OHL46_TX
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[00:00:00] Kaisha: All right. It's Thursday at 4:20 PM Eastern. That means it's time for office hours. Roy's weekly podcast for cultivators to hear from the experts and talk to each other about what they're seeing with their grows. My name's Kaisha. I am co moderating with my good friend. Mandy, how's it going over there, Mandy?

[00:00:16] Mandy: Hey Kaisha, we're here for episode 46, live with our growing cultivation community and live also over on YouTube. Wherever you're tuning in from, make sure you send us your questions and I'll make sure I get those over to the team. couple of [00:00:30] quick announcements before we do get started. Do check out our case study from Ascension Farm.

[00:00:34] Mandy: They're our latest team of growers that we're featuring as a part of our AROYA Grow series. So I'll post the link on our story on our Instagram right after this. So yeah, check that out to read about all the success that they're having in their grows. A final announcement before I do send it back over to Kaisha.

[00:00:48] Mandy: If you're going to MJBizCon in Vegas next week, make sure you reach out to us and we can set up a time to meet with you. Schedule something, hang out. Yeah, we'll make it happen. But yeah, you know what we're here for. I'm excited for this one. So [00:01:00] I'm gonna throw it back

[00:01:00] Mandy: over to you.

[00:01:01] Kaisha: Awesome. Thank you, Mandy. If you're here with us live, you have a question, type it in the chat at any time. We're gonna do a little bit different format today because it's a very special session. We are offering a preview of Aurora's new irrigation control feature. So we're gonna answer questions after the fact. But Seth and Jason ready to get us started on this wonderful preview.

[00:01:20] Jason: Absolutely. Yeah, we're we're excited to, to be launching this. Obviously it's been in the works for quite a while. We've always intended to have some type of control integrations, [00:01:30] fortunately enough, you know, in the market, Open Sprinkler has been very prolific in medium and some large facilities.

[00:01:36] Jason: So great portion of our clients you use in Open Sprinkler. We have obviously had the opportunity of working with their Open API to get it integrated into our system, and we've kind of built on some of their simplicity to make those features available through AROYA. So, without further ado, let's get the screen share going and we'll do a quick walkthrough on how to set it up, [00:02:00] how to configure channels, walk through some of the advantages of using it with AROYA, and then we'll also go through some of the basic operations that you'd expect to be setting up once you're integrated.

[00:02:15] Jason: Let's get this shared. So this is a live demo. This is a real facility here at my house actually. And so it's not much facility, but it's a great example for this setup and tutorial systems. [00:02:30] So basically what from the client's side we'll need to do is have the client get on our list for setup with open sprinkler.

[00:02:37] Jason: We'll enable the feature for your system in a timely manner, and then we'll work with you just to make sure that initial setup's good to go and you have the education that you need to be using it proactively. So when you jump into the setup page, this is where you'll be adding a control. Let's make my screen just a little bigger for everybody [00:03:00] here, and I already have a controller added, but we'll just walk through the steps for adding a controller added mine earlier today just to make sure that we can make this happen as fast as possible.

[00:03:11] Jason: First options controller, host, or IP name. This controller, host name or IP address. This is pretty easy to get. This is just the network address of your open sprinkler. It's available basically in three common areas. The first one would be on the face of the open sprinkler. That's going to show that the IP [00:03:30] address that it's using.

[00:03:31] Jason: The other one would be from the web face that you're used to using to control your open sprinkler. It'll just be the the digits at the beginning of that. And or lastly, you can jump into your router and go to devices or users on that network, and it will be showing up there as well. So in this case, it's usually gonna be something like 1 92, 1 68, if it's on a local network, some networks are set up like 10 point 10, et cetera.

[00:03:59] Jason: One thing [00:04:00] here is you will wanna make sure that you're connecting the open sprinkler on the same network as your AROYA gateway. Next is our port. This is going to be, the port by default would be port 80 for open sprinkler. You'll only need to change this if you've changed to a separate port on your open.

[00:04:20] Jason: The password by default on open sprinklers is open door. If you've changed that password, make sure you get it correct. Case sensitive, all that good stuff. [00:04:30] Selecting a gateway, if you only have one gateway to your facility, like I said, just make sure it's on the same network as your open sprinkler. If you have more than one gateway, make sure that you choose a gateway that is on the same subnet or land as the open sprinkler that you're trying to connect.

[00:04:47] Jason: And then device name. This can be whatever you call it, maybe you call it upstairs, open sprinkler or rooms one and two, open sprinkler, et cetera. Just a human readable name to give it an easy identifier. After all these entries are [00:05:00] in, we will say, save down here in the bottom right, and it's going to start connecting to that controller.

[00:05:06] Jason: It can take up to two minutes. Basically, it's some updates on your gateway to let it know to communicate with your open sprinkler. Advantages of using the open sprinkler through AROYA. Since we are in talking about networks right now, if you're used to using your open sprinkler, it's likely that you have done port forwarding through your network to access your open sprinkler port forwardings natively, not a very secure, probably not a safe way for [00:05:30] almost any business to be accessing a device on their network.

[00:05:34] Jason: And so when you're using AROYA and open sprinkler, the external communication is no longer needed directly to your open sprinkler. So what's happening when you are working with our interface is any of the information that you're inputting here is gonna go through our secure software directly to our gateway.

[00:05:54] Jason: And the gateway is only gonna be connecting locally to your open sprinkler. So that's a really nice advantage [00:06:00] for any of the facilities that you know, haven't set up a VPN or don't other have other secure ways to access their open sprinkler. Once this open sprinkler is communicated, we'll see this last communication over here on the right side as now or very recently.

[00:06:17] Jason: And it'll tell us things like the model, location, and channels. In this case, you can see a zero of 24 channels enabled or configured, excuse me. And what you'll notice here is we, I have one [00:06:30] expansion, that's why it says 24 channels. So open Sprinkler has eight channels on the core and then 16 channels per expansion board.

[00:06:39] Jason: And what we'll wanna do, this is basically the first step in telling your system what channels are related to what zones. So obviously this case we're looking at channel one, and I'm gonna have that allocated to remote one zone one. And then let's jump in here and say remote [00:07:00] one. Let's go to zone two for channel two, and just get these set up pretty clean.

[00:07:12] Seth: We should also point out right now too, that you can use your open sprinkler to control your pump with a master zone as well. A lot of people have that set up already and you can set it up from the same menu right here. Super easy. Any of the ports can be used as the master.

[00:07:26] Jason: Exactly. And basically so you'll see over here on the left [00:07:30] side, we've got this drip icon with a dropdown. If we select the master, it'll show us a crown on top of our drip drips. It'll allocate it as master and like. From any of the other zones, what they use as a master. So in this case, let's say we have a main valve going to room or a main valve on channel five. It's controlling remote one as the room, and then we have sub [00:08:00] valves in there controlling each zone.

[00:08:02] Jason: In this case, when we do any irrigation scheduling for say zone 1, 2, 3, or four, it'll also enable that channel five to open up the valve or run a pump, assess that. So great that you mentioned that. And we'll say save, it's gonna push this, we're gonna save succeeded. Very cool. And then the next thing that I like to do is also set up some of the [00:08:30] auxiliary information for my open sprinkler and.

[00:08:33] Jason: Necessarily isn't required for your setup, but what it's gonna do is help you keep track of your substrate information and flow rate so that you can calculate things like percentage of irrigation, or you can run it as a volume of irrigation rather than just irrigation time, which is nice. Back in math feature obviously we've got single block, a stacked block on slab.

[00:08:56] Jason: This could even be like a four by four in a coco [00:09:00] pot or any of those types of things. And then slab with multiple blocks. Really all we're asking for here is how much substrate volume per plant, and then number of emitters per plant and flow rate of the plant. And that's gonna basically allow a very approximate calculation of volume or percentage.

[00:09:19] Jason: And you know, one thing I think we have said in the past, and I'll mention it again here, Sure you can refer to your manuals for getting the emitter flow rate, but one of the [00:09:30] best things to do just for your own piece of mind is do some test irrigation runs into volumetric PLAs or a cup, and then measure the weight of it.

[00:09:39] Jason: That is just to check that your printed flow rate is exactly what is coming out of that system. All right, so basically we're through the setup of it, which I think I made it sound a lot more complicated than it is, but that gives you the full tutorial of how to get one set up when we go over.[00:10:00]

[00:10:00] Jason: What this does for us now is we can think about some of the ways that we have set up an open sprinkler and basically they are building programs. When we do programs in AROYA, we can actually combine programs. So most of, you're used to having one program for your P one events, another program for your P two events, that type of thing.

[00:10:21] Jason: In this case, we can combine those into what we're calling a schedule and we can build new irrigation templates. So that's a schedule that can be applied [00:10:30] to any of our recipes. And so when we think of recipes, they are allocating different operations for the specific phases of plant life cycle. And we could say, All right, we wanna use our generative stacking.

[00:10:44] Jason: We can look at this generative stacking and we'll see that this template is gonna be referencing how we want to irrigate for our generative stacking. Might even go in there and say, you know, generative week two, generative week three, and break it down even farther. [00:11:00] That's really just gonna be up to how you run your irrigation schedules and how easily you wanna track that stuff.

[00:11:05] Jason: One of the things that also wouldn't be a bad idea is make sure that you're specifying your substrate. You know, anytime I'm talking about building recipes, we want to have our substrate in there. Are we using a six by six block? Are we using AROYA Dan slab of a specific size? Are we using any of that type of information?

[00:11:21] Jason: coco, I would even separate coco from rockwool, even if it's the same volume. So then obviously when we go into a recipe, [00:11:30] we can apply those different irrigations. To the recipe. You can either build new ones right into the recipe, or we can use this drop down right next to it and say, Let's use our vegetative bulking.

[00:11:48] Jason: We can see there's what we've got doing four times to get up to field capacity. Another eight times to get some maintenance shots in there. We'll save that, save to our recipe [00:12:00] and we'll see that anytime we apply this recipe to a New Harvest group, we'll have those irrigations applied for the duration of it.

[00:12:08] Jason: So rather than going into your open sprinkler and flipping back and forth, trying to track your plants' life cycle and making the appropriate changes on the exact day that you need to, we can go in here and apply irrigation schedules. So we have different irrigations for our generative for vegetative at day 14.

[00:12:25] Jason: It's going to apply these new or excuse me, 21. [00:12:30] So at day 14, we'll be applying this one. At day 21, it'll be applying the. Irrigation schedule. Very cool. So that kind of gets through the framework of how you might be wanting to use harvest groups with the irrigation schedules. And now let's go in and check out some of what we can do in the system.

[00:12:51] Jason: So let's just get some normal values on here and in our room dashboard. Once the irrigation flag is enabled, you'll notice [00:13:00] that we have. This little drip over here, and there's two functions that we have allowed. Basically what it's for is to help people that aren't using harvest groups. So if we don't wanna use harvest groups, then we will set things up as a room schedule, and this isn't gonna have necessarily any timeframe allocated to it of the plant age.

[00:13:22] Jason: It's just gonna always be going unless we say disable. So I can enable it. Right now we'll see schedule pending. Basically [00:13:30] what this is doing is pushing new irrigation schedule to the controller. We can edit it directly from here. So this is gonna be our options here. Maybe we just want pretty static irrigation schedule.

[00:13:44] Jason: Then we can also disable it Harvest group schedules. This is going to be following that irrigation template that I talked about from our recipes or harvest groups. So let's jump into here and see what I can do to make sure we get Irrigations planned, so make sure [00:14:00] we got papaya in zones 1, 2, 3, and four.

[00:14:08] Jason: And then let's jump in schedule and make sure I've got some irrigations planned for today. So let's say transition badge, no irrigation schedule yet. Let's throw one in here. We're gonna go for, let's go 95 seconds. Repeat every, Let's go [00:14:30] 20 minutes. Actually for this one, we might go a lot farther than that.

[00:14:36] Jason: And one of the things here is you also have a dropdown. So if you do it in minutes, if you do it in hours, et cetera, let's go every four hours and we'll do it three times or three hours. Make it somewhat realistic. Save. And then we can see, all right, this is applying it to that stage and we can save our schedule.

[00:14:57] Jason: When we go do that, it says, irrigation schedule [00:15:00] changed this all zones, and we added P one. So let's do that. It started on 1110, so it should begin that irrigation schedule for us. And we can jump into the room dashboard and see that we now have a harvest group schedule. In this little box, we can see here's the phase that we're in, here's the zones it's currently active, and some representations of what our irrigation should look like.

[00:15:24] Jason: So we're gonna have one, two, and three irrigations today. [00:15:30] Hovering over the little irrigation miracle shows how long it's occurring for and what time they begin at. Also with some information of our irrigation window and our drive back duration. So, unless I missed something that's a quick overview of.

[00:15:45] Jason: Our open sprinkler integration.

[00:15:47] Seth: I only got one question you didn't cover. Okay. All right. So, let's say I've got my generative stacking recipe and I get into, you know, midway through week two and I need to add a shot or add some volume. Can I do that from the [00:16:00] dashboard or do I just go into the harvest group?

[00:16:03] Jason: Sure. So either or when you go in here, it's actually going to take you to the irrigation schedule that's in that harvest group, right? So if we modify it right here, let's say we want it every two and a half hours, we need to clean that up a little bit. And it's gonna say this program will adjusted for all zones starting tomorrow.

[00:16:24] Jason: P one adjusted to that and changed interval to that. So let's [00:16:30] say confirm, it's gonna say start publishing a new irrigation schedule pending, and then currently active. So now that's modified it for all of our transition veg.

[00:16:41] Seth: Right. So as a grower, when you know, come in the morning, you're checking out where your dry back got to, you know you need to add some shots, you can do it all in one spot right here.

[00:16:48] Seth: You don't have to jump around into the harvest group schedule or go to irrigation templates. You still have the ability to adjust it very

[00:16:55] Jason: easily right here. Absolutely. And one of the things that I would you know, recommend [00:17:00] as well is start building out recipes as detailed as you need your irrigation changes.

[00:17:05] Jason: So if you know that, hey you know, my three day run in period needs to have irrigation change after that, start building your phases based on your irrigation schedules. You know, if you're changing every week, just go week one, week two, week three, week four. I always do recommend to have some steering intention label with your weeks just to help your team, you know, keep an eye on, Hey, if I've got 10 hour irrigation window and I'm meaning to be generative, or we [00:17:30] making, or did we do something up, we're making the right decisions.

[00:17:32] Jason: So, obviously as you begin to refine those recipes and your irrigations can become more detailed with a lot less work, jumping back and forth into open sprinkler to turn on different programs.

[00:17:44] Seth: Yeah, and I really would like to highlight that labeling accuracy and diligence because if you are utilizing this, you're gonna build a large amount of irrigation templates. And, you know, if you've got, I mean, people run a very wide variety of strains as far as numbers that they're running at any one time. [00:18:00] Let's say you've got one, you take it outta production, I wanna bring it back next year. Still wanna save that irrigation recipe. But also, like Jason said, you know, media look at your recipe you're running, just look at all the things because these are gonna be very specific.

[00:18:13] Seth: And you know, like right here, when you go in and I change that harvest group schedule for the irrigation, I'm gonna change it for that whole phase. So if I wanna really be accurate in developing a new one, I might end up, you know, adding more phases as I'm going through my first run building.[00:18:30]

[00:18:31] Jason: Exactly. And maybe we'll just take a minute to talk about how, you know, some of the ways that you can save your modifications to a harvest group. So I built this harvest group from a recipe cuz it's a template and you know, I'm a little bit lazy or I like to work smarter than harder. So I've built up a harvest group in the past, and what I did was I said save as recipe.

[00:18:54] Jason: Obviously if I'm making intentional changes to a harvest group that I might expect to be used in the future, [00:19:00] then after I make those changes, I'll jump in and say save as recipe. So in this case, let's talk a little bit about, All right, well we wanted to add you know, another type of irrigation in here.

[00:19:10] Jason: And so if I go in and say at its schedule, we could say, you know, rather than whatever this was called, we could say Rod in. Then let's change it to say, three days, [00:19:30] and then we could add another,

[00:19:37] Jason: that phase, we'll drag this phase over right here after run in and maybe just call it dry down. And then let's go two days on here. And then we can add a different irrigation schedule in here. Maybe we need a few less shots because we're trying to encourage that root [00:20:00] to fill out the entire new medium.

[00:20:03] Jason: So let's just say, all right, instead of 95 seconds, we're gonna go to 45 seconds and we're gonna repeat every four hours. And maybe we're just gonna do it twice. And then when I save this as a recipe, we can use that the next time we run. And we won't have to remember the changes that we.

[00:20:23] Jason: And so, kind of like you said, it's very good practice to make your [00:20:30] naming as complete as possible. So that labeling is excellent. This case I just said save succeeded as a new recipes. Let's jump into recipes. Here's the one I just saved. And we can also copy 'em. Maybe we need to make two variations of the same recipe.

[00:20:45] Jason: We could copy it. In this case, rather than being named the Harvest Group, let's just call it

[00:20:49] Jason: you know, rock wool slabs including bread is like that. And then we go back and maybe I didn't [00:21:00] do the best example of giving as much information as possible, but you might wanna strain in there just depending on how many variations of irrigation schedules that you include.

[00:21:08] Jason: So, don't be afraid to make that recipe name too long. , and that's what I've got. Do we have questions from the crowd on things that we can answer right now in the system so far?

[00:21:19] Kaisha: No questions, but I mean, what an incredible walkthrough and preview. It just seems like, another way to just kind of help growers just like keep things dialed in, [00:21:30] get that consistency dialed in so that they don't know that their quality comes out the same every time.

[00:21:35] Seth: Yeah. But it's really helping overcome, you know, for some people, like the port forwarding challenge is huge. You know, there's a lot of people out there that have used open sprinkler. One of the tough things they have with it is, you know, at their facility, whoever's in charge of network security is just saying hard no to Port forwarding, which as Jason said before, is quite responsible from a business owner's perspective or operator.

[00:21:54] Seth: But this allows them to bypass that and take advantage of you know, the open sprinkler hardware, which is incredibly [00:22:00] cost effective. and it's very adaptable. You know, we can use it to run one or two zones at once, Run zones in sequence. Or actually, Jason, you could actually probably show that little diagram we have.

[00:22:11] Seth: You can upgrade it so you can run as many zones as you want at the same time. Yeah. And all of these things are very cost effective. They do require, you know, a little bit of research and work on the client side as far as building the system. It's not a super complete solution in its basic form, you [00:22:30] know, But adding components is very simple and easy, and it's just super adaptable.

[00:22:38] Seth: You know, I've known about up and sprinkler for a long time, and it's proven itself in a lot of applications to work just fine. And part of that is, you know, the simplicity of it. We've got a control board running relays and there's not a whole lot else going on.

[00:22:52] Jason: So just gonna reference what you talked about there. And I've done this personally quite a bit with success [00:23:00] and I've also had a number of clients do this with their systems in order to get get as clean of output as possible. So basically what's going on here is an open sprinter has, if you're know a lot about electronics, it's using a low current triac.

[00:23:18] Jason: And what that's doing is it's acting like a switch to, to turn on the 24 volts to this channel. So, The restriction there is depending on how many valves we're trying to run concurrently at the same time, we might [00:23:30] run into some over current protection on the open sprinkler depending on what type of valve you have.

[00:23:35] Jason: Sometimes it's between two per, Some clients can run seven. Just gonna really depend on the size and the brand of the valve that you're trying to operate. So what you know, one of the things I do suggest is to offload the current. Some type of industrial relay. That can be a relay board like shown here.

[00:23:53] Jason: It can be individual relays. In this case, this is a eight channel using fairly standardized all neuron relay. [00:24:00] And you know, what you can see here is the open sprinkler is now just signaling the relay to power it from a reliable transformer. So this is just like 120 volt, or two 20 volt to 24 volt AC transformer.

[00:24:13] Jason: And that way we can run as many valves as we want without worrying about open or over current protection on the open sprinkler.

[00:24:20] Seth: Yeah, and that's, you know, aside from having expansion zones or you know, multiple open sprinklers in one facility, that's all it takes to scale this little device up to commercial [00:24:30] capability. I mean, also, you know, don't hit it with the sprayer. Maybe put it in a waterproof box, but I think that's one thing that we've found so appealing and why we like to work with open sprinkler. It's just so open and adaptable. And really, I mean, I haven't done the install nearly as many times as Jason.

[00:24:48] Seth: I've installed and uninstalled mine four or five times now. But the first time I did it, it took me less than an hour. It's very user friendly, very straightforward, and honestly, if you do want to use it, I highly [00:25:00] encourage people to hook it up and actually, you know, get into the open sprinkler dashboard, familiarize themselves a little bit with that, because what you're seeing in AROYA is based off of similar concepts, but we've really kind of focused it in for the cannabis cultivator.

[00:25:16] Jason: Yeah, exactly. You know, and kind of, a funny thing that Open Sprinkler was a little bit of a hobby project on the guy that wanted more control features for his. Irrigation for watering his yard. He didn't find that the products on the [00:25:30] market allowed him to have the right intervals, the number of irrigations, et cetera.

[00:25:34] Jason: I think that's why it's caught so much traction in the indoor hydroponic scene is because sometimes we do need a substantial number of irrigations. Sometimes those irrigations need to be fairly short and pulse at whatever intervals that we choose. And I, you know, I've actually been to some clients where we replaced their existing system with an open sprinkler and, you know, the cost of it.

[00:25:56] Jason: Pretty insignificant compared to almost any other control systems [00:26:00] that that are traditional in this industry. So, you know, I think opens pre clears like 150 bucks for the module, and I forget how much the expansions are, but you know, they're like half hundred, a hundred bucks. Yeah. And so you can have, you know, 72 channels for less than 300 bucks.

[00:26:17] Jason: If you're interested in replacing the system, then just kind of think about the advantages. You can get more flexibility than most of the other available controllers. Obviously if you are using it with AROYA, then you can have secure internet access without [00:26:30] necessarily having any IT configuration going on.

[00:26:33] Jason: And yeah, at, you know, we don't have any affiliation with open sprinkler. We've just chosen the product because of client popularity and ease of integration.

[00:26:42] Seth: Yep. And it's been around long enough. It's kind of proven to work. I mean, now that. A long time ago, Open Sprinkler started, as Jason said, kind of open source software came out.

[00:26:51] Seth: And now that they've got a physical product, what they've done is put together a unit that functions really well, actually. And it requires, I mean, [00:27:00] shoot, if you can terminate 24 volt wires, like, just like hooking up any other sprinkler controller you, you can do it. It's that easy.

[00:27:11] Kaisha: Amazing. Jason, Seth, thank you so much for walking us through that. For anybody who joined us late or just is still thinking about what they just heard, if you have any questions about our new irrigation control, please do drop it in the chat. Let's get you some answers live. So it looks like we, we actually have a lot of questions just related just in general.

[00:27:29] Kaisha: [00:27:30] You guys ready to just keep it moving onto our usual crop steering sensors and cultivation.

[00:27:35] Jason: Sure, yeah, just some comments on the open sprinkler stuff. If you're an existing client and you're interested your admin will be seeing a notification next week about our product launch. We're gonna include some links in our resource center to, to help you either purchase those, or if you've got questions about the open sprinkler itself, some of the FAQs from their site.

[00:27:55] Jason: Yeah, contact us, shoot us an email, give us a call and get signed up on the list so we can make sure that [00:28:00] we know that you want this turned on.

[00:28:03] Kaisha: That's it. Get in line. Awesome. Okay. We're gonna dig right into the questions here, and Dyan posted a couple. Let's start with the first one here. When I'm stacking ec and stretch, when I'm feeding, I'm aiming for 0% runoff, or do I still need runoff? That's the first question.

[00:28:21] Jason: So usually, I mean, without seeing your data, the, my rule of thumb is using runoff to modulate ec. So rather than making big changes in your feed ec [00:28:30] data, a pretty set ec port, your feed lines makes mixing easy on a database basis, makes it easy for your employees to do things right, and then modulate how much runoff.

[00:28:39] Jason: So if you need to drop the EC closer to, or the substrate ec closer to your feed ec, then push for a little bit more runoff.

[00:28:48] Seth: Yeah. You know, to build on that. We're the other thing we're looking at too, and we're talking about runoff. We're always watching pH, pH is a really big contributor and director plant nutrient availability.

[00:28:59] Seth: If we have the wrong [00:29:00] pH, we're gonna see deficiencies. So really, we do want to push runoff not necessarily every single day during stretch, you know, going more than two or three days without it. I personally would want to get some runoff and check my pH and make sure that's not climbing or falling downward.

[00:29:16] Seth: Pretty rapidly. That being said, as these plants grow, some of them feed very heavily. So if you do have something like AROYA, you can easily watch and see, okay, I am maintaining EC in the block, or it's [00:29:30] going down with my feed rate. I need to get more in there. I'm gonna push less runoff to try to drive that up.

[00:29:34] Seth: Or no runoff. But again, we still always want to have a good balance in pH and in order to achieve that, we've gotta be replacing everything that the plant's pulling out and also flushing out some of the things that it's not. So yeah, rule of thumb, no more than three days without runoff, I think. Cuz usually that's what I call safe.

[00:29:53] Seth: And again, if you're gonna do that, pay real close attention to your runoff pH a.[00:30:00]

[00:30:02] Kaisha: Oh, awesome. Thank you guys for that. Dyan posted a second question here. He's wondering if my terrace doesn't show me accurate water content in the medium, how should my leaves look? Should they start wilting right before watering? Is that the perfect dry back?

[00:30:16] Jason: I'm gonna just break down this question a little bit. We'll start with the one. If my terrace doesn't show me accurate water content probably check out your cleaning procedures and or your installation consistency on that device. You know, we've got tens and tens of thousands of these [00:30:30] out there. I forgot specifically on Terras twelves, but it's well over 50,000 of these in the field, and it's very rare occurrence that we ever get.

[00:30:38] Jason: One that doesn't have accurate water content. You know, they aren't calibrated for the lifetime of the sensor, so make sure that you're cleaning those prongs off. Try not to use anything that's abrasive that can change the surface properties of the stainless steel on those prongs. You know, his propanol alcohol is great.

[00:30:54] Jason: Hydroco acid, you can use bleach, any of those types of things. And if you do have salt buildup, this is a kind of [00:31:00] trick I learned from Seth. It's just leave the tariffs in a cup of water. Obviously not the repeating or the. The no, if you will the electronics, but just the white part with the prongs, you can leave it in the solution for overnight or for a day to, to kind help it dissolve some of the buildup on there.

[00:31:16] Jason: As far as installation consistency, make sure you're using an installation template and you'd know what size media that you're using if you're using something like a hard pot and make sure that you've cut out a slot so that the entire body of the Terra 12, [00:31:30] that plastic, that white plastic body can sit flush in the substrate.

[00:31:34] Jason: And that should get you a pretty realistic, accurate water content. Obviously some natural variations occur and. The substrate itself, you know, is the chip consistency good near coco? Do you have some per light pockets in there? Have you experienced irrigation channeling in your rock world from letting it dry down too much or not having good initial wet up procedures, that type of thing?

[00:31:58] Jason: So, Kinda break it [00:32:00] down. Your question into the second part here. Should they start wilting right before watering? So I'm gonna answer this like, how do you crop steer without sensors? Okay. If we're trying to read the plant, we're missing out on a huge opportunity. If we are getting to wilting, we've probably already damaged some of the potential production from that plant.

[00:32:20] Jason: You might be able to tell from some of the physiological behaviors of the plant. I know I'm not good enough to do that. And so, you know, if I'm trying to run thousands of [00:32:30] plants it's very unrealistic to spend that much time with each plant to try and understand how it's performing. Whereas using substrate sensor data, we can document it and compare it, store it for different strains, and then how they perform when we're trying a certain type of dry back.

[00:32:46] Seth: Right. And I, you know, I'd really like to highlight too, that in any of these crop steering techniques, we're not, you know, especially generative steering, obviously what we're talking about here, we're. Well, ideally we're talking about here if you don't have a huge plant, a tiny pot. But we're not trying to [00:33:00] actually push drought stress on these plants.

[00:33:01] Seth: I think there's some confusion around that term. In the industry we're looking for a dry back, but really what we're doing is spacing out those irrigations and spacing it, you know, slowing down growth in the plant, slowing down respiration. Cause the roots don't, they're not continually getting oxygen.

[00:33:15] Seth: They're not as active, not growing the plant as fast. We're not ever trying to apply actual drought stress to these. We're not trying to get close to wilting point. What that does is slow down the plant. If we get there, we get more water on it, but the plant's gotta recover. [00:33:30] If we're going back to actually seeing physical wilting, that means every day when we water that plant, we're wasting precious time, rehydrating it to a baseline.

[00:33:39] Seth: And if you extend that time over, you know, 63 days, 56 days, that it adds up, it leads to considerable loss in production time. The same as, you know, if we over dry and. Or overdrive repeatedly day after day, we're just spending less and less, or we're spending more and more time in a condition where the plant's not being [00:34:00] productive.

[00:34:01] Seth: And yeah, any, anytime your plant is looking, you know, anything but healthy even first thing in the morning that's not a good sign. You know, we're in cannabis right now in the interest of quality. We're all pushing for not running on the bare bone side of things. You know, like when we're talking about field agriculture and we look at drought resistance and stuff, that's how little effort can we put into this to achieve some sort of profitable result?

[00:34:26] Seth: And while we do kind of have that same mentality and now that we [00:34:30] throw, you know, quality in there and especially, you know, efficient operators, people are looking at doing a little bit more, we're, look, you know, we don't wanna find out how little CO2 we need to get our yield. We wanna just make sure we've got adequate CO2 because it's not an unobtainable expensive product.

[00:34:49] Kaisha: Love that. That is a great overview. Thank you both so much. We've got some live questions in from YouTube. I'm gonna send it to you in one second, Mandy, but just a reminder who everybody's on with us, you got any questions about our new [00:35:00] irrigation feature? You got any questions about AROYA? Anything? Drop it in the chat. Now's your chance to get questions live answered. What's going on at YouTube, Mandy?

[00:35:08] Mandy: Yeah, we got some shoutouts. We got some questions. Iron Armor. It's my favorite time of the favorite part of the day. So yeah, that's also my favorite day of the week. 5 0 5. Colt had a question. Talk about coco and crop steering, pros and cons.

[00:35:24] Seth: All right. Yeah, we'll hop in. I if you love Coco. Good. It's a great product. [00:35:30] It doesn't suffer some of the same structural integrity issues that rockwool does. We can easily push a bigger dry back if we've got a high water holding capacity, coco.

[00:35:38] Seth: You know, if we can get 65% vwc and coco, I can dry that all the way back to 25% pretty safely. So long as I'm watching my EC range and not running an incredibly high ec as a baseline.

[00:35:51] Jason: To kind of add on that as well as it's more forgiving as the human way that I say it, you know, without involving the science of matrix [00:36:00] potential and cat eye exchange capacity.

[00:36:02] Jason: You know, if you are interested in those checkouts, some of our other episodes, I love talking about it, so I try to talk about it most often, but we have hit it probably too many times to, to be chatting about it again. But why I say it's more forgiving is with rockwool, the available water to the roots, it is there almost to 0%, right?

[00:36:19] Jason: And so what's gonna happen is that plant's gonna pull and pull water from that. Rockwool until it's at zero and then it can't, and then it's gonna hit wilting very quickly. Whereas rockwool, [00:36:30] it's got a more gradual dry down curve. When we get on the low end of the water content for Cocos, it's okay.

[00:36:35] Jason: Coco has a more gradual dry down when we get to the low end of that water content, so miss a day irrigation or you know, we don't have automated irrigation set up yet, then then our plants are gonna slowly start to, to show signs of stress before we run into that cell rupture wall. That where they lose integrity.

[00:36:54] Seth: Yep. And then we're also getting our field capacity back with the coco, you know, a single over [00:37:00] drying event in that rock wall. And you've, depending on when it happened in the cycle, like if it happens during the first three weeks, You can kind of kiss your good yields goodbye cuz you're never gonna have the water capacity in that rock wall to be able to run generatively or ripen very well.

[00:37:15] Seth: You might still end up with some, okay. Pretty decent product. It's just definitely not gonna be as much as you wanted if you're not able to maintain that field capacity. Super important stuff

[00:37:25] Seth: to keep in mind. Yeah, you'll have to let us know if you have any follow ups. We also got a question [00:37:30] from kcc.

[00:37:31] Seth: Can you shed some lights shed some info on proper cloning strategy like the link that domes should stay on spraying or not. When to first water, et cetera. What do you guys think? I don't necessarily have my own SOPs specifically related to some of those dates. I know a couple nutrient companies out there that have released this information.

[00:37:50] Seth: Some of the other suppliers out there have pretty reasonable SOPs. I would go off of what you're doing now, document it, and work from changes in [00:38:00] that direction. So, you know, maybe use those other SPS as references. You know, what you're doing now. It works up to some degree, That's why you're still able to do it.

[00:38:08] Seth: So product or cloning improvements is going to be kind of an iterative step for you. You know, take that information that's working for other people, maybe run one batch with, you know, some of the changes that another vendor has recommended and go from there.

[00:38:25] Seth: Yeah. And you know, I think Aside from using different types of cloning media or you know, let's say aero [00:38:30] cloning versus cloning in rockwool the procedure's fairly standardized.

[00:38:34] Seth: Even if we're aero cloning versus cloning in rockwool, we're still trying to take very similar cuts, and by that we're trying to go with the same number of nodes. Having a good cut, not leaving too much below the node. And then, you know, there's, there is gonna be no perfectly pre-made cloning tech for your facility because every facility's got its own little variables.

[00:38:53] Seth: If every clone room was the same, had perfect control and could run domeless, hey, now we're talking [00:39:00] about a really uniform environment. But the reality is most of us have to run downs because that's the only way to control the environment that tightly on a micro level. And then beyond that, we gotta look at, okay, different strains are gonna react differently, different moms are gonna provide better cuts that root faster.

[00:39:15] Seth: So there's a few things that go into that, and I think one of the best things you can do as a cultivator. Is be open to using just some simple tools to analyze what's going on in your cloning room. If you can get a scale in there, you know, measure what a [00:39:30] saturated rockwool slab with clones on it weighs.

[00:39:32] Seth: Make it so you can pull it off and see, okay, how much water did we pull up outta here? How much do I want to see? You know, usually probably close to up, even up to a 50% dry back before we add water, but hey, that might be day 4, 5, 6, 7. You know, how aggressive are those clones? How quickly are they rooting in?

[00:39:50] Seth: Strain to strain. I've definitely cloned some strains off of some really good moms that I would say we probably have well over 50, 60% cloning success [00:40:00] rate without even using any rooting hormone, other strains other people cutting it, not the case. So there's a lot of variables and I think the best you can do is document every.

[00:40:11] Seth: As much as you can and try to repeat things over and be really diligent about your cleanliness. You know, that's one of the biggest things right now with oh, we see hops latent running around. That, that really forced a lot of people in the industry to go, Okay, I've got two, you know, be really careful when I'm out there taking cuts to switch scissors.

[00:40:28] Seth: Be careful with my [00:40:30] sanitation and follow that sanitation protocol all the way through. Not just say, Right, they're in the clone room. We gotta clean the clone room. We've got to, you know, really make sure there's no holes in that program. Yeah.

[00:40:43] Jason: And you know, clonings kind of, it's an expensive procedure and it's even more expensive if you're not doing it as effectively as you possibly can.

[00:40:52] Jason: So, you know, as big a head start as we can get with these plants, the more days we can cut off of our cycle and increase [00:41:00] or maintain production quantities.

[00:41:03] Seth: And you know, a big part of it too that I always like to stress to people. That's part of where the art of this come in, comes in. Cloning is definitely a skill.

[00:41:11] Seth: So, it's not something that I would expect to just pick up a new employee with no cultivation experience and say, Hey you better get 90% or better, otherwise you're fired. Like, no, you've gotta build up people and really develop those skills and techniques.

[00:41:25] Jason: And one of the most simple things that catches almost everybody I know in [00:41:30] production, off guard every once in a while is label your clones correctly.

[00:41:33] Jason: That might save you a headache down the road.

[00:41:36] Seth: Yep. Label your clones. I like to put a little piece of masking tape with initials on there of who took the cuts. That way I can have them come back and look at 'em, you know, really get them to develop like, okay, if I cut 'em a certain way that I tried this time, wow, we lost 30%.

[00:41:51] Seth: Okay, let's not do that next time. You know, really just Yeah, looking at the procedure holistically and making sure you don't have any gaps, that always goes back [00:42:00] to that.

[00:42:01] Mandy: That's really great advice and it's super important. Yeah I think that's it over on YouTube right now, but I think that we're getting live questions in the chat, so I'm gonna pass it over to Kaisha.

[00:42:10] Kaisha: Thank you, Mandy. Yeah, that was a great overview Again just for anybody who's on with us live, we posted a reminder office hours episode last month. We actually talked quite a bit about cloning, so maybe there's some helpful tips in there for you. But moving on to live questions here. Dyan posted a couple.

[00:42:25] Kaisha: They wrote, Can I spray copper or a manganese on my plants in [00:42:30] stretch? Same for the calcium, and if yes what form of calcium should I spray?

[00:42:37] Seth: Copper and calcium, I don't think we're growing grapes, so, during stretch. It sounds like you're talking about foer nutrient applications. Personally that's not something I go for too much.

[00:42:48] Seth: Usually that means I'm probably missing something in my feeding program. As far as calcium sprays, that's not something I really approach. I do know some people that occasional price, [00:43:00] calcium silicate I don't necessarily see a big need for it personally, as far as silicate goes, that included, get it in your feed.

[00:43:09] Jason: And he's asking about manganese too. I think that's what you meant in the first answer

[00:43:12] Seth: there, but, Okay. Manganese. Yeah. I've never found a need to spray manganese on my plants at all. That's a, it's a trace element that you would find in the feed. And typically when we're talking about deficiencies, you know, let's go back to this.

[00:43:26] Seth: We've got mold's chart and all these different relationships. So [00:43:30] if we're trying to diagnose something in, say it's manganese, Look at that chart, then start looking at your pH. If you really go down the rabbit hole, you can get into tissue analysis and that can be helpful. If you are lucky enough to be growing the same strain all the time, you can do some time series analysis there, but typically you're gonna find your results in raising or lowering your EC levels.

[00:43:50] Seth: And then also being able to maintain a program for a whole run. If I di try to diagnose a plant and I throw some cow mag at it, and then I switch up [00:44:00] my feed ratios and do all these reactive things, suddenly I've got too many variables and I don't know which thing actually made a difference. And even when we're talking like any kind of plant nutrient deficiency, always stress every one of parameters in terms of like, Hey, what's a good nitrogen content inside tissue E Every one of those is determined experimentally.

[00:44:21] Seth: So, We're kind of loose on the guidelines right now of what everything should look like. And even if we look at other agriculture, [00:44:30] when we get outside of, you know, one variety, we start to see variation too. So probably don't, you know, lose too much sleep over deficiencies and just try to start playing with raising or lowering that ec and maintaining consistency.

[00:44:47] Seth: And remember that plants don't heal. That's the worst part about that stuff. As a grower, you walk in every day and you see a dying leaf or something, and then it never turns green again. Well, it's never going tothat's just an unfortunate reality. [00:45:00]

[00:45:01] Kaisha: Seth, I wish I had heard that advice from you when I was growing my plants , but now I know for next year. Dyan, thank you so much for your questions. And I mean, I, we love to hear from growers who try things and come back to us with some results. Or if you try any of those things and see some interesting results, let us know. Alright, we're gonna keep it moving. We have about just over 10 minutes left in the program.

[00:45:24] Kaisha: If you have any questions, live now's the time to ask them. I'm gonna move on to this question we got on Instagram from Dave [00:45:30] Ray. Can you guys talk through an average day as far as irrigation goes in veg and gen strategies? I'd really like to understand what's ideal throughout the day and watch an explanation of the events happening during the day.

[00:45:43] Kaisha: What do you guys.

[00:45:45] Jason: Sure. I think, you know, also if you visit some of our earlier episodes we do talk about this quite a bit as well. My basis is when I'm running a more generative irrigation schedule, I'm having a shorter irrigation window. So when I say irrigation window, that's [00:46:00] first irrigation to last irrigation of the day.

[00:46:03] Jason: And for if I'm pushing generative really hard, it might be as short as an hour. If I need to balance out some of my other environmental factors, it might be three or four hours. For vegetative steering, that's gonna be a wide irrigation window. So getting up to field capacity maintaining it with some irrigations throughout the day to encourage infrastructural growth to the plant.

[00:46:25] Jason: And so that would be something like usually an eight or 10 hour irrigation window. [00:46:30]

[00:46:30] Seth: Yeah. A way I like to simplify it, you know. The ultimate generative strategy would be to go back to your bigger pot size, like three and a half, five gallons with medium sized plant you're watering once in the morning with one big shot and then not touching it for a day.

[00:46:43] Seth: So basically one thing to really think about is the total number of irrigation events in a day is going to affect whether we're running vegetative or generative. So even in a generative strategy, like when we talk about rockwool for instance, the reason we're, you know, putting on maybe [00:47:00] five, six shots in P one, Hey, is that ideal generatively?

[00:47:04] Seth: No, but that's the limitation of the medium. So that's what we're relying on is that longer dry back time. And then when we get into vegetative, like Jason said, we're opening that up to 10 hours. We're also giving it that many more irrigations. So that's why if you look at some graphs that are zoomed in, you might notice that there are 16, 18, 20, 22 irrigations throughout the day in inside of that 10 hour window.

[00:47:25] Seth: That's what we're looking at to drive that. So, It changes a [00:47:30] little bit based on media size and type, but total number of shots in that time window and how long our drive back is what's really driving.

[00:47:38] Jason: Yeah. You know, one of the most important things that sometimes I do forget to mention when we get into crop steerings, just because I'm excited about irrigation specifically, is, you know, taking consideration to the rest of our environmental and genetic factors.

[00:47:50] Jason: So, you know, am I restricted to a more generative leaning or vegetative leaning environment? Do I need to modify my irrigation to balance out some other [00:48:00] limitation that I'm encountering? Is it a generative or vegetatively leaning type of cultivar? You know, if it's, I think I've used this one dozens and dozens of times now, but I'll talk about like MAC one as a very generative leaning type of genetic, and then say something like, Blue Dream is a very vegetative type of genetic, and, you know, you run 'em both balanced.

[00:48:22] Jason: Genes show themselves very obviously, you know, Max's gonna be pretty stubby in comparison. And your big, your blue dream's [00:48:30] gonna be tall, stretchy, and lots of lots of growth infrastructure as far as leaves stems and stocks go.

[00:48:35] Seth: Yeah, I mean that's, it's really important to remember that these are crop steering is not one program.

[00:48:40] Seth: It's a set of tools and it's gonna be applied slightly differently to different strains in different situations, you know, and one of the best things you can do as a cultivator, especially right now in the industry, I think we're hitting a time now where enough people are starting to keep track of data and have the ability to represent or run pretty well.

[00:48:59] Seth: [00:49:00] But you can start trusting some of that data. But, you know, previously, if we go back like 10 years, I'm looking at seeds or clones somewhere and I don't know much about how the person I'm getting from would've grown that particular strain. Like how, what kind of a grower are you growing outside in Northern California in a 10 gallon pot?

[00:49:18] Seth: Are you growing? Under hps, like just those little changes make a lot of difference. So really tracking your own progress is what is gonna make you the most successful right now. [00:49:30]

[00:49:30] Jason: It's kind of fun. I think, you know, in the last year or two we've seen a resurgence of some of the legacy strains, if you will.

[00:49:38] Jason: Some the older stuff that wasn't necessarily profitable without tailoring in the crop steering that we see nowadays. So for me it's really fun to, you know, have some of those strains pop back into popularity that weren't necessarily the highest yielding at the time. But now when we've learned the tools to make its full potential or the best potential we know right now, [00:50:00] then then they can make it back into that list.

[00:50:03] Seth: Oh, absolutely. And there's certain strains I know that I've grown that were for all the cultivators I worked with was really frustrating. Notoriously finicky, depending on the season where, when we were working in the greenhouse or certain variables, so, What this allows us to do is actually quantify what made that screen perform and then replicate it without insight.

[00:50:21] Seth: That's sometimes it's really hard. You know, we got, let's say we've got fresh irrigation in one room versus the room next door, and these plants are really [00:50:30] sensitive to over drying or being overwatered. Okay. Well, just because we've got one irrigation system that's, say, three runs deep versus a brand new one, probably gonna wanna watch my water contents and make some adjustment to the irrigation schedule because more than likely I don't have a hundred percent flow rate on that one.

[00:50:46] Seth: That's three or five runs deep compared to a brand new irrigation system.

[00:50:53] Kaisha: Amazing. And I will just say as somebody who's a big fan of some of the classics out there, I am all for [00:51:00] documenting. So you, we can put 'em back in circulation. Wonderful. All right. So just a reminder to anybody who just joined.

[00:51:06] Kaisha: If you have any questions, now's the time. We're gonna be wrapping up the show in less than 10 minutes, but we wanna, we prioritize our live attendees first. I've got another write in here on Instagram. This is from Lockheed, One of our good friends they wrote in, Is there a tipping point when it comes to making environmental decision, environmental decisions based off V P D?

[00:51:25] Kaisha: Say, if temps get to 90 and you're in late flower, should you shoot for [00:51:30] 70% relative humidity if you have a trius in your environment? What do you guys think?

[00:51:35] Jason: Yeah, there, there definitely is tipping points. You know, I use. CPD to match my humidity to my temperature. So usually given appropriate control systems I'll shoot for an ideal temperature night and day, depending on the plant lifecycle and genetics that I'm trying to optimize.

[00:51:52] Jason: , and expression of that genetic. And so, you know, if I'm trying to hit a specific temperature, usually not 90 [00:52:00] degrees then I will try and match my humidity to hit that. You know, in the case example that you said, you know, close to harvest and 90 degrees not a good thing, it's 70% humidity.

[00:52:10] Jason: That's not gonna be a good thing either. You know, if you're outdoor, you gotta make the best concessions that you can or compromises that you can. And

[00:52:19] Seth: I think, you know, you wanna look at everything it takes for these pathogens to survive. So Jason's absolutely right, there's a point, a tipping point when VPDs not our only judge.

[00:52:28] Seth: And the other thing we are gonna [00:52:30] have to start looking at is temperature. Now, regardless of V P D not totally regardless, but for instance, at a certain humidity range mold petr is going to be more active and healthier down at 65 degrees than it's gonna be at 80. So at 80 or 90 degrees, yes, you can run that higher humidity at 90 degrees and 70% humidity.

[00:52:50] Seth: I mean, it's honestly almost low. But what you can't do is drop your temperature overnight if you can't, you know, maintain that vpd you, if you're at 90 degrees, you certainly don't want to [00:53:00] drop down to 70 or 65 and say, Hey, I'm gonna get this weed to purple up. That's how you're gonna mold it. You're gonna be locked in between more like 82 and 90, the rest of your run.

[00:53:09] Seth: And, you know, I think we've talked about it before. There's been a few times over the years on the forums where people have posted these kind of crazy runs where their de stopped working, you know, on week seven, week eight, and they're like, Well, I'll just crank it up, or the AC went out. So they just got a really humid to maintain their vpd and they pulled off and harvest [00:53:30] harvest without molding everything out.

[00:53:32] Seth: But that doesn't mean it was ideal. You know, adventure stories are great, but that's not how we wanna live our lives every day to make money, I guess, you know, not all of us anyway. Some of us will wanna have a consistent turnaround product every time.

[00:53:45] Jason: Yeah, maybe this is a good time just to talk about what relative humidity is.

[00:53:49] Jason: You know, temperature, I think everyone's pretty familiar with it. Relative humidity. We all know what it feels like, but by definition, relative humidity is the percentage of water in the air of [00:54:00] holding capacity at that temperature. So if when we change temperatures the amount of water in the air doesn't have to change for our relative humidity to change.

[00:54:07] Jason: So if I have a static amount of water in the air and my temperature goes up, my relative humidity's gonna go down because our warmer temperatures can hold a higher capacity of of water. So another way to say that would be is if I'm a hundred percent humidity at 60 degrees I'm gonna have less water in the air than I will if I'm at a hundred percent humidity.

[00:54:29] Jason: 80 or 90 [00:54:30] degrees. One of the things we do in AROYA also is we allow you to display absolute humidity and not necessarily really applicable to some of the growing techniques, but it is very applicable to sizing some of your equipment. So absolute humidity is going to be how much water is in the air regardless of the temperature.

[00:54:46] Jason: So just some fun things to kind of keep track of if you're, you are worried about those big changes or you're at the edge of a tipping point with with vpd, like we're talking here.

[00:54:56] Seth: Yeah. I also encourage people to check out, there's a lot of extension [00:55:00] resources. I bring that up sometimes from the universities, but for any given plant disease that we run into commercially, agriculturally, Weed's not special.

[00:55:08] Seth: Guess what? Apple growers deal with petites, rose growers, all kinds of people. So you can find some of these known values such as like temperature ranges that things can survive in humidity ranges, times of the year to expect running into that versus other times of the year in your area. All of that's really helpful and freely available.

[00:55:24] Seth: Iron Armor though.

[00:55:25] Kaisha: Yeah, Iron Armor posted something here. Iron Armor. I'm gonna read it and then if you'd like to [00:55:30] unmute yourself to clarify, feel free. Can you gimme a quick example of Overwatering and when generative steering, should I be stacking my field capacity vwc lower than in veg bulk stage?

[00:55:42] Kaisha: Or should I be stacking it up close to my first initial saturation on hydration? To be able to get bigger dry backs without getting the medium vwc too low that it is compromising it. Anything else you wanna add there? Iron armor? Nope. Okay. Yeah.

[00:55:59] Jason: So we're [00:56:00] gonna, we're gonna start from your question backwards here because you asked the easy one second and Absolutely.

[00:56:05] Jason: Yeah. So when we talk about generative, usually we want to get up to, we like to call it field capacity. It's slightly different than saturation, but an application fairly similar. So yeah, we want to use our irrigations to get up to that field capacity. And then since we are at field capacity, we can run a nice big dry down based on the size of our media and transpiration evaporation rates in the plant and substrate.

[00:56:27] Jason: Example of overwatering. Yeah, [00:56:30] absolutely. So, probably two types of overwatering. One would just be having way too much water in there, so getting to field capacity and continuing to irrigate. Yeah, you'll probably get runoff. It's probably not as bad as having overwatering as a stagnation thing where we're just always watering throughout the day.

[00:56:46] Jason: Mostly we're not exercising the roads.

[00:56:50] Seth: Yep. That's the main thing I see when Overwatering and generative is people typically aren't patient for that dry back in the beginning. So like, let's say we've got a Delta 10 on top of the slab, we've gotta wait, you know, three to [00:57:00] five days to get an appreciable dry back on that slab.

[00:57:02] Seth: The biggest thing I've seen is people worrying about it and trying to hit those P one s too early, you know, not waiting and being gentle with your, you know, little root in irrigations and then keeping it too saturated and not waiting for that dry back. And then, like Jason described the other situation where you're pushing too much runoff, that's just not gonna ever let you stack up your ec.

[00:57:21] Seth: You know, that's how we go to kind of. I would say like, you know, coco tech from like 10 years ago, we're keeping it in the two to three EC range in the root zone the whole [00:57:30] time, maybe even down to one and a half and just pretty much flushing it back to that every day. And

[00:57:34] Jason: you're wasting the trains to water.

[00:57:36] Seth: Yeah. Yeah. At the end of the day, that gets pretty expensive for sure. And as far as that field capacity goes you know, ideally when we're talking about rockwool especially, and Coco, it's not as much of a concern cuz we can get it back. But typically, we'll, you know, plant into a media that's anywhere from, you know, 70 to 85% saturated or percent volumetric water content [00:58:00] after that root in period, those roots have taken up some of that pore space.

[00:58:03] Seth: And we typically see volumetric water content at field capacity in the 60 to 65% range. And then those subsequent over drying compromise it and that's when we'll start to see it drift down. Yeah,

[00:58:15] Jason: I, you know, one of the easiest ways as well, if you are using a media that you're not used to, or maybe you have a different supplier field capacity is when you're still irrigating, you get some runoff and you don't see the irrigation the volumetric water content, excuse me, [00:58:30] rise.

[00:58:30] Jason: So a lot of times we'll see it kind of start to just top off. If you're looking at your AROYA and you know, obviously if you're documenting how much runoff you have, just use that as a calculation on how you can easily reduce your runoff.

[00:58:43] Kaisha: Awesome. Thank you guys. And Iron Armor. Thank you so much for your question. Drop your email address in a chat. We would love to enter you into our raffle. We have one last question from Dyan, so we're gonna wrap it up with this one. What is the lowest temperature I should go for between go, what is the lowest temperature I should go before [00:59:00] harvest and not expect mold, nighttime, ideally.

[00:59:06] Jason: Yeah, daytime temps. It's gonna depend a little bit on how much airflow you have, what types of lights you're using. Genetic preference. I mean, I wouldn't go below 70 absolutely for a daytime temperature. I mean, if, you know, if you have some issues getting heat into your environment, like 70 would be the lowest that I'd run for anything during the day.

[00:59:26] Jason: Simply because I, if I'm trying to get the expression of [00:59:30] anthocyanins color during ripening, then, you know, 10 degree night differential would put me at 60 degrees, which is not good at all any time of day or night. So just kind of, that's the low end extremes. You know, more idealistic would be a little bit higher up than that.

[00:59:46] Seth: 75 days. 65 night is about as low as I prefer to go. As far as mold goes though, I mean genetic preference has a big factor in that there's a wide range of mold resistance I've seen in strains. There are strains that I've grown that I wouldn't worry about getting down close to 60 [01:00:00] degrees cuz I've put them through the ringer quite a few times and those don't mold even when the bench next to 'em is just covered.

[01:00:06] Seth: So that is a huge factor. And then also, you know, what is your environment like? Do you have the ability to maintain a 1.3 to 1.5 V P D at 65 degrees? If not, then that's not something you can do in your facility.

[01:00:22] Kaisha: Wonderful. Awesome. Thanks to everybody who submitted some questions today. Appreciate you.

[01:00:27] Kaisha: Jason and Seth, thank you so much for that wonderful [01:00:30] preview of our irrigation future and as in general sharing your knowledge with us. Mandy, thank you for co moderating with me. We ran a little late. I'm gonna wrap it up here. Thank everybody for joining us for AROYA Office Hours. We do this every Thursday and the best way to get answers from the experts is to join us live Reminder to our AROYA clients, Reach out to your client success to rep to get in line for your irrigation integration setup.

[01:00:50] Kaisha: If you don't have AROYA, wanna learn more, book a demo and our experts will walk you through all the ways can help. You improve your cultivation production process. If there's a topic you'd like cover in a future [01:01:00] episode of Office Hours, post questions anytime via the AROYA app. Feel free to drop them in the chat.

[01:01:04] Kaisha: Send us an email to support dot AROYA at meter group.com. Send us an Instagram dm. We love to hear from you. We record every session. We'll email everybody in attendance and link to the video. It'll also live on the or AROYA YouTube channel, like subscribe and share while you're there. We're gonna be at MJBizCon next week, so hit us up if you wanna meet up.

[01:01:22] Kaisha: Otherwise we'll look forward to seeing you next time. Thanks so much everybody.