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Seth Baumgartner and Jason Van Leuven open the mics for your crop steering and cultivation questions.
Office Hours Episode 76
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[00:00:00] Chris: This is Office Hours Live, Episode 76. Letting you know that Kaisha's on vacation, so no need to panic. She needs a break, and so we're gonna do this today. I'm Chris, the producer usually, and I'll be keeping an eye out for questions on YouTube. And also in the chat. And so if you guys get some questions in early and we'll try to get them over to Seth and Virginia and Dexter.
[00:00:25] Chris: Virginia and Dexter from Medusa's Eden joining us today. [00:00:30] And yeah, we're excited to have them. We did a case study on them about nine months ago. Nine months ago, I know we were out there over a year ago, but excited to check in with these guys again. Seth, why don't you take it away?
[00:00:43] Seth: Yeah, we're here with Virginia and Dexter today.
[00:00:46] Seth: They own and operate Medusa's Eden out of Maine. And they're our grower of the month, per se, this month. So, thought we'd kind of bring them on and kind of talk about your growing experience and kind of the evolution [00:01:00] of that over the last about year and a half or so, I guess, that you guys have had AROYA.
[00:01:06] Seth: And go ahead, Dexter. Yeah, it's been it's been quite a process, learning how to grow this brand. It's really it's a journey, yeah, so, I guess, for the listeners, do you guys want to talk about getting your well, legal growth up and running and how that journey has been for you?
[00:01:26] Seth: I'm getting your it's been good.
[00:01:28] Dexter: Well, it's been a lot of [00:01:30] running and how that journey has been, there's a lot of getting resolutions when you're figuring out what to grow, how to grow, what type of soil, I mean, it's there's a lot that goes into trying to figure out even how to put the facility together.
[00:01:44] Dexter: I don't have a real any growing background before getting into this venture. So, it's kind of learn on the fly.
[00:01:55] Virginia: All the data from the sensors is super helpful, considering like, [00:02:00] I've been super new in this. So it's just, and I've, for the last four years of college, they're all science classes. So I'm just like very data driven. Thank God.
[00:02:15] Seth: Well, good. I mean, I know one thing you guys have definitely navigated is like, okay, so I always call it like the Gen 1 or Gen 2 or Gen 3 build out, right? Yeah, for sure. Yours has been accelerated compared to a lot of what we see here out here on the west coast, right? [00:02:30] The market happened in Maine and it got competitive quick.
[00:02:33] Dexter: Very quick, yeah. It's definitely it's a hard saturated market. I think it's like anything I think Booth weeds itself out, you know what I mean?
[00:02:41] Seth: Oh, absolutely. And I know, like, just working with you guys, you've made huge strides on things like environmental control, making sure you've got the right equipment to achieve all the set points you want, and I know that's often a challenge at a certain size, right?
[00:02:56] Seth: You guys have definitely taken it from pretty small and [00:03:00] slowly scaling up how much weed you're pulling down, bringing the quality up. And going through some of those pitfalls, like, I'm sure you can probably comment on how fun it was to get your environment dialed in on the first time.
[00:03:12] Dexter: Yeah, I mean, when you just finally start getting, like, weed that looks like it's supposed to, oh man, it feels so good.
[00:03:19] Dexter: It feels so good. Mean, it's we're still trying to figure things out here and there. We're always phenohunting. So that's, like, a really hard situation because pretty much most of our runs [00:03:30] are always... Some sort of, like that we're going through or just have, how few plants at one type and that's hard, having different cultivars like that is very difficult to grow.
[00:03:41] Dexter: And if it wasn't for having, a little bit of data on each zone, we should have more,
[00:03:45] Dexter: but I mean, we tried to do the best we can with what we have.
[00:03:49] Seth: It helps, it really, it's interesting. It helps you kind of weed stuff out quicker and figure out like what, what you need, what you don't need.
[00:03:55] Seth: Like, I don't know, it's hard because when you're looking at something in a [00:04:00] room, it's like, they all kind of look the same. It's hard to kind of figure out like what's going to end up
[00:04:05] Seth: dried weight versus, oh, they look so big in the room. Oh, absolutely. And then repeating that, right? Like that's one thing I find once you start going down the road of, crop registration and collecting data, you can really streamline that pheno hunt to like production strain process.
[00:04:24] Seth: You're not spending six runs in a full size room trying to figure out how to grow this thing. You're going into it with a [00:04:30] pretty good idea. And now usually it's actually, I mean, it's getting easier every time you grow that strain, but again, instead of six times, it might be, Hey, this is the third time we've ever grown this.
[00:04:40] Seth: Bye. We just blew up to a whole room and now it's easy. I can make all these changes I wanna or even a whole zone. Right?
[00:04:47] Dexter: That's some reason I feel like I gotta see it like two or three times to see what it's gonna end up really looking like. Like the first. time, it's not fully accurate, at least in my opinion for our, I [00:05:00] mean, sometimes it is, but I don't know.
[00:05:01] Dexter: I just noticed that I wanted to look the same all the time. So I want to make sure that it's going to, you know what I mean? So if you're going to run in, it's going to look good a couple of times and then change. I don't know.
[00:05:12] Seth: Yeah. And that's something that's always kind of interesting too. When you're doing pheno hunting, if you're popping a bunch of seeds, pulling males, all that fun stuff, you end up with sprouted plants.
[00:05:21] Seth: And sometimes that first round of cuts will look a little bit different. structure wise and morphology wise compared to that seed you just sprouted and is that something you guys run [00:05:30] into quite a bit you go like hey we made these 12 selections but after cloning we're seeing like half of them that we actually like
[00:05:36] Dexter: yeah well we well we actually we haven't been doing any like regular seeds we just kind of do feminized right now so okay we're not having to just like select males per se but i mean selecting what we do like, yeah, I think that it it helps.
[00:05:54] Seth: Yeah. Yeah. Just streamlining. You at least have some meaningful data, right? Like that's a huge thing when you're bringing [00:06:00] genetics in, it's always like, okay, so and so said it was going to grow this way, right? But you have no insight into how they actually grow.
[00:06:08] Dexter: Yeah. And I feel like a lot of the new genetics are coming up out of LEDs and that's just not what we are flowering under yet.
[00:06:16] Dexter: So I don't know. Yeah, it is. Everything has to do with it,
[00:06:20] Seth: oh yeah. That whole thing, like, yeah, this one's a heavy feeder, or this one stretches a long time, stretches shorter, and it's like, well, what were you doing with it? And I think [00:06:30] that quite frequently where someone gets a strain, they pull it in, and they're going like, man, I can't get this thing to finish up, but the guy I got it from says, I swear it's an eight week strain, and it's like, well, you might be growing quite a bit differently than that other person.
[00:06:42] Seth: And if you don't have any kind of numbers to put on it, the most you can do is say, Hey, like, what do what kind of set points are you running on your environment? And what kind of media are you running it in? I'm sure you guys do. Like you mentioned, a lot of these new genetics are coming out of breeding pretty much to grow under LEDs.
[00:06:59] Seth: Just the [00:07:00] market's moving over to them, right? are literally going off the market all over the place. You won't be able to get them someday.
[00:07:06] Dexter: Yeah, for sure. I mean, environmental it's probably a positive direction. And I hate my electric bill. So
[00:07:14] Seth: yeah, if only you saved a bunch of money running LEDs, right?
[00:07:17] Seth: Usually. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, no, let's grow more weed. For sure. I mean, that's,
[00:07:23] Dexter: that's the real goal anyways,
[00:07:25] Seth: oh yeah, absolutely. So you guys [00:07:30] are on the east coast. One question I have, and I always love talking to you guys about this, is are you seeing a lot more unique strains come in on the east coast and more local favorites or is it, always kind of trailing a little happier behind or so the west coast?
[00:07:46] Dexter: I mean, I think that there's a lot of sour, everyone's sour, everyone wants cushes. That's definitely a thing for sure, being from New York specifically. But I feel like the hype [00:08:00] is real everywhere. I feel if it's hot in California, it kind of is trickling down here pretty quick. If the people who know, you know what I mean?
[00:08:09] Dexter: To the growers who are like tapped into the market there. I feel like California in a lot of ways or the West Coast, I don't want to say dictates what we're doing out here, but it sets trends. So maybe with, Okay. New legalization that will change. I could see that.
[00:08:26] Seth: I don't know. Well, California is a genetic powerhouse.
[00:08:29] Seth: I mean, they've [00:08:30] had a lot of these genetic for a long time. It's been easier to keep them there than pretty much anywhere else in the U S for a long time. So they definitely have the leg up. I was just asking, cause I'm getting more excited. I'm getting excited to see more breeders coming out of like Michigan.
[00:08:44] Seth: And I know New York's coming up in the game. Yeah, Maine. I can't wait to see some more of that local stuff. I know out here on the West Coast, it's kind of wild. There's so much hype around like right now. Runtz is just the crazy most popular. Anything crossed with Runtz, right?
[00:08:59] Dexter: Yeah, I [00:09:00] mean, I think, I agree.
[00:09:01] Dexter: Yes, for sure. I think there's a lot of good, there's a lot of good breeders everywhere. Spunkfoot Farms, he's out of Maine. There's a
[00:09:07] Dexter: lot of really good quality genetics who breed for their location. You know what I mean? And for resin production too. So I feel like, depending on what you're growing for, you know what I mean? Some people want to grow for hash production.
[00:09:20] Seth: Oh, absolutely. Yeah that's one thing I think that's kind of neat about just the East, especially New York, coming online with such a huge population. It's not that cannabis culture hasn't [00:09:30] existed there before. And people are also used to paying, I feel like, a premium for a product compared to, like, California, for instance.
[00:09:38] Seth: So every time I visited, I thought it was really neat. There's growers all over the quality range, but it seems like the market demand has been for higher and higher quality right out of the gate.
[00:09:50] Dexter: Well, that's great. I feel like that's yeah, I think that
[00:09:53] Seth: the higher quality,
[00:09:55] Dexter: I mean, the East coast dictates the West coast, I feel like the East coast consumption is dictating what the [00:10:00] West coast is growing because
[00:10:01] Seth: yeah, for a long time.
[00:10:03] Dexter: Yeah. I mean, that's just how it's been. It seems like in the traditional market.
[00:10:07] Dexter: So I don't know. I think that it'll be interesting to see the change, when. I don't know. We'll see. It'll be cool to see these next couple of years to see what's going to happen, even like the Midwest and some people who like people who have growing in their, years of generations of DNA, you know what I mean?
[00:10:24] Dexter: Kansas, Middle Nebraska, you know what I mean?
[00:10:29] Seth: Yeah. [00:10:30] Yeah. Oh yeah. There's going to be some interesting, some stuff coming out, especially as like, culturally we see, I want to say more acceptance. Cannabis has been fairly accepted for a long time, but more more socially normal. So people are talking about it more, there's all these little pockets of America that have been kind of, kind of sequestered, right?
[00:10:47] Dexter: Yeah. No longer I'm a criminal. That's, it's cool.
[00:10:50] Seth: Oh yeah. There's a there's a company around here that's had one strain that I've never seen anywhere else. And that guy's had that cut for like 20 something years living here is just [00:11:00] never been a big commercial producer, but that strain is pretty special.
[00:11:05] Seth: Yeah, I've never smelt another, I've never smelt another nug that smelled like a peach cigarillo when I cracked the jar. Wow. And it's like, man, this is interesting. Where'd you get this? Like, oh, a bag 20 years ago. Like, that's interesting, and a lot of that stuff is out there. I think there's some really well kept secrets still, though.
[00:11:22] Seth: For sure. I think that's really true.
[00:11:25] Dexter: I think that's totally true, in all these different pockets of America, all [00:11:30] over. I know there's like, different sour cuts from bags of sours, so it'll be interesting to see, like, what comes out, what was preserved, what could be cleaned up.
[00:11:39] Dexter: I don't know, it'll be cool.
[00:11:41] Seth: Oh, absolutely. And I think one of the most important things is just getting that variety because, as we see commercialization, we're seeing some of the same things that have happened in other crops, maybe not quite to the extreme that you see in, like, apples, but we're, lineages.
[00:11:59] Seth: So. [00:12:00] As time goes on, I think it's up to growers to put the demand on breeders to say, hey, we want stuff that's not just something new crossed with your same old lines. We want new lines all the time. We want it to be distinctly different.
[00:12:16] Dexter: Yeah, I think it's, I think it'll definitely be interesting because, it's not like a, I mean, it is, I don't know, it's a commodity, it's a fruit, like, but if you compare it to grapes, it's like, I'm sure they pick the grape that yields the most.
[00:12:27] Dexter: I mean, I'm sure sweetness has a factor. [00:12:30] play the factor into it. But I mean, cannabis should, terpenes, I mean, yield, I mean, all of it should play a how it smokes. All that is important. Like, that should all go into like, whether you're making it or not, whether you keep it. And I think a lot of it, I mean, yeah, you're as good as your grower, right?
[00:12:48] Seth: Absolutely. No, at the end of the day this whole thing is, I've probably said it too much at this point, but horticulture is half art and half science. I can, we can talk numbers all day, [00:13:00] but if you're not good with your hands at actually touching these plants, you're not going to have a good result.
[00:13:05] Seth: I mean, I've personally met cultivators who really really do well all the way through their flower runs, but they, struggle with cloning, for instance. And that's like their big Achilles heel is like trying to get that in line. So they're buying a lot of cuts and, moving on from that.
[00:13:22] Seth: Like, It's tough. It's a skill you got to develop. And if you're not good at it you're not going to have success. So at the end of the day, yeah, you've got [00:13:30] to, you got to have just an awesome grower and one that's really dedicated to perfecting the craft. And half the battle right now is staying in the game, right?
[00:13:38] Seth: We all got to like,
[00:13:40] Dexter: I'm, I'm always looking in my mom room. Well, my mom room slash my bedroom slash my clone room. And I always hear you in the back of my head saying you're going to need them. Mom room. Like a dedicated mom room and it's like, you're so right, you know what I mean? And I'm, we'll get there one day, but it's, it's true.
[00:13:58] Dexter: If you can't, you're only [00:14:00] as good as your parameters too and what you got to work with. So
[00:14:06] Seth: yeah. And then you start to, once you've got data, really start to break down, like what are the limitations of my facility? Yeah. I know working with you guys, you. You're a mom and pop operation. It's a small business. You don't have, yeah, exactly. You guys don't have a huge cash pile to go like, Oh man, we need this.
[00:14:22] Seth: Let's just get it. So inevitably end up making some tough choices. And I think one thing that, although we talk about either [00:14:30] yield or quality, a bunch there, there is an important component into looking at where your business is at and saying, Hey, What are our goals here? Our goal is to produce the best flower we can, of course, but that's going to take time.
[00:14:41] Seth: We've got to get our facility dialed in, our production processes, and then the icing on the cake is finding those genetics.
[00:14:48] Dexter: Yeah. Oh, genetics is, I think genetics is the number one thing, but like when I think about it, right? So if genetics is first, but if you don't know what's going on, like we [00:15:00] can't afford to be, to have one month off. We run a cannabis delivery service as well. So we can't we can't lose a crop for a month or we won't have fresh products for our phone. So being able to not look at the substrate and know what's happening in the soil with the data is great. It would be crazy for me, I think, as a grower to not have that information, to be able to make those changes on this crop now, opposed to having to wait until it finished.
[00:15:26] Dexter: You know what I mean? It's, it helps you learn on the, on the [00:15:30] job, I feel like a lot better.
[00:15:32] Seth: Oh, absolutely. And, I mean, that's what I try to get people to a place too is like, hey, everyone wants to make it in this business. Most people do have the same goal, which is to grow something that they can be really proud of and push on the market, right?
[00:15:44] Seth: But then the other side of it we've got to deal with is making it to that point. Like, anytime you get a new facility, I don't care if you are the world's best grower, give yourself some padding. Don't pre sell that first run for a price that you're not gonna, you're gonna [00:16:00] put out that product and they go, we won't pay for it.
[00:16:02] Dexter: Yeah. And you can't rush it. You can't rush the cure. You got to take your time and every step, you know, that you don't.
[00:16:08] Seth: Well, when I first got into commercial growing GG4 and Blue Dream were huge and everyone had it. And you know what? We weren't stoked on growing it because we had 20 other strains that were way more interesting, but we white labeled a lot of Blue Dream and a lot of GG4 because I kept the doors open.
[00:16:28] Seth: Yeah. If we would have like been [00:16:30] too high up with the ego and been like, no, we're just going to grow the best of the best. That company wouldn't be in business anymore because they wouldn't have been able to keep up with market demand. Some of those early lessons, like fortunately in Maine, you guys can control your own distribution, for some of these businesses, like, yeah, maybe you have some, really good marketing and your first run's all pre sold, but you short those orders.
[00:16:51] Seth: And now you got a lot of customers that aren't going to want to do business with you again. And so there's all these little nuances outside of just growing that I think people overlook. [00:17:00] And I know you guys are at a point where it's kind of funny where you're like, yes, the growing is the part we really want to focus on, but we've got to set up all this other stuff first.
[00:17:08] Dexter: Oh yeah. I mean, we finally just got our first printed bag. So it's like, it's been years coming, but when you, it's all those other things that you don't think about when you're running a business, that you need, that you need to put into, or you need to just sell to someone cheaper for them to do it.
[00:17:24] Dexter: Yeah.
[00:17:24] Seth: Absolutely. Yeah. You've gotta stay in business. You won't be able to get better at it if you have to quit tomorrow.
[00:17:29] Dexter: [00:17:30] For sure. And I feel like, you know I don't know, we put all this work into popping these seeds and trying to figure out like what's good. I feel like we should, care about it, we should care about what it looks like when it gets to the end consumer and all that.
[00:17:39] Dexter: It's important.
[00:17:42] Seth: Yeah. None of it matters if it doesn't sell. Right. For sure. Smoke in this. Yeah. And in this day and age there's so much variety out there. Like, I know that's hitting, starting to hit the East coast more and more like just this year, but people have a pretty broad choice now, you can go to a store and see [00:18:00] 30 different brands in one place.
[00:18:02] Seth: And at that point, it's, it's I like to compare it to like the craft beer and wine industries. There's a lot of really cool things going on, but you see a lot of turnover in specific products brands, labels, product lines are selling just because, they got to keep it fresh and also.
[00:18:18] Seth: If you put one out that's subpar, people will remember your failures with a lot, just a lot more and make their buying choices based on that than on your successes. [00:18:30] And, it's a bummer, but that's, I think, especially, when people go nowadays, now that we're hitting, we've hit legalization, it's been accepted for a while, the expectations higher.
[00:18:41] Seth: If you can go to a store and get some kind of booth, you're like, what? What year is it? , for sure. 10 years ago it was a different game. 60. It sucks. Yeah. Yeah. And you're stoked if you had an option, you're like, I can choose from three. Whoa. And now it's like, that's right.
[00:18:58] Dexter: I think that there's like, [00:19:00] I don't know, there's a lot of that. It's hard because there's so much to grow to gotta figure out like what? I just grew what I want. What I think is like, going to be good. I don't know. It's hard to like, I don't know. It's hard to
[00:19:12] Dexter: get behind the hype stuff. I mean, I don't know. Sometimes I do. Sometimes it's great, but sometimes it's not.
[00:19:20] Seth: Exactly. And it's always riding that line, right? Sometimes we got to balance between what the hype wants and then also like, all right, save some room for our own ideas. [00:19:30] Yeah. So that's how that all starts, right? Nothing gets popular unless someone puts it out there.
[00:19:34] Dexter: For sure. For sure. I mean, at the end of the day, I want to be able to smoke it. I want it to be like, I'm, I, I'm growing it so it can be fire so I can smoke it.
[00:19:45] Seth: Absolutely.
[00:19:46] Dexter: That's like the first and foremost, the main goal. So it's not that I don't really care about it.
[00:19:52] Seth: Well, I'll go ahead and say that a lot of the people that aren't continuing to stay in the business are people that don't care as much about their end quality product.
[00:19:59] Seth: [00:20:00] Passion is where it's at in this industry. Even if you've got a great business plan, if you don't cultivate passion in your organization and pride in what you do, it's going to reflect in your end product and unlike other manufactured goods or even we'll just compare it back to the beer and wine industry aging wine can take quite a while, but making wine doesn't take that long.
[00:20:23] Seth: It's not, I mean, as long as you have good grapes to start with that, the wine making process is much shorter. Yeah. Yeah. [00:20:30] We, we, unless you're making, some sort of extract, we don't have that post production to work with the products so that everything leading up to that dried product is extremely important.
[00:20:40] Seth: You can't do very much to save it, I mean, whereas with some other manufactured goods where the key points on nailing certain things, like in beer making. All these heat processes and stuff going on. If you miss the slightest thing, you can throw a flavor off, but that's a couple hour process for the brewing and then just [00:21:00] staying clean and running a decent facility for fermentation here.
[00:21:04] Seth: Yeah. We've got three months where any, not any hiccup, but a whole host of different small problems, right. Can completely ruin that.
[00:21:11] Dexter: Oh my God. And not even, not even only like what's going on inside your room, it's what's going on outside. We grow in a, we grow in like a old barn, so it's not really well insulated or built. I mean, my nephew, ended up, making some of it for God's sake.
[00:21:26] Dexter: So it's, it can be better built for lack of a better word. And [00:21:30] when it's outside, like you can, you feel it when it's cold, but in Maine, it's, when it's cold, it's, it's extra energy consumption is put on the building and it's hard, it's, yeah.
[00:21:42] Dexter: Got one wall that faces like the backside. So it's like that one has to be insulated again because all the time it just gets colder. And so if there's too much of a humidity swing and area, it just creates issues and pockets of inconsistencies. No good. But you don't realize that,[00:22:00] it's, yep. I don't know. It's interesting. I think we're a really good size because we don't have a huge facility. I mean, it's not small, but it's not huge. So we can manage ourselves, which is nice. Okay. I don't know. I think it lets us able to focus on, quality more and grow what we want, as opposed to grow what's going to just pay the bills.
[00:22:22] Seth: Absolutely.
[00:22:23] Dexter: We used to grow GG4 all the time. It's just like, hey, I still love GG4. It was beautiful. I mean, everyone loved it and it sold, but [00:22:30] it got boring. And you can only smoke it for so long.
[00:22:33] Seth: Yep. And then I think that's another important thing that people overlook is like, hey, when you're scaling a business, cannabis is definitely not unique.
[00:22:41] Seth: Yeah. There's a micro level you can operate on and then your next jump is, unfortunately, like if you guys want to expand, you need to up your canopy space, like by enough to justify the, labor you got to bring in, right? Yeah. And that can be so hard to balance.
[00:22:59] Dexter: Yeah, [00:23:00] I think like, what, I mean, what we're doing is building the brand opposed to just growing weed, you know that they're trying to figure out everything. Get somewhere maybe like this somewhere else. That would be probably our expansion goal. Just, keep it small, replicate this pretty much.
[00:23:24] Seth: Yeah, that is one thing I'm very excited to see in the Northeast because it's such a, compared to out West, [00:23:30] everyone's kind of crunched in, like you're not that far away from New York City, where you're at, or Boston.
[00:23:34] Dexter: Yeah, for sure.
[00:23:37] Seth: And I think yeah, brands are going to spread faster and have more opportunities to be an interstate brand just because of that closeness. I mean, you see it in all other kinds of industries, right? People want a local product and there, a hundred mile circle encompasses a lot of different local people, which is cool in its own right.
[00:23:57] Dexter: For sure. Well, I mean, that's kind of the whole [00:24:00] like, farmers market thing, farm, fresh farm, a hundred miles or less. That's cool. You're supporting the people around you and you know where the money's going that you're spending. And I think that's important. I don't know.
[00:24:13] Seth: Oh yeah, one, I think that's one awesome thing about the cannabis market in general is there because it's such a quality driven space, there is still a lot of demand for the boutique growers.
[00:24:23] Seth: You do have your bigger growers and, in certain places we're also seeing situations, just [00:24:30] always compare it to the craft beer market, but with some of these bigger MSOs and stuff coming in and buying like, a certain amount of equity and interest into some of these smaller brands, because they're looking at it going like, Hey, we got to like, there's a whole market range.
[00:24:45] Seth: And at a certain point, we've got to decide, okay, we, are we going to dominate the low price range market range? Are we going to dominate the high price? Or if I have this big facility, that's putting out a minus. Yeah. Is it worth it for me to like, try to upgrade that whole facility [00:25:00] and make my A plus herb or, Hey, should I farm that out to some of these boutique grows?
[00:25:08] Seth: And maybe actually be like, Hey, I'm going to help support them financially and give them a distribution network and also realize that there's space for both of us in the market.
[00:25:17] Dexter: Yeah. I mean, I think, I think all that's important and that's cool for sure. I think that like the number one thing should be trying to go quality if you can, obviously it's hard. It's like the larger it gets, the harder [00:25:30] it is. So. Maybe not everyone is trying to grow large scale crap, you can't like large scale crap cannabis. That's not a thing
[00:25:39] Seth: It only is to an extent right?
[00:25:41] Dexter: Yeah, exactly. I mean, is that bigger really? Oxymoron does it kind of make sense when you say it like that? But yeah, you're right
[00:25:47] Dexter: It's hard.
[00:25:48] Seth: The bigger the room gets and it doesn't scale the same way as other products, right? Like, if you're building cars, the bigger your factory and your machines are, the cheaper it is to build those cars. It's hard to keep your price per [00:26:00] per pound down with mounting and, higher and higher mounting overhead costs.
[00:26:04] Dexter: For sure. And also like freshness, when something there's, there's all these, you gotta wait for everything in California for a lot of checks and balances. So you get some California weed here, it's. Chances are it's got to be a couple of months old, maybe, maybe
[00:26:20] Seth: a decent chance. You couldn't sell it in California anymore.
[00:26:23] Dexter: For sure. For sure. That's what I'm saying. So I think that's important too when the consumer is starting to see all this fresh weed and know [00:26:30] what we should look like, that was, a month old that has different properties than weed that's three months old or four months old. I think that really plays into buying it from your fresh local farmer or growing your own or whatever you want to do, just getting it as fresh as possible. It's like anything, you know what I mean? You can get it when it was right made, just as soon as it was made or cured or to perfection. And that's when you want to try to get that product and whatever.
[00:26:56] Seth: Oh yeah, especially on the east coast for the longest time, right? It was last [00:27:00] summer's outdoor.
[00:27:01] Dexter: Of course, yeah, it's interesting how the market used to be just controlled by like, oh, it's a drought. Like, I don't know. It's funny.
[00:27:12] Seth: Yep, and now we're back to normal things.
[00:27:15] Seth: Well. Let's let's pivot into some questions here, and if you guys want to pipe in, let me know if you got any commentary. So that to me at least, entirely depends on what you mean by transplant. If you're going directly into the pot, it's definitely a good idea to veg. If you're [00:27:30] stacking, you can go either way, and really in both situations, you could flip right away.
[00:27:35] Seth: In terms of a rooting in strategy, what you're going to do is go ahead, and ideally you're going to have some sort of soil moisture sensor. Ideally, our TEROS 12 or Solus, but... When you're rooting in, there's two factors, right? We want that meaty to dry out to get enough pore space for those roots to penetrate and have them follow that water table downward, but we don't want to wait so long to hit the point where, hey, we've got this pot in [00:28:00] this room, it's warming up to like 80 degrees, it's full of water, and now there's no oxygen in it, so we get a bacterial bloom, aka root rot.
[00:28:08] Seth: So what we're doing is giving it a very small amount of water every single day, one to two shots at a tiny percentage, and just watching that water line fall from, if you're in Rockwool, percent, and coco, usually anywhere between 45 and 65, depending on your brand. You want to see that water content fall all the way down, at least [00:28:30] 15 to even 20, 25 percent.
[00:28:32] Seth: Before introducing any true P1s, I would bring it back up to field capacity. And really all that's doing is we're giving the roots space to grow, and then that pulsing is pushing growth downward. Water moves with gravity, those roots follow the water. Can they sense gravity? We've talked about it before a little bit.
[00:28:53] Seth: But, when we look at like a rockwool slab, for instance, those roots go down, that water's wicking out, those roots follow it everywhere they [00:29:00] can.
[00:29:06] Seth: I mean
[00:29:07] Virginia: That is definitely what we do because Seth is our consultant.
[00:29:11] Dexter: Nailed it.
[00:29:14] Virginia: Yeah, but we do 0. 3 gallons into 1 gallon and then we do the 1% shot when it's flipped into flower. And then when it reaches the 10 to 15% in difference in the water content, then we [00:29:30] start vegetative bulking,
[00:29:32] Seth: vegetative cues.
[00:29:35] Seth: Getting a drive back, making sure you're established instead of overwatering it, and I think that's the key, I mean, we're always looking at these graphs, and I think there's a tendency to kind of over pontificate on the data sometimes, you get so obsessed with making what's on the screen look correct, and part of this whole thing too is like when, if you kind of follow that strategy I just told you, you'll watch your plant, you root in and get a good idea.
[00:29:59] Seth: And it's not gonna be a [00:30:00] mystery anymore. Why you have some plants in the room that you're just like, man, these things won't root in, but I'm dumping water on them every day. Like, okay, you're drowning those. Still use your own visual analysis to, document and register plant health.
[00:30:17] Seth: Yeah, when you're limited like that. And I guess what you're saying is you have no ability to go to three P one shots ever, and that, that makes. I can't think of why exactly it'd be limited in P1 for generative, but in [00:30:30] vegetative, if you're running out of total irrigations in the day, that is a good way to preserve EC because you do want to build EC and it's not the most efficient.
[00:30:39] Seth: I'm definitely going to say that. But when you're pushing that 4. 5, you're going back to kind of the old wash it to exactly what you want that root zone EC to be. If you're pushing out that extra runoff, hey, that's a side result. And if you're pushing 4. 5 EC. Obviously, as your plant's smaller, you're going to keep washing it back to 4.
[00:30:58] Seth: 5, and as you hit a point where [00:31:00] you're, you can get right up to field capacity with your P1s and then maybe put on a P2, now you can bring that back to your 3. 0 and start modulating. So, I guess, that's a decent strategy. Let me review the question again, 36. 2, but really, I mean, we're talking about kind of a band aid situation.
[00:31:26] Seth: One thing I would look at... And I always recommend to people, if you are in a [00:31:30] situation where you have automated drip irrigation, you've got 24 valve, 24 volt solenoid valves you've got the basic hardware, but your controller is a little bit lackluster. I can say in the past I've spent way more money going to the hardware store and buying something that was meant to run like golf course sprinklers, than if I just would have invested 150 in an open sprinkler and thrown that in place.
[00:31:55] Seth: So what you're doing, that 4. 5 is great. That's going to keep washing you [00:32:00] up or down to a 4. 5. And then your P3s or your P2s at that 3. 0 are going to have not a whole lot of effect so long as you're not continuing to push that runoff. But if I were you, I would definitely, and we can talk about this in the future, Daniel look at figuring out a better control system.
[00:32:18] Seth: That's really going to allow you to have the control you want and not have to back into these corners.
[00:32:27] Chris: Excellent. P,
[00:32:29] Chris: we'll just [00:32:30] move on. Looks like PHX, MARS, I'm feeding at a, let's see, as I'm dialing in feed strength by a runoff pH, should I keep increasing feed strength until my runoff pH is closer, matching my input nutrient pH?
[00:32:50] Seth: So when we're talking about runoff pH, what we're looking at is how much fertilizer the plant's actually pulling out of that solution, right? So, Continuing to increase your [00:33:00] FEDC is actually changing a variable and making it more difficult for you to stabilize that pH in your root zone.
[00:33:06] Seth: What you want to do is if you're underfeeding, you're going to want to bring that up. So if you're feeding at a 2. 2, let's go up to a 3. 0. If you're at a 3. 0, maybe go up to a 3. 5 to help reset that ionic balance. But when we're talking about pH, typically we want to see a slight drop between our input pH and our output pH, at least input pH and runoff pH, because that tells us that the [00:33:30] plant's actually pulling nutrients out of solution.
[00:33:33] Seth: And we, typically are going to see a little bit of a range that's perfectly acceptable in those runoff pHs. We've talked about it before running down below a 5. 2 or even a 5. 0. That's where I'm going to start looking for signs of overall plant deficiency. even if I'm above, let's say, a 4.
[00:33:49] Seth: 0 EC. Now, there's a bunch of problems that can look like that, and deficiencies, deficiency when we're talking pH. You're gonna get out of [00:34:00] pH range, starve your plant. On the flip side, if my pH looks okay and my EC is really low, I might just be starving my plant. If I'm running, 850 to 1000 ppfd with a 2.
[00:34:12] Seth: 0 to a 3. 0 EC inside the root zone, There's a decent chance that plant's just going to take up more than I could even put on.
[00:34:23] Seth: So that's kind of where we want to go with that. I'm in coco with 6. 0 pH, getting 5. [00:34:30] 3 runoff, increased feeding.
[00:34:35] Seth: So 5. 3 is not too concerning. I would continue feeding the 6PH, getting 5. 3 right now.
[00:34:45] Seth: If you increase, it depends on what your feed inputs are. So if your feed input is, let's say, a 2. 5 right now, I would probably up it to a 3. 0 or a 3. 5, but that depends on what your EC in the root zone is doing. [00:35:00] So if your root zone EC is low, then we're going to pick that up. If your root zone EC is high, we're still going to pick it up a little bit, but basically pushing more of that feed through is going to, at a slow rate, is going to do more to reset that ionic balance than messing with your pH too much.
[00:35:18] Seth: So I'd keep feeding at the six. Again, like I said, probably raise it too much, but I wouldn't raise that feed EC very much at all. Really, we just want to push it out. And then next time, [00:35:30] usually what that means is that pH got too low, probably didn't stack enough salt up in the media. to not get that pH swing as the plant is pulling it out.
[00:35:39] Seth: So next run, goals are, alright, we're flipping with a higher EC in the root zone. That way we're not getting behind on building that EC, which generally if you can't build EC, you're also driving down pH as the plant's pulling those negative ions out.
[00:35:59] Chris: [00:36:00] Another question from Instagram that the chemical grower wants to know how easy is it to stack the EC in pure coco with bottom feeders, say with drippers?
[00:36:15] Seth: Bottom feeding like flood and drain style? Or are we dripping on top? Because if you're going like a full flood and drain, you can flood all the way up to the edge of that pot.
[00:36:25] Seth: In general, it's going to be your EC is going to be really easy to control. It's going to be about whatever [00:36:30] your feed is because you're going to wash and rinse that all the time. And then you'll have some buildup. Typically if you really want to control that EC in the root zone though, I would try to get away from bottom feeding because basically we want that soil to be washed all the time.
[00:36:46] Seth: We're trying to reset that pH and reset that nutrient balance constantly. So in a bottom feeding situation, basically we've got wicking action, bringing moisture upward into the media. And we've got roots that can go down, into the bottom or even out the [00:37:00] bottom of the media into a water space, but we're not effectively washing that root zone, and that's why you don't see bottom feeding too much can it work?
[00:37:09] Seth: Definitely, but is it leaving control on the table in terms of what you can actually do to affect that root zone EC? Absolutely, and that's kind of why we've seen, look at hydroponic growing over the last 30 years, you've got like nutrient film trays, you've We've got ebb and flow, we've got deepwater culture, and in the end, the one that gives us the most [00:37:30] control over the plant and allows us to have the most effect on plant morphology is going to a soilless media because It turns out plants have evolved for millions and millions, hundreds of millions of years, in fact, to grow in a soil like media.
[00:37:45] Seth: They're very evolved to pull nutrients up out of soil. The role of soil physics in plant physiology is actually pretty important when we look at root formation. We get a different type of root formation in deep water culture or even [00:38:00] nutrient film. So, at the end of the day, the best way that we can grow the plant and effect change is actually to have a top feed system that saturates the moisture and takes advantage of gravity to homogenize that mixture and then allow runoff to occur.
[00:38:14] Seth: That's actually rinsing the soil out.
[00:38:18] Chris: So, Dexter, Virginia, do you have anything to add to that as far as controlling EC and how you irrigate?
[00:38:28] Virginia: I mean. [00:38:30] There's, I mean, there's some times that I've had issues or I like, I missed a feed or my barrel has gone empty and, I'd have to like, pull back a shot to like, even it back out. It's just like a balancing game.
[00:38:47] Seth: One thing I've got to say about Dexter and Virginia is they entered this space without a lot of preconceived notions. So I think one conversation we've never had to approach is I think I'm [00:39:00] giving them too much salt. Yeah, it's true. You guys can attest it's pretty amazing once you start watching that day to day when you do have like, your res runs out and you're like, Oh, didn't plan for that.
[00:39:13] Seth: We're missing a couple shots. It's pretty amazing what these plants will take, right?
[00:39:18] Dexter: Yeah. You could tell immediately though when you're watching the graph, like, oh, it's, something's not right. Yeah. You gotta go check your water's and that's great. I mean,
[00:39:26] Seth: yeah. And then you guys never have to see the bad results.
[00:39:29] Seth: You [00:39:30] guys never have to see the bad results pretty quickly. Yeah. You're like, oh, we can handle that.
[00:39:34] Dexter: Yeah, because you, I mean, that type of stuff you catch and that, I mean, all that's so important. All that's so important. It can take out the fun of growing and
[00:39:44] Seth: Oh yeah.
[00:39:45] Dexter: It makes your life that's new to the game. It's, you gotta really have those types of fail safes in place to help you. It's hard,
[00:39:54] Virginia: joke that we like live in a circus. So stuff is happening all the time. So that's just like, honestly [00:40:00] makes my life in the grow so much easier because I could just see something's wrong and I go in and I can see immediately.
[00:40:11] Chris: Let's move on. Pro Drybacks asks on Instagram, what causes a strain that normally turns all purple? Like LCG stay all green.
[00:40:26] Seth: There's a few factors to look at there. And this is [00:40:30] again, where looking at time series data is going to be your friend, especially with respect to the environment, one thing, one big factor in purple that we always talk about is temperature.
[00:40:39] Seth: A lot of strains need a pretty big temperature differential to turn purple. So we're talking about LCG for instance. I personally have seen one grower who has several rooms, summer LED, summer, HPS. The thing they bang their head against is saying like, Oh, why? Why is it purple every time we grow it under HPS, but not [00:41:00] necessarily LED?
[00:41:01] Seth: And a big part of that is like, hey, we're hitting our 10 degree diff, right? We're getting 78 in the day, 68 at night, 75, 65, but we're seeing the diff in the HPS, but not the LED. One straight up reason is that HPS is projecting more radiant energy onto the plant, which is heating up that leaf surface. So if the ambient room temperature is 75, but we've got an HPS versus an LED, That 10 degree ambient temperature differential that we see from the day to the night might actually be [00:41:30] more like 15 or 16 degrees on a lot of parts of the plant just because that light turned off.
[00:41:35] Seth: So that's one thing to look at is like that overnight temperature differential and, if you don't have your humidity under control, you're going to lose your crop trying to run it too cold and get that purple, you're going to rot it out. So that's one thing to look at. Going back farther and farther, being able to go back and look at your run and see, did you have any times where you accidentally watered too frequently and too hard and pushed, [00:42:00] continue to push vegetative growth that didn't allow that plant to mature inside the time window that you wanted?
[00:42:05] Seth: Cause when we look at this plant's life cycle, right? If we want to reach maturity, we have to hit every mark that leads up to it. So the plant needs X amount of water, X amount of salt, X amount of CO2, X amount of light. And X amount of heat. So if not all those things are balanced, we're not going to get the exact same expression.
[00:42:23] Seth: Now another thing to look at, too, so heat, a big one. Then, like I said overwatering, but also looking back and saying, hey, did [00:42:30] we run not enough temperature differential? Another thing that can affect it is basically nitrate availability. Am I over fertilizing this thing to the point where... I'm encouraging it to grow and by overfertilizing, I don't necessarily mean running a high EC, but for this particular strain, have I been running potentially too low of an EC?
[00:42:49] Seth: Is it too comfortable in the sweet spot? But basically if it's not purpling, there's, we're, they're not guiding it towards through senescence or, dying back of the plant, ending [00:43:00] its life cycle. We're doing something to extend that or we're not hitting one of those marks. So the biggest thing I would encourage you to do is go back and Get as much documentation as you can and start reviewing these runs at the end and look for those outlying data sets, look for anomalies that are outside of your normal ranges, and then from there we can go, okay, here's something that's outside.
[00:43:23] Seth: How does this typically affect the plant? If we're talking about water content, like, hey, you did not get enough water [00:43:30] availability to your plants for 30 days during your flower cycle, like we're probably going to expect to see some yield loss between lack of water. Okay. and probably EC problems being all over the place.
[00:43:41] Seth: And we look at, EC for instance on that same plant, we could have a plant that's looking for more or less and their expression is going to change whether we got more or less. So those are all factors to look at and, even even your light intensity in the last two weeks of flower can start to affect that, certain plant processes rely on [00:44:00] a certain amount of light energy input to move those pathways along, like if we're talking about maturity.
[00:44:07] Seth: A good thing to check is did your purple l c g test lower in T H C A and higher in t h C than your green version? Because if your green version tested really high in T H C A, but low in T H C compared to your other purple version, basically that means you probably should have just let it keep going longer.
[00:44:26] Seth: The the reality is something you did along the way. [00:44:30] Either that or you cut it down earlier, but something along the way extended. That determinate life cycle of this plant. It didn't get all the inputs it needed to finish at that point, and it needed more time to gather and, basically not ingest, but uptake and fix more of those inputs.
[00:44:46] Seth: So, those are a few things to start looking at. And, one thing I like to point out to people, if you when we're talking about these plants, 63 or 58 days, 57, 56 in flower, even a plant, if we're going a two week [00:45:00] veg, in a two month flower cycle, that's not that many days that plant is actually alive.
[00:45:05] Seth: So any time you've missed a mark, whether it's light, heat water, CO2, we're slowing down production efficiency. So not only is that necessarily leaving grams on the table, but when it comes to light and heat and even AC, we might just be extending the life of that plant. So those are a few things to look at in certain strains.
[00:45:28] Seth: Time is a factor. I've certainly [00:45:30] grown strains that no matter what I do, if I try to harvest them in eight weeks, I can get them to look more finished, but the quality and the test results will speak for themselves compared to letting that same strain grow ten weeks. I'm sure Dexter and Virginia have seen that a bunch with their pheno hunts and testing a strain through a few runs.
[00:45:46] Seth: Like sometimes you just have to be patient and then if you're in a bigger facility, I mean, this is where you guys have freedom, right? That's what's awesome about being a boutique is you can make those business calls yourselves and say, yeah, maybe we want to take a chance and do a 10 week run [00:46:00] and we'll try to put our 10 week strains in there and we'll do a, a couple times a year release.
[00:46:05] Seth: When we do that if you were in a much bigger situation, like, Hey, we can't run more than eight weeks. That doesn't work with our business plan. Like, okay, how important is it that we put this strain out? I mean, I'm sure even in your pheno hunts, you've run into some weirdos where it's like, Oh, this thing is amazing, but it is not going to be profitable, and it always sucks.
[00:46:29] Seth: [00:46:30] I had a cut of this string called Candyland years and years ago that one of my favorite strains to run and grow super easy, but it was a semi dwarf. Okay. So what am I going to do? Veg it for six weeks to try to get it big enough. Like, no, this is just kind of a novelty strain at this point. That's. Well, more for a boutique or home grower than it is for commercial production.
[00:46:52] Virginia: Yeah, we have, we have a bunch of those that are like special and we could just never get rid of them. We just like keep recloning it, keep it small. [00:47:00]
[00:47:00] Seth: Yeah, and that's what you guys are allowed to, kind of explore that niche. That's what's awesome about your position in the market is you can push some of those trains just because you're not going like, Hey, I need to blow this up to 10, 000 square feet.
[00:47:13] Seth: of canopy and, make a huge profit off of it. Like, as long as I hit a certain weight in this room, I'm going to be okay because I know if I grow this exotic strain, I'm at least going to get a good price premium on it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and in, the boutique [00:47:30] space, it's also, the growing aspect is certainly not easier, but just like you guys said with the local.
[00:47:37] Seth: the local factor, farmers market style. People are willing to put a little bit more premium on their product because they know that it's actually going to stay more local and have a better impact on the people who are producing that product. When I buy when I buy Coors, versus going to the brewery here in town, I know that by bucks that I give the brewery, isn't going to get, more of it's [00:48:00] going to make it back to the producer and not get lost in the supply chain packaging, et cetera.
[00:48:06] Chris: All right. So we've got about 10, 10 minutes left on the show and YouTube's super lively. I promise we'll get to all these questions eventually, not today. But we'll probably do a special show just to cover these questions since there are so many.
[00:48:24] Chris: Golden Child wants to know, I'm growing in one gallon pots with Bio [00:48:30] 365 Soil less mix.
[00:48:33] Chris: And he's trying to hit a 3 5% dryback in between P2s. What would you consider too long of a wait to hit that 3 5% before worrying?
[00:48:47] Seth: If you gotta wait more than 3 hours. That's probably a sign, but the key here is that time. So when we're looking at crop steering in general there's perfect situations and there's imperfect situations, and 99% of [00:49:00] situations are imperfect, right?
[00:49:01] Seth: There's some variable that we're dealing with that's tough to get under control. So if you're looking at your afternoon drybacks that 1% is a minimum we look for when bulking, and part of that isn't so much There's a physiological reason for 1% or 3%. It's more about logistics and timing.
[00:49:19] Seth: A 3% dryback, you're waiting longer and effectively putting less irrigations on in the day. And that's the signal. The plant can't count from three to five or one to three. So it's that [00:49:30] spacing we're looking at. And if I would, if I wanted to bulk, but I wasn't getting the dryback rate that I that's sum I want.
[00:49:37] Seth: And really, 1% per hour is a decent dryback rate in the daytime. That's telling if you're exceeding that, if you're hitting 3%, 5% per hour, we're probably not going to be able to pull back into ripening. Your plant's probably too big for that pot to finish properly or finish in an ideal way according to our irrigation strategies.
[00:49:57] Seth: So I would look at changing that up just a little bit and [00:50:00] maybe going to more like a 1% P2. And then also keep in mind, when we're switching from generative over into bulking. General rule of thumb is double your irrigations, cut the volume and the time in half, the time between irrigations in half, and then with those P2s, we're waiting on that dry back, but by optimizing the number of shots we can get in that P1, we're getting those shots in, we're bulking that up, and if anything, we can stretch out that P1 a little longer.
[00:50:29] Seth: We're not seeing that [00:50:30] afternoon dry back go quite as fast as we want, but on the flip side, There's a lot of strains and I know these two can attest to that. Some of them you aren't going to get very many P2s on and that's totally okay. You might get one or two sometimes, but when you're doing that, you're pushing more towards quality and less towards, over bulking it.
[00:50:51] Seth: Because like you guys, honey, it's all over the place, right? Some strains are just sucking it up, others [00:51:00] aren't and you got to go okay.
[00:51:01] Virginia: Pretty much like our P2s are like 1% is like about 40 minutes.
[00:51:09] Seth: And then on some strains, right? You're not going to even, you're not going to try it at 1%.
[00:51:13] Virginia: Yeah, definitely. You could definitely see, because we have each sensor, we have each table, and we try to have one cultivar for each sensor, each table. And they're different, they're all different.
[00:51:26] Seth: Yeah, and they have to be treated differently. It's just the way it goes.[00:51:30] There, there is some of that, we talk about like growing OGs and some of those older strains that are known to be like, oh, this one doesn't like high levels of fertilizer.
[00:51:38] Seth: This one doesn't like extra waterings. There are nuggets of truth in there. Observational science is not definitive, but someone noticed something for a reason. There's a continued correlation, so sometimes you gotta step back and go, okay, what's, why is this plant freaking out? And go well, I did hear that it's finicky.
[00:51:58] Seth: Okay. What are my levers [00:52:00] where I may be pushing it too hard? And a lot of times we'll see that especially with modern fertilizers, if you're running, a single mix all the way through flower, there are strains that will respond to that, those bulking signals negatively. So like if I'm growing a GMO or even sour diesel, I don't really hit a very hard bulk pattern myself.
[00:52:20] Seth: Just because I know if I do that, I might see some continued stretching. I might see weird bud formation that I don't want to get. So, [00:52:30] as we always say that dry bag number is a lot of different things put together. If it's not doing what you expect be patient and you're always going to be rewarded with better flower by being patient and putting on.
[00:52:43] Seth: less frequency than if you try to focus solely on pushing that bulking for yield.
[00:52:53] Chris: All right. I wanted to get this, get to this question from South Africa. Jason, what do you think [00:53:00] of using calcium sulfate as a pH buffer in coco?
[00:53:07] Seth: As a pH buffer, I guess my question would be, are you watering that in, or are you somehow mixing straight powder calcium sulfate into your media? I know when we talked about pH buffers in coco back in the day, we'd be talking about calcium carbonate, azomite, some of your more traditional soil amendments, for lack of a better word, that people would use in their garden to buffer pH in more of a living soil [00:53:30] system.
[00:53:31] Seth: As far as using calcium sulfate, the only problem when you're using any calcium ion complex is you've got to look at what is that attached to. So in terms of calcium sulfate. Maybe not the best because that's going to throw off our sulfur ratios in the rest of the mix and also possibly do some other weird things that I might have to break out some molecules and look at and draw around.
[00:53:58] Seth: That's why when we're looking at, some of [00:54:00] our different things to pH actual systems, if we're using like sulfuric acid, for instance, that's not bad. But what I got to look at is how much am I putting in at the end of the day? Is that throwing it off like here where I live personally? if the water comes out of the ground at 7.
[00:54:15] Seth: 2, sometimes 7. 5. If I'm not feeding a lot, if I'm feeding at a really low EC, like if I mix up a 1. 5 EC, I'm dumping enough either sulfuric or phosphoric acid in there to actually throw off my [00:54:30] NPK ratios. On the flip side, same water, most nutrient companies that I'll try to, I'll try out and mix up, if my water's coming out at 7.
[00:54:39] Seth: 72, I mix it up at an appropriate 3. 0 or 3. 5. And that water is coming out at like 6. 1, 6. 2. Okay. At that point, I'm adding very little acid to fix that pH range. So that's kind of where you need to balance it. Like, what am I adding? And then, what else is that complex coming with? Because, another good example, I guess, [00:55:00] is calcium.
[00:55:01] Seth: Calcium nitrate, that's our common nitrogen base used in a lot of single mix fertilizers. And that's because it also comes with calcium, right? Those are two things we want. And since we're only going down to basically one nitrogen source, that calcium is just a bonus. However, in that situation, calcium nitrate does have its own drawbacks because then you can't pull your nitrogen back without losing out on calcium.
[00:55:26] Seth: And that's sometimes where we'll come in with calciums like, or products like calcium [00:55:30] silicate to help keep calcium in while we're pulling nitrate back. But if we're talking about using a calcium sulfate in the traditional buffer sense, like mixed into your physical coco. I would probably lean away from that because over the years we've just found, coco is a true soilless media.
[00:55:47] Seth: We can pretty well control it. It has very low cation exchange capacity. It can't hold on to many things, so it's better to directly control with inputs what's going on in the [00:56:00] root zone than try to mix in a buffering agent that we're dealing with where it's actually holding on to some things, letting go of other things.
[00:56:08] Seth: And then slowly being rinsed out of the pot and having less effect over time. So in short, I would probably not use that. If you do write it down, record it, take pictures because every once in a while, someone does have an idea that's helpful and sometimes we're limited on what we can get. Right.
[00:56:28] Seth: There's certain products [00:56:30] that are really popular in the U S, but if you live in Canada or Europe, I wouldn't recommend buying them because you're going to be waiting for a long time for that to clear customs. Yeah, good.
[00:56:39] Chris: His question is sourced from South Africa, so I don't know if all the rules are interchangeable.
[00:56:46] Seth: Well, and is it a supply chain issue? Because there, there's also certain products, like we talk about peroxides and cleaning products and stuff like that. They don't have a long shelf life in shipping, so there are certain areas of the world and I'd [00:57:00] happily reach out to me sometime with email or whatever, because I'm curious to know why that's what you're leaning towards.
[00:57:04] Seth: If it's a supply chain issue, local availability, that's the best you can get what's going on there.
[00:57:12] Chris: Well, I think that's going to do it for episode 76. I wanted to thank Virginia and Dexter and Medusa's Eden coming on the show with us today. Be sure to check out their case study on AROYA. io. Learn more about their operation and their history and what their plans are for the future.
[00:57:28] Chris: I want to thank Seth for [00:57:30] coming on today. The show will be back next week with Kaisha, I promise, and it'll be smoother on the production side, but for anyone interested in AROYA, go ahead and book a demo at AROYA. io, and we'll have one of our experts get in touch with you, and if you'd like to have a topic covered in office hours post questions anytime in the AROYA app, drop your questions in chat or on YouTube, send us an email at sales@aroya.io.
[00:57:57] Chris: io DM us on all the socials. [00:58:00] We do the Instagram, the Tik TOK, the YouTube, the LinkedIn, et cetera, et cetera. We want to hear from you and for everyone in attendance, we'll send a link today to the show and we'll be back next week. So from Pullman and from wherever you're joining us, have a great day.
[00:58:19] Seth: Take care.
[00:58:20] Dexter: Thanks guys. It was nice to see you. Have a good day.