Cian [00:00:03]:
What's up everybody? Welcome to AROYA Office Hours Episode 133. I'm Cian this is Jason, our resident cultivation expert for the day. This is your place for free Cultivation education. Just want to give a free shout out today. This QR code on the screen is a free ebook from our industry expert Jack Whipple. His crop steering super system has been proven across millions of square feet of canopy over 12 years. Scan the QR code now to download and start transforming your yields today. Also want to give a quick shout out to an event happening tonight.

Cian [00:00:37]:
The Connect Community event is happening. It's called Foliar Focus and Trim Demo happening this evening in Sacramento at Indoor Sun Hydro. Both Seth and I will be attending, so come join us and say hi in person. If you're able to attend. It's going to be something you can RSVP to through the connect.community. you can find that by searching the name Foliar Focus Trim Demo or by Connect Community through Google. Find it on the first link. I also want to give a quick thanks to everyone today, tuning in our live viewers on YouTube as well as Instagram.

Cian [00:01:15]:
Please let us know in the comments today where you're watching. We always like to know who's out there on what platform. Don't forget to give us a like and then tell your friends about office hours live. And as always, please help leave us a review. It really helps out, gives us an idea of how we're doing and what you guys want us to cover. All right. Well I had a question down in here today that I was looking at that, you know, we've kind of touched on the idea of how to plan out what you want out of a facility and I thought this question was something that you would find fun as well. Jason IG Grown by John D.

Cian [00:01:54]:
Says Working on a new facility build out. Curious about your thoughts on vegging in place versus having dedicated veg rooms. Anything that comes to mind that I might not be considering while I plan this out.

Jason [00:02:06]:
Yeah. So you know, I guess there's really two two paths here and I'll try and hit on some of the positive, negatives, liabilities, efficiencies of both processes. You know, the bulk of places that I see, you know, they've got a dedicated mom room, they've got some dedicated bedrooms and then the dedicated flower rooms. Nice things here being that if you have moms who have a little bit of redundancy, you have a little bit of a safety net. If you are only using flower moms or flower rooms and you're cutting clones off your actual production plants. That would be kind of the other route. Right. So.

Jason [00:02:44]:
So typically there's kind of two pathways here. Obviously, you know, the other one being if you purchase your clones or you purchase your veg, plants may not get into that too much thing. It's pretty obvious there. Yeah. If we are cutting our clones off of our production plans, we mislabel things. If we go into bad counts, if we have a health issue, it's kind of. We really only get that one chance to make the clones effective. Correct.

Jason [00:03:12]:
Healthy. And even then you may want to have a bedroom or not. So I guess I didn't break this down as cleanly and organized as I could have, but yeah. So dedicated. Dedicated bedrooms. Obviously in that case it's going to be a veg, usually where we have multiple stages of veggies. So if we take a. Let's take an eight flower room facility, for example.

Jason [00:03:39]:
Right. We're going to typically, you know, an eight flower room facility might be doing like harvesting two rooms at a time. That'd be kind of a pretty typical approach for that size of facility. Obviously there's lots of facilities way larger than that. I work with a site that's got 50 plus flower rooms. They're harvesting every. Um, so. But let's just use this eight flower room as an example.

Jason [00:04:04]:
We're going to have stages of different plants in that bedroom. So, you know, one of the challenges there is, obviously it's always going to be difficult for us to do any sterilization and maintenance in our bedroom. Our bedroom always has living plants in it. The advantages there being that we can pretty much, you know, always optimize that environment for more vegetative growth. A lot of times we can actually, you know, if we've got sliding benches, maybe we'll even have our light intensity move through that room. Sometimes we've got to move plants across that room. But. But we can kind of set up a process that's dedicated for that phase in the life cycle.

Jason [00:04:41]:
Advantages of vegging in your flower room. Obviously, you know, our rooting in period is going to be a tad bit easier because we don't necessarily have to phase that into a specific part of our workflow. If, you know, we want to get into slabs earlier on. Right. We can, we can run into slabs on an 18 hour life cycle light cycle there and, and you know, maybe get kind of a head start on our flower cycle. So we have a tad bit more flexibility as far as our plant life cycle timeline. If we veg in the flower room possibly a little bit less logistics, labor. And then, you know, we also get a veg in a clean room because we're going to probably be sterilizing that.

Jason [00:05:26]:
You should be sterilizing, I shouldn't say probably sterilize your room between each run, get that thing nice and cleaned up and any of the pathogens that we're worried about can get rid of them. So those are, you know, some positives and negatives of vegging in your flower room. Obviously, I talked a little bit about also, you know, the option of having moms, not having moms, if you have a really good source of hedging plants. And it's great because then you can put all of your energy, all your focus into the flower cycle of those plants. Most the clients that I work with, it's not very often that I talk to people that are super happy with the quality of veg plants that they're getting. You know, it's too bad. Obviously, you know, transportation is difficult, sourcing is difficult. And then, you know, people that are vegging their plants don't necessarily have the liability of how healthy those plants are.

Jason [00:06:20]:
Right. They typically have a set price that they're selling these for if they have one round with some type of infestation. The people that are flowering with plants are typically end up on the short end of the stake here. So usually it is a little bit better to control that aspect of your grow. If you have the ability to veg your own plants, take your own clones. Now, when you need to, you know, improve the quality of that portion of the life cycle, then that's up to you. Right? You're not in the, I said liability of someone else's process in order to really have a high quality, high output plant towards the end of this cycle. I'm sure I missed something.

Jason [00:07:06]:
I went all over the place on that one.

Cian [00:07:07]:
Cian well, it was a bunch of great points you made there. One of the things that I was thinking about the whole time is that it really depends on your scale. I know me personally doing small batch runs with very limited labor supply. You know, going direct from clone into my final substrate is a really attractive option for me for several reasons. It, you know, cuts down the amount of time I have to spend on moving plants into a, an intermediate substrate. It also has the advantage of allowing me to kind of like you said, move into a light cycle that favors those clones moving into a flower, flip a little bit easier, smoother, with less stress on the plants. However, you know, I've also done it the other way for a long time where I've had a veg dead dedicated veg room and a dedicated mom room. And I really kind of think it depends on what your ultimate goals are.

Jason [00:08:11]:
Right.

Cian [00:08:12]:
Because at a certain point, you can look at the idea of having a dedicated veg room as this is one of the only ways to kind of set yourself up to be able to be in a relatively continuous harvest situation where you have, you know, one of the rooms in your facility harvesting and then ideally, cutting down the dead time that that room has to a bare minimum so that you're able to have stock ready to transition into that next flower phase at the key moment you need it to be. That will ultimately allow you to drive, you know, production to its highest efficiency. But one of the things that Jason touched on there that's really important to remember is that when you group all of those vegging plants into one room like we're talking about, you do have the option for, you know, a tougher time keeping that room sterilized and clean because it's difficult to take it out of production to be able to get that room properly cleaned and sterilized versus flower rooms which are going to be getting, you know, cleaned and sterilized at the end of each round. So there's definite considerations to the veg room strategy. Implementing a really regimented IPM strategy to those rooms is really helpful and, you know, making sure that, like Jason said, you're taking proper advantage of it by segmenting that room in such a way that you can have a plan for the different plants in the room, where they are and what stages of life cycle they're in.

Jason [00:09:55]:
Yeah, I'm really glad you hit on that specifically, as far as rooting in from different medias, obviously everyone's starting with the clone plug. And when we are in veg, we have the option of obviously going right into our final media or in an intermitterary intermediate, a medium between our veggie and our flour in the media there. So most of the time we're talking about, so clone plug. And if we're going directly into our final media, a lot of times we're looking at a Hugo, maybe if we're in a, you know, multi tier, if we got shorter, smaller plants, anytime that, you know, obviously we grow bigger plants in a Hugo, we, it makes it a little bit more difficult to do crop steering. You know, we have to go a little bit more vegetative simply because we're not matching the size of the substrate to the transpiration needs of the plant. We're going to go have bigger dry bags than than we want as far as, you know, ideal crop ste goes to these plants. Then there's obviously the option of going into that medium sized substrate. Right.

Jason [00:11:05]:
So the advantage is when we do direct from clone plug to final media, we only have one rooting in process, right in. When we're running in, we kind of have to play with irrigation that's not necessarily ideal for plant growth where we're trying to optimize that penetration into the new substrate. And so it's a little bit tricky time. So the advantage obviously directly into the final media, a little bit less labor, a little bit less media cost possibly depending on what you're selecting. And then obviously the, you know, the only having to deal with running in process ones if we have an intermediary intermediate. Still can't figure it out. Medium substrate during our veg phase. Advantages there being that little easier to control our drybacks.

Jason [00:11:53]:
Right. So an example there would be, you know, 4x4x3 before we go on to slabs. This is a great solution for larger plants. Say we're growing, you know, five and a half, six foot plants in our flower rooms. Reason being there is we can accelerate our plant growth a little bit by having good control over our our water content during that it's a little bit easier to do rooting in. And occasionally I've run into some clients who are actually trying to go from a clone plug to a, you know, two gallon cocoa. You know, that's definitely going to be some of the more trickier times to control your irrigations. You know, if we are going into, let's say, you know, a 4x4 mesh bag before we go into a 2 gallon cocoa, it's going to give us a little bit more control.

Jason [00:12:39]:
A lot of it just comes down to logistics as well. Right. If we're growing very large plants, obviously having a 2 gallon in our bedrooms is going to limit how many plants that we can get into that red room make. It might make it a little bit harder to control humidity depending on your H vac abilities and then definitely going to make it more work in order to transfer those into your flower room. So that that's kind of also another logistics concern or thought when we're dealing with flowering in your own room, how big are your plants, what size media is, how many times do we want to run in?

Cian [00:13:17]:
I think those are all great points. And I mean there are things to really keep in the center of Your mind when you're planning out a fac that you're building out from the ground up because you have the opportunity to design that whatever way you want to when you're building it out and to maximize, you know, either one of those strategies, whether that's to, you know, route directly into your final substrate or to move towards an intermediary substrate. Like Jason was saying, you get the opportunity when you are first building that facility out to sort of plan it to be purpose and purpose built towards one of those two strategies. And you know, it really depends on a variety of factors like we've talked about and which one of those strategies ultimately fits you. You know, may come down to budgetary concerns, it may come down to logistics in your facility or you know, the size and shape the rooms that you have are and how easy it is for you to manage having a dedicated veg room or, you know, tight schedule changes, or it may be, you know, more advantageous to you and amount of labor that you have to be having a little bit more time in between the flower cycles by moving direct from, you know, clone to flower plant really depends on your specific situation. I know that's a lot of information, but I hope that helps answer the question a little bit.

Jason [00:14:48]:
Yeah. And maybe to break it down so that people can decide whether or investigate they're going one route or the other size the implant. Right. If we're going into a big plant, we've got a, you know, a slowly maturing plant, we're at a 70 day flower cycle, then you're probably going to end up wanting that intermediate size end up in a larger media. Right. If we're going to end up in a one gallon cocoa bag, let's just pop that clone plug right in there. Skip those steps. If you know we're going to have to be able to control a much larger plant, then yeah, let's, let's think about getting enough substrate to it.

Cian [00:15:24]:
I think that's a great way to structure the thought process there. And just remember, you know, outside of just that part of your grow, you also, when you're setting it up right off the start, have the opportunity to, you know, help, help make that a little bit more purpose built towards a lot of the different strategies that you might want to employ later down the line. And one of the things that Jason said a while back that really stuck with me that I really like, you know, bigger conduit than you think you need, there's those little logistical pieces and parts that will help you down the road. When and if you need to expand or expand the capability set of some machinery or equipment you have little, little things like that can go a long way.

Jason [00:16:17]:
Yeah. Especially on your dry room. Like, I don't see it quite as much anymore, but like, God, it seems like every client we help crop steer, they'd end up with mold in their dry room because they're just like, all right, well, we've got 20 more bud mass that we're hitting our dry rooms with. And we, you know, we either started slightly under spec or right at spec for the crop load that we were bringing in there. And she's like, well, I mean, that's. Those are good problems. It's still a problem. Yeah.

Cian [00:16:46]:
Yep. And no, that is very common. You know, I see a lot of people undershoot that dehumidification capacity, especially on dry rooms, just because they're used to certain yield. And like you said, once you start pushing the boundaries of that, all of a sudden you're going to find the limitations of that, that H vac system really quickly. All right, well, we've got a bunch of questions I think, to jump into here that are fun ones that I don't think we've covered yet. This one was one that caught my attention a little ways back in here. I love to see your response. Jason says, Daniel Rakowski gives us.

Cian [00:17:26]:
Hey, guys. I have a strain that has pre much built my reputation. I can't seem to make it not seed just a little bit. No matter how many runs I've done with it, something in the room always goes to seed. Is this genetic? Because I've ran at multiple strains in the same room just fine, but always end up with one or two seeding out. I have the environment locked in and VPD is set very well. Only the irrigation side of things is not 100%. As I'm a little bit too big of pots for plants that I'm growing.

Cian [00:17:59]:
Could that stress from stacking the EC too high be one of the reasons that I'm having issues going to seed?

Jason [00:18:07]:
Possibly. You know, I wish we had a question or a picture with this question. You know, there's kind of different stages of seed, right. And for. For most of the fully developed and reproductive seeds, you know, there's gonna be some, some amount of pollen, right. Some fertilization that goes on. You know, when we see bananas, we see some herming. Maybe we just even see some of those, those small, early developed soft, soft seeds inside, way deep towards the, towards the inside of that bud.

Jason [00:18:44]:
You know, if you're getting fully developed seeds, then there's something pretty significant going on. Right. If you already know that you're in too large a media and that's a concern, then, you know, see what you can do to just, you know, try to run with the, a little bit smaller media. This is also where I'd look at just kind of the general stressor factors. Right. Because obviously it sounds like you're looking at, you know, substrate conditions. It's pretty easy to overlook some things that end up, end up getting you. And that's why I love the data.

Jason [00:19:16]:
There's a lot of times I grew a cycle and it's like what, what happened here? And then we can go back and look at the data. Obviously data is only as strong as the sources of that information. Right. Many times I've worked through a system where a sensor wasn't necessarily giving me the right data. So typically when I'm thinking about where to begin diagnosing this, obviously environmental issues, my rock in just one sensor. What's the quality of the sensor in that room? Is it reliable? Have I validated or verified it or calibrated it, you know, recently? Environmental factors, I always like to talk about them first when I started discussion with a new client simply because one, they're, they're, they're unavoidable. They, they need to be in a pretty reasonably tight range in order to optimize your crop. Right.

Jason [00:20:12]:
Regardless of what we do with our irrigation, if our environment, our light and our CO2 parameters aren't pretty close to a good range, then doesn't matter what we do with our irrigation and our substrate or we're still going to be leaving some on the table to be completely optimized. Yes, stressors do cause reproductive ex, you know, growth in the plant. Right. So I mean, that's one of the reasons that sometimes we are leveraging the osmotic differential between the substrate and the plant. You know, raising our ECs so that we have less osmotic differential, try and induce the, the hormone balance in that plant to be more reproductive, obviously going too far. Then you know, we're going to see things like reduced plant growth, possibly seed development. You know, it might be one of those things where you just work on that genetic a little bit as well possibly, you know, do some crosses with itself to see if we can't get rid of the genetic propensity of that strain to build those, those seeds or those seed pockets that you're talking about. So that's where I'd go.

Jason [00:21:24]:
It wasn't necessarily a linear answer, right. It's just let's re examine if we do think it is a stressor, is it one that's not known of? Is it one that we know we're doing, that we're pushing too far or you know, is it possibly just something that this is going to happen with this specific cut? Let's, let's try and get it out of the genetic, get it out of the breeding of that strain.

Cian [00:21:48]:
I love your answer though, honestly, because it's kind of the same two boiled down things that my mind came to which was, you know, what's the genetics predisposition to create seed? You know, how often are you seeing that? Is it happening in multiple other facilities with different conditions? And you know, if so you can start to come to the at least partial conclusion or feel like you have a good, a good direction in trying to solve for that genetic predisposition. Kind of what Jason was saying by, you know, cross breeding it back in with itself to try and help eliminate its predisposition to do that. The other, you know, big thing being if a plant does have some genetic predisposition to go to seed, hitting really high EC levels in the substrate can definitely be one of those stressors that push you a little further across that line than you wanted to go. And you know, the other thing to take into consideration, you know, are you getting any potential pollen into the rumor greenhouse somehow? So a bunch of different factors there to consider when you're looking at those genetics for going to seed. Looks like we had one more from Daniel Rakowski real quick. A little bit of a different subject, but since he put two in right at the same time, we'll give him another one here. He says, hey guys, love the arroyo crop steering section in the CCI black book. I'm learning so much.

Cian [00:23:24]:
My question is regarding resetting a room for another run. What chemicals would you recommend after cleaning the room to disinfect and reset it? It'd be a bonus if this doesn't require a wipe down. For me.

Jason [00:23:39]:
I personally, I like chlorine dioxide fumigation. It's probably one of the easier and maybe even more aggressive ways to get it done. You'll want to protect any of the equipment that you have in there to some degree. Obviously if you have anything that does like to corrode, some chlorine dioxide fume is going to make it corrode faster. And now it's time to get new hardware. So do think about obviously that there are some less aggressive ways, you know, when we, when we think about, you know, yeah, wipe downs, not ideal. I like pressure washers personally. You know, if you do feel like you need to put some type of sanitizing chemical or agent, a lot of pressure washers just have a dilution bin on them so you can just fill that bad boy up at the dilution that you need to spray things down with.

Jason [00:24:33]:
But for me, it's mostly, you know, the pressure washers, debris removal, and keeping things nice and shiny and clean. So those are the specific ones that are my favorite. There's lots of good options out there, though, so don't, don't take that as, you know, as the best necessarily.

Cian [00:24:52]:
I mean, I'll be honest. I'm right there with you, though. The chlorine dioxide is my favorite sanitization method by far and away. I'm also a big fan every once in a while, especially if you got hps of, you know, kicking the temperature up, baking the room a little bit, that can definitely be another one of those great ways to help reduce, you know, potential vectors for disease in your room. And both don't require you to wipe down your walls. I will say, when you skip too many rounds wiping down your walls, it does look a little suspect. When you walk into those rooms, you're like, why? Why are the walls strange colors? So for what it's worth, little presentation goes a long ways.

Jason [00:25:40]:
Bake it or freeze it up here in the northwest. Two weeks ago we were down at negative eight. And tell you what, there's not much that's going to survive in there if you turn the heaters off in a greenhouse for a couple of days or even a few hours, possibly.

Cian [00:25:58]:
That is a great point, Jason. Actually, next time I'm in a nice big cold swing, I might just leave the door open for a little while. Well, let's jump on to another one in here. I had another one that was kind of interesting to me a little further down. It was from one of our viewers a while back here, but thought it was a fun question that kind of went along with our first one this morning about rehear to this afternoon about rooting. This comes from burn tires, burned trees, and he's asking, do you guys think it's better to let clones root longer than plug or plug as soon as you see roots starting to pop out of the bottom of the cube?

Jason [00:26:41]:
Yeah, great question again. I wish there was the exact right answer here. I think the right answer is how big a meteor are you going into? So, yeah, to tie it back to where we're at obviously if I'm going from a clone plug to a 4x4 where I still have quite a bit of control over my water content. And again, round plug into a round hole hole, that's going to make a big difference as well. You know, even if, if we plug that when the hairs just start popping, we're going to see enough hydraulic continuity connectivity between that 4x4 and that clone plug to do a good job. Now let's say I'm going from a clone plug into maybe I don't have a choice, but I'm going into a two gallon cocoa. You know, I kind of took it to the far side here. I'm going to definitely want a little bit more amount of maturity on there.

Jason [00:27:34]:
You know, when we're thinking of. All right, if I have, if I don't have good hydraulic connectivity conductance between my new substrate and my clone plug, then the more exposed root that is there, the better chance that those root hairs are going to find water, seek out the new media and really take hold.

Cian [00:27:56]:
I think that's a good way to judge it. How big of a plant are you trying to grow and what media are you going into? Because a lot of times, like you said, if you're going straight into that 4x4, that next intermediate media, you should be able to go in there with, you know, you don't have to have finger length roots coming out of the bottom of your clone plug to be able to have that successfully root in on your, your 4x4. Meanwhile, you know, going into a much bigger media like Jason said, that may well help you root in faster and establish, you know, a healthier root system in that larger substrate if that's what you, you got to work with. Not necessarily an ideal situation going into that two gallon, but you know, work with what you got.

Jason [00:28:44]:
Yeah, maybe we'll just hit some up, hit up some general tips of ways to help rooting in happen quickly. You know, we hit, we just hit the first one with that question there. Having good levels of dissolved oxygen absolutely necessary. Right. Anytime that we see some amount of discoloration in those roots, you are not growing as quickly as you could. You don't have the health of dissolved oxygen in there. Those things should be pearly white. They should be whiter than your teeth, basically.

Jason [00:29:13]:
So good levels, dissolved oxygen, making sure we don't hit water stagnantation in any of our medias. And so when we're thinking about that, that means we need some amount of fresh oxygen again and nutrients provided by an Irrigation. And that's where we were talking about that rooting in process being a little bit of a challeng. Right? Cause if I'm going from a clone plug to a two gallon cocoa pot, I'm going to have a hell of a time doing that rooting in process simply because I don't. It's easier for me. The balance is going to be much harder to achieve perfectly where I not hitting root stagnation. But I am getting some amount of dryback so I can provide irrigations. And so it really kind of comes down to those processes and then obviously appropriate light levels.

Jason [00:30:01]:
Environment, environment, environment, environment.

Cian [00:30:04]:
I think that's a great, great set of instructions to think about how to get your clones to root in a little bit more quickly. One of the things that I always think about too is consistency and health of the cuttings from the plant. Because I see time and time again, you know, people will contact me and talk about, you know, they've got some varietals that are or some cultivars that are not rooting in as quickly as others. And you know, that may well be a genetic predisposition for it to root in a little bit less quickly. But one thing I see really commonly too is people taking poor quality cuts that have less pith in the stem. And that's a really avoidable product or problem to have that you can cross off the list by just trying to monitor the quality and consistency of the cuts you're taking from the mom stock.

Jason [00:31:03]:
Yeah, great point. You know, it's interesting because cloning is one of those processes where sure you're timing it by how many clones did you cut in an hour. But the reality is that short amount of time is never going to make up the cost of a low quality cut. So the absolute first place to start when you're starting or trying to improve a facility's consistency, when you're trying to improve plant uniformity, is making sure are we detailed, are we clean? Are we doing what Cian Says as far as, you know, making sure those cuts are healthy.

Cian [00:31:45]:
Well, we have another question that came in from our friends here at North Fork Farms. Not quite on the clone side of things, but ties in with our talk about, you know, is it cleanly, is it clean? Are you guys being able to provide the environment that those plants need and want? They ask. Hey guys, can we talk about the western flower thrip? Can't seem to beat these guys. Tried pyrethrins and quadruple strength spinosad. Heard lots of growers are Having similar issues with this level of, of persistence, shall we say with the western flower thrip.

Jason [00:32:25]:
Yeah. You know, and I think we've, I kind of do my three step process really when we think about dealing with bugs. And that is obviously plant health, you know, facility cleanliness, probably the first one, plant health's the next one. You know, I, I not that it's going to fix it. You know, once we have that infestation. Yeah, you're, you're talking about trying to, to solve it really. Ideally, you know, the best thing that we can do is next round think about what are ways that we can help prevent this. Because as you are experiencing it's pretty much almost impossible or way more difficult to eradicate it after an infestation.

Jason [00:33:08]:
Much more energy goes into that than it does into helping reduce the chances of an infestation or the intensity of an infestation. So you know, obviously cleanliness of the facility, doing things that we talked about during a room flip, plant health, you know, making sure that anytime that you know, we're, we're getting significant amounts of dead material or old plant material that we are doing a, a D leaf or just periodically going up in there and cleaning it. Unhealthy plant material is the, the main food for this stuff. They would way rather chomp on some soggy cells, you know, something that, that's a little bit easier for them to feast on than good, good healthy plants. You know, I like a little bit of silica additive in early fl. The, the cell wall density and thickness in our plants and it helps just provide a natural defense. Yeah, it's spin aside and pyrethrins are usually pretty good. Obviously other options that you have there, you know, doing some type of predator on them as well.

Cian [00:34:21]:
Yeah, I was going to mention predator bugs. The other thing that I was thinking of too is the facilities that I've seen have major issues with thrips in the last year or two and there have been quite a few have had the most success by a. If they haven't gotten into your mom's yet, religiously protect the health and the continuity of your genetics and then try to systematically clean your facility from there. And I've had, you know, a lot of people tell me that that's a painstaking yet effective way to deal with it so long as it hasn't gotten into your current mom stock. And unfortunately like Jason said, you know, pyrethrins are normally pretty effective. Spinosad's pretty effective by and large. So you know, it's It's a difficult proposition to be able to make sure that you're actually effective in getting rid of those thrips. Just because they can be a whole lot more difficult to, like Jason said, get rid of than prevent with good practices in the first place, knowing that you have them.

Cian [00:35:45]:
Like I said, you know, pay close attention to just, you know, how closely you're able to watch your mom room and your stock there. To be able to try and protect against future generations in rooms moving that direction. Along with whatever in your facility is currently experiencing the thrips infestation. Got one from a friend that's been posting in. His handle is chief of Kiev. Hey, guys. Loving the show as always. Question for the team.

Cian [00:36:17]:
Do you know if there are any negative effects we might see if we take our clone cuts off of our plants during week one of stretch and flower? We've been doing this for a while and getting decent results with no major issues. But with that said, you guys tend to have the expert opinion. I think we've heard a similar one before, but always worth touching on.

Jason [00:36:38]:
Yeah, I mean, if it's done well, it's a really great option to save some facility resources. Get yourself another flower room instead of a veg or. Yeah, you know, mom's room. Excuse me. Downsides of that, just liability, you know, the detriment of screwing something up with whether, you know, labeling or quantities or any of that stuff. You know, plant health in the. In that room room. You know, it's just a little bit harder, I guess, is all I'm saying, to do it right.

Jason [00:37:12]:
No downsides.

Cian [00:37:15]:
I'd agree. I'd say, you know, the times where I have seen downsides occur. Generally speaking, timing is your biggest Achilles heel. You know, if you are not paying attention to just how far into your flower cycle you're getting, then you're in reveg territory, which is nobody's favorite place to be with a. With a cultivar. So watch your timing carefully. But like Jason said, if it's done properly and done well, I mean, it can be a great way to, you know, decrease some of your resource consumption around your facility in certain ways. It can also be a great way to, you know, if you don't have mom stock of those genetics ready to go, be able to get some, you know, off of some currently growing cultivars.

Cian [00:38:00]:
So, you know, never be afraid to do it. But do pay attention to that timeline because if you're starting to produce bud sites, you potentially just a little too far along there. Well, I want to Jump on to another one here that we had. Here it is. Hey, you guys think about starting to cut the lights down and cut the irrigations a week before or sorry, not cut them down, move them up. Build your lights and irrigations a week before flip. I'm having the issue that the side branches are going wild and making a bunch of branches which is very time consuming when big leafing. My plan of action is to kind of go through and cut a bunch before veg.

Cian [00:38:53]:
I think he's actually talking about potentially de leafing practice or like a cutting out now that I'm reading the question a little bit more thoroughly. So let's go with that a little bit. My plan of action is to cut. Let's assume plant matter veg week one and start bulking one week before flipping. I wanted to see what your guys opinion is on going a little bit deeper in the D leafing. Yep. So it is D leafing so that I can not spend any time doing more of it later on in the round. We do 2 gallon cocoa perlite 7030.

Jason [00:39:30]:
I I usually don't need to do a significant amount of deleting and veg if I am usually it's a signifier that I could change some environmental parameters to try and help reduce how, how leggy and stretchy these plants are getting. So it, you know, it shouldn't necessarily take a lot as far as, you know, topping. Anytime that I'm removing, you know, stems or plant material that is more significant than lower leaves, I try to avoid that. Personally I spent energy, time, money, nutrients, all that stuff into growing biomass. I try to avoid cutting it off as far as, you know, taking some of that leafy matter going into flowers. It's really one of the first times that I prefer to do it. But maybe, maybe my veg plants are smaller than he's used to.

Cian [00:40:27]:
Yeah, I was gonna say I tend to try and not have quite as aggressive of a strategy especially since starting to move towards under canopy lighting. Um, I just don't have to take as much plant matter away from the bases and stems as I used to. So I try to really kind of avoid pulling too hard on it. Um, for a long time though that was definitely a pretty effective strategy that a lot of people employed to try and train their plan plants into the growing space that they had. I've definitely seen people over the years be pretty aggressive with early like de vegetation practices that have been pretty successful. I always kind of wonder though, you know, with the heavier practices whether or not you're leaving a little bit of money on the table when you take that much of the plant matter so early on. On.

Jason [00:41:22]:
Yeah. And you know, for me, the way I judge how much plant matter I need to take off is typically on how. What's the minimum amount necessary to maintain light levels and canopy uniformity? Um, you know, deleving is costly. If you're doing it yourself, it's probably not that much fun and just, I guess, depending on who you are. Um, but yeah, you know, doing it at scale can take a significant amount of time.

Cian [00:41:54]:
Absolutely agree. You know, try to touch the plant as. As infrequently as possible.

Jason [00:42:01]:
Only when you want to.

Cian [00:42:02]:
Oh, yeah, exactly. And always wear gloves. Got another live question came in here from Keaton P. Says, what's y'all's take on no lights for the last 24 hours or even 48 hours to increase and terpene production? I've seen it mostly with resin farmers, but I was curious on what your take would be.

Jason [00:42:25]:
I mean, sure, if you want to. I. I just don't necessarily prefer it myself. You know, maybe on my harvest day. Won't turn the lights on. Mostly just for human comfort in there, you know. Same thing with irrigation, man. I just won't irrigate the last, you know, the actual harvest day.

Jason [00:42:45]:
Up until then, I like to keep it running. You know, if. If you do have some anecdotal or even scientific evidence that says, yeah, by, by cutting it out we see some type of chemical or morphological improvement, then yeah, keep doing it. Personally, I haven't had that experience. And so that's how I roll.

Cian [00:43:07]:
I would say I'm in the same boat there. I have. I haven't seen any hard evidence that that says that that produces any quality that I'm after in my final product. I've also, you know, I've always been a little skeptical when I've heard people talk about, you know, cutting your lights off. Especially up to 48 hours, you know, before you're actually harvesting your product, you're going to have a hard time getting your plants to transpire properly. First of all, when you kill your light source and you don't have normal day and night cycle through that time. So you're going to have to watch how much you're actually, you know, feeding and irrigating your plants through that period of time really, really carefully. And then the other thing that, you know, you want to consider there is photosynthesis is a.

Cian [00:44:02]:
It needs light to happen. So at the end of the day, you know, you Cut off your light source. I don't necessarily personally as though ending its photosynthetic processes are allowing it to necessarily finish in a way that produces, you know, better taste or terpene profile or a color, for example, that might sell for more money. Nothing that I've seen personally at least. So to what Jason said there, if you have any anecdotal evidence or if you've got anything that you'd like to share with us that's a little more concrete from runs you've done that, you know, shows that that's working better. Um, definitely. But if, if just kind of something that people have suggested, I would say, you know, take into consideration what you might be leaving on the table. Doing that to the plants rather than allowing them to finish properly.

Jason [00:44:53]:
Yeah. You know, one of the things that you might consider if you're doing a side by side trial as well is, you know, rather than comparing it, you know, lights off versus you know, lights on for the last two days, whatever, compare it with lights off versus chopping two days early. Right. Because when we think about, all right, how long is that that flower phase in? Days, really? The plant's counting them by how many micro moles it gets, how much light it gets, how often does it get a photosynthesize. Right. So if, you know, if we are seeing a higher quality out of running two days with lights off versus cutting it, you know, two days early. Two days early. Hopefully you guys understand what I'm trying to say here then.

Jason [00:45:34]:
Cool.

Cian [00:45:37]:
I think that's a pretty astute observation. You know, if you need to just couple days early, why not instead of trying to leave it like that? All right, I have another one in here. We'll finish this out for the day. I think this one's from our friend Mighty Mouse. He's a regular commenter in here. How long does it take for plants to respond to aggressive drybacks? My levels dip just a little bit below 20% VWC after the lights first come on, before irrigation hits. But it's only for about an hour or so. Is that enough to send generative cues to my plants or is it too much?

Jason [00:46:22]:
Yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't worry about being down there with cocoa. Obviously, you know, if we're trying to push extremely generative. Yeah, we get down under 20%. You know, that's at the point where we actually are starting to send a little bit of drought signals to the plant. So when we think about, all right, how does the plant know, how does it know anything about water Right. It doesn't know water content. It's. It knows how much vacuum does its roots have to apply in order to pull water out of that substrate.

Jason [00:46:53]:
And when we're working with Coco, we can talk about Rockwool here in a minute too, if we want. But assuming questions related to coco, because it makes it a lot more fun to answer when we look at a curve of matric potential, which is the amount of vacuum the roots have to apply to get water out of there versus volumetric water content in coco or you know, these graphs are going to change just a little bit when we're over with a perlite blend or any type of specific cocoa versus another. But if we generalize, cocoa actually has a little bit of an elbow. And that elbow, typically we see a matric potential starts to be present between about 15 and 25%. You know, usually I think about, all right, when I hit 15% water content that that plant is getting a signal from the amount of water content in there that it's, it's getting to the point where it actually feel the vacuum increase. Right. So, and forgive me, I didn't bring my laptop today, but let's go vwc. Nope, vwc.

Jason [00:48:10]:
And then I think this is going to be negative. Kpa. Kpa, Right. I don't know if my scaling is going to be very good here, but let's see. Yeah, let's get a better scale.

Cian [00:48:30]:
Let's go like this.

Jason [00:48:34]:
There we go. All right, so jumping into the fun soil sciences of this stuff and hydroponic growing. You know, one of the reasons hydroponic growing's nice is because most of the time we're, we can fluctuate EC levels to play with osmotic differential to start queuing this plant. Now when we get down to say you know, under 20%, that's where this elbow starts to kick in with Coco. And like I said, this is kind of a rough drawing. Um, but basically what's happening is, you know, anywhere in, ah, we'll use some other, anywhere in this section. The, the vacuum that has to be applied by these plants is, is insignificant to pull water out of hydroponic media like cocoa. Right.

Jason [00:49:26]:
It really can't tell the difference in this range of, of necessary vacuum of matrix potential. Now let's say in this range here we can see, all right, when we drop below say 20% water content or down to 15% water content, that the steepness of the curve changes a lot. Right. So let's say we went from, you know, 20% to 15% we can see that actually represents a much more significant difference in necessary vacuum. Right. And so even though here, you know, our level of vacuum isn't changing much, say between 20 and, you know, 80% water content. If your cocoa can hold that, if it only holds 45, then we're talking between 20 and 45. Yeah.

Jason [00:50:18]:
So that's kind of explaining. All right. Well, sure. When you get down there for an hour, it's probably not doing much. If we get down there, say we hit 10% for three hours, you're definitely going to be sending, you know, some type of. Of drought response to this plant.

Cian [00:50:37]:
I think that's a more scientific way than I've ever seen it explained to most people. But, yeah, that's the, the principle of the concept there is that the lower you get in volumetric water content, the more vacuum that plant has to apply to the root system to be able to pull water up through. And that is the stress, stress essentially that you are putting on the plant. And the further along that trend line that Jason was showing you. There you go. The further you've increased the stress on that plant. And that's what we're using to try and push it towards the reproductive life cycle change. And I think, you know, realistically, 20%, assuming, you know, coconut.

Jason [00:51:27]:
Oh, you.

Cian [00:51:27]:
Sounds perfect. Sounds like you're right on point with that.

Jason [00:51:31]:
Yeah. Anyone who's seen very many episodes of this, know I'm always very careful around the word stress because I think a lot of times it's misused. Right. Uh, you know, as far as when I'm looking at data points, it's. It's gonna be very difficult to talk about what is stress. When we are assessing stress, the plant is the only thing that can assess what stress is, is. Right. And if we are seeing temporary wilting point, probably just starting to get in there, we're seeing permanent wilting point.

Jason [00:52:05]:
Yeah. Some parameter has caused, you know, a significant event to have. Have some damage. Right. So that's, that can be used a little bit for, you know, manipulating plant growth. Temporary wilting point is sometimes an effective way of increasing chemical. Chemical potencies of, of some stuff. Sometimes you can also do it at the right time in order to, to get a little bit higher metabolism in the plant that's kind of, you know, starting to get at the edge of crop steering, where it's like, all right, you know, we're using the plant to.

Jason [00:52:38]:
Or we're using crop steering just to manipulate the variables to swing hormone balances and, and swing morphology and plant growth. When you start planting around with, you know, significant stressors, plants, you know, elements that cause that plant stress visually, then. Then you're. You're pushing the edge. And it can be, it can be helpful in certain strains and certain amounts of application and intensity, and sometimes it can be detrimental. So.

Cian [00:53:10]:
I think that's a really good thing to kind of point out is that there is a big difference between, you know, visual stress symbols that the plant showing you that it is stressed out, like temporary wilting point, when you're getting into that. And you know what we talk about when we say, you know, creating a stressful environment for the root zone by kind of edging it along that vacuum curve that you were talking about, because there's definitely a difference there. You know, creating an environment, the root system is pulling harder. Vacuum in there can be, just like you said, something that helps to really move our plants in the right direction or, you know, if you are really getting into that temporary wilting point, you know, there are some cultivars out there that can really have positive beneficial effects from that. However, I would say it's a limited list and, you know, marginal effects the further you get along that curve as you start to get further into temporary wilting.

Jason [00:54:22]:
Yeah. And if we want to talk about the coco side of this, to break it down simply, if you're spending much time that low in Rockwool, you know, you're probably wasting Rockwool, you're going to have some, some real challenges getting back up to resaturation. The only time that, you know, I, I'm comfortable spending much, many hours under, say, 30%, 35% Rockwell is right towards the end, or it's like I'm throwing this Rockwell out anyways. I can't get my water capacity up, not, not the end of the world. Now if I'm in week three in a Hugo and I keep hitting 10% water content, it's going to be a challenge to, to. To wrap up some of those generative cues in the plant simply because I'm going to have to irrigate at least all hours and possibly into the dark.

Cian [00:55:11]:
Hours just to be able to keep it wet. Yeah, I mean, I talk to people constantly about that. You know, if you're dumping that field capacity on your. On your Rockwool early on, like you said, that's going to be a long, painful road of trying to keep enough water moving through that substrate that you're able to just, you know, allow it to survive every day. You're not really going to be able to steer it towards a more successful outcome at that point. So you know, when we do say 20%, definitely realize we are talking about cocoa because we don't necessarily want to see spend all that much time down in that range in in Rockwell substrates. Well, I think it's probably about time for us to wrap up for the day everybody. Thank everyone for tuning in today.

Cian [00:56:01]:
We as always love all the cultivation questions. Guys, keep the live questions coming. Drop them in anytime in the AROYA app. Email us@salesrooya IO DM us via Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. We want to hear from you guys. Use this QR code here today to download a free copy of that CCI book. It's a great resource for anyone learning how crop steering works or to just be able to reference in your grow day to day. As I said earlier, Seth and I are going to be at a connected event tonight in Sacramento sponsored by Power House.

Cian [00:56:39]:
People with great shirt Jason's got on today and we'll be down there. So come out if you're able to come down and meet us. There's going to be a bunch of wonderful educational talks from experts in the field and thank everyone that came in and tuned in live today. Want to make sure you guys keep coming in? Please leave us reviews on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, wherever you're listening to the podcast and if you'd like to have specific topics come up, please drop them into the comments and our feed. Thanks everybody and we'll see you guys all on episode 134.