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Seth Baumgartner and Jason Van Leuven open the mics for your crop steering and cultivation questions.
OHL Ep 80
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[00:00:00] Kaisha:
[00:00:05] Kaisha: What's up, Grommies? Welcome to Office Hours, your source for free cannabis cultivation education. I'm your moderator, Kaisha, and this is episode 80. Crazy! This is 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. We're also going live on YouTube, so if you're logging in over there, post your questions, and if yours gets picked, we'll do our best to cover it during [00:00:30] the show.
[00:00:30] Kaisha: We're also live on Instagram, I believe, so if you got questions, be sure to Drop them in the chat. Real quick, if you are not on our email list, you need to be. You want to head over to AROYA. io to sign up for our newsletter on the homepage and you will get latest updates and news from the Ultimate Cannabis Cultivation Platform.
[00:00:46] Kaisha: We got a lot coming down the pipeline. You do not want to miss out. Seth and Jason! How you guys doing today?
[00:00:53] Seth: Good. How about you, Kaisha? Oh, good.
[00:00:56] Kaisha: It's nice to see you. We're all here today. This is exciting. And we have a lot of [00:01:00] questions in the bank, so let's just get right to it. We got this one recently from Terpenes Hub.
[00:01:05] Kaisha: They wrote, I'm running a room with LEDs and two gallon pots with coco Core, currently on day 31, and feeding with Athena Pro at 3. 0 EC, 6. 2 pH, and starting to notice some tips and edges burn on some strains. I'm in vegetative steering, so runoff is around 10%. Should I go for a flush or just reduce EC?
[00:01:28] Kaisha: And if flush, [00:01:30] how would you go about it?
[00:01:32] Jason: So, I mean, my, my initial response to the knowledge that we got there, and we appreciate the details you know, usually a 30EC is actually kind of on the low side for an LED, but the first thing I would do is probably just take a look at pH make sure that you really want to be at a 6.
[00:01:46] Jason: 2 pH running in and a lot of times I'd rather be at, say, 5. 8, 5. 9 in COCO when I'm doing that, especially with LEDs, and so, Yeah, that, that's where I would go first is let's take a look at their runoff pH. If it's, you know, any higher than your 6. [00:02:00] 2, that would be absolutely the first thing to correct.
[00:02:02] Jason: And so I would probably, you know, go to drop that at least to 6. 0 on your feed side and see if that helps a little bit, maybe in just a little bit lower. But those are the first steps that I would do before looking at your EC levels. And you know, I think probably one of the interesting things that I ran into really.
[00:02:20] Jason: Really opened my eyes was, you know, what is tip burning, right? Is it seems like historically we used to always associate that with too high in nutrients. And usually what it is actually an [00:02:30] excess or a deficiency. So an imbalance in nutrients some way. And so a lot of times, you know, we might actually be eating up more nutrients running into an imbalance and seeing a similar type of symptom in the plant.
[00:02:42] Seth: Yeah. I mean, that, that first thing is pH every time when we're talking about, especially if you don't have a sensor in the substrate to know where your EC is at. Most of the time when we see that tip burn, it is a result of drifting pH either on the low end or the high end. 3. 0, if you were to take your coco pot and [00:03:00] submerge it into a bucket of water and fully manually flush it to 3.
[00:03:03] Seth: 0 or rinse it, I like to say, every day we would know you have adequate nutrition for the plants at 3. 0. But, outside of our typical range of, you know, 6, up to 6. Outside of that, we see decreased availability of nutrients to the plant, so even if you had a 6. 0 EC in the root zone and you were swinging up to a 10, which is something, you know, even close to the low end on LEDs if your pH is [00:03:30] coming in at a 5.
[00:03:31] Seth: 0 or a 7. 0, you're really limiting the availability of nutrients that the plant can uptake at that point. And that leaf tip burning is where we see any kind of deficiency in the plant, especially after stretch, when we're stopped, when we aren't putting on as much new foliage. We're going to see those deficiencies in the leaf tips because it takes the most energy to get water and nutrients out to those leaf tips.
[00:03:52] Seth: They're the farthest from the roots and the most difficult to get water to. So that's Red Star. Just like Jason said, make sure your runoff [00:04:00] pH is in line. You want that to be coming out right in between 5. 6 and 5. 9. in your coco, and if it's drifted, start there. We'll always say this again.
[00:04:08] Seth: If EC is seeming like a mystery, you really can't get a handle on what your runoff EC means versus your runoff pH, get a sensor. See what's going on inside there, because more often than not, at least with what I myself have seen, and I know Jason can back this up, more often than not, instead of like a, [00:04:30] pH swing.
[00:04:31] Seth: That's keeping things out. And then on top of that, if you are feeding at a 3. 0 and you can plug a sensor in and say, hey, at my wettest point, my root zone's actually only hitting a 2. 2. What is that telling me? Well, that means the plant is taking up just as much, if not more, than I'm putting in every day.
[00:04:48] Seth: And when I see that ECU baseline go down as the plant's feeding, I know that my pH is drifting down as well. So, basically, Everything's got to be in play here. Everything's got to be [00:05:00] within ranges for the plant to have healthy nutrient uptake, regardless of how much or how little we're giving it. And just like Jason said with the LEDs, typically we see the need to run quite a bit higher EC, you know, if you were at a 6.
[00:05:13] Seth: 0 baseline, you might be running the same stream up at an 8 or a 9 baseline, just to keep up with the increased demand of that LED. And that's not a universal rule, you know, we have different type of LEDs, but with your standard panel LEDs that we're seeing on the market, that's putting a lot more demand across the whole plant.[00:05:30]
[00:05:30] Seth: And it's also providing a lot more light to the plant, so it needs more nutrients to be able to grow at an adequate rate and grow healthily to keep up with that. That's why, like, some growers will switch from HPS to LED and then go, wow, I know it's not as hot, but now I'm seeing these bleaching issues.
[00:05:45] Seth: And some of that is typically just the plant not being able to keep up in terms of resources on how fast it's trying to grow.
[00:05:57] Kaisha: Hitting the ground running this afternoon. Thank [00:06:00] you guys so much for that answer. Okay. YouTube is already, it's hot over there, so we're gonna just get right to it. Blaze dropped a couple questions here, let me ask the first one. Hey guys, what are your recommendations when transplanting to a 2 gallon coco pot on day 1 flower?
[00:06:16] Kaisha: Should I keep steering vegetative for a few days to help root in the plants?
[00:06:21] Jason: Kind of. Yeah.
[00:06:22] Seth: So wait, that's a great answer. I love it.
[00:06:25] Jason: The idea there is I say kind of [00:06:30] because we are going to be more of a vegetative pattern where we are doing a small irrigation throughout the day. I actually like to call it running in type of irrigation.
[00:06:38] Jason: And that's simply because we're typically at a much smaller shot. Most of the time throughout those the day. First, I don't know, usually three or four days of rutting in, we're going to be doing a few really small irrigations throughout the day and the goal of those is not necessarily, we're trying not to get back up to field capacity on any of those irrigations, we're trying to let that substrate dry [00:07:00] down, but we are also needing to supply fresh nutrients, fresh oxygen, and we want to make sure that small rut zone that is in the plug That we're putting into the cube, that it has availability to some amount of water, right?
[00:07:11] Jason: So as that substrate dries out, it's going to typically dry out from the top to the bottom. And if our plug is in the top, we want to make sure that the top of that substrate is getting at least some refreshment. And those roots are following the fresh nutrition and water, the fertigation down through [00:07:30] that substrate.
[00:07:31] Seth: Yeah, you know, to simplify it, we're using tiny irrigations to push the roots down in. And this is also why if you move to, let's say, transplanting your clone into a smaller media, say a 4x4x4 rockwool or a coco cube, or even your good old, you know, 4 inch pot with like a 50 50 coco perlite mix in it what that's doing is allowing us to push a lot more water and oxygen by those roots.
[00:07:55] Seth: And if you want to think about root development in terms of oxygen availability. [00:08:00] If we go and look at, you know, I mean, I know for most of us production wise, let's say a rockwool cloning technique works a lot better in production than an aero cloning technique, right? We get a much more convenient way to reproduce these plants and move them.
[00:08:15] Seth: But if we look at, you know, aero cloning or hydroponic cloning, that extra oxygen bubbling actually stimulates a lot of root growth. So what we're doing is taking that small block. pushing small amounts of water through it to move water downward and push oxygen into that root zone, [00:08:30] which is going to stimulate root growth.
[00:08:32] Seth: And now that your roots are right on top of your stacked media, whether it's a rockwool slab or coco, we want to continue to push those roots down and oxygenate them. If we just wait and they're growing into a fairly anaerobic environment, we're not going to get that explosive root growth that we want.
[00:08:48] Seth: So we want to stimulate that plant to push those roots hard. And the way we do that is tiny irrigations. And we're talking about that. We're saying, you know, less than 1 percent or less than a total [00:09:00] media volume. We're not trying to raise that capacity in the bottom block. And that's where we always go back to sensing technology.
[00:09:08] Seth: If you have a sensor in that bottom media, you can be sure that, Hey, I'm putting water on two to three times a day in my upper block. I know that I'm going to keep it healthy. And I can actually watch to make sure I see a dryback occurring in my bottom media. And knowing that I want to see 15 20 percent overall dryback before I'm bringing it back to field capacity because that's [00:09:30] ensuring my roots have adequate access to oxygen and space in the block to expand.
[00:09:34] Seth: If I'm not seeing that quick progression, that dryback occurring in the bottom block that's, you know, indicating that I have a good root in, then I need to investigate, well, why isn't that happening? And if we're waiting 5, days to irrigate. There's a lot of factors that come into play that might be affecting that root.
[00:09:54] Seth: Anything from incoming clone health, to how did we veg our plants, to [00:10:00] are you doing anything to try to encourage them to root in.
[00:10:05] Kaisha: Yeah, rooting in is super important. We've been getting a lot of questions about that lately. Blaze had a second question here. They wrote, would it be better to place rooted clones straight into two gallon pots so that they have a root base before steering generative on day one of flower, or is it better to transplant the plants before flower?
[00:10:25] Kaisha: What do you guys think?
[00:10:27] Jason: I mean, so there's kind of two options here and a lot of it just [00:10:30] depends on logistics production timeline, that type of stuff. So yeah, if we do want to hit generative first day of flower, we are going to need to make sure we have those plants rooted in, into the final media.
[00:10:40] Jason: So, you know, if we're in a two gallon and we need to make sure that they're rooted in before we, then let's you know, let's transplant, say five days before a flower. And then I guess the logistics side of that is now we're moving two gallon bags. So it's one of those things where it just kind of comes down to what's your veg time line, how much time can we spend in the flower room, what types of [00:11:00] resources do you have for moving more substrate it's a question you have to answer for your facility.
[00:11:05] Seth: Yeah. Yeah. It's more of a logistical workflow problem. And then also looking at, you know, certain other factors like overhead height, you know, if we're in a double tier system where we're limited, let's say we have, you know, 48 inches from the top of the pot to the light. That's a spot where I might look at trying to go as generative as possible, and that's where I might root into a one gallon coco directly earlier in VEJ.
[00:11:28] Seth: But it's important to look at your trade offs. If [00:11:30] we're going to clone direct into a one or a two gallon coco, there's two, two side effects of that we gotta look at. Number one, we're gonna take longer to root in because we're waiting for that dryback. We can't give it as much water early on compared to a smaller media.
[00:11:45] Seth: And because we're waiting longer some plants will root in faster than others. So we're leaving the opportunity to have more variation in our population because some plants might be taking off at day three, day four. Other plants might wait till day eight to actually start to root in and take [00:12:00] off.
[00:12:00] Seth: So that's something you want to balance is where, what's better in my system. Let's say a three week veg on a one or a two gallon coco pot, gently getting them to root in very carefully. Or going with something like a 4x4x4 or a smaller media that's stacked or transplanted because I know I'm going to get better rooting success and plant uniformity with the smaller media because I can control that irrigation much earlier in the cycle.
[00:12:26] Seth: So that's kind of the balance there is like, do you [00:12:30] have the veg space to accommodate all of these two gallon pots? That's certainly part of it. If we're looking at, you know, operational efficiencies, like Jason said, You have to move all these two gallon pots now if we're going to veg in them, and that takes, you know, if I have one rolling part, I might go from eight pots that I can fit on there to 20 something, because I've got a four by four setup.
[00:12:53] Seth: So when you're evaluating some of these procedural factors in your production system, [00:13:00] you also got to go like, okay what are we looking for here? Maximum work put in to get a certain product? Are we looking to max minimize our veg time? Where are we trying to save some money economically, and where are we trying to make the plant the most efficient?
[00:13:15] Seth: So, is it better to root in straight into the 2 gallon? Totally depends on your situation and your workflow. Personally, I like to minimize my energy inputs to the plant, which means not having a 3 [00:13:30] or 4 week veg. A big part of what allows me to do that, maintain plant uniformity, is going into an intermediate media in between my clone phase and my acquire phase.
[00:13:43] Kaisha: Great advice. Good luck out there, Blaze. All right, we're going to keep it moving. I've got a few questions from Indybud. I'm going to ask the first one and then we got a lot of action on Instagram live, too. This is great. Hi, everybody. All right, Indybud writes, What kind of [00:14:00] veg? Double rack bedroom, four foot tall racks, and two gal for two to four weeks.
[00:14:05] Kaisha: Should I go with more blue light oriented or full spectrum, like I have in flower?
[00:14:12] Jason: So, there's been some research on this stuff for other crops. There hasn't been a lot of well documented stuff that I've seen in cannabis. That being said, you know, what's been proven in other crops is that when we lean more towards the blue spectrum, this is encouraging.
[00:14:28] Jason: The infrastructure of the plant growth, [00:14:30] right? And so when we look at getting through veg, we want stocks, stems, root zone we want all of that. Seth's, what Seth calls lumber from the old episodes here, that that blue light promotes that type of growth to be faster. So usually we'll see, you know, leaning on the blue spectrum is going to be a little bit happier, healthier veg and then obviously as we get through flower, we can start leaning towards full and then maybe at the end of flower more of a red spectrum.
[00:14:57] Seth: Yeah. And you know, if you're looking at cost in your [00:15:00] system have we shown that full versus blue in cannabis is completely advantageous? Not necessarily. So going off of that, some of it's going to come down to the performance you're getting out of your light for the price. So if we're looking at veg lights, I think one of the most important things is having a light with a controller that you have a lot of control on brightness.
[00:15:20] Seth: Because in VEJ, one of our goals is to walk those plants up from 150 UMOLs to 200, coming out of clone all the way up to 500 plus [00:15:30] before we head over into flower. And that's really what we're looking at here is like, do I have the control? You know, that was a huge problem with old CMH lights, right? We can turn them down, but that does slightly affect the spectrum.
[00:15:43] Seth: So ideally I want to be running that bulb at a constant rate that way I have a predictable spectrum and that means now I'm raising and lowering my lights to affect the amount of light the plants are getting. So more than looking at whether it's full or blue, both of those are going to do great for you.
[00:15:59] Seth: Look at [00:16:00] how adjustable it is and you know, like for me when I look at my little micro grow, how much do I have to move my light? Now that I've gone to some of the newer, brighter LEDs I've been trying out, I think it's pretty awesome to leave mine strapped to my 8 foot ceiling, crank it up, and then use my light meter to adjust it from there.
[00:16:19] Seth: And call me lazy at the end of the day, we need to have that incremental control. If all you have is like off 50 percent and 100%, you're going to be playing with your light height to [00:16:30] really dial that in. If you're buying new lights, I would strongly argue you want to be on the forefront of the technology rather than the back end of the technology and then, you know, get something quality.
[00:16:42] Seth: I think that's one of the biggest things in lighting manufacturers that we see out there, especially with LEDs. We've got I don't know, Jason and I could start writing down names of companies that have come and gone overnight in terms of LEDs. And one of your biggest things as an operator is buying something that's reliable.
[00:16:57] Seth: will work in your environment and then has good [00:17:00] ongoing support. And that's where when you're shopping for LEDs, definitely take that into account. If you're a commercial size grow with 500, 1000 lights, you're going to have a percentage of failure on any part that you use in your manufacturing processes.
[00:17:16] Seth: So if we're looking at those lights, you want the most reliable ones that are going to work the way you want them to. And that means switching on and off is reliable. We've got good connections, waterproof ports, everything we need. So that's [00:17:30] more, I think, where you need to be looking at from a commercial standpoint is what's reliable, who's got a really good warranty and stands behind their products and which of these units offers me the most control as a grower.
[00:17:45] Jason: Yeah. And, you know, if you're interested in learning more Do some web search on the effects of Chlorophyll B on plant growth and we'll talk about the different spectrums there, you know, when we're looking at those if you really want to dig in, go Google search [00:18:00] Photomorphogenesis, and that's basically the study of exactly what we're talking about right now is how does light affect plant growth over the different phases of its life.
[00:18:10] Seth: Absolutely. And, you know, we can see the differences as growers. Like, I know a bunch of people we work with, especially on the West Coast, are in the midst of switching from HPS to LED and going, how can I get this same expression? And sometimes the reality is you're not going to get the same expression because part of the expression from your HPS spectrum is [00:18:30] due to that spectrum.
[00:18:30] Seth: You might not be able to exactly replicate that with your LEDs or the ones that you're using. So that's part of what to look at. We're not just looking at heat differences or humidity in the environment, but also those spectral differences and Some are more important than others and some of it also has to do with just product continuity.
[00:18:48] Seth: You know, if you're a grower and you're making the switch to LEDs, It might not be quite possible to have a strain that has the exact same expression under HPS as it does under LED and [00:19:00] then you've got to make the choice as a business. Are we going to have this hard transition? Or are we going to figure out how to deal with this and try to make sure that we never end up with two differently grown buds of the same strain on the same shelf at the same time.
[00:19:17] Jason: It's it's interesting. So when we're looking at why do reds affect some of that? Expression in the plant, you know, whether it be coloring, terpene profiles, etc. It comes down to some of the really cool stuff like Cryptochromes, [00:19:30] Phytochromes some of the advanced synthesis that's going on in that plant.
[00:19:34] Jason: So yeah, it's really fun stuff for those of us that really enjoy the science aspect of agronomy. Just dig in and. You might find yourself at, you know, 2 a. m. Still searching through Wikipedia and all that stuff, getting the knowledge ground.
[00:19:48] Seth: Yeah. I think one of the important things is, you know, expand your knowledge, but don't expand your knowledge at the same time that you're spending money on equipment.
[00:19:57] Seth: Look at that and try to look at like, Hey, what are [00:20:00] small changes I can make to affect these, you know, I don't need to go replace all of my lights with the latest generation of lights thinking that's going to give me a night and day difference. So. When you're looking at, you know, some of these concepts, take the time to read about them for a long time before you make a business decision based on it and really try to approach it from a, you know, more of a lean side where you say, Hey, I need to do a cost benefit analysis and decide like, Hey, this might have an effect.
[00:20:27] Seth: Should I test it out? If so, how am I going to [00:20:30] test that out? I need to find a way to test it. That's not going to impact my current production system. I think that's one of the hardest things in cannabis production right now is we have So many products that all promise to do something, right? And pretty much all of them do something, but in your particular application, is that thing going to be what puts you over the top and gets you that price premium?
[00:20:53] Seth: Is that going to be the thing that bulks up your production? Or is it not going to have as much of an effect either [00:21:00] way as you had hoped and maybe wasn't worth the risk in the end? So always trial things before introducing them to your production system. Do your R& D. Do your due research. And don't believe in advertised miracles, maybe miracles happen, but the advertised ones won't happen for you, I guarantee it.
[00:21:17] Jason: So, so you're saying that these products do something, they just may not be reflected in the financial statement?
[00:21:24] Seth: Absolutely. That's a good way to put it.
[00:21:28] Kaisha: We're all about doing that research in advance. [00:21:30] I'm going to plug this real quick because I wrote it. We have an article right now in our education guides about photomorphogenesis.
[00:21:36] Kaisha: You guys inspired me to write that. So. Factor our education guides into your research. You're welcome. All right, we're going to keep it moving. We got a question here from IG Live. Somebody posted here, when feeding synthetic nutrients, which nutrient do you recommend to obtain massive colas? Plant is already on flower four weeks out and CO2 is in the tent running.
[00:21:59] Kaisha: What advice do you [00:22:00] have for big colas?
[00:22:02] Jason: I mean, it's going to come down to some amount of balanced nutrition, right? That plant is requiring most of those macro elements and most of those micro elements. To some degree, at least for the duration of its growth and you know, really what we've found successful with crop steering is a lot more modulating things like osmotic potential and making sure that your and environmental and irrigation factors are correct to optimize that plant growth.
[00:22:26] Jason: So when we talk about generative steering, we're looking to [00:22:30] reduce node spacing enable early bud development so that plant has time to establish this plant buds to be massive. By the end, we're ready to flower, or by the end of flower, ready to harvest.
[00:22:40] Seth: Yeah we're pretty nutrient agnostic here, and a good way I'll put it is if you know how to dissect the Lucas formula from 10 years ago, we could have a conversation about plant nutrition in terms of fertilizer.
[00:22:52] Seth: Nowadays, almost any commercial fertilizer you buy that is advertised or intended for cannabis is a pretty complete nutrient [00:23:00] package. If we're talking about big colas what it, you know, the biggest thing that comes down to, I guess there's two, two main things, you know, number one, we've got genetics.
[00:23:08] Seth: Some plants are going to push that. Number two is going to be your crop steering strategy. You know, if you want to push big colas, you've got to find that balance on a plant where we've put enough energy into structure and now we're flipping over at the right time from our generative steer to our bulking steer and going in and really bulking those buds up.
[00:23:27] Seth: And at the end of the day. Like I said, [00:23:30] genetics are going to play a factor in that and on the flip side, I can say after growing many baseball bats and footballs, you don't always want the biggest possible nugs. That's another factor to go for. Like if I've got a nug the size of my fist, I got to break that nug down to get it into a jar.
[00:23:47] Seth: If I'm a commercial producer, well, if the outside of that fist is purple and the inside is green, now I've got some inconsistency in my product. And not only that, but I've opened up the door for potential infections like Botrytis, [00:24:00] Aspergillus, Powdery Mildew. You know, once that bud is so massive, we can't control the conditions inside of that bud.
[00:24:07] Seth: Not inside of the tissue, but in between all the different bracts and leaves. So, with that in mind, the bigger your bud gets, the more at risk you are for actual bud rot. So, definitely keep that in mind when you're pushing for that. Big bud strategy.
[00:24:22] Jason: Reminds me of some of the green crack days where we just had huge koalas on the green crack.
[00:24:27] Jason: And, you know, one, it was just simply hard [00:24:30] to keep them upright because every branch is falling over.
[00:24:33] Seth: And that's the whole trellis.
[00:24:36] Jason: And then too, between like grapes, the note spacing on it was so tight that God, unless we were just super careful with the relative humidity, things turned into a mold pit
[00:24:48] Seth: and, you know, right now in the world of cannabis genetics we're just hitting that point where we have different people that have identified markers and strains that are specifically mold resistant and are working on [00:25:00] breeding those into different lines.
[00:25:01] Seth: But. As with a lot of other things, we're quite a ways behind the curve. There's a hundred years of research in other crops plus, and we don't have nearly as much genetic research in cannabis. So as cultivators, that's something we've got to be aware of is we're not walking into every strain assuming it actually has any kind of disease resistance engineered into it, you know?
[00:25:23] Seth: Some of your best sellers might be strains that are extra sensitive to mold growth and mold. Hey, that's just a reality. You've [00:25:30] got to play with now as a cultivator. If you want to run that strain, you have to maintain a dry environment. You have to have no condensation, no dew point inside your room to get those buds wet, and you've got to have good air flow, and going from the garden to the business, sometimes we might have to look at like, hey, have we been able to grow this strain successfully?
[00:25:53] Seth: If the answer is no, then now you're at a business point where you either need to invest in your facility. If possible, you might be out of [00:26:00] power. Availability. So you really got to make some of those choices and you know, we've seen just the same as cannabis as in a commercial agriculture at a certain scale and level of control.
[00:26:11] Seth: There are strains and varieties you can grow and then there's maybe some of the boutique ones that you can't. And that's part of why even if we go to fruit, we see that market stratification where we've got mass produced fruit and then we've got, you know, highly expensive, very small production organic fruit.
[00:26:27] Seth: And not that there has to be a hard line in between because [00:26:30] there's quite a range. But if you aren't getting the premium out of your product to be able to put in the amount of inputs it requires to grow that one, you really have to do some balancing and decide if it's worth it in your facility. I've seen way too many people hang their hat on a certain set of genetics, thinking that was going to be their silver bullet in the market.
[00:26:52] Seth: And while those genetics may have been great, they didn't have a facility that allowed them to grow those genetics to a potential where it was [00:27:00] economically viable in the market. So it's kind of a bummer for those of us out there that are really, you know, have the plan in our heart and want to see those really special strains we let go.
[00:27:11] Seth: But you see the same thing in tomatoes and every other crop. You know, we've got our heirloom tomatoes that we all like to grow at home slash we pay 10 bucks a pound to the hippie down the road or whatever that's given us great tomatoes versus the 2. 99 at the grocery store. And then we have our grocery store tomatoes and figuring out where [00:27:30] you fit in as a producer in that spectrum isn't always easy but it's really important to keep paying attention to and try to find your niche because at this point in cannabis production so many facilities are so different just in the small values here and there that it's, it takes some time to really figure out what's working well for you And I think the important thing is to be open to other possibilities, especially when we're talking about genetics and variety.
[00:27:57] Seth: Like, there's an unlimited world [00:28:00] of different crosses out there to explore.
[00:28:04] Kaisha: It's a great time to be a consumer. Thank you guys so much for that answer. Okay, moving on, we got another question here from IG. Smokey wrote in, Hello, I am having some discoloration inside of my flower before and after harvest. I don't notice mold, but it looks like a very light color green to almost white.
[00:28:23] Kaisha: The outside of the flower looks great. This is only happening with a couple strains in the room. I've added a ton more airflow to the [00:28:30] room to try and correct this problem, but it seems to still be happening. I run in coco at 2. 5 to 3 EC, CO2 1000, PPFD 900, Any ideas what's happening? Thanks, appreciate you guys.
[00:28:45] Seth: Send us some pictures. Yeah, that'd be the best. It's really hard to say what exactly you're talking about there. You know, obviously, betraytus comes to mind. when we're talking about interior bud problems, but that's, you're not reporting any brown. [00:29:00] Botrytis is also known as gray mold. So depending on the stage of infection and the type of strain, we can see that a lot of times with Botrytis, you will see small brown lesions on your stem at the base of your buds before you actually see that interior rot set in on your buds.
[00:29:14] Seth: So that's something to look for. Besides that, I would also want to know what kind of temperatures you're running. If you're trying to push super low temperatures despite that higher VPD, you might still be running into the same problem because when we talk about molds, there's [00:29:30] temperature and humidity at play as far as their habitable zones.
[00:29:36] Kaisha: All right, Smokey. DM us a picture so we can talk about what's going on with your plans. If not today we'll cover it in a future episode, but appreciate the question. All right. We're going to keep it moving. Josh dropped a question on YouTube. You're right. Hey guys. Do you think not dumping CO2 out of flower rooms during lights off could affect the crop?
[00:29:55] Jason: There's a possibility that it could. Yeah, absolutely. I don't have any concrete [00:30:00] evidence as far as how much. I mean, it's going to depend on the levels that are happening as well. You know, as usual, I just kind of break it down into the physiological impacts on the plant. And so when we think about, all right, how is a plant growing?
[00:30:14] Jason: Well, during the daytime, it's. photosynthesizing. So it's consuming CO2 and processing that into sugars. During the nighttime, it's actually transpiring. So it is off gassing a little bit of CO2 using some oxygen and actually building plant material out [00:30:30] of the sugars that they had created during the daytime photosynthesis.
[00:30:33] Jason: So in, in optimal growing conditions, you know, we want in inflated CO2 levels during photosynthesis during the day to provide as much growth molecules as possible. And then during the night, we want that to be closer to ambient as possible so that that plant is doing its transpire as efficiently as possible.
[00:30:54] Seth: Yeah, I mean, the important thing to look at there is cellular respiration, right? That's happening day and night, but at night, we're not [00:31:00] pulling in any CO2 to fix it and make sugar. So, although you're seeing elevated CO2 levels at night due to that plant respiration, it's turning sugar into energy. That's not necessarily a huge problem in the room overnight, but that's highly dependent on your actual PPMs of CO2, you know, if you have a malfunction with your CO2 system and you're seeing five plus thousand PPM every night and struggling to recover from that in the morning, we're certainly going to see some effects on plants.
[00:31:29] Seth: And I mean, yeah. [00:31:30] If we're looking at human safety levels, anywhere you'd be concerned about your own health, that's where we're going to start to be concerned about the plant health. However, typically in most rooms when we see like, I don't know, Jason, 1250 to 1500 is a pretty average daytime CO2 value.
[00:31:46] Seth: I sometimes see it creep up a little over 2000 to maybe 2500 overnight in sealed rooms and that's honestly not a huge problem. We see pretty high PPMs of CO2 are when we finally start to see some what we [00:32:00] call like toxicity type issues.
[00:32:03] Jason: So that's during the day we're transpiring, during the night we're respiring.
[00:32:09] Jason: I think I might have said that.
[00:32:10] Seth: Well, we're photosynthesizing in the day, you're transpiring all the time. That's water going up. But yeah, at night we're, well, even in the day we are respiring. The plant's burning some of those sugars to you. The roots are always respirating. It's true. At night, we just have none of that CO2 uptake, so that, that's where to gauge it, you know.
[00:32:27] Seth: If you're hitting I put a hard rule on like, hey, is it [00:32:30] 3, 000 or above? If it is 3, 000 or above, we're probably dealing with an equipment issue in the room where your controller's not modulating that CO2 and it's still allowing some gaseous heat. Typically when we see plants off gas, they rarely do it to a point where it's going to affect the health of the crop in a 12 hour dark period.
[00:32:52] Kaisha: Awesome, you guys. Thank you for that. All right, I'm going to keep moving here. We got another couple questions from IndieBud. Let me ask the second one here. [00:33:00] They wrote, if PPFD is the same, but height of the light is different to save on power costs, is there any difference in plant growth? Thanks for all the info as always.
[00:33:11] Jason: Break this down. Yeah. P F D is the same. Is that at canopy or at the light? Let's see here. I mean to,
[00:33:20] Seth: to be most, okay.
[00:33:21] Kaisha: I don't know. Height of the light is different. To save on power cost,
[00:33:25] Seth: I'm assuming you lower the light and crank down the yeah. Percentage on the [00:33:30] light and get the same P F D.
[00:33:32] Jason: So, I mean, basically, yes, if your lights are turned down you're going to be using a little bit less energy you know, the thing with LEDs, this would be, I guess, more applicable to HBSs you know, where we are using a high voltage ballast that does consume a lot of electricity and they're not necessarily very efficient right off the bat.
[00:33:51] Jason: So, yes, as long as, you know, you're getting the same light penetration and spread in the canopy as intended, you know, one of the challenges in shorter [00:34:00] bedrooms is, especially with HBSs, is we don't get the light spread, and so we don't have as, as even of light penetration and even on the top of the canopy, we don't have as even of light spread, so, that's one of the challenges obviously, you know, with LEDs you know, a lot of times efficiency actually just kind of comes down to the ballast itself.
[00:34:17] Jason: So, and they're not even a ballast in a LED, they're usually buck converters, if you will. And so those things you will save a little bit, but not as much as you would with it with an [00:34:30] HPS by dropping it down. And then kind of the spread option, obviously, if your LEDs, if you're in a. In a panel type LED or the bar type LEDs, a lot of times you can be a lot closer to the canopy and get the same amount of penetration and spread.
[00:34:45] Seth: Yeah, I mean, if you want to think about it with an HPS, you've kind of got a, you know, especially their standard 1000 watt double enders, slightly an oval of hot eliminated area. And by hot, I mean hitting the PPFD that we want to for plant growth. If I get [00:35:00] that light, just, I'll use the shotgun analogy. If I shoot it closer, it's going to have a smaller pattern.
[00:35:05] Seth: If I back up, it's going to have a bigger pattern, right? But if I back up, especially with light, every time I double my distance, I'm losing three quarters of the amount of photon energy that's actually hitting those plants. So that's kind of the balance. If you've got a LED panel, we've got pretty even distribution across that 4x4 area because we spread those diodes out and they're shining straight down.
[00:35:26] Seth: So that's really the balance. Lowering your lights is going to give [00:35:30] you... You know, to an appropriate level, like at an HPS, when we get inside of like 2 feet, we're starting to potentially cook some of those upper parts of the plant. With the LED, it's kind of opposite. We might be, we might want to be right down, depending on the light, really close to the plant.
[00:35:44] Seth: Because now, instead of having a hot spot that's very small, we've spread that evenly out over that 4x4 area. And that's where your light meter is going to come in handy. As you're lowering these lights and trying to dial it in, take your 4x4 section or [00:36:00] 5x5, 5x6, whatever you think your light spread needs to be, and start mapping that out.
[00:36:04] Seth: You know, if you've got an HPS, you're going to lower your lights to a point where you've got really efficient PPFD in, What, 60 percent of your 4x4? Maybe, if you're lucky. So that's kind of the thing to keep in mind is light uniformity throughout the room and looking at where you are taking advantage of light and where you're wasting, essentially.[00:36:30]
[00:36:30] Kaisha: Thank you guys. All right. We got a two part question here from Tyler on YouTube. So first part, I may run 1400 to 1000 PPFD across the room at 84 degrees.
[00:36:42] Kaisha: Wait a minute,
[00:36:42] Kaisha: let me make sure I'm asking this in the right order. Keep going. I may run 1400 to 1000 PPFD across the room at 84 degrees. Some strains have a stretching elongation of the bug during weeks three and four.
[00:36:59] Kaisha: Thank you guys. Can too [00:37:00] high of temps cause this phenomenon? Too strong of veg steer causing re veg during weeks 3 4 bulk transition? Bed structure is bad but plants look healthy. I think I got all that
[00:37:12] Kaisha: right.
[00:37:12] Jason: Yes and absolutely yes are the ways to answer that. So, you know, as far as the temperature goes, a lot of times we can have it higher and be successful generatively steering.
[00:37:23] Jason: That being said, typically higher. Temperatures are more of a vegetative type of cue. You know, when we talk about a balance in [00:37:30] the room, it's interesting because early in flower, a lot of times we're pushing reasonably hard with our irrigation and nutrients in a generative fashion, but we're keeping some of our environmentals in a more vegetative fashion just to encourage as much plant growth as possible, right?
[00:37:43] Jason: And so that's why that answer is yes. And then the second answer is. Absolutely. Yes. If we flip back to veg too early, I've seen plants just blow up the next day.
[00:37:54] Seth: Yeah, it sounds like a classic way too early flipping back to intense irrigation and something to look at might [00:38:00] be, you know, we didn't mention what media type you were in.
[00:38:03] Seth: If you have plants that are three and a half, four feet tall, halfway through stretch and you're in a one gallon pot and you expect those to finish at six feet tall You might have a plant that's too big and you might back yourself into a corner where you have to water that plant frequently all day just to keep it alive.
[00:38:19] Seth: You know, I'm having flashbacks of like nine foot tall plants in a one gallon pot. And basically once you're there, everything you do to keep that plant alive is just pushing that vegetative growth, telling it to [00:38:30] grow taller. And another thing to look at is, you know, when we're talking about crop steering.
[00:38:34] Seth: I think one thing that gets confused a little bit is we, you know, we talk about plant stress a lot. We're trying to keep this plant in a healthy range in terms of EC, pH, and water content. We're using these oxygen injections, aka these irrigations, to really control how that plant's growing. And when we're trying to control it, we can, you can either fight the plant 100%, or you can introduce the right cues to help steer it in the direction that you want it to go [00:39:00] at the time that it's appropriate in that plant's life cycle.
[00:39:02] Seth: So if we're talking about generative, you know, we've talked about this before and I love repeating it because it's one of those everything about crop steering is it's this way except when, right? And you know, the general rule we see, we put out and you see out there is a three week stretch.
[00:39:18] Seth: Well, that's right back to some Anchorman stuff. That's true 60 percent of the time, every time. There's always those strains out there. There's some of them that stretch for 15 days, [00:39:30] 14, 12. We're talking about dwarfs and semi dwarfs and then, you know, we get into some of the OGs, the hazes, the good old, my good old friend GMO that I never want to grow again that just continues to stretch for a long period of time.
[00:39:42] Seth: So a big part of a part of nailing this with different strains is really registering like, hey, I'm going to run generative and use really obsessive proper registration to understand when this plant stops, stops stretching, not just by my eyes when I walk in every day, but by actual [00:40:00] measurements, I want to see that plant have a significant reduction in, you know, upwards growth.
[00:40:06] Seth: And then at that point, I want to wait a little bit, you know, sometimes even up to five days if I'm being real conservative. Yeah. So I know that plant has stopped, that plant has stopped stretching and then I'm going to switch over into bulking because if we take some plants that tend to be a long stretching plant, you know, four or five weeks, if I go into bulking, the effect that we see typically is you start to set buds, then they start to stretch apart [00:40:30] and look really weedy, you know, big bracts, really far apart, really loose maybe a lot of trichomes, but just not a lot of actual flower or tight flower that we're looking for.
[00:40:40] Seth: So, It's important to take a lot of notes, really register those height differences, and then next time you run those strains, you know, I always tell people to err on the side of quality over quantity, because the worst you can do if you're going generative not as hard as possible, but a reasonable generative strategy all the way through [00:41:00] is you're not going to grow as big of a plant, but, you know, some of my customers that I've really gotten into crop steering for the first time, what we did is not improve their yield on the first two runs, But their product was gone within a day of hitting the market because it's the best weed they've ever grown.
[00:41:16] Seth: So, if you err on the side of being, you know, pushing towards quality, which if you want to think of generative versus vegetative, generative is your quality, vegetative is how we get the yield. We're pushing more generative. At the end of the day, you're going to have more quality and be [00:41:30] happier with your yield.
[00:41:31] Seth: And if you took good notes, now we can start opening that window of bulking and saying, okay, we're pretty sure it stopped stretching at four weeks. At four weeks and two days, let's start introducing our bulking signals and then on the other end, maybe we'll run three weeks of ripening and slowly open that up to two weeks and maybe one week, but understanding that especially with finicky strains, pushing them too aggressively to bulk might have some [00:42:00] unintended side effects that you don't want to see in your garden that you rely on for profit.
[00:42:05] Seth: So, being conservative, pushing towards quality and generative, and then, like I said, the key thing here is it's really easy for us as cannabis growers with so many crops. The availability push so many crops through a year. You want to change things up all the time. Those changes have to be slow, documented, and evaluated.
[00:42:22] Seth: And the only way to do that is run after run. Try to be as consistent as possible. And take notes, take pictures. [00:42:30] If you do this for a long time, It's so cyclical that you I shouldn't say some people will remember everything, but I don't, you know, once you get, you know, if you're at one facility and you get 60 plus runs deep with the same strains, like you're not going to remember what day, what specific thing happened, you really need to fill it out, get all the data you can, so you can make an informed decision.
[00:42:52] Seth: And then build a rigorous program so you understand what did I change this time versus last time and realize that each of these [00:43:00] runs is a tiny experiment. You just have to limit your variables so that you can have repeatable results and actually start to predict.
[00:43:07] Jason: Yeah, I'm super glad that you're reiterating and emphasizing the importance of plant height when we're talking about how these things can start stretching again if we start bulking too early.
[00:43:17] Jason: Yeah, I've seen it a number of times as well when, you know, people have mixed cultivar rooms and they haven't necessarily done a good job taking these notes. And so it's hard for them to group plants with similar characteristics as far [00:43:30] as crop stack crop steering preferences. And this can make a huge difference in the long run as far as how your production planning goes.
[00:43:36] Jason: Making sure that you let's get strains in a room that are behaving as similar as possible. Because yes, if we do have different irrigation zones, we can do slight differences in crop steering from zone to zone. A lot of people don't have that, but we're always going to have challenges with modifying the environment to meet the crop steering needs.
[00:43:54] Jason: And so the better that we can document that, the better that we can group these plants together and optimize the output [00:44:00] of every cultivar.
[00:44:02] Seth: Yeah. My, my favorite example I like to use is there's a. A producer in Washington that produces super silver haze and super lemon haze. Two of my favorite old school strains.
[00:44:11] Seth: Guess what? 10 11 weeks is where you want to be on a run to really get those to be where we want them to be on a boutique level, right? Okay. Because they understood that, did a lot of crop registration, and tried to start grouping their strains according to like characteristics, they were able to say, hey, in our business plan, [00:44:30] we can't.
[00:44:32] Seth: Take every run on every room to 11 weeks. And then the next step is do we really want to do that? Because if we only have a couple 10 week runs a year, now we have a limited drop and we can work marketing the other way to make it worth it to run those 2 3 extra weeks. Because most producers you'll know, I mean, the shorter you can pull a crop out, the less time you have, the less time you spend having those lights on and burning money, right?
[00:44:56] Seth: So, you really got to look at Cost benefit [00:45:00] analysis and, you know, get in that mindset that, you know, not every crop has to be the shortest possible production time. But if I'm going to be taking it beyond what my normal time would be or really any time window, I want to make sure that the premium that I'm getting for that product justifies me going above and beyond in terms of input.
[00:45:23] Kaisha: Awesome, you guys. Thank you so much for that. All right, y'all. We got less than 15 minutes on the show. I wanted to ask you a couple of follow ups that came [00:45:30] in. We asked a question earlier about feeding synthetics. Which nutrient do you recommend to obtain massive colas? Person wrote in, they are using soil tupper.
[00:45:39] Kaisha: The lights are low as possible. They're in a tent grow. Anything you want to add to the advice you gave earlier?
[00:45:46] Jason: So Tuper is actually a toyless media I
[00:45:49] Seth: was going to say right off the bat, not to admonish the guy, but
[00:45:52] Jason: As far as, you know, when we're operating in a hydroponic situation you know, Tuper's not necessarily going to have a lot of organics going on [00:46:00] in it just natively.
[00:46:01] Jason: You know, we're not looking at any type of additional nutrients being synthesized by microbial or bacterial behavior in there. So do keep that in mind, you know, that, that is a reasonably sterile media. And with most situations that would be considered a soilless type of media.
[00:46:19] Seth: Yeah. And with that, you know, the biggest thing to watch out for is if you are growing in true soil, which, you know, I always like to drive in. Nothing in a pot is true soil. Soil [00:46:30] takes time, unless you like, had a core drill and took an exact circle out and plopped it into a pot. You don't actually have soil.
[00:46:38] Seth: So, and that being said there are benefits of soil in terms of organic inputs, everything going on in terms of biology there. However, once you get into a small media, a pot, we have limited resources available for these plants and any change that we make is going to happen much faster than in an actual soil situation, a.
[00:46:57] Seth: k. a. in the ground. [00:47:00] So, understanding that means that you know that your inputs directly affect what is available to the plant that day. Not next week, not next month, today. Those changes are going to be made. So, that means monitoring your input pH, your runoff pH, and making sure you have adequate runoff, and monitoring everything you can about that grow, are going to be super important.
[00:47:23] Seth: On the flip side, you know, One of the reasons that COCO came on the market and we've arrived at 3. 0 [00:47:30] feed as an easy way to look at it is if I push appropriate runoff, I'm going to keep my ECs in a two to four range. That's going to be okay for most plants under most growth strategies. Is it going to be optimal?
[00:47:42] Seth: Not necessarily, but if I push enough runoff and constantly reset that pH and EC, I can operate within those parameters and achieve reasonable success without getting too granular in the small details. And that's part of it. You know, when you're growing don't miss the forest for the trees.[00:48:00]
[00:48:00] Seth: Don't stare at one plant and get too freaked out because you have a population of plants that's dynamic. And if you were able to go in and test every single pot in your grow, even if it's only six plants. You might be surprised at the differences you're seeing, even though those plants look like they're close to the same size.
[00:48:19] Seth: So, that's the other side of it, is like, especially when you're in a small grow, I know for myself, I have the tendency to run a sensor for every plant if I can, just because [00:48:30] I can. And I can definitely tell you on that sample size, I have more data than is practical for those 9 or 12 plants. Like. I have all this data.
[00:48:41] Seth: What do I have? Two irrigation valves. Woo. You know, I can only do so much with this without going in there with a graduated cylinder and measuring out shots by hand for each plant. And I'm not going to do that because that's not representative of what I'm able to teach people how to do. [00:49:00] Nor would that ever be a situation where the results benefit me enough to make that work.
[00:49:08] Kaisha: Well, thank you for that. I also now know, because I grew my one successful plant in Tupper this year, that's a soilless media.
[00:49:18] Seth: It's good stuff.
[00:49:18] Kaisha: We'll be making some different choices next time.
[00:49:20] Seth: For those of you out there, it does have a little bit of, if I remember, composted bark, a little bit of char in there.
[00:49:26] Seth: So it does, if you are, and this is a [00:49:30] statement that applies mostly to people on the smaller scale because if you're moving, you know, 200 plus plants, I never recommend that people hand fill pots because you're going to spend a lot of money and burn through employees who actually value their back health.
[00:49:45] Seth: But for those of you at home, tupper is a great option, especially if you like playing with compotes, teas, or any other organic inputs, because it does have some carbon content in there. That you can have microbes sustain life. That [00:50:00] being said, if you introduce those, expect to see some fungus gnats in your little grow tent.
[00:50:05] Seth: And you know, for the commercial growers, a lot of times that also means failing aspergillus tests and a few other microbial tests. So, always be conscious of what your setting is that you're growing in for sure, because certain things can seem like they're going to be awesome, but in a commercial setting, for instance, Hey.
[00:50:26] Seth: I can grow you some awesome weed, but if there's a trash [00:50:30] can on the corner that's got moldy fruit in it we're going to fail a test for aspergillus and lose a huge portion of our crop and no one wants that. So, also being conscious of the limitations of what you're doing and the backside. You know, when we introduced like, let's say years ago, I used to work in brewing for a short amount of time.
[00:50:50] Seth: Lactobacillus is one that also is used in the plant world. I don't want to fail a test for lacto, and also I don't really want it in my production facility [00:51:00] because it's incredibly difficult to get rid of. It grows on all kinds of things. Is it beneficial for plants? Sure. Can you make yogurt with it?
[00:51:07] Seth: Yes, also. But we're not trying to make yogurt in our weed farm. We're trying to have clean products and understanding that, you know, certain things are a band aid and not treating the root cause. Like if I'm putting on compost teas and then I'm going back and applying No Fly or 22WP as a root drench, maybe I should just [00:51:30] knock off the compost teas because they're making my production facility really dirty and not providing me the benefit that I hoped it would because unless I'm putting it into Tuper or something with some organics in it, I'm not, or with some carbon in it specifically, like Biochar.
[00:51:45] Seth: I'm not actually getting the benefit out of that compost tea that I hoped I might. Now, if we go outside, into a bed, into actual soil, that compost tea is great. Feed your microbes. But, understand the risks that come with bringing certain [00:52:00] practices inside, and what they mean on the back end. You know, I'll use I'll GMP certification States in general, a lot of them are getting tighter on Aspergillus.
[00:52:09] Seth: It's a huge one. It's a big thing we see with coco incoming. A lot of coco has it. That's a pass fail test in a lot of states. Okay, well, if I'm going to do anything that's going to promote Aspergillus, that puts my crop at risk. The payoff for it better be big enough for me to remediate that Aspergillus.
[00:52:28] Seth: So, if that's in there and I'm [00:52:30] promoting it and I can't remediate that early on, the root cause of it, Now, I might be shoving all my product through a rad machine or an apex machine or various different cleaning methods that will clean up the product, but oftentimes leave it with lower smell, lower bag appeal, not as good of a finished product to be putting in your packaging and on the shelf.
[00:52:52] Seth: So, trade offs, you know, grow more, have a lower quality product at the end, or Really [00:53:00] fine tune your processes so you can focus on having a quality product and not having to spend money on remediation slash also sacrifice your price premium. If I've got to spend X amount per pound to put it through remediation and then accept a lower price premium on it, that's going to hurt every time I do my books and I'm not going to like it.
[00:53:19] Seth: So bringing it all together is really important. And that's something we see in all kinds of levels of grows where we have, you know, operators. And then other [00:53:30] people who come in and have their own idea about how operations should be or cultivation should be run from the outside. And that's where like, when you're in those situations, those people need to come together and have some mutual understanding on what's actually possible.
[00:53:46] Kaisha: It's all about having that intention and making the best decisions for the business. All right. Well, on that note, one of our account executives is on the line. What's up, Haley?
[00:53:57] Haley: Hey, I just learned that. Seth might be [00:54:00] opposed to seeing like a infused go gurt, you know, is that like a no, I guess?
[00:54:08] Seth: No that's great. Get it on the market. I'll be healthier.
[00:54:13] Haley: It's the yogurt, man. I get a lot of questions from all of the amazing folks I talk to in demo requests and they're shy. Just kidding. So, first one that I got is from a lovely individual named Chris. And he is like, just rattled [00:54:30] with an issue where like, curling leaves.
[00:54:33] Haley: It's like, no matter what, on around day 20, 19, you know, 21 his sugar leaves, they just curl and it's a snowball thing all downhill from there.
[00:54:45] Jason: So I mean, obviously the first thing is just check, always check in environmentals and it's own parameters. What I would do. Right with him is just send off for leaf tissue analysis that's going to be the best indicator of what might be going on in there [00:55:00] could be a easily identifiable nutrient excess or deficiency and you know, pretty reasonably they're cheap in when we consider as far as finding a solution that's going to be the cheapest way to be getting the right answer up front.
[00:55:15] Seth: Yeah that's a great thing to look at. One thing I will say, it's huge that I've oh boy, if they have this and they don't know about it, they've been fortunate in their career, but broad mites is always a huge one to look at. Those are really hard to see with your eye. Sometimes as those populations bloom in a room, [00:55:30] you see leaf curl, a little bit of leaf dieback, and then moving on, you, you actually can't necessarily see their bite points because broad mites aren't very visible to the naked eye unless you have way better vision than I do.
[00:55:43] Seth: Not to say some people don't, but that's another thing I've seen overlooked highly. Another one to look at is, you know, our overall VPD. If that room is running too humid and we just can't get control, or we can only control VPD during the daytime, but not the night, a lot of times what we'll see is some [00:56:00] adverse effects in those bud leaves.
[00:56:02] Seth: So if it's too humid all the time, we'll see a lot of those bud leaves not necessarily curl up, but actually curl downwards. And they won't droop in the same sense that when you see a plant that's approaching wilting point, those leaves pretty much deflate and just hang. That's not what's going to happen if we have a low humidity situation.
[00:56:19] Seth: Those leaves will keep some turgidity. They won't be totally limp, but they will curve down, especially those small leaves coming out of the bud because there's not a whole lot of [00:56:30] tissue there to give them rigidity. Your regular leaves have a good amount of tissue, especially if they've been healthy up to that point.
[00:56:37] Seth: And once you take that suction out of the air, that's a big part of how those leaves keep their structure. So, the smaller the leaf, the more it's going to be affected. Your bud leaves are fresh. I would say likely humidity. And yeah, get your tissue analysis. It's really hard to say without quantifying as much as you can inside of your grow.
[00:56:58] Seth: Like I said, the reason I bring up broad [00:57:00] mites is I've worked with a few grows that were unaware that they had them. And they were doing absolutely everything else right, because they researched everything about like what numbers do I need in my environment? How do I calibrate this? They spent hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars perfecting their environment, but at the end of the day, The issue was a almost invisible tiny bug that they just weren't aware could, you know, and especially when you're in the cannabis space, [00:57:30] I think a lot of us think we're, I don't want to say pretend, but we have this idea we're kind of operating in our own space, right?
[00:57:35] Seth: And the reality is a lot of these pests and plant diseases are not unique to cannabis. A lot of times it isn't that one of your employees has a home grower, they work at another grow. It's that you live near an orchard. And these spores are floating everywhere. You can't, you know, even if the growth's not there, you drag them in on your hair, on your clothes, on your shoes.
[00:57:57] Jason: Or you went to the farmer's market.
[00:57:59] Haley: You can't [00:58:00] like, you're on like houseplants, right?
[00:58:03] Seth: Yeah, houseplants still. Yeah, houseplants house spider mites like crazy. There's probably some right behind you, Haley. No, dude. There's a really big one in there.
[00:58:10] Haley: Lacewings, giant green lacewings crawling on my keyboard right now.
[00:58:13] Seth: Exactly. So like, you know, when you look at this, cannabis is about as susceptible to tomatoes, to every single crop disease out there, so. When you look at that it's not always cannabis sourced, but unfortunately it still affects our industry and we have to be aware of those things.
[00:58:29] Seth: I can't [00:58:30] think of a better example than cannabis aphids and hops latent over in central Oregon there along the I 5 corridor where you got all these producers trying to grow quality cannabis in an area where hemp and hops production are huge and hops, cannabis. Well, hops, marijuana, and hemp all share every single disease with each other.
[00:58:49] Seth: They're a big family. So, when you're in that environment, like, you just got to be aware and go, okay, that's where I understand myself as a pest manager, not an [00:59:00] exterminator. There's a reason it's called integrated pest management, not integrated pest extermination, and then looking at, okay. What can I do to keep the threshold of disease or infection levels down enough to produce a crop because I know it's never going to be zero.
[00:59:17] Seth: Awesome.
[00:59:18] Kaisha: Haley, what a treat to have you on. Thank you so much for that question. Seth and Jason held it down. Y'all, if we did not get to your question today, it's all good. We do this every Thursday. So we're gonna wrap up here.[00:59:30] Thanks Jason, Seth and our producer Chris for another great session. Thank you all so much for joining us for this week's AROYA Office Hours.
[00:59:36] Kaisha: We do this every Thursday and the best way to get Answers from the experts is to join us live. To learn more about Roya and book a demo@roya.io, one of our experts would be happy to walk you through the ways the platform can improve your cultivation production process. And while you're there, be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay up to speed on all things Roya.
[00:59:52] Kaisha: There's a lot coming down the pipeline. Okay, so if you have a topic you'd like to cover us on, a US to cover on a future episode of Office Hours. [01:00:00] Post questions anytime in the AROYA app, drop your questions in the chat or on our YouTube, send us an email to sales at AROYA. io or DM us. We are on all the socials, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, and social club.
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