'all think? So we don't want to push that EC too high and vegetative, even if we are steering generatively. Still want to maintain that lower EC range so we get really robust root growth. Getting it too salty in there and that's, and I want to be clear too, if you're in a 4x4x4, you're going into a stacked media.

[00:43:59] Seth: Running [00:44:00] generatively and vegetative can be a great option to help keep your plant size down a little bit. That being said, if you run too generatively to all the way through veg, you're going to see a difference in root development and how aggressive that is. That's why a lot of times if I am running generative through vegetative growth, what I'm going to do is, especially if I'm in a stacked media where I have really good control of that small block, About two days before transplant, sometimes three, I'll start pulsing that a little more vegetatively to really start to push that root growth and make [00:44:30] sure it's really robust and ready to grab that slab or coco bag or block, whatever I'm stacking it on.

[00:44:37] Jason: Cool. Another thing to think about is, you know, you might try to analyze how long you're vegging for. And there's a good chance that, Hey, we can just take advantage of how fast this plant is growing through vegetative and get, you know, get that built up node spacing right at flower going into 12, 12, you know, if we're six inches too tall, maybe let's cut two days off or two or three days off of a veg and then just hit it really [00:45:00] hard with with our generative strategy.

[00:45:02] Jason: So it kind of just depends on what your facility looks like and how that strain is

[00:45:06] Seth: behaving. Yep. And then there's everything in between, right? Like I know in my own experience going from a six week to a four week, then finally a two week veg I started to kind of notice some really simple things like, Hey, we're transplanting into a one gallon coco.

[00:45:19] Seth: Now, why did we top the plants right before we move them into the flower? Well, well, because they were too tall. Okay. I mean, we're talking about rent on a [00:45:30] square foot per day for a plant here. Can I reduce that rent cost during veg and just shorten that up and really make my cycle more efficient?

[00:45:37] Seth: So I'm not spending. As much money and energy and time vegging these plants. Instead, I'm getting them through my system quicker. It's more efficient and I'm saving money. So there's a lot of little hangups. And that's why, you know, we always go back to talking about the system holistically, right? Like when we're trying to diagnose a problem, Jason and I are looking at what's happened today, what happened yesterday.

[00:45:58] Seth: What happened a month ago? What happened a month [00:46:00] and a half ago? All the way back to cut and sometimes there's the problem right there, like, hey, we've had some plant, we've had a really sick round, like I can't, my consistency is all over the place. I don't have good rooting and stuff. I'm like, well, did those cuts suck after they're in the clone room for a week?

[00:46:16] Seth: Were they not rooting well? Could we, could you have identified a problem there where you cut your losses? And you know, now we live in a world, especially if you're in California a lot of the West Coast, even parts of the East Coast now, yeah. If you do have a situation like [00:46:30] that, you might have a resource to go, Okay, this sucks, but now I'm going to go spend a couple grand on clones and get this run going anyways, rather than pushing out my cycle another month and having an empty room sitting there that I can't fill.

[00:46:46] Kaisha: Excellent. Thank you so much, Cypher Wrote. Awesome. Great advice as always. We appreciate you, Cypher. Good to see you. All right. Austin dropped a question here. Wanted to get your thoughts on nano bubbles. What are

[00:46:57] Seth: nano bubbles? [00:47:00] Exactly that. Yeah.

[00:47:01] Jason: So, as with any nano thing, it's very small, right? And you know, we see some of these things on the market where basically what they're pushing is that, Hey, the smaller we make these bubbles in there, the easier they can be suspended in water.

[00:47:15] Jason: Right. Our fertigation system will have a little bit higher holding capacity of, total oxygen if the bubbles are smaller. There's a little bit more surface area, so there's a better chance that the plants can use that up. My aspect on it is

[00:47:27] Seth: it's not gonna hurt. I'm going [00:47:30] to take this right into the glass shop here.

[00:47:32] Seth: We all love smaller bubbles in our percolators, but at the end of the day, what's going to make your head a little smoother is going to be having colder water. So although those I'll say micronized, not nano bubbles, but that's another term that's pretty much the same. Using that, utilizing those tiny bubbles is great.

[00:47:49] Seth: However, if you can't get your feed water temperature below about 70 degrees Fahrenheit,

[00:47:58] Seth: we can't get it below that, we're [00:48:00] losing, the water does not have above that temperature a good capacity to hold dissolved oxygen. The oxygen wants to gas off and be released from the water, so. Although, you know, nanobubbles, anything like that, great. Oxygen injection into your water is awesome. But I will say, places like fish hatcheries and aquariums have been accomplishing this same thing by having this wonderful thing called a waterfall, essentially.

[00:48:24] Seth: And sometimes they'll have some tumbling mechanisms that it goes through. That's another spot where the word coking is [00:48:30] used, but basically it just tumbles the water, creates a lot of turbulence and swirls air into it. And the key there is just like the fish hatchery or aquarium, you've got to have a target temperature that holds the right amount of oxygen and can maintain conditions for the organism you want to grow in it.

[00:48:44] Seth: With cannabis, that's going to be, you know. Between 60 and 70 degrees is right where we want our feed. That's a pretty wide window. If you can't hit 10 degrees, start putting some money towards hitting that 10 degree window. And that's where I would look at because I [00:49:00] know across hundreds of grows water temperature and handling and pre treatment have been way more important than something like oxygen injection, because generally the problem wasn't oxygen.

[00:49:12] Seth: Fortunately, these plants have evolved to grow over millions of years using rainwater and groundwater, and no one's injecting oxygen into that. So, it's cool, it's rad, but much like growing in straight perlite. It's maybe more of a science experiment than a production [00:49:30] product, I guess, would be the way to look at it.

[00:49:33] Kaisha: Fantastic. Austin, thank you for that question. I learned a lot of new things today, actually, but especially about nanobubbles. All right, we got four minutes left in the show. There are two questions that were submitted on IG Live. I think they can go together. So Iron Armor, this was a follow up to another question, but wanted to know why different mediums require different pH ranges.

[00:49:52] Kaisha: So that's one question. And then BubbleMeltKenny wrote, How do my Teros media sensors compensate readings [00:50:00] when using different media? And he was asking specifically around coco versus Rockwool. So can we talk about why there are pH differences between media and then how the Teros compensates for the differences in media types?

[00:50:13] Kaisha: Yeah.

[00:50:14] Jason: I'll kick us off and I'll take the easy one and talk about the terrace 12 . So when when we calibrate these terrace twelves in-house and then we ship 'em out with the calibration, it is a generalized calibration for Soil less medias, right? And to give you the most insight, [00:50:30] basically we took rockwool and coco the most common hydroponic medias that we see and we ran a generalized calibration to cover both of them.

[00:50:38] Jason: And in reality, yes, you could get a calibration that is specific for either or you know, some of the rockwool manufacturers have done that specifically to match the exact rockwool that they're using. The thing is it's always going to be difference out there. So how much time do we want to spend trying to get that last one or 2 percent accuracy in VWC?

[00:50:58] Jason: Right. Is it worth it [00:51:00] or do we just need a great picture that has the precision across the board from sensor to sensor to sensor? Right. So if we took a Hugo, for example if we wanted a regular Hugo versus a Pargo they're going to be slightly different. The material makeups are different.

[00:51:17] Jason: If I'm using a chippy coco versus coco, coffee, ground coco, right? Those are all going to have different calibrations. And so one, we could either spend the time trying to get the exact value. [00:51:30] Out of that, or we could make a generalization, start to learn to attribute the dynamics in the data and accept that, hey, we might be off one to two percent based on that generalization.

[00:51:43] Seth: Yeah, I think it's important to recognize here when we're talking about watering and differences. A lot of times we are talking about some of that initial hydration. After you've been running that particular media for a while and using specifically hydroponic solution to give the plant everything it needs, at that point, we've got a lot [00:52:00] more control of that ionic balance, and that's what's at play here.

[00:52:02] Seth: So when we're talking about rockwool versus coco, you know, I think Jason kind of hit the nail on the head earlier, when you're first watering into that rockwool, you've got wetting agents. You got binders, you got a few different things that are residuals from the manufacturing process, and like the wetting agent, surfactant in there to help it hydrate right away, right?

[00:52:19] Seth: So, right off the bat, we want to deal with that, but then recognize, hey, maybe I did initially hydrate that. 4. 9 with RO to get it somewhere in the ballpark. So I'm not having to do [00:52:30] anything too weird with my nutrient solution when I charge it, but it's also realizing that I'm not feeding 4. 9 for the rest of my run.

[00:52:37] Seth: You know, that's a difference right there. As far as those calibrations go, this kind of comes into play too. You know, we're looking at calibrating for different soils, a big part of what they're looking at is the actual charge state of those soils, the cation exchange capacity, how well can it actually hold on to different ions and what kind of charge we're looking at, because when we're talking about EC, those probes are measuring electro conductivity that will affect [00:53:00] how electricity is moving through that media and solution.

[00:53:05] Seth: So luckily for us Rockwool, coco. They don't have any sand, silt, or clay in them, so we're not dealing with different particle sizes and charges, so when we look at that general calibration, it can be very close. The difference between coco and Rockwool is we're Not nearly as bad as driving from wherever you're at downhill to the nearest river and looking at the soil gradient that goes from varying ratios [00:53:30] that varies the ratio of sand, silt and clay and therefore charged particle size in that soil.

[00:53:35] Seth: So, it's not super simple, but the reality is when we're talking about soilless media part of that soilless definition is essentially a low charge state with very low CEC. And that's part of what we're, you know, like I said, this all comes back to fertilizer. We're using an ionic balance. That's what's actually affecting that pH.

[00:53:56] Seth: So once we've got enough of our ions in there [00:54:00] that we're controlling, then we're really directly controlling it. As far as watering long term with different pHs for different media, you're at, by, by two to three weeks in, it's no difference between coco and rockwool. And that's why, like, I don't know, we always tell people, switch back and forth.

[00:54:19] Seth: See what's working well if you keep. If you keep over drying your rockwool, switch to coco for a while. Why? Well, you don't actually have to re engineer your entire facility, it turns out. The change overs. [00:54:30] Pretty simple. The biggest thing is going to be maybe telling your employees that those pots that they have to drag from veg over to flour are going to be heavier now, unless they decide to come in and get right on irrigation every morning.

[00:54:41] Seth: That way you can keep running the rock wall.

[00:54:45] Kaisha: This was an epically weed nerdy episode, you guys. Thank you so much. Dropping the knowledge today. Thanks to everybody who submitted questions, too. I know we didn't get to all of them, but don't even worry about it. We got you. We're going to put them in the [00:55:00] bank.

[00:55:00] Kaisha: You're going to have to just keep coming back until we cover it. Submit more. We appreciate you. Jason and Seth, thank you so much for your excellence today. Thank you, Producer Chris, for another great session. Thank you all for joining us for this week's episode of AROYA Office Hours. We do this every Thursday, and the best way to get your answers from the experts is to join us live to learn more about AROYA.

[00:55:19] Kaisha: Book a demo at AROYA. io. And one of our experts would be happy to walk you through the ways the platform can improve your cultivation production process. If you have a topic you'd like us to cover on Office Hours, post questions anytime in [00:55:30] the AROYA app. Drop your questions in the chat on our YouTube.

[00:55:33] Kaisha: Send us an email to sales at AROYA. io and DM us. We are on all the socials, Social club. We want to hear from you. We'll send everyone in attendance today. A link to today's video We're going to post it on AROYA's youtube channel Be sure to like subscribe and share while you're there and we will see you at the next session.

[00:55:51] Kaisha: Thanks everybody We got

[00:55:53] Jason: one last announcement here. It's Kaisha's birthday. So if you're still listening in give her a big [00:56:00] Kaisha

[00:56:03] Kaisha: I will light one up for all y'all tonight. I appreciate you so much. Thank you. All right. Thank you. So cool. I'm freaking out. This is really nice. I might cry. I'm going to stop. All right, everybody. Thank you. See you next time. Bye.