Cian [00:00:03]:
What'S up grummies? Welcome to AROYA. We're Office Hours Today, your source for free cannabis cultivation education. I'm your moderator, Cian and this is episode 129 shout out to our live viewers on YouTube and Instagram. To everyone tapping in on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts, thank you for your support. If you like the pod, drop us a review. We appreciate your feedback. Before we get down to business, we wanted to share. This Saturday, February 1st in Vernon, California, Connect is holding an event to raise funds for those impacted by the devastating wildfires in la.

Cian [00:00:38]:
AROYA is honored to be a sponsor. Scan the QR code here to learn more about it and make a donation. All of the event proceeds will be donated to Pound Pray for LA Fund. Jason, ready to get going?

Jason [00:00:52]:
I am.

Cian [00:00:54]:
All right, let's jump into our first question here. Looks like Daniel asks us. Hey guys, love the videos. When it comes to ripening and finishing, what targets do you aim for with light intensity and CO2? And is heavy D leafing something worth doing in the final days before harvest?

Jason [00:01:16]:
Yeah, I think I'll hit the easy part of this question first. Delay finger in the final days of harvest aren't going to affect your product necessarily. The, you know, the goal there we'd see it a lot in the industry is really just to help the, the harvesting process, right. Make it a little bit easier. One, we're bringing less wet biomass into the dry room so that can be a little bit easier to manage. Two, gives us a little bit, you know, better time to to deal with that product. Makes harvesting a little bit easier and stuff as far as, you know, product quality coming off there, that process usually isn't, doesn't have any relationships to that. It's mostly a logistics issue where, hey, you know, we got people in here that can do this.

Jason [00:01:57]:
Let's make our processes a little bit easier, make everyone's life a little easier, make the dry rooms H vac system a little bit, little bit less biomass that's coming in there, right? So that's going to be up to you. You know, what resources do you have on site? Is it easier then and lighter? Does your dry room have any capacity issues as far as dehumidification that types of stuff, other parameters for ripening and thank you for calling it ripening. That makes us feel so much better because now we know that your goals are here is to get the best product that you can by the end of the harvest cycle. So when, you know, we're thinking about light and CO2 in specific as per the question, you know, you can drop those down a little bit. You know, there's really been kind of a back and forth as far as do we want to keep those levels as high as possible. You know, CO2 levels since we're seeing probably quite a bit less actual, you know, photosynthetic activity as far as a total amount of photosynthesis going on in the last week, week, 10 days. No, you can drop those CO2 levels. It just kind of comes down to cost.

Jason [00:03:12]:
You're not gonna lose any product quality or biomass by keeping it at the same CO2 levels as you had it as far as light intensity. Yes. You know, we could shoot for a little bit less, you know, total amount of light during the last say, you know, seven days of, of the cycle for ripening. I probably would, I'd keep my light levels up for some of that possibly. You know, it depends on how long you're ripening. Like I said, 7 to 10 days is usually where I'm at just because I like to do a little bit faster cycles. If you're at a 14 day ripening because you have the ability to, to run product a little bit longer, you're running longer strains, then you know, I wouldn't turn it down for the whole thing. Um, but yeah, we, you know, we could go to 80% for, for some of that ripening maybe the last week for, for light levels.

Jason [00:04:08]:
Again, this is one of those things where, you know, you might see a little bit of, a little bit of improvement in quality with, with the decreased light levels, you're, you're probably not going to see a huge difference and your end product, you know, it's kind of fun. There's been some conversations and I had actually, you know, thought about it when I was a grower is just modifying your. So any of the growers out there that want to test this and get us some, you know, scientific backing or anything that we can really relate on would be awesome. You know, if you want to cut it down to a 10 hour day and keep your same, you know, 100 light intensity, there's a good chance you might even see the same impacts on the plant quality as you would as to go into 80%, for example. So, you know, really what we're looking at.

Cian [00:04:55]:
Interesting you bring that up. I always wondered about that. Whether or not you might be able to kind of, you know, bring down some of your overall costs by factoring in, you know, a natural progression towards what would be considered you know, an autumning cycle in the outdoors. Yeah.

Jason [00:05:15]:
And I mean, for me, there's kind of just, you know, some natural validity there as far as when we're thinking about that. You know, one of the challenges when we are operating a facility is when we talk about parameters. At this point in control systems, we're usually on a fairly discreet change. Right. When we're looking at outdoor environmentals, that marker sucks. We get to see curves. Right. And you've heard me talk about on the show quite a few times environmental ramping.

Jason [00:05:54]:
Right. And there's some light manufacturers that ramp. HPS is kind of. They kind of do kind of a weird ramp because like, they actually get really bright right off the bat when we hit them from that ballast and then they ramp towards the end. You know, natural. Nothing necessarily changes on a discrete level. You know, whether we can get a better product by mimicking natural or not. You know, that's.

Jason [00:06:17]:
That's to be debated. But the things that can't be debated there is some of the advantages to ramping to more smooth curves. Right. The faster, or excuse me, the slower that that plant has to adapt to changes. Environment typically mean better plant health. So if. If we make instantaneous changes, that plant is going to lose some amount of. Of growth health for the.

Jason [00:06:47]:
The temporary period that it's using to adapt to the new parameters. Right. Whereas if we do it a little bit slower, then that plant's actually. It can continue at a higher growth rate while. While it's also adapting. So I answered the question already and now I'm just blabbering.

Cian [00:07:09]:
It was good though. It was a good little bit of discussion there. And you know, there's a lot of different factors that come into play with your strategy as you come into those last few weeks and going into leafing and whether or not that's actually a worthwhile practice is definitely something that's worth talking about because I see a lot of people out there that, you know, especially if they have real thick canopies and maybe didn't do the best job of going through and getting enough of that leaf mass down the first go around when they went and did their de. Leafing process. I do see some people kind of seek to get their canopies thinner that last two weeks. And talking about the fact that, well, you may not necessarily see any overall product quality yields is really important. I think it's a good point to make to people to help them understand that what they're really gaining is an advantage in potential labor savings in their process if they go about structuring their post processing to that, but not necessarily if you don't create a process that works well with that, that plan in mind.

Jason [00:08:24]:
Yeah. And so you know what, as far as what I was talking about with, with ramping and, and natural versus you know, discrete controls, obviously here on the top we're looking at, you know, maybe we could talk about this as temperature or light levels or really whatever. For the most part in relationship this would be a more discrete type of changes to the plant. Right. And when you, you know, let's say we have a nighttime daytime differential and we actually set our environmental parameters to go from higher set point to a lower set point at a specific time. Right. Rather than ramping, that's what this would look like as far as say, you know, temperatures probably easiest to relate to. Light levels is also a really good example as far as natural versus indoor control, discrete type of stuff.

Jason [00:09:13]:
And what we're looking at here is any of these periods where the line is perfectly vertical. That's a substantial change to what the plant is encountering. And when that plant is trying to, you know, basically equilibriate or recalibrate to that environment, there's going to be some amount of loss as far as plant growth goes down on the bottom. You know, this would be a natural environment. Right. And what we're looking at is obviously, you know, sinusoidal reflect impact or reflected on, you know, temperatures as our sun is rising, as we're getting into daytime, this might even be light levels as sun's coming up over the horizon and then going down over the horizon. This is where I think for me working in greenhouses was really fun because I get the opportunity to play with both of these waves to try and optimize how these parameters are playing in respect to equipment efficiency as well. So you know, up here this is what we see in a lot of indoor, completely controlled ag.

Jason [00:10:18]:
This is what we see obviously outdoor. And then you know, other things come into play. With outdoor weather you got kind of unintended impacts, clouds, that type of stuff, you know, inclement weather, snowstorms, whatever. But if, you know, we are indoor and we want to start ramping, for example, we can actually, you know, apply these ramps. Ramp was backwards with an impact of the dotted lines that I am showing here. So probably a little bit harder to see. But obviously if we, and oddly enough my, my thermostat in my house does this even is start to, rather than just going to full capacity, say full duty cycle to change this, Right. We're actually just saying, all right, let's.

Jason [00:11:27]:
Let's make incremental changes over time. Like, this doesn't have to happen instantaneously. And actually for, you know, a lot of plant responses, sometimes when we have that happen a little bit slower, it can have a helpful impact. The obvious thing that, you know, we need to understand here is, you know, as. As far as. And when we talk about dli, it's a lighting integral, right? And so that means that it's the actual. The photons can be calculated using math as the area under the curve. That's what an integral is.

Jason [00:11:56]:
Very simple. But when we start to make, you know, ramping changes, we also have to think about, all right, I'm actually influencing the total amount of this is temperature, you know, the total amount of actual heat that's getting this plant. And this is pretty important when we think about traditional agriculture. Growing degree days is, you know, even to this day, what a lot of farmers use to understand when they need to plant. Plant their crops in specific environments. And, and it's really nice thing because it is kind of giving us an idea of when we have enough heat in the environment in order to, you know, start producing an effective crop. If we start too early, you know, there's. There's chances that, hey, we're not going to have early growth that match with what this plant needs for the best outcome.

Jason [00:12:47]:
Yes, you can always have freeze events and that type of thing, which. Which is. Is really hard in traditional ag. But some traditional ag crops also don't mind that my winter wheat out in the field care less what temperature it is in the environment. But in order for us to actually make a harvestable crop, those growing degree days are very important. So what I was basically getting at is when we do make ramping changes, we also have to kind of think about, all right, have we impacted the total amount of some type of environmental parameters that we're applying to it?

Cian [00:13:24]:
I like it. Well, we probably rounded out a bit more thoroughly than you were hoping for.

Jason [00:13:32]:
Without Seth here, I get way too nerdy. So I love it, though.

Cian [00:13:36]:
I mean, it's kind of one of my favorite parts of the conversations with you is that you get a little bit more into the nitty gritty parts of it. Granted, I think Daniel probably got maybe a little more information than he was bargaining for on that one, but I love the whole conversation and I think it really kind of points out that there's a lot left to learn out there in terms of what we can and can't manipulate and what we're going to be able to get out the other end of the equation because like you said, you may be able to reduce the amount of CO2 he's injecting, the amount of light he's applying, and still be able to get the quality that he's looking for at the end of that, in that last week or two without necessarily coming to a point where he is having much of an impact on his quality or his yield, which super valuable for him to know and also valuable for him to understand the, you know, qualitative savings of what he's actually going to get out of trying to deal early. But as much as I want to keep talking about that entire part of the process because I do think that there's a bunch of misconceptions out there in terms of those last couple of weeks and like, you know, little myths, tips and tricks people do to try and get a little bit more quality out of their product the last couple weeks. We do have a lot more questions to get through. So I think I'll jump us on to another one here. We have a great one from Kaihoro who dropped this question about breeding. So specifically he wants to have us talk about stress events to mutate genetics in a positive way. Is it beneficial to breed your plants in an outdoor environment which are stressful to cannabis? What do you think about that first question there?

Jason [00:15:19]:
You know, that is, that is a great question because there's, there's two sides of this coin. You know, obviously we do see advantageous mutations in certain types of plants that, that overcome, you know, a little bit more difficult situations. That being said, we also do see advantageous effects of breeding crops in their production environments as well. A lot of times if we end up breeding in a different environment and growth, we see a significantly different response than we would in the production environment that that genetic is intended to be sold and produced in. So I don't know that there is a right answer for this one. It's a little bit more, more difficult for me to answer. I can't explain it mathematically with, with my background quite as easily as the last one when what, you know, what mutations are we looking for? Maybe we can identify those and try and you know, push the environmental parameters a little bit one way or the other to do something like that. You know, however, you know, outdoor versus an indoor, such a significant difference, right? Like, I mean, that's the whole reason that autoflowers exist, right? If all we did was indoor cultivation, we wouldn't even.

Jason [00:16:38]:
We would never bred for autoflowers. But, you know, because, you know, outdoors we're seeing pretty easily 1600, 1800, 2000 micromoles, depending on your location. We're seeing obviously that very, you know, typically more smooth type of environmental parameters. Day frames that aren't necessarily as predictable, no control or very limited control over our wavelengths coming from the light source, the sun. Yeah, I don't necessarily know that that's the strategy that I would deploy as far as trying to induce beneficial mutations.

Cian [00:17:21]:
Yeah, that's kind of the same thought that came to my head is, you know, I've always heard from people who are into breeding and not just really in cannabis, but in lots of different agricultural crops that you try to breed for the environment that you're going to eventually try to run the crop in. Ideally, I've heard a lot of people say test to the limits of the parameter scale so that you can catch genetic variations or variability that are going to produce poor results on the outer outside edges of where you can run your plants so that you can weed those ones out in your early trials. But as far as, you know, introducing outdoor style stress to a plant that you're going to eventually run indoors, you may just end up genetically predisposing the plant to be better off growing outdoors than it will be growing under indoor light, like Jason's saying. So something to think about.

Jason [00:18:23]:
You know, it's interesting here really, because we're just kind of playing with our influence on natural selection, on evolution. You know, if we're trying to identify a mold resistant strain and we give it a super wet, humid, maybe a little colder environment to grow in, and 99 out of 100 plants get moldy and mildew and the one doesn't, then, yeah, that one's probably going to have a little bit better resistance genes in it. Um, you know, the same thing happens with drought stressors and you know, traditional ags, like dry land farming. That's a lot of times what they're, you know, identifying for is, is what, which one survived when we didn't give it any water and, or even better, when we give it some amount of water, which ones thrived? Right. So how far do we push those stressors in order to identify it? Right. You know, if maybe, maybe we want to, you know, push them farther and farther to identify one that has a specific gene set that is, you know, extremely resilient, maybe we don't need to go that far and we can get one that actually has better expression at mild stressor. Levels.

Cian [00:19:34]:
I think that's another topic we could go on for a little while about because. And there's also, there's a lot of, you know, room for research to be done in this sphere in cannabis because there haven't been the types of mass scale genetic studies that you see in a lot of other mass produced agricultural crops. We just haven't really seen the scale yet. And so I think there's definitely going to be within our lifetimes, hopefully more information that comes out that helps us understand certain markers that we can look for for genetic predisposition towards issues with certain stressors or that might make them certain cultivars better and more predisposed to grow higher yields with better quality in certain conditions, like indoor life versus outdoor. But at this point, unfortunately, we're in a speculative part of the journey right now where we don't quite have all the information yet to be able to say yes, this one way is going to give you the results that you want. And conventional wisdom in the breeding sphere would say that if you breed a plant for the outdoors, it's going to do well outdoors, and if you breed a plant for the indoors, it's going to do well indoors. But again, we gotta jump to a few more because otherwise we'll won't get more than three questions through this whole day today. I have another one in here.

Cian [00:21:01]:
Since we talked about autoflowers today, I think we might have talked about this last week, but I'm not 100%. What do you guys think about autoflowers? Are tree pots acceptable for keeping the taproot signaling flower for the first two to three weeks? They are 12 inches deep, 4 inches wide. So you can really let that, that taproot grow. Any thoughts? Thank you for all the work you guys do.

Jason [00:21:24]:
Cool. I love it. You know, I've planted thousands of trees out of those containers and I love them for, for outdoor work. Obviously, when we are in a area that doesn't necessarily get as much regular rain as some areas that are more preferred for cannabis cultivation outdoors. You know, up, up here, for example, if we can get a tap rope that's two feet deep, two and a half feet deep, we're going to have a hell of a good start of providing access to water for that plant. So it's a great idea from my perspective, obviously out of flowers, you know, typically are a little bit shorter plant. And so that's one where unless you're helping it get a tap root then, or providing a good starter area for it to encourage that trap root, then we may not end up with as deep of roots as we need. For environments that don't get the typical rains.

Jason [00:22:22]:
You know, ideally for cannabis, when we're looking at being able to irrigate every day, that's awesome option. When we're outdoor around here, we might go three weeks without a drop of rain. And that's why anytime that I'm planting outdoors, we get a little deeper root, the more access to water we have. Great idea.

Cian [00:22:44]:
I do. I think that's a great idea as well. I mean, if you're going to be growing outdoors like that, you know, using an autoflower plant, you really want to encourage that taproot growth and get it moving like you said, as soon as possible and encourage that taproot to get down deep to be able to access more water and have a little bit more resistance to potential times where it's not getting any water from water help in other ways. And if you can encourage that taproot to move down quickly and make sure it's got good aeration, I think that's an awesome idea, personally.

Jason [00:23:15]:
Yeah. And yes, this is going to kind of depend on soil profile as well. So, you know, one of my struggles is when I get down below my topsoil in, in my garden here and in the Northwest, I have very clay soil. So there's not, not much oxygen availability and I don't get much moisture transport. So some of that is going to also influence. And then one thing is, you know, your strategy is probably not just restricted to autoflowers as well. If you're doing, you know, autoflower and then a regular flower crop like a lot of people do during the summer, so that, you know, obviously auto flower get her, get her planted April, May, June, depending on what zone you're in. And then you can get that, that harvested middle of the summer, then get your regular crop in because don't necessarily always have quite some of the product benefits that we see from a regular crop.

Jason [00:24:10]:
And a lot of times in if you're lucky, you can, you know, have that, that regular crop be signaled by the photo period decreasing in order to, to get her down before too. Too bad of dew points or, or frost.

Cian [00:24:29]:
Well, I think another one of those topics we could talk for a few minutes on. I. Autoflowers are one of those things that I think are really fun to play with and I think more people should give them a try. Especially if you have the option to do some fun experiments like doing like that in an outdoor environment. Personally, my soil would immediately kill Any plant that I tried to put outdoors, it's just basically all just ground up granite, unfortunately for me. But I have often thought about how much fun it would be to be able to grow an outdoor autoflower crop up here where I am, just because of how short my outdoor growing season is. It would really fit well with that specific profile on its timeline. So.

Cian [00:25:07]:
Man after my own heart, for sure.

Jason [00:25:09]:
You know, I guess that brings up another, you know, specific here is obviously outdoor. There is so many different ways that we can grow cannabis. Obviously, you know, what I was referring to was a, you know, almost virtually unattended type of crop without any irrigation, either either drippers or sprayers or any of that types of stuff. You know, if you're running in granite, you could run a hydroponic situation where you're just supplying nutrients and a constant supply of water through there, you know, and we're thinking about soil composition. And, you know, this kind of brings us back to the environment.

Cian [00:25:51]:
You're right. It does make a pretty good inert physics. Inert medium.

Jason [00:25:55]:
Yeah. Right. So we have. Was it silts, loams and sands. Right. And so I forget exactly how the triangle is drawn, but silt, loam, this is like a test. I don't get to use my computer for references anymore here, huh? He's gonna make me draw everything. Silt, sand, and loams.

Jason [00:26:21]:
Right. So this is the Cian hanging out down over here in this corner. I don't know, I draw an arrow or a C or whatever. Right. I probably drew the C backwards because I'm looking in the camera. This is cn. He's down in, basically the sand. That's that crushed granite.

Jason [00:26:42]:
Right. He's in big sand, like rock. Right. Maybe if we go outside the triangle or Rock where Cian's down here. He's like past Sandy's granite. Yeah, that's great. Like, it's like growing in hydroton. So as long as we've got some nutrition and some ability to get water down there.

Jason [00:27:00]:
The only thing is our CEC is very, very low. Right. Our cation exchange capacity. So not only does our soil have almost no ability to hang on to nutrients, it also has a very low ability to hang on to water as well. The hydraulic conductivity is allowing the substrate just to basically be overcome by gravitational force. Water's going right through there. And then Jason's up over, you know, here somewhere. Right.

Jason [00:27:29]:
Let's see if I can draw actual J this time by looking at it. Right. So I'm somewhere hanging out, you know, who knows between silt and loam. Right. We're looking at a clay place and obviously my hydraulic conductivity that that water is getting stagnated. We're losing all of our oxygenation out of it. It's super easy for me to you know, over fertilize it simply because not, not really any of it's washing through. It's all binding to molecules in that, that silt in that loam and the soil is just super hard.

Jason [00:28:01]:
Those roots have to work, work to even push to get to build their own space. So yeah, kind of off topic but hey, we're going to get sc.

Cian [00:28:13]:
I think it's fun to talk about some of those things. You know, why you're going to be able to do well with those situations. Let's jump onto another one here though, otherwise I'll get sidetracked because I do love talking about these things. We have a question in from carelessdoner1175. Have you guys heard of carbon based nutrients and if so, what's your opinion on running a carbon based nutrient like rooted leaf versus a salt based nutrient?

Jason [00:28:43]:
Sure. Like I guess if you have low CO2 levels it might be a really great way to get those carbon molecules to the plant, you know. However, when we are in supplemented CO2 areas, we're typically getting enough carbon from the environment. It's easy for the plant to access that. You know, when we're at 1200 or thousand ppm plus there's way more than sufficient CO2 molecules available. Right. So you know, if you know a carbon based nutrient, we're probably just buying something we don't need to buy necessarily. We already are getting it from our, our carbon supplement in the environment.

Jason [00:29:25]:
However, you know, if we're in areas that, you know, we're maybe only static of 400, 450 ppm CO2, you know, no injection then yeah, it might be a good way to, to help us get, get some of those molecules in there, how effective it is. I don't necessarily have a lot of experience with what's, what we're calling a carbon based. I would imagine that you know, really what we're looking at is, you know, if it's a synthetic, we're just looking at carbon as a micro addition into our typical NPK macros in a synthetic nutrient. Obviously if we're doing a fully organic we're going to have tons of available soil carbon anyways.

Cian [00:30:14]:
Yeah, I wasn't too familiar with rooted leaf before. I'm just kind of looking at it right now and it does seem like it has a little bit more of. Well, I guess they do have a normal, normal EC range for their feed chart that seems to line up pretty well with, but run a lot of times. To be honest. I don't personally have a ton of experience with carbon based nutrients. I've heard of people having some reasonable results with them. But like Jason said, I've always kind of wondered what your, what you're really trying to get out of it at the end of the day and whether or not you're maybe chasing a little bit of that supplemental carbon that you can just get through CO2. But again, that's always just been kind of my, my thought process, not necessarily any confirmed information.

Cian [00:31:09]:
All right, well, let's move on to a live question here we have from Dustin Lozdoski. What is the ideal amount of time for the following phases? Going from clone to 4 inch cube and then how long until the 1.5 inch clone should be rooted into the 4 inch cube? The small irrigation shots help drive roots down. Then putting my 4 inch cube rock wool into slabs, how long until it's rooted in and how long or how soon should I start to target, to flip to flower from that point? Looking for four to six foot plants.

Jason [00:31:46]:
Nice. Four to six foot plants. I like those. Oh, I drew that. Way too big. That's right. We're just going to ignore some of proportions here. So you're not going to like my answer, but the answer really has nothing to do with an actual time frame.

Jason [00:32:09]:
It has to do with the maturity of that plant and its root system at the different, at the different phases of growth. So yeah, you know, it's really. Let's start. Give me just a minute to draw so I can think. I can't draw very good and think at the same time. Especially since somehow we got three dimensional drawings today. What I like and yeah, you do. In order to do any production planning, you have to kind of think about, you know, an actual time frame.

Jason [00:32:56]:
So that's why my answer is really not going to be super helpful for you. Because a lot of these time frames are based off of, you know, experimental numbers. How does it work in your environment and how does your plants respond to this? Right. So, you know, basically really the, the question is asking, my interpretation is how many days from here to here to here. Right. And what, you know, my response here is going to be is really related to how much growth are we seeing? Right. How much plant growth are we seeing? You know, typically when I have a reasonable amount of roots Popping out of there. That told quantifiable reasonable amount is when I want to go into here, right.

Jason [00:33:55]:
I don't want roots that are, you know, have to be, you know, jammed into my cube or be spiraled around multiple times. You know, for, for this one I actually, actually talk about like, hey, I want to see, you know, probably about 60 to 80% of the bottom of the cube covered in hairs, right. Which for some people seems a little bit, probably a little bit extra. But the reason I like that is because I'm trying to, you know, get as many irrigations in there. I'm taking advantage of the 4 inch cube as a very controllable sized media, right. And so when I want to, when I want to take advantage of that, I want to actually have those roots growing in there for longer because I get to push it every time I transplant, I have some delayed response before I have a manipulatable ability to control that plant growth again. And so how many days? It's impossible for me to tell you in your situation. However industry wise, you know, a lot of times I like to be here in clone for 7 to 10 days.

Jason [00:35:07]:
I like to be in a 4 inch block for about 14 days. And then obviously, you know, flower times depending on strains and stuff, typically rocking, hey, you know, if we're nine weeks strain, we're 63 days. So those would be kind of the, maybe the numbers that you just start with if, you know, if you don't have any prior experience, if you do take some pictures, what your roots look like in each of these, you know, try and pair that up with some, some crop registration data that says. All right, well actually when my clones are, you know, when I've seen, you know, 2 inches of growth here, maybe that's what I want to go. Obviously, you know, I talk about plant height as one of the most influential crops registrations that I can, may not influential but most important that I can take when I'm learning how to drive a new strain. And that is obviously what is my plant height at the end of veg, right. If, if I don't get my 4 to 6 foot plants because I transplanted a little bit earlier, maybe I need to do a slightly longer veg time. You know, maybe I need to play with some of my parameters and put the work into the veg room instead of, you know, everything into the flower room.

Jason [00:36:20]:
Right. And it's kind of interesting because, you know, obviously if we're spending the most time in flour, it's always, it's always Easy to think about that. That is the most important phase of the plant's life. Right. This is. This is where the money's made. Right. But this is where the plants are made.

Jason [00:36:37]:
The faster that we can get on a healthy plant track, the faster we're going to be making money in our flower phase. Right.

Cian [00:36:44]:
The plants make money.

Jason [00:36:45]:
Anytime that we make mistakes here, it's going to cost us more time to fix them over here. And I actually kind of made a fun chart, so harder to. It is. Yeah, it sure is. Yep. Depending obviously I was kind of thinking.

Cian [00:37:03]:
About this and like, I've always kind of given myself deadlines rather than exact amounts of days that I need things to be done by. So I usually try to give myself a 12 day cloning window as a deadline. If anything takes longer than 12 days to set route, it's probably not going to be getting run into a 4 inch block from there. What's your root in strategy?

Jason [00:37:31]:
Right.

Cian [00:37:31]:
Because I've seen different root in strategies from your clone to your 4 inch block make a drastic difference in how fast and how aggressively you're going to be able to root in and be able to create health, healthy plant that you're going to then transplant onto your slab. And those two first building blocks, I can assure you that if you don't take proper care and you don't do them in a controlled, stable way, that the results that you're going to get at the end of them are not going to be as good as you would like them to be, either in yield or in quality. And the building blocks of, you know, making your plants healthy, like Jason's saying, that's how you end up being able to have plants that you can derive in, you know, an aggressive way throughout your strategy, so that you actually are achieving those benchmarks.

Jason [00:38:20]:
Yeah, I'm glad that you brought up that writing in process because the. I think. What was it last week that I was talking about square plug in the round hole. Like, you know, this is a round plug, goes in the round hole. Don't like get a square. Okay. And jam it in here because, you know, when we get a new one out. All right, here's what a square and a square looks like.

Jason [00:38:47]:
Sorry, we're going back to kindergarten here, everybody. But I keep seeing it out in the field. So actually we went, all right, I'm getting all mean on air and I'm the one that drew it works you.

Cian [00:39:02]:
Up a little bit. I know.

Jason [00:39:06]:
Yes. And then I'm actually going to talk about another stage as well, right.

Cian [00:39:13]:
We actually had a comment on it too. One of our viewers said that I like how you drew the micro plug instead of the square alk starter plugs going into the 4 inch cube.

Jason [00:39:21]:
Yay. I can do it. Right? Yeah. So like, all right, when we look at it here, this is airspace. There's no hydraulic conductivity between the areas. And a lot of times actually this gets crushed in order to, you know, fit the square plug into the round hole. It's no longer providing optimal root growth in the areas where we really need that roots to be growing and pushing into the cube. Here, obviously, you know, we want, you know, we don't want to be stupid tight with those plugs.

Jason [00:39:54]:
We want them to sit in there nice and, and flush with each other and so that water transport can happen between there and there and that our roots, you know, aren't being air pruned, but, you know, we're getting some, some oxygen and some, we're able to access those, those newts. Pretty simple thing. You know, it's, it's logical if you, you break it down and you think about it and like I said, supply availability is really not an excuse for that. You know, whatever that hiccup is, is. That's one of those things where you just got to, you know, break the norm.

Cian [00:40:29]:
And that's a choice.

Jason [00:40:30]:
Yep. It's just do what you got to do to be doing it right. You know, another thing that I have seen quite a bit as well is when we're putting these onto the slabs, sometimes, you know, when we trellis these, these blocks get lifted up on one side or another before they're fully rooted in. You know, I've seen people, you know, put the dripper stakes all the way through the top blocks. No, that's not the right way to do it. Our dripper stakes. You know, we only really want to be as basically as shallow as we can in that rock. Well, anything that we do in this rock, whether it's squish it, pierce it, cut it, break it, is jeopardizing the, you know, optimal root zone.

Jason [00:41:14]:
And so, you know, I've seen some people use, you know, barbecue skewers to keep them down. Like, that's probably, if you have a serious problems with. That's probably okay. Right. The best way. But yeah, just really trying to avoid it. Be really, you know, conscientious of that, that connection between our 4 inch and our slab.

Cian [00:41:35]:
Well, and then, you know, not just between the 4 inch and the slab, but like Jason saying, as you're Rooting in to, to your 4 inch as well. You know, I've seen people have the idea where they're like, I will place my drip stakes halfway in and all the way to the very corners of my 4 inch block while I'm trying to root this clone in. And my comment to him is always the same. How much oxygen is reaching your root system of your clone block when your emitters are the furthest that they can possibly be away from those roots. You know what I mean? And if you even just place one of those emitters a little closer to where you're trying to encourage that root growth to happen so that when you actually irrigate, you're in introducing oxygen to that root zone, you're going to have a quicker, more aggressive and healthier rooting in process.

Jason [00:42:34]:
Yeah, so I'm glad you brought that up because this is another one that seems like so many facilities I get into. I bring this up and you know, really what we're thinking about here is how do we allow this water to spread out in the block as effectively as possible. We want to create a large uniform water content for that red zone to take advantage of. So when we put our drippers here halfway, you know, between the corner and you know, the center of the block, we're building these, these wettest areas. Right. This is giving us the biggest chance. Now if, and I'll try to exaggerate this, like let's say we're going to use red because red says no, red's bad. Don't do this, you know, for there and there with our drippers, for example, now we're going to have this really high concentration of water that's actually going down the side of the bag and we're not even getting our water, you know, our wetness as close to this clone plug where this root zone is at.

Jason [00:43:39]:
And especially early on when we're trying to get an effective rooting in process, we actually, we got to get some water close to those roots, you know, vice versa. If we go right here and right here, we're actually have a good chance that we're going to be over watering it right after those roots have penetrated. We're not going to get as much oxygen in there, etc. You know, and last but not least, sure, I don't know why we see this, but some people just go on the sides here like again, and that's probably of the red ones that's the least worst, but still, you know, the least worst.

Cian [00:44:20]:
I like that.

Jason [00:44:21]:
Where, where, where do we Geometrically have the advantage. The blue dots.

Cian [00:44:30]:
And water dispersion. It's an important concept to think about and you know, it always surprises me how few people have put a lot of thought into imagining the way water moves through one of the substrates from the top to the bottom with gravity. But it's definitely something that, you know, I think is worthwhile taking a few minutes to think about. Just because the dispersion of water as you apply it, like Jason said, especially like if you poked your emitter all the way down to the bottom of that pot, you can imagine you're basically making it. So no water is going to be really going through the top of that pot. It's all going to be starting to disperse at the bottom where that emitter is actually letting that water start to disperse into the substrate.

Jason [00:45:19]:
It's the, the upside down ice cream cone away from our drippers. Yeah. You know, time and hydraulic conductivity does help. Rockwool, especially wicks from this is one of, one of the reasons a pretty decent product to grow in. But you're never going to overcome some of those natural physical properties. Just with, with that.

Cian [00:45:49]:
I think we've got time for another question or two in here. Got one from Gav Sewell. He says, hi gang from sunny England. What are your thoughts on under canopy lighting and are you using it yet?

Jason [00:46:02]:
Sunny England. All right. My thoughts on under canopies. Check out episode with Tim Curl from Favan and he, you know, he'll, he'll kind of dive into some of the specifics. Obviously, you know, we try not to be too brand specific, just that, you know, he's an expert in that area because he started a business doing that stuff. It's a great option on some fronts. You know, obviously the ability to cut down on a few labor costs by decreasing your needs to delay if those plants in order to get enough light across the canopy is advantageous. You know, basically typically you will see higher yields and you're going to see a better uniformity of a buds.

Jason [00:46:57]:
So do they work?

Cian [00:46:58]:
And a better uniformity of quality, I've found, you know, throughout your canopy from top to bottom, I've seen a lot better color and size and density out of the lower canopy. That just really isn't as possible when all you're doing is an overhead light. Like Jason said, not really very brand specific for me, but I have seen good results in terms of what they can produce in terms of yield and quality. One thing I have seen people consistently get surprised by though is if you do go down that road. Do remember that all of a sudden you're going to have a lot more weight lower down in your canopy than you're used to having. And if you forget to add a little bit of trellis down low, you may well end up with some of these surprisingly large buds that you didn't realize were going to be growing off the bottom branches of your plants, dipping into your drainaway trays. So. So keep an eye on that if you do go down that route and do keep in consideration like your power costs.

Cian [00:47:59]:
Sometimes adding more lighting to a space isn't necessarily within your ability just because of the amount of power load you're able to pull from the system. Little things to think about in that realm that you may not have really parsed out in your initial thought about getting them.

Jason [00:48:19]:
Yeah, that you're nailing it. Is it. They will, you know, they are helpful, you know, they will produce a better crop. Whether you know, that works out for your costs, for your facility constraints, as far as dehumidification, you know, increase irrigation capacities, processing being increased, you know, do the lights just simply cost more than your gains on your, your profitability based on sale pricing? You know, that's all going to be a regional and grower specific type of answer. But as far as a fundamental advantageous to plant growth, I think it's indisputable at this point.

Cian [00:49:03]:
It's a good way to put it, I'd say. Yeah. As far as what they can do for you, they can work. Just got to be careful in terms of how you go about looking at what your overall cost benefit on investing in them is and you know, do a little bit of research on your own in terms of other people around you. If, you know, people running them, go look at how they're run in place, what types of infrastructure needs. You're going to have to be able to set those up and just like anything else, plan it into your cost structure so that it works for your business. I think we do have time for at least one more here today. Oh, we have actually another kind of follow up to that one from Dustin.

Cian [00:49:46]:
Under canopy lighting increase temps and require more AC or environmental control.

Jason [00:49:53]:
Yes, burning energy increases temperatures. So most. Okay, all under canopy lights I've seen are led which are fortunately going to be more efficient as far as light output versus heat output of that energy. You know, however, a lot of times some of that light output is converted to heat as well. But you are going to see a little bit higher temps, especially under canopy. That's what happens Use electricity, push through diodes. We're going to build some light, some, some heat.

Cian [00:50:27]:
You're going to see slightly higher temps overall in the ambulance ambient. One of the things I think you'll notice more than just the higher temps ambiently in the room though, is that you'll have less of a stratification of temps from the top of your canopy to the bottom of your canopy as well. For your, your, some of your other environmental parameters there, your vpd, your relative humidity, you're going to have just a little bit of a different stratification than what you're used to seeing. And it's worthwhile tracking that if you start to use under canopy lights so that you understand what that actually is doing to your plants and that, you know, some of that is a beneficial aspect to those things, that they help to even out that stratification and that some of the buds at the lower end of that canopy can now be privy to conditions that are more similar to what your apical buds are used to seeing.

Jason [00:51:21]:
Yeah, and you know, just some rough numbers out there. If you, you're putting under canopy light across the whole room, I mean, you know, expect a 20% increase in, in irrigation needs and you know, at least a 20% irrigation in, or, excuse me, 20% increase in H vac dehumidification. You know, really probably even more than temperature that, that humidity is, is going to come into play because those water, those plants are going to be processing more as we're pulling more, more photons through. Right. When we look at the photosynthetic equation, you know, we got water and CO2 and catalyzed by light. You know, up to a certain point, the more photons that were hitting that plant. And you know, the cool thing about under canopy is like, right, the plants have a certain level of intensity that we're not necessarily going to see better plant growth out of. You know, depending on the strain, you know, we're typically talking 900 to 2, maybe 1800 micromoles somewhere optimized outdoor for, for very high intensities.

Jason [00:52:26]:
But when we actually get that across the canopy, you know, we're getting more photons because of an increase leaf surface getting a higher amount. Right. So if the top of our canopy was getting a thousand micromoles, then maybe, you know, six inches down the canopy, we're only seeing 712 inches. We might only be seeing, you know, 500, 400, for example. You know, every, every little bit we're losing a substantial amount. And so those, those lower leaves aren't Necessarily being very efficient as far as their, how much they're adding to the plant's value to the plant's growth. You know, it's one of the reasons that we do a lot of de leafing. They're just, you know, they're just sitting there hanging out when they're at 100 micromoles underneath the canopy or less a lot of times.

Jason [00:53:16]:
So that D leafing helps us keep that plant efficient and produce new growth. However, if we do some under canopy, well, you know, it's just easier to have a more uniform canopy as well.

Cian [00:53:30]:
Definitely a good thing to point out. Well, I would love to go deeper into a little bit of the last question that I see in here. Maybe this. We can kind of get started on it. But round back on it this next week. What's the ideal temp for the rhizosphere? Is that different than the ideal temp for your water for your newts?

Jason [00:53:58]:
You know, this is one of those questions where I don't know that. I don't know that ideal is the best way to approach it. Right. So maybe it's just because I don't know the answer. But what, you know, what can I do to actually make my root zone the ideal temperature? Right. Well, I need my environment to be the ideal temperature. We know that for absolute sure that's going to be one influential factor. I need my irrigation to be a pretty good temperature so I can have good dissolved oxygens but not necessarily, you know, decrease that substrate tip too much.

Jason [00:54:33]:
Really what's going to happen is, and this is one of those things. So obviously the arroyo sensors do have temperature of the substrate in them as well. So super fun to have this question. We don't, I don't look at the temperature of the substrate very much. I do use it for looking at some room stratification things. I do look at it for validating some of my air temperature readings. I do look at it for understanding what my irrigations affect that temperature of the rhizosphere. Right.

Jason [00:55:05]:
So when we irrigate, typically we'll see that drop a little bit. Right. So I like my fertigation water in that 66, 68 degrees range. It's just a good place to help us increase those dissolved oxygens level. You know, the colder the liquid, the more soluble the gases are in there, well up to a certain point, but in those ranges. So when we have it at say 66 to 68, we're going to irrigate. That's going to typically drop our, our Red zone temperatures. You know, unless we're, you know, way late in ripening or trying to push tons of anthocyn in production.

Jason [00:55:41]:
We're like super chili growers. We're cool growers. No one laughed at that joke. So, you know, maybe I should just draw a graph here. When we're just gonna have some quick irrigations, drop in, irrigate, irrigate, irrigate and we'll call this. These are just going to be some, just a P1 event. Yeah. So obviously we're cruising along and let's say our environmental parameters, maybe we're even warming up the room.

Jason [00:56:27]:
This one. Lights are coming on. So let's say room temps are coming up or maybe they're even static. I guess it'd be easier to talk about up there. Static. Right. But when we irrigate the 67, 68, it's always going to try and bring those root zone temperatures closer to 60, you know, 67. Right.

Jason [00:56:46]:
So let's. If our temperature was in the room at 75, then it's always going to, depending on how much we irrigate, it's going to bring closer to 67. Right. And then throughout the day the amount of radiation and the rim temp's always going to try and climb, get its climb back up, up to fairly close to the environmental temperatures. So you know, what is our ideal root zone temperature? The, the problem is it's being influenced by so many other factors that are probably more important than getting the root zone at the exact perfect temperature. However, there are some cool things you can do. You know, if you run some H vac socks down your benches, if you've got a multi tier system system and you have the ability to have airflow throughout those as well, that's a great way to help keep it, you know, down. So probably having that root zone in that say, you know, 70, 75, definitely probably not above 80 is going to be be somewhere that those plants will grow the best.

Cian [00:57:50]:
So that's a great breakdown on it. The way I always kind of thought about it is that your root zone is always going to be a little bit closer to like you said, the environmental factors in your room, the environmental temperatures. One thing to really consider about your, your feed is that, you know, there are ideal and unideal temperature zones for your feed EC solution. If you keep, you know, your solution in a space that's really warm, for example, you're going to have less dissolved oxygen in that solution before it gets fed to your plants. That is something to watch and ideally, I mean, personally, I like to keep mine down around 65 or so if I can help it in terms of my feed temperature. But kind of like Jason was saying, I pay a lot more attention to some of the environmental factors with regards to my steering cues that I'm using in my room, rather than the temperature of that rhizosphere, as long as it's following somewhat in line with what my environmental cues are giving it.

Jason [00:59:03]:
Yeah, you know, I think a really good standard of process is these values that you're creating when you're thinking about plant growth is capture them at the dripper. You know, I've seen facilities where I'm getting a 6 degree temperature rise in my irrigation water by the time that it gets gets to the plants. Right. In which case I'm going to keep my reservoirs way cooler than I would if I have, you know, no rise in temperature as well. So, you know, always think about, all right, how is this actually affecting the plant? Right. I need to take some measurements in all of these places where either I can or it's easier or it's where I can control those. But what we can do is we can offset some of those in response to what's the difference between where I'm measuring it and where the plant is?

Cian [00:59:49]:
That's a great point. Well, I'd love to get a little bit further into a few of these questions, but unfortunately I think we're out of time for today. You guys, thank you for all the insights today, Jason. It's been a fun episode, even though we didn't have Seth here talking about a lot of the scientific aspects is a good time for me. I enjoy it. Thank you for our producer Chris as well. And thank you guys for joining us for this week's episode of Office Hours Hours to learn more about a book a demo at a and our team will show you the ins and outs of the ultimate cannabis cultivation platform. If you have crop steering or cultivation questions that you want us to cover, drop them anytime in the Arroyo app.

Cian [01:00:25]:
Email us at salesroyaa, IO or DM us via Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn or anywhere else that you have our information. We'd love to hear from you. If you're a fan of the podcast, please leave us a review on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, or wherever else you listen to your podcasts. We appreciate your feedback and your views. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel so you never miss an episode. Thanks, y'all. See you on episode 129.