Cian [00:00:05]:
All right. Hi, everyone. Welcome to AROYA Office hours live, episode 142. This is a chance for all of you, whether you're Aurora customers or whether you're curious or just super into growing and existing in this exciting industry, to share your stories and get all your burning cultivation questions answered. My name is Cian and I'll be your host. For today's discussion, we're joined by our director of applied technology, Jason Van Leuven. And we're going to be talking about late flower transition products, specifically those final two weeks when you want to reduce nitrogen and chloride levels while maintaining calories, calcium. So I thought we'd kick today's discussion off with a question about what do we mean by ripening? Exactly.

Cian [00:00:39]:
So we can kind of define the term a little bit and get into what it is that we're looking for when we talk about ripening. Jason, you want to kick us off a little bit in this department?

Jason Van Leuven [00:00:49]:
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, anytime we're kind of following our crop steering recipe or our ideas, you know, historically we're thinking about cannabis for running, you know, veg. We're getting plants built and infrastructure. Leaves, stock, stems, root mass, you know, getting them prepped up for the flower phase. Right. So it's like, okay, well, here's these two stages of the plant lifestyle cycle. And really to optimize each of those, we need to break it down a little bit farther. Right.

Jason Van Leuven [00:01:20]:
You know, if we're in a nine, nine week flower cycle, there's a lot of opportunity to make changes. And so breaking that down into different segments, obviously early on we might be doing some rooting in or some stacking. We might be trying to combat stretch and then we'll do some bulking later, maybe weeks, four or five, six. And then that last segment, I like to call it ripening. And so just applying some terminology to that helps us in the industry discuss some of the strategies to achieve better results there. And you know, ripening is kind of, it's analogous with our goal there. The things that we're doing there, trying to build out the, you know, the best chemical profile in this plant. You know, ideally, you know, during, through the bulking stages, we've gotten to a large amount of mass and now we're trying to kind of get the final amounts of maturation.

Jason Van Leuven [00:02:21]:
Sure. You know, we'll continue to add some flower mass there in the last, you know, 10 days, two weeks is typically what, what I shoot for. Ripening, some strains need a little bit longer, you know, especially if it's a Strain that is typically like a 10 week strain, 11 week strain, then we may need to do ripening longer just to encourage that plant to, to come to full cyan essence. Right. And so when we're talking about ripening, we're thinking about what, what's the chemical profile of this plant, what's our, our color look like? A lot of it. Getting the best quality out of, out of the work that we've done. And so by applying specific environmental irrigations and actually some nutrient strategies in here, we can help that plant fully express its genetic potential or at least to the best of the constraints that we're working within.

Cian [00:03:22]:
I think that's a great explanation and it also kind of leans into why it's so important to have some clear definition around these different life cycle stages so that we can start to have clear ways to communicate with each other about, you know, what exactly we're seeing, what we're trying to accomplish, what levers we're pulling during that transition out of bulking to our ripening, if you follow that terminology. And it also helps us kind of, you know, establish a vernacular to teach others. So as other people get into this industry, we're able to have clear defined terms to help them learn what it is we're talking about. When we are looking at finished product, flower or flour, that's starting to transition into that. It also helps, you know, to develop a terminology around what those characteristics that we're looking for when flower is actually maturing to its ripe stage, where you're going to start harvesting. And so there's a few things in that department as well that are good to touch on. You know, some of the key visual indicators that we look at when we're talking about what cannabis is going to be, when we talk about what cultivars are going to look like or what their defining characteristics are for the date of harvest. You know, some of the key things we're looking at are like trichome development and changes in the pistols.

Cian [00:04:57]:
We're also looking at a little bit of leaf color progression. So that's, you know, looking at that anthocyanin response in the plant and seeing that color build and mature. And we're also kind of looking for a morphological change in the plant where as the humidities are kept stable and low throughout those last couple of weeks, we're looking for the bud to harden a little bit as well. So there's a few different things that are key to understand about those individual parts and pieces. Right. So trichrome development, for example, we're looking to harvest not at a stage where the trichomes are fully clear, but also not at a stage where they have become, you know, fully dark amber. We're looking for a nice point in the middle there where the, the flavor profiles are at their, their peak, so to speak. And we're also kind of looking for like a little bit of a cloudiness to those trichomes.

Cian [00:06:00]:
Right. We don't want them to necessarily be like a clear visual sight through the trichrome. If you look at that with a loop. Another thing is, you know, keep a loop, little 60x jewelers magnifier to be able to walk through your facility to take a look at those towards those last two weeks so that you can track the changes day to day and look at, you know, those last couple weeks. Okay. Today it's, you know, the start of, you know, week eight. And I'm looking at, you know, pretty clear trichromes and no milkiness to them. And it looks like maybe my color is not quite fully developed in every single part of the bud structure that I want it to be or maybe isn't as deep through some parts of the canopy as I want it to be.

Cian [00:06:49]:
We're looking to track the changes from there up to the point where you're harvesting and notice day by day, you know, the changes in what you're seeing with those trichrome colors and with the, the look of the bud as well, how much color it has and how that structure looks to be hardening.

Jason Van Leuven [00:07:10]:
Yeah, and maybe, maybe our producer Chris will help me get some screen share on here just to, for some visuals about what Chris or CN's talking about here. Obviously most of us are pretty familiar with this and it's so nice to have kind of a side by side comparison of some of these. And honestly, in this, this amber trichome one, I would consider this a pretty early stage in amber trichome because we only see like maybe two or so. Let's see if we got some other references to look at. Yeah, there you go. There's some very amber to almost red and or beyond, you know, and sometimes there's different optimal harvesting points depending on what you're doing with this flower as well. You know, seeing. Talked about using a loop for, for looking at this stuff.

Jason Van Leuven [00:08:05]:
I also really like to use like a USB microscope just because it makes it really easy to, to document or it helps, it helps us document that type of stuff. And anytime I'm working with a new strain especially, I'll try to get an idea you know, say within five days of when I plan to harvest. What are those trichomes looking like? Get those stored somewhere in a file system or any other type of digital journaling application that you have. And then when we go to harvest the next cycle, we can also start to optimize which sections we're harvesting first. So we had a pretty small harvesting team when I was cultivating, and it usually took us two to three days to pull a whole room down. You know, large greenhouse type application. And so it was really helpful to know where we wanted to start with. How could we optimize each of those based on that two to three days.

Jason Van Leuven [00:09:03]:
And when we are ripening, those two, three days can actually make a fairly significant difference in the opacity or the coloring of those trichomes as well. You know, it's coming to a finish. And that can happen fairly quickly depending on how hard we're pushing some of our ripening strategies.

Cian [00:09:28]:
I think that that's a. Another great point. Another thing I want to kind of touch on is, you know, pistol development. So as these plants go through their natural change towards senescence, they are going to be, you know, decreasing their. The new pistols that you see appearing on the bud. So ideally what we're looking for is the pistols that are there to be maturing and for them to be kind of moving along in a color progression as well. Right. So when they're still actively growing, pistols are generally white, kind of cream colored, and when they start to mature a little bit, you know, more towards the end of the life cycle, you're going to see a little bit more of an orange or brown color to them, indicating that, you know, approaching readiness to harvest.

Cian [00:10:22]:
And then curled or receded pistols is going to be that final maturation stage where they start to really kind of make a change towards senescence. Again, you know, this is one of those things that's highly cultivar dependent as well. So like Jason said at the start there, we can see, you know, some of these cultivars approach senescence, you know, on their own accord at day 63, reliably, like clockwork. Some of the others are going to be, you know, 70 and 80 days. And whether or not that's commercially viable for you is, you know, if you're able to do that right now, more power to you. I know a lot of people, they're, you know, stepping away largely from those longer run strains just to be able to maximize the efficiency and output in their facilities. One of the things to note about longer run strains is That I see a lot of detrimental results when people try to force a flower that needs 70 days to finish in 63 by applying some really, you know, harsh measures those last few weeks or potentially starting their fade and pulling out their nitrogen all the way too early. So it's also worth noting that, you know, going too hard too fast when trying to push plants towards senescence in a timeline that's not really natural to them can also have some ill effects that end up costing you yield and quality in the long run.

Jason Van Leuven [00:11:47]:
Great point. And you know, earlier as you brought up lots of different characteristics that we're shooting for. So looking at trichomes, pistol coloration, formation, shape, bud shape, looking at, you know, bud color as well, it's kind of fun. Here, I'll, I'll share another one that kind of just came up. I love, I love using resources and everything out there to help illustrate this stuff. And this is actually a question that I've encountered quite a few times out there is, you know, here's a good picture. I can zoom in on it too. That's the question here was why some buds keep making new pistols.

Jason Van Leuven [00:12:31]:
Right. And you know, there's kind of some extremes on this, right. Basically when we see this, that's sometimes also going to be indicating that a, of piece, a plant might begin to foxtail as well. Right. So our ripening strategies are typically to reduce how exaggerated some of that growth can, can happen. And you know, by manipulating nutrients, by manipulating irrigations and environment, sometimes we can control certain genetics that have a tendency to do this. I used to grow a pineapple that, I don't know, we didn't, we never figured it out. Even if when we tried some of the best ripening strategies that we knew at the, we were always getting a little bit of new growth at the end.

Jason Van Leuven [00:13:18]:
So in this picture we've got obviously those dark orange pistols that would be like indicating, hey, this plant is ripe and then new growth at the tips of all of those with fairly white or light, light green expression. And so when we're shooting for a really high quality bud, it's nice to have some consistency across those pistols. When we run into a plant like this, for example, we kind of have to analyze and think about, well, you know, some of this stuff is going to be maybe a little bit over mature and maybe a little bit under mature and how do we help that plant finish all of its parts at the same time. And a lot of growers have experienced this also with within the vertical aspect of the canopy. So a lot of times our, our lower buds just don't become ripe. And a lot of times that, that ends up as maybe some of the, the lar product or a lower quality product. And obviously things like under canopy lighting, you know, better canopy uniformity have helped create more, more a buds out of a situation like that. Same kind of strategy with ripening, right.

Jason Van Leuven [00:14:32]:
How do we apply some of the controls that we have in order to produce the best product as possible?

Cian [00:14:43]:
I agree with all of that. I also kind of want to add in that, you know, there's, there's a whole bunch of things out there that I hear from time to time that we're not shooting for. When you're going through ripening, right, plants that start to yellow, that's generally just a sign of nutrient deficiency. Something's, you know, not going very well in your plant. When you start to see that that's yellowing of some leaves down at the bottom of the plant as you start. Senescence can be natural, but yellowing of a large amount of the leaf mass is genuine, a cause for concern, not a, a moment to be excited that that plant is pushing towards senescence, necessarily. Dry, crispy sugar leaves, that's generally a sign that you have done something wrong and made your plant a little unhappy there. Sorry to anthropomorphize the, the plants a little bit, but something has gone wrong.

Cian [00:15:40]:
And that is not an indicator of ripeness, but generally an indicator that something has adversely affected the finished product there. Whether that's going to be yield or quality, hard to say, but something is genuine, generally not going to have gone to its potential in that situation. Another thing that is a common occurrence is that people tend to mistake the return to a somewhat generative form of irrigation steering as a, a moment to kind of return to the type of intense drybacks that they were seeing right at the start of their generative steering. And that can also lead to situations where you see wilting. Wilting is not encouraged during those final weeks, so. Nor ever. But you know, it's, it's not more okay during those final weeks as a result of returning to that generative steering strategy than it was earlier on in your round.

Jason Van Leuven [00:16:48]:
Yeah, that's a great point. Maybe, you know, maybe we should always think about ripening not necessarily as accelerating the death of the plant, but as far as optimizing the best qualities of the plant before it's reached term. And I think one of those would be the old tradition of pushing ro water. You know, the better we can maintain the health of this plant until it is cut. The. But more likely we are to have good quality bud. Anytime that the plant's health is jeopardized, we're gonna be more susceptible to molds and mildews. You know, we're actually going to probably lose some amount of quality and that's really not the goal.

Jason Van Leuven [00:17:31]:
You know, there's kind of a fine line there as well because we are playing with some levers that may not necessarily, you know, be optimal for plant growth, but, but we're kind of past that point in, in the, the flower cycle where we're trying to optimize the character of the, the bud. Right. The flowers themselves. And in historical or traditional agricultures trades, there's a lot of tactics that have been used in, in different industries. For wine grapes, for example, they do have specific types of irrigation programmed in towards the end of the cycle in order to get a different flavor profile out of those grapes. They call it ripening as well. That's one reason I really like the terminology ripening when we're bringing across because you can work with scientists, you can work with agronomists from other industries as well and start to kind of combine knowledge and some of the strategies that have been in practice for decades.

Cian [00:18:37]:
I agree. I think that's one of the reasons I'm such a terminology stickler is also because it lets you have a wider range of conversations with people that are outside just the cannabis industry to help broaden your own knowledge base. And I mean, some of the most interesting conversations that I've had with people have been, you know, viticulturists or people running olive orchards of all things. So, you know, you never know who you're going to talk to. And having some terminology in your day to day vernacular that is coming from the industrial agriculture sector is going to make your knowledge more transferable and it's going to lead to a whole bunch of fun conversations that I can promise you you wouldn't have otherwise. So that's one of the other reasons I love those terminal terms like ripening because you get to have a little bit more of that transferability like Jason's saying. And that's one of the rich parts of our industry, is that, you know, there is a lot of overlap between industrial agriculture and a lot of the applications that they have been using for quite a while to be able to either drive flavor or increase sugar production or, you know, increase yields, quality, what have you. There's a lot of crossover knowledge and techniques that are going to be useful on both sides of that relationship.

Cian [00:20:09]:
So I always encourage people to lean into trying to use some of the more traditional horticulture terms because it's going to benefit you down the line.

Jason Van Leuven [00:20:21]:
Yeah. And I mean not even just from an agronomy standpoint as facility operations as well, pulling information from traditional sources. Research extensions on universities is where I've picked up a ton of knowledge about operating greenhouses and you know, maintaining some of the equipment in there and kind of really the strategies in order to build a system that can operate a wide variety of crops.

Cian [00:20:52]:
Thank you for catching that. I want to take the opportunity to jump us into one of our next questions that's kind of linked into the same topic about, you know, ripening and what it means to have plants hit that final stage. So the question is, can I switch from a calcium nitrate to a calcium sulfate after stretch? I think you've talked about this in some previous episodes. Jason, you want to start us off?

Jason Van Leuven [00:21:20]:
Yeah, I actually been dealing with this with clients quite a bit here just recently. Obviously calcium nitrate is one of the main forms of base nutrient in a lot of two part salts and probably in mixed, mixed nutrients as well. Towards the end of the cycle it's pretty, pretty significant to try and reduce how much nitrogen you are providing to that plant. That is going to play a huge aspect in helping that plant ripen, help to achieve those goals of good bud formation, not hitting foxtailing the whole white ash objective on, on our smoke, that types of stuff. So really if we can start to reduce the amount of nitrogen in the plant, we're going to cut down some of the carbohydrates and in that that's available in there and that that helps us provide a better smoke. A lot of times it also helps kind of, you know, reduce how long this, this plant is going to be expressing its infrastructure, growth, its vegetative growth. You know, nitrogen is one of the, it's the main nutrient that, that is providing chemicals for the plant to continue to build infrastructure. And so when, you know, we look at some of the feed schedules from a lot of popular manufacturers, a lot of them have some type of chemical to, you know, replace the calcium nitrate in there.

Jason Van Leuven [00:22:49]:
You know, at some point some of the more advanced nutrients, some of the good nutrients will, you know, will cut out that base completely and replace it with another type of product. And this question's actually kind of great because a lot of times those in most of the larger nutrients, they're actually calcium chloride. So that, that's how we're getting our Calcium when. And we do supplement with calcium chloride. We gotta be a little bit careful on how much we do that just because that. That chlorine can become toxic at certain levels. But we still need high levels of calcium in there. And when, you know, we're also looking at that depending on what strains you're using and some of the expression that you're.

Jason Van Leuven [00:23:33]:
A lot of times we actually can just also adjust our base to our A to B nutrient ratios. Every once in a while they're a little bit heavy on base. Even at week four, for example, a lot of times I like to start to taper that. And then maybe for the last two or three weeks we'll cut that calcium nitrate out completely and get a replacement like calcium sulfate. Calcium sulfate is actually one of my favorites to replace it. You get a lot of good growth factors in when we're using a calcium calcium sulfate. It just kind of side effects of using it though it does come with its own challenges. You know, we do need to make sure that we've sourced a micronized calcium sulfate and then we also need to make sure that it's been dissolved in our nutrient solution very well.

Jason Van Leuven [00:24:24]:
You know, it's calcium sulfate typically kind of a powdery product. And unless it is fully dissolved, we can be causing some. Some clockages down the road. Un. We. We've spent that extra effort to get it dissolved.

Cian [00:24:40]:
That was gonna be one of the things I added for sure was, you know, it the times that I have used calcium sulfate myself. It's definitely one of those things that you have to make sure you are diligent about mixing because it can be, you know, one of those things that more easily falls out of solution. So, you know, for what it's worth, just one of those things you gotta watch when using those calcium sulfate products. But they're definitely one of the better ones out there, at least currently.

Jason Van Leuven [00:25:10]:
Some.

Cian [00:25:10]:
Of the different places that you'll see on hydro websites and things like that that are pretty stable for the most part and that you can use very effectively.

Jason Van Leuven [00:25:22]:
Yeah, and one thing to kind of, you know, really keep an eye on as well. You know, once we have have that well dissolved as well, make sure that we are checking our phs. You know, anytime that we make a change to what constitutes our nutrient solution, we want to make sure that, you know, we're not just in a daily routine of hey, I know X, I know X amount of base or acid in there to get my ph where I want it to be. When we do change either of Those ratios and or substituting a chemical in there. It's good practice because we may or may not need to adjust the ph adjustment ratios on that.

Cian [00:26:01]:
Another thing to remember too, is that we're always a fan of gradual implementation of these changes. Throwing the lever from having calcium nitrate to overnight, no more nitrogen, just sulfate generally is going to produce some adverse side effects. So you do want to be careful to, you know, start these implementations slow a little bit further into your bulking stage so that you're able to, you know, bring them into full effect over a period of time rather than all at once.

Jason Van Leuven [00:26:40]:
Not to sidetrack our question there, but your media type would also have an impact on that as well. So when CN said that, my mind instantly went to cation exchange capacity, which is basically how, how much do the particles in the substrate hang on to some of these nutrients? And so when we're working with Rockwell, for example, it's what I would consider a somewhat reactive media. It's probably not the right term for it, but it changes quite quickly. It has a low cation exchange capacity. So when we make an adjustment in our fertigation solution, that that adjustment affects the substrate quite quickly. Right. So that that nitrogen in there, it's not being held on to the basalt fibers very well in that substrate. It's also a reason that we would, you know, consider COCO a little bit more forgiving because it has the ability to buffer some of those changes.

Jason Van Leuven [00:27:36]:
Right. It may take a few days. Even if we do change, you know, immediate immediately from one ratio to another, the, the nutrients in the cocoa are going to be held in there. It's going to buffer how much that change affects the actual root zone. And so kind of keep that in mind. What type of media we have will also determine how much we need to ramp the changes in the nutrient solution at least.

Cian [00:28:09]:
All great advice, I think I'm going to add on our next question here that's along these same lines from one of our friends, Jack Burns, at Deerfield Farms. It's can I use calcium formate as a calcium nitrate replacement for the last two weeks? And he says I typically run 1g or 1 gram calcium chloride the last two weeks or so to fade them. However, I suspect that the high chloride levels could be detrimental to health. Was planning on using it at the final two weeks to maximize cost efficiency while keeping the current 0.3 to 0.5 gallon calcium chloride I use alongside.4 grams of pure calcium would be cool to try throughout the crop as well. On a future run, though, to see how it goes. What are your thoughts, Jason?

Jason Van Leuven [00:28:51]:
Uh, well, I mean, I did a little bit of research on this just because I don't have any firsthand experience using calcium formate. Um, and it, it sounds like maybe, maybe Jack's gotta be his own guinea pig on this one, which he, he's a great person to, to be doing that. Cause he's so, so knowledgeable with, with nutrient stuff and he's got some pretty good control over his growth up there. Yeah. So I, I can't really give any great stuff. You know, chemical composition wise, should be a good form of calcium. You know, I believe it is an acidic compound. So again, checking in the ph is on that type of, you know, after that's been added in there.

Jason Van Leuven [00:29:37]:
I guess in this case I'm just, just not super comfortable given a yes know.

Cian [00:29:45]:
That'S kind of the same thing I told Jack. I was like, this is fascinating. I don't think I've ever used calcium formate myself or heard of anyone specifically using it. But the same thing, research that I was doing into it sound like is definitely potentially viable. And it'll be interesting to see what Jack knows about this as he's, as his trials go on with it. You know, from first glance, there's no nitrogen in it, there's no chloride. So I mean, we've got, you know, two of the things we're looking to kind of reduce the amounts of that we're seeing those last couple of weeks already knocked out of the equation with this. Supposedly it's got a pretty high bioavailability, although most of the studies that I found were all done on human dietary supplements.

Cian [00:30:32]:
So I imagine there's still some, you know, peer review research needed to figure out what the bioavailability is in plants, but does look promising. With that said, Jason's totally right on. You know, formate salts can affect your ph. And you got to monitor your solution pretty closely to make sure you're still within your target ranges before you feed with that stuff and that you're not producing any issues with your cation exchange by monitoring your runoff ph pretty closely as well. Well, one of the other things we wanted to tie this all back to is a question about how I achieve white ash in my final product. Because a lot of this ties into this conversation that we keep having again and again about how to get your final product to this white ash, this consistency that's smooth and feels finished, where you've got good terpene expression without harshness and you know, how to be able to do that repeatably every time, which I think ties in well with this discussion about how we're trying to dial out calcium nitrate and kind of look towards some more, you know, replacement options for calcium that offer us the calcium we still need to be able to keep feeding the plants without the higher nitrogen and chloride levels. That can be a little bit more difficult for us to manage.

Jason Van Leuven [00:32:05]:
Yeah, kind of a fun one. We mentioned it in the show a little bit already. But pairing your goals with your strategy based off of some type of scientific explanations, typically a fairly successful route to go. And so when we are ripening, that white ash can definitely be one of the strategies. When we think about what's causing that, a lot of times it's a buildup of unprocessed carbohydrates or sugars in that plant. So when we. When we think about how are these plants growing, when they're photosynthesizing, they are creating a reserve of sucrose, and that's basically what the plant's gonna be processing in order for it to grow. Right.

Jason Van Leuven [00:32:53]:
So during that photosynthesis, that's what we're building up. Um, you know, it's kind of interesting when we think about some of the strategies that people have used towards the end of. End of the harvest. Like, all right, let's reduce our light levels or let's reduce our CO levels. And, yeah, some of that might also contribute to reducing our sucrose reserves in that plant. But from my experience, the most impactful is reducing the amount of nitrogen that we're supplying to it. So kind of like our last few questions there. What are our options in reducing the amount of nitrogen, but making sure that our calcium levels are up there and making sure that we haven't.

Jason Van Leuven [00:33:34]:
Haven't completely cut out some other impactful element into the equation.

Cian [00:33:43]:
I think it's also important to point out that because I still hear this strategy over and over again from people that they move towards feeding, like, even for a day or two days or three days, just straight RO water. And, um, I mean, you know, personally, I. I don't subscribe to this theory. I find. I find that I've had adverse consequences when I try to feed just RO water towards that last couple of days. Early on, when I had first started growing, I'd gotten that advice, and it definitely didn't seem to do anything positive or beneficial for my plants those last couple of days. And, you know, since then, what I've learned about that definitely confirms that that doesn't seem to be an ideal or optimal strategy. Um, and so always kind of like to talk to people want to hear that still in play about, you know, we're not necessarily trying to starve the plant.

Cian [00:34:41]:
We're tapering on some of these nutrients to be able to reduce the amounts of them that are still lingering and that are bioaccumulating. But we're not necessarily trying to do that by kind of like what I said before, making a really quick sudden change and taking the food supply to that plant altogether. That can have some really adverse consequences, especially if you, you know, shoot that mark of when you decide to start feeding RO water a little bit too early. And at that point you can be, you know, going so far as collapsing root capillaries before the end of harvest. So, you know, definitely some, some careful balancing to do if you're trying to implement an RO only feeding strategy. And to be clear, I don't really recommend it as it feels like it kind of lacks some scientific basis and is based in a little bit of the bro science.

Jason Van Leuven [00:35:41]:
Yeah, I think it, if, if we've, if we want our plant to finish like be dead, sure, let's run, run it ro. But, but as we discussed a little bit earlier, it's not necessarily going to be optimizing for the product there. You know, we're not aligning that strategy with our goal. You know, sure, in something like cocoa, maybe the last day or last two days RO flush, but at that point we're, you know, we're talking just, you know, apples and apples like, because that red zone EC is going to maintain some level of nutrients in there because of our cation exchange capacity that, that, that buffering effect that I talked about. So sure, you know, if we want to save just a little bit of nutrient cost, but you know, anytime we make substantial inside, we are making changes quite quickly. It's not great on the plant, fortunately. All right, let's. If I add, you know, 25% Ro water into a substrate that that's at say 4EC, we would only expect it to be down at like 3 EC with no runoff there.

Jason Van Leuven [00:36:49]:
So kind of keep that in mind as well. However, I do like to reduce the, the feed levels, especially if we don't supplement. If we don't get rid of the nitrogen in our feeds, then I like to be about half of feed strength, sometimes a little bit lower by the end of end of that ripening period. And that as you know, seeing said it's a good thing to taper. Sure. You could break it up into two or three taper segments, depending on how much flexibility you have with your mixing units. And then, yeah, it's, there's no reason to put that much work into these plants. It's just cutting corners as far as making it finishes the best products, not usually optimal.

Cian [00:37:36]:
And to drive it home again, I mean, you know, having an ideal time frame to be harvesting the specific cultivar that you're going to be harvesting is an integral part of that whole strategy. Because like I was saying before, you can't really force some of these longer run cultivars into finishing it. Day 63, just because you want it to and because you, you know, take away its nitrogen. That on some of these cultivars that want to grow, let's say like, you know, 75, 80 days, if you strip out all your nitrogen at day 60, you may well be causing some detrimental effects to your plants and not allowing it to finish in the right timeline. Now if you, you know, start tapering a little bit, you know, day by day, towards the end, and you're able to, those last two weeks of an 80 day cultivar have your nitrogen be out of the system, great. But trying to force that to happen earlier isn't necessarily going to make that plant hit its full potential at the timeline that you're trying to force it to.

Jason Van Leuven [00:38:39]:
Yeah, you know, the fun thing about the way that we give advice is we get to talk about these little specific topics and we get to take them out of context. Of all the complexity of an operation. It's like, all right, cool, take some documentation, cut the strand on the right day. All right, well maybe if we got five strains in a room, we got to get that planned out. Well now if we've got 20 rooms, let's get that planned out. So production planning and documentation here, developing some amount of consistency checkpoints as far as plant height, are we maintaining the assembly similar environment and root zone as to, you know, what we're basing our projections off of, those are all keys when they're all really important. When it comes down to running a larger facility, we've got a client. Like I said, we used to have a couple clients, but up there in 50 plus grow rooms at their facility.

Jason Van Leuven [00:39:41]:
And when we start to get very detailed on exact specific actions, you know, over 50 rooms, that's a lot to keep up with on a day to day basis. So we definitely understand that some of our recommendations can be more difficult to implement in reality than we make it seem as we talk here on the screen, 100%.

Cian [00:40:06]:
And it's definitely worthwhile remembering that we all have to operate within the limitations of the system systems that we're operating on. And if you've got a really large facility like that, you're not necessarily going to be able to implement a lot of these small, detailed changes cultivar to cultivar, room to room. When you are in a market that requires you to grow some diversity so that you can hedge your bets against one particular cultivar falling out of style by the time you get it harvested. I definitely know a lot of people that know for a long time have been only going to one broker, for example, and they base a lot of their choices on what they're going to put into rotation based on what this one broker is going to end up buying from them. And I always was kind of of the mindset that growing a few more cultivars, if you have the, the modularity in your system to allow for it, is going to be a good, good way to hedge your bets against that one big buyer deciding that that wasn't their taste profile this round. And so if you have the ability these days to hedge your bets, a lot of people are, they're, you know, broadening their library of cultivars that they have in rotation and growing more things per room side by side with less large mono crops. And you know, when the market is requiring that of you so that you're able to keep sales high, it's understandable that it can create some difficulty in implementing a lot of these cultivar specific changes that we talk about. So you know, if that is something that's difficult, don't take from Peter to feed Paul, so to speak.

Jason Van Leuven [00:41:51]:
Dude, I thought when, when your, your cultivar goes out of style, you just rename the stock as a new strain name and then hype that product up and hit the shelves.

Cian [00:42:02]:
Add guava to the end of it.

Jason Van Leuven [00:42:05]:
Sorry. Yeah, I guess we're not live today. We could have got some, some good feedback with that.

Cian [00:42:17]:
Right? Oh man. Might be worthwhile here to round out the day with some talk about some of the products people use for, you know, late flower transition that are on the market that we see quite a few bit of. I get asked quite a bit about, you know, what does fade do? For example, when should I start using it? Or why does front row prefer a transitional strategy where you start to dial through or dial down your feed concentration over time to the full replacement strategy that some do. And you know, there's a couple of different products out there that are interesting that are, you know, talked about Quite a bit Advanced Nutrients has got a flawless finish product out there. So you'll see a lot of different options. These days, many different nutrient manufacturers are coming up with their own. Whether it's a regimen or a specific product to be applied into your system to be able to help you through that ripening stage. So yeah, kick it off to you Jason.

Cian [00:43:21]:
Let's see what you have to say about a few of these things that are out there these, these days.

Jason Van Leuven [00:43:25]:
Yeah, I mean you mentioned kind of two that I'm fairly familiar with and that it's, you know, obviously a fade product. We've covered what, what we're doing there. I'm almost positive that's just calcium, calcium chloride substitution for our calcium nitrate on the base. You know, front row strategy of reducing total amounts there as well. A lot of times it kind of comes down to how the, the nutrient has been or the nutrient line has been mixed in order to provide the elements to it. So you know, if, if we've got a ammonium based nitrogen supply then that can differ from you know, something like, you know, see nitrate versus ammonium, so. Or nitrite versus ammonium so NH4 versus NO3. You know, depending on how that's supp the plant, we may want to adjust those formulations and, or you know, pulling it out of supply.

Cian [00:44:30]:
I think that's a great bit of advice there. And you know, it's worth noting that each, like Jason said, each brand, each company that you're going to be using has its own strategies there. And so understanding what your base composition is to your, your part AB Salt fertilizer mixes is, you know, an integral part of being able to make a choice on what type of ripening product that you're going to use or what strategy you're going to implement to do that. And so I guess my best advice would be to follow your specific fertilizer manufacturer instructions because that's going to be, as Jason said, you know, one of the important pieces that helps you understand the best way that you can be either, you know, targeting your goals by reducing the inputs or by switching up what exactly it is that you are feeding the plants in those last couple of weeks.

Jason Van Leuven [00:45:33]:
Yeah, and it's a great place to start, you know, with, with the manufacturer recommendations. If you have a cool manufacturer, maybe you know, try to try to get them on a video call or two and talk through your specific goals because you know, they might have some great advice on how that recipe can get tweaked to, you know, to better tailor Exactly. The, the facility constraints or the plant optimization that you're shooting for.

Cian [00:46:00]:
Yep. I know we've said it before, but you know, these many, these fertilizer companies are motivated to be a, a resource in your court. You know what I mean? They want you to be successful with their products. And if there's a way that they can help you do that, or if they have some solutions that they have come up with already already, they'll oftentimes be more than willing to talk to you for a little while about how you might be able to integrate those solutions more quickly. Well, to round out the day here, I want to throw in one last question that we got in from one of our Instagram friends here. And he was a little concerned about when he should do his daily walkthrough either before or after the lights come on. And so Daniel's managing 924 plants. He's steering without sensors by lifting the pots every walkthrough.

Cian [00:46:52]:
Man. Sorry, buddy. Lights come on at 7am and he's trying to dial in the optimal timing for his daily plant assessment so that he can get his irrigation set up by the time the plants need to feed.

Jason Van Leuven [00:47:07]:
I mean, before the second half of that. I was going to say, well, I like to walk in after I've reached field capacity. Right. That way I can get my runoff measurements specifically, specifically ph of my runoff. I get an idea of whether we had a serious irrigation issue for that day. You know, pipe broke or it didn't trigger, didn't fire. Right. Some of that stuff comes pretty obvious if we walk through after, you know, after our first sets of irrigations for the day.

Jason Van Leuven [00:47:40]:
So after we've reached field capacity, our P1s are done. We got a little bit of runoff that if, if we only had 1, 1 chance to do it. That's probably wind when I'd be running. It sounds like, you know, I think he's shooting for trying to get an understanding of how much dryback he has. So, you know, it's something also where he'd maybe want to walk through.

Cian [00:48:01]:
Before.

Jason Van Leuven [00:48:01]:
The first irrigation in the day. And you know, having those walkthroughs side by side, yeah, that is a lot of work. But you're also going to get pretty well in tuned with how well things are operating in there. As far as, you know, whether you're walking through photo period on or photo off, always walk through photoperiod on if that's a chance, you know, even before first irrigation, that time you spend in there, let's say if you know you've had an hour from lights on to first irrigation, that might be enough time, depending on how large the room is, to do a fairly thorough walk through. You also kind of get a cool feeling for how our plants wake up. Right. What's the leaf morphology response when we start to photosynthesize, that types of stuff. And you didn't know that the lights did come on that day, that type of stuff.

Jason Van Leuven [00:48:54]:
So yeah, personally I like to do it when there's some expected change. We've got some goal in there as far as what are we capturing out of the walkthrough.

Cian [00:49:06]:
Yeah, I'd say similar. If you have the opportunity to be there once your plants are hitting field capacity and running off, that's going to be ideal because you're able to do quite a bit at that moment and understand whether or not things ran, didn't run, and um, collect runoff measurements like Jason said. But if that's not something within your timeframe span or, you know, like Daniel in this question, if you are, you know, trying to do all this without any sensors and you're trying to figure out, you know, just what your drybacks are looking like overnight by hand or even with, you know, a, a sensor like our solace unit, where you're just going around to get instantaneous data feedback from a few key plants before you plan your irrigation for the day. Have to probably go in there before your irrigation hits if you can, and just be able to get in there to make those assessments right before irrigation happens. And like Jason said, it is kind of a cool time to be in there. You get to see those plants wake up and kind of understand a little bit more about what that timeline looks like from the point at, you know, first lights on, when the plants are, you know, maybe still a little asleep to that, that point at about the time you're starting your first irrigation, where they should be woken up and starting to pray for the day. So.

Jason Van Leuven [00:50:29]:
Sorry, I don't know if you were done with that one.

Cian [00:50:31]:
Not done. You go for it.

Jason Van Leuven [00:50:32]:
I was gonna say security cameras, they're not just for security. They're also a great way to experience some of what your plant is going through. You know, whether or not you're, you're on site that day or not, uh, if you're off site is what an awesome opportunity to, you know, to check that, hey, may some runoff on the floor or the drain trays, you know, filling up any of that types of stuff. Really cool project that I did as a cultivator I set up time series video, basically snapshot video, and I could watch an entire plant cycle in three minutes, right. And you know, I'd zoom it into like, all right, what is my nocturnal diurnal behavior of these plants? So when we talk about how's it behaving when it's waking up, you know, what do things look like night, all that types of stuff, getting some, some footage on it. I don't know that. I don't know. It gave me like ideas on how to change what I was doing.

Jason Van Leuven [00:51:35]:
But it got me definitely familiar with what to expect and when, like when things didn't happen as expected, where, where to look.

Cian [00:51:45]:
I think that's something that I learned from one of the early on opposite episodes of Office Hours actually was, you know, this idea that I should go look around my room at the things that I am checking each day and if I can, and if I can afford to set up my security cameras in such a way where I was able to see those things when I looked at the security cameras and cycled through the different camera feeds and I went so far as, you know, in my fertigation room having a wide angle camera lens that both captured the, um, the manual check numbers from my blue lab units as well as, you know, was giving me a visual of my floor and my batch tanks and, you know, what was happening with my dosers. And that saved me so many times just being able to have this visual check on what was happening in there, you know, whether my ph in solution had changed or whether, you know, something broke and I've got some water on the floor. It was such an easy way for me to be able to figure that out without having to go in and find out what, what was happening on my, on my own or if I'm off site. Just such good peace of mind.

Jason Van Leuven [00:52:59]:
Awesome.

Cian [00:53:02]:
Well, I think that that's about the extent for today. I think we can wrap it up with our deep dive on the late flower pull of nitrogen and how to keep calcium moving through your plants those last two weeks. You know, a couple of great suggestions in there with you tapering your calcium nitrate towards the end or replacing it with products that allow you to maintain your calcium levels while still giving your plant, you know, what it needs to finish properly. And you know, just want to stress again, we're talking how to bring your plant to its optimal finish, its optimal ripening stage, not how to starve it into death towards the those last couple of days. Um, want to thank everyone for dropping into Office Hours today. It's always fun doing these podcasts and know Jason has a good time with it too. So no matter where you guys are, leave us a little review, give us some comments, shoot us some questions. We always need some more material to go through and talk out to your problems, your fun stories, whatever you guys got.

Cian [00:54:14]:
So send in some information to either Salesroya IO or leave us comments in the feed on YouTube, where Spotify, wherever. You're listening today to this podcast and thanks so much for tuning in. We really appreciate it and I know it is awesome every time I talk to someone who tells me that, you know, office hours has changed their growing for the better and that we're helping them, you know, be successful with what they're doing in this industry. So keep the comments rolling guys. We love it. We'll see you guys next week or the next week that we do this on episode 14 43. Thanks guys for tuning in.