AI generated

OH TX 58
===

[00:00:00] Kaisha: All right. How's it growing? Friends, welcome to Office Hours. You're for free cannabis Cultivation education. My name is Kaisha. I am one of your co moderators today. How's it going, Mandy?

[00:00:13] Mandy: Hey, Kaisha. Oh my gosh, I'm so glad that we're back. We're here for episode 58. We really missed y'all. We're going live over on YouTube, so if you're logging on over there, make sure you send me your questions and I'll get those over to the team.

[00:00:27] Mandy: I'll go through our list of social media where you should be following us. [00:00:30] So if you're on any of these platforms, please follow us. Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Social Club. But you guys have sent in so many questions over the past few weeks, and we still have those, so I'm not gonna waste any more time.

[00:00:41] Mandy: I'm gonna throw it back to you, Kaisha.

[00:00:43] Kaisha: Fantastic. Mandy, thank you so much. All right, we got Jason in the studio and Seth is coming in remote. How are you guys

[00:00:50] Jason: doing? Great.

[00:00:52] Seth: I'm good. Doing pretty good. I'll I just wanna forewarn everyone. I'll be here for like a half hour, then I gotta board a plane, but I'm gonna leave my mic off and throw me the [00:01:00] questions when you want me to say something.

[00:01:01] Seth: Please.

[00:01:01] Kaisha: Amazing. Glad to have you on Seth and Jason. All right, we're gonna just get into it. Ready for the first question, guys? All right, go. I got a two-parter here from David submitted it a while back. Here's the first one. If I wanna determine the field capacity of my medium using AROYA, can I just super saturate the coco and wait two hours and then take a reading?

[00:01:25] Jason: Yeah that's a good way to do it. We actually have a video on our YouTube as well with with Ramsey back in the [00:01:30] days that talks about a great way to basically check using weight and your sensors to get an idea of what that field capacity is for a specific substrate. So, Coco's, we see a lot of varieties in between, say, 45 and 65% of volumetric water content when they do hit that field capacity.

[00:01:48] Jason: So, yeah, make sure that are using the low flow take. Get up to super saturation and give it hour or two hours or so. Probably the hour range would be good. And then take some measurements there. Check out that video we've got on [00:02:00] YouTube. It's kind of a step-by-step explanation.

[00:02:02] Jason: A great way that you can check this with your specific media.

[00:02:06] Seth: Yeah it's honestly, you nailed everything there, Jason. It's super easy if you've got a good hydration tech already for your blocks, which should involve a decent soak, not a 10 minute dunk or just a simple splash, just make sure you drain it off good enough and you're not sit having the blocks sit in a puddle when you do go take that test.

[00:02:23] Seth: And it's pretty easy. But it is very important. Just like Jason said, we see a wide range in between brands and even in [00:02:30] between batches and times of the year in coco. So it's really good to establish that every time you start a new run, just so you know where you're at and you're not accidentally over or underwater in your plants from a distance.

[00:02:42] Kaisha: Fantastic. And for anybody who's on with us live here on the Hangout. So I just dropped the link to the video that Jason referenced in the chat. And we'll also be sure to include that most likely in our blog post. But yeah, our knowledge base is full of great resources for you there as well. All right.

[00:02:56] Kaisha: Let me ask the second question from David. If I get [00:03:00] runoff at say 48%, does this mean I'm at field capacity or does runoff now necessarily mean that field capacity has been reached throughout my medium because I get runoff around 48%. But if I saturate my medium, my meter reads 67%. After the runoff stops, I'm around 62%.

[00:03:19] Kaisha: So is 48 or 62% my field capacity. Did you get all those numbers guys?

[00:03:25] Jason: I think so. Yeah. So kind of wrap around some of the points that we made is one [00:03:30] let's make sure that this media either has been never soaked up before or hasn't been jeopardized by some low low volumetric water contents before.

[00:03:37] Jason: And the reason we're doing that is just to make sure that we're avoiding any hydrophobic properties, any dry and wet. Pockets in that substrate in which the irrigation channeling could occur, where we're getting runoff before we've gotten to our field capacity point. Yeah, a second part of that would also be, making sure you are using a low flow emitters that'll also help avoid any channeling those type of issues [00:04:00] as well to make sure you are getting up to a field capacity.

[00:04:02] Jason: Yeah, field capacity is usually gonna be actually where that thing kind of likes to sit some of the time. If, usually if we're irrigating in a really good situation, we'll see runoff right about field capacity. That being said, if any of those caveats that we just talked about have happened, then that substrate's gonna take a little bit longer for the capillary effect to actually soak all of the pore space in that media.

[00:04:26] Jason: Yeah.

[00:04:27] Seth: I wanna highlight, we, we do spend a lot of time talking about how [00:04:30] Rockwall can develop hydrophobic pockets, and that's a big downfall. You can develop some of the same behaviors in coco if you don't do a proper job hydrating your media initially. So a lot of it really does go back to a proper hydration tech and make sure you're where you're at and keep, just keep testing it, make sure you know exactly what's going on with your bwc.

[00:04:49] Seth: And probably if you hydrate a thousand or 1500 blocks, go test at least 10 or 15 of them. Get a good idea what your variability is gonna be. Because at the end of the day, especially with coco, we are [00:05:00] playing a game of averages and we can only control what we can inside the ranges that we have access to.

[00:05:05] Seth: So it's important to know that, maybe this first one hit 65, go check another one that might hit 58. See what we're looking at. .

[00:05:13] Jason: Yeah that's a really good point because well, two, two things here is one I know we're always talking about hydrophobic properties and rock wool and making sure we're avoiding it.

[00:05:22] Jason: I don't think we talk about it nearly as much as we actually encounter it with clients. And so reiterating just the absolute necessity to start [00:05:30] off with the best slate that you can when we're getting started with this growth cycle, obviously we also talk about, things like, hey, every day later is harder to fix changes or mistakes.

[00:05:41] Jason: Each day lost in production is one that we can't have back to have the optimal product. And so getting that idea of what your expected variation between blocks is helps you kind of verify that our sensor installation is good and that any maybe of the croc uniformity [00:06:00] issues that we're trying to analyze.

[00:06:01] Jason: Aren't due to other variables that we're looking at with this data. So getting a good sample size is absolutely critical. Great. Great point, Seth.

[00:06:10] Seth: Yeah, and especially if you get some new media, don't be scared to explore it. Cut it open, dig it up. See what we're looking at here. I know different brands of coco over the years have experimented with different densities at different pot depths.

[00:06:21] Seth: Typically they design that on purpose so we hold more water in the area of the pot where the roots are gonna uptake it. But it's good to know because I've encountered pots where [00:06:30] that hydration tech was everything. If we didn't let 'em soak for at least an hour, you'd end up with coco blocks that have a still compressed bottom layer or top layer that you know, you're not gonna get it to completely hydrate just to regular irrigation at that point.

[00:06:45] Seth: And then that's a percentage of your block that your plant can't utilize. And if that happens to be the bottom two inches, let's say. Well you, if that's still hard and compressed, you've got like less than half the pot volume to work with at that point. And just like Jason said, when [00:07:00] the later we go, if after transplant that's not fixed, immediately your plant's gonna suffer the rest of the run.

[00:07:06] Jason: Mikey's got comment in on here. Thanks Mikey. He says also always test a few of the cubes, pots from each new bag ordered in. Inconsistency has been commonplace with most vendors. Absolutely if you're used to using one of the specific vendors for, three years, two years five years, don't expect what you had dealt with and established as your standards back then to be true on today's order.

[00:07:29] Jason: [00:07:30] So, great point as well. Mikey. It's worth the time.

[00:07:34] Kaisha: I love this conversation. It's really about setting your own benchmarks in the first place, right? Yeah.

[00:07:39] Seth: And while we're on that, we should probably talk about EC on incoming coco blocks. coco grows in a pretty salty environment, typically, so depending on the time of the year that the coconuts were harvested, how long it's been sitting outside in a pile before processing, whether they were rained on as a grower.

[00:07:54] Seth: You'll notice at different points, even with the same brand, that initial hydration, the first time you give it a another [00:08:00] shot, your runoff might come off pretty clear. Other times it might be pretty dark red brown. So when you start seeing anything coming out, and even if you see Clearwater come out, it's always good to get an EC reading off of that runoff and established, if we've got 500 to a thousand PPM and runoff of.

[00:08:16] Seth: sodium . Like that's not good. We don't want our plants growing in actual sea salt pipe water. So, just check that, always remember like anything in horticulture, as, as much as we, especially in cannabis look at premium products that are pretty [00:08:30] specifically designed, we're also paying a really low price point to process and ship this stuff halfway across the globe.

[00:08:36] Seth: So we've gotta, temper our expectations and operate within that variability.

[00:08:42] Jason: Yeah, that, that's a great point. It might be worth testing that coco with RO and or with your nutrients and seeing what that offset is. So if I'm coming in ro at like 0.1, ecs are we seeing that coco running off at 0.7 ECS and take take advantage of those measurements [00:09:00] when you do your nutrient schedule?

[00:09:03] Jason: Yeah.

[00:09:03] Seth: And to back that up, I have seen blocks come in with, over 1.0 EC in that. in the runoff, it, it happens. And at that point you just go, okay, we've got a flush. There were, I can think of a few brands that I won't name that used to have it printed on their blocks to say, that said, rinse them two to three times with nutrient solution.

[00:09:19] Seth: That's why, they weren't trying to be wasteful. They were just giving you a practical solution and that would ensure that if you did that you weren't gonna run into a sodium issue with their media. [00:09:30]

[00:09:31] Kaisha: Awesome. Thank you for that. Yeah. It just goes to show you, like the grower's always gonna be super integral to this entire process.

[00:09:38] Kaisha: So, I think we got some live questions over on YouTube. What's going on over there, Mandy? Oh yeah. You guys

[00:09:43] Mandy: are commenting and asking questions. Grower County 74 wants to know, I'm curious if you have any recommendations for increasing terpenes and resin production through irrigation strategy rather than bios.

[00:09:59] Jason: Yeah. [00:10:00] So, if terpene production is the utmost valuable, usually we will go for more generative type of irrigation strategies throughout the plant life cycle. Those generative are the ones that typically see a response from the plant that's more potent in chemical composition.

[00:10:19] Seth: Yeah. I mean, pushing that generative strategy is gonna help focus on cannabinoid and terpene production, especially later in flour. If we've been able to, where our traditional bulking period, or not traditional, where our bulking period would be , [00:10:30] if we continue to go more generative, bulk less there, so less shots in a day, essentially.

[00:10:35] Seth: We do see a higher resident terpene production. Another part of that equation is environmental. When we're looking at terpenes, it's a volatile compound. That's why we're part of why we're lowering our tents towards the end of flower. And that's currently, kind of a big battle with people like, Not with people, but that people are facing.

[00:10:50] Seth: Do I run a higher temperature and not deal with mold? And then kind of we're, we're all growing inside of a box now that we have licenses and buildings. [00:11:00] So sometimes it's like, Hey, I wanna get my yield up, but I don't have the DEH capacity to run a lower tempera temperature. And when we look at temperatures under like 75 or so and late flower, and then having the DEH to deal with that, that helps with those not gassing those curbs off essentially.

[00:11:15] Seth: And then a huge portion of that too, guys, is post-production. I can't tell you how many people I've talked to and even experienced this myself several times where we went and hung up a crop and had any equipment failure in the driver room and that, that loses it [00:11:30] right there. If your dry room AC goes out in the summer and that stuck your spikes up to 85, 90 degrees say bye-bye to your TURPs.

[00:11:37] Seth: That's, it's a bummer. But that's just as important as growing good cannabis. Curating it and getting it to market in a desirable form.

[00:11:47] Mandy: And I know the rule, don't beat up your buds. That one I do know. We do have another question that came in. This is a comment that came in over on YouTube.

[00:11:55] Mandy: Let me know if you guys have any advice for him. For this person, my pH runoff is a bit [00:12:00] weird. Input pH is at 5.8. Output is at 4.5. EC input 2.8, EC output, four to five ec. I'm in Coco Media with Pearlite and I'm also gonna put that in the chat right there.

[00:12:17] Jason: Yeah. First thing I would do is go get a leaf tissue analysis as quick as possible on this one.

[00:12:23] Jason: Probably getting some buildup of specific elements from your nutrients. If you're using. A [00:12:30] known branded nutrient that's out there right now. Probably two part salts if you're in a commercial scale. Get in contact with them, see what kind of recommendations they have for dealing with that.

[00:12:39] Jason: That's one point. Three E or 1.3 pH lower than your input. Kind of my general rule of thumb is like 0.4, 0.5. Then I start to get worried if I'm 0.4, 0.5 high or 0.4, 0.4 low. Definitely something screwy is going on with how that plant is eating the nutrients in respect to the nutrient balance in the [00:13:00] feed.

[00:13:00] Jason: So, if you do have miscellaneous supplemental that you're adding to a basic two-part nutrients, make sure you're talking to your manufacturer about, Hey how could this affect what's going on? Also check out your mixing systems. Might get in some fallout. Is there a precipitate in my tank or in my filters?

[00:13:19] Jason: Make sure you're cleaning out your filters as well. So, kind of just get, getting down to one, checking the basis. I would get a lift leaf tissue analysis out in anyways just because they're [00:13:30] fairly inexpensive. It's gonna take the lab a couple days to process that and get you the results.

[00:13:34] Jason: And hopefully that'll help you from spending too many weeks trying to deal with what this is gonna do to your plants, which might end up in lockout.

[00:13:43] Seth: Yeah, I mean, check out the whole situation. That's the reality now. If it's a facility-wide problem and it's all of your plants, yeah, really look at your irrigation system.

[00:13:50] Seth: Go get your EC readings at the actual dripper and make sure you don't have a mixing or fallout issue. Something else. If it is just one finicky strain, yeah. Immediately get [00:14:00] that tissue analysis. And then what we'll look at is like, hey, on this particular nutrient line, the strain we might have to actually run at a lower EC with more runoffs so that we're constantly correcting that pH balance every day.

[00:14:11] Seth: And at that point, evaluate, do we want to waste a bunch of water or require, one mono cropped room for this strain to treat it special? Can we do that? Do we have a separate tank for that flower room where we can add what we need to or take out what we need to keep this plant healthy?

[00:14:28] Jason: Yeah, and anytime we're [00:14:30] troubleshooting anything, isolating variables like Seth is talking about, is gonna be the way to keep you from going crazy. It's so easy to kind of overlook some of the simple things that can make this happen and dig into maybe something else that changed even though we weren't maintaining something properly or some of the variation in in supplier materials.

[00:14:48] Jason: Maybe that coco or the pearl light come in has bad wash on it or changed the actual suppliers to the brand name. So, take the first steps that you can to isolate the variables and [00:15:00] that'll help you go down to the right path without wasting

[00:15:01] Seth: time. And I wanna stress to you guys it's a lot easier to evaluate this if you have time series data going back as far as you can on that plant's lifecycle.

[00:15:09] Seth: Cuz we could be talking about, a strain, specific deficiency, something wrong with that fertilizer. We could just be looking at, low sea in the beginning, some severe dry backs. That, hampered its ability to maintain that pH balance. And then if if we went zero runoff for let's say five days trying to build that ec, but we started at 1.5, 1.8 AC in the block.

[00:15:28] Seth: We had some really hungry plants [00:15:30] trying to get that to stack. It's just not doing it cuz the plant's uptaking so much. So we're not pushing runoff and replacing that pH balance. So sometimes what looks like horrible plant disease deficiency can actually just be a simple irrigation problem earlier on.

[00:15:44] Seth: And then, the cumulative effect of small mistakes building up over a few weeks. Thank you

[00:15:51] Mandy: guys for that. Oh my gosh, that was a wealth of information. Yeah. Keep those questions coming over there on YouTube and then Bilbo had a comment monocropping for the win. [00:16:00] Yeah. So that's it for over on YouTube for now.

[00:16:02] Mandy: So I'm gonna pass it back to you. .

[00:16:05] Kaisha: Thank you, Mandy. Yeah. On the subject of kind of checking in on what's happening on a separate basis, somebody wrote in a question around leaf surface temperature. They were wondering what's the best time to measure this? And they were wondering if y'all have any recommendations on like, A good laser ther thermometer.

[00:16:22] Kaisha: They wrote in, I've gone through over six or seven lasers, thermometers and have even tried an emperor camera. There always seems to be big [00:16:30] discrepancies between all of them, and I have no idea which

[00:16:32] cut this: one to rely on.

[00:16:35] Jason: Yeah, that's, I mean, that's a challenge that we all face. I get, I always get calls people comparing our equipment to other equipment.

[00:16:42] Jason: It's like, all right, gimme the name brand, the model. I'm gonna look up the. That accuracy of that sensor. And if it's plus or minus 5%, then I have to add, the plus or minus 1% of our sensor on top of that. So it could be, hey, and maybe I'm 6% off in humidity and these sensors are actually agreeing, which is [00:17:00] very brutal way to start making SOPs and expecting people that don't understand this stuff to operate.

[00:17:05] Jason: But yeah, back to the point. As far as the time to take, leave surface temperature we're seeing, I mean, I've seen some studies that suggest that there's slightly different amounts of transpiration throughout the day. Talking about a little bit of a little bit less transpiration in towards the evening.

[00:17:22] Jason: So, a as a basis, probably not within the first hour or the last hour of lights on , I would probably just take a few of [00:17:30] them. They're fairly quick. Go across the room, take samples in different places on that plant. Make sure that you are getting some of the top exposed leaves as well to see the highest leave surface temperatures, the ones you're getting the most radiation to them.

[00:17:42] Jason: And, build a quick T curve. If it takes 30 seconds to take and record a sample, go take 10 of 'em or 20 of 'em across the room and start to understand. All right, well, when I'm over by the HVAC system or the, when I'm closer to the mr, I've got a little bit higher transpiration.

[00:17:56] Jason: All, all right. Let's see the spatial variance across that so [00:18:00] we can actually have a good standard of comparison as far as which laser thermometer would use. If you can get one that has A N I S T. Rating, that's gonna be a good start. Typically, these are gonna be substantially more expensive than a lot of the ones that we're used to using for industrial applications.

[00:18:21] Jason: But leaf service temperature could be a fairly panicky measurement.

[00:18:28] Seth: Absolutely. I mean, it's [00:18:30] a one or 10,000 kind of reading, so it's a good idea to just get a feel for the light layout of your room and what kind of stratification of it radiation you have at different depths. Because like, just like Jason said, those top leaves are most exposed, those start going above about 85 degrees and we get some pretty undesirable effects.

[00:18:46] Seth: And another thing too, to look at, the easiest ways to do this is gonna be, right after your, It's a great time to go check everything in the room and get some readings. Personally, especially if I'm dealing with a light setup that I haven't quantified very much, I like [00:19:00] to get it in the morning during that first hour after P one and then in the afternoon too, and start to ramp, like, look at what my ramp is like in leaf surface temperature.

[00:19:09] Seth: So if early in the morning I go and see that, like, wow, I kicked the lights on full blast. And these are, 90 degrees leaf surface temp, and then they cool down four degrees after we get some transpiration. That might ramp my lights up a little bit to try to match that curve and not, keep that plant in Optimum's.

[00:19:24] Seth: Model conductions.

[00:19:27] Jason: Yeah, and I mean, so talked about things that are [00:19:30] affecting our leaf surface temperature. Obviously the rim temperature is gonna be one of the most influential aspects of leaf surface temperature next to the amount of radiation that's hitting that leaf surface. Then we talk about the stone metal conductants.

[00:19:43] Jason: So how much water vapor is leaving these plant stone mates that's going to be cooling the plant down as well. And then in relationship to that, that P one thing actually substrate temperature. So the temperature of the irrigation coming in can, can change that plant leaf surface temperature as well.

[00:19:59] Jason: [00:20:00] So quite a few

[00:20:01] Seth: variables play in here.

[00:20:03] Kaisha: Great overview guys. Thank you so much for that. All right we got some action helping over on YouTube. I'm gonna send it to Mandy.

[00:20:10] Mandy: Yeah, we submitted a poll to y'all and the question was, what's more important to your success as a grower? So the answers were data science and both.

[00:20:19] Mandy: And so data came in at 10%. Science came in at 10% and then both came in at 80%. So pretty important both of them, I would say. And then, yeah, we also have some more [00:20:30] questions rolling in. This one's from Anthony. He says, Hey, I was reading a little on your runoff post on Instagram. I would love to get some info if possible, on what I should be expecting putting in 6.0 pH and 3.0 ec and how much water content I should be looking f looking to finish the day off with the last feeding, and they're in one gallon pot.

[00:20:51] Mandy: coco. I'll add that in the chat. .

[00:20:55] Jason: Cool. Yeah, good to hear that. They're on coco, at a 6.0 pH that's definitely a good [00:21:00] range for Coco. I like to be at, five eight typically. Sometimes six. Oh for Coco. Let's see, how much water content should I be looking to finish the day off with?

[00:21:07] Jason: The last speeding. Gonna have to answer that with what the field capacity of that specific coco that you are using. So as we mentioned earlier, most of the Coco's we work with, we see between 45 and 65% for field capacity. Some of 'em are a little bit higher. Every once in a while. So if we are early in the plant cycle, we're trying to do generative steering, something like a one gallon coco, you [00:21:30] might see about 25% lost in water content.

[00:21:32] Jason: And this is pretty important because if we are to say a 65 percent field capacity type of coco means we're gonna be hitting, 40% water content. Now if our coco is going to be only getting field capacity, it'd say 45%, that's gonna put us at 20% water content. So we may not want to push generative quite that hard with that specific type of media.

[00:21:53] Jason: In that case, we need to either get coco that'll hold a little bit more water content or possibly move to a two gallon. Some of these [00:22:00] numbers that I'm given out are based on very rapidly growing plants. Let's say maybe week two, week one and a half, week two to, for generative steering in in that flower life.

[00:22:10] Jason: So obviously if we're looking for a vegetative irrigation, We'll wanna be at a closer drive back to probably around 15%. And that, it's a little bit safer range if you are in a one gallon coco that has a lower field capacity. And sometimes we just have to run things a little bit more balanced if we don't have just the right situation to accelerate the [00:22:30] growth of our plants as, as best as possible.

[00:22:33] Seth: Yeah, I think. Awesome. I think you touched on something important Jason there, which is that dry back number is gonna vary widely depending on plant size. I mean, even if we looked at two plants that were within 10 grams of each other, one plant might literally have leaves that have more stomata on it and transpire water faster.

[00:22:49] Seth: So when we're talking about this percentages, we wanna keep in mind that like, if everything's ideal, we're looking for that 15 to 25%. Plenty of options exist outside of that. . [00:23:00] So, really it goes back to your field, like you said, field capacity, figuring out how big your plan is and then watch it and use, we can run some pretty big dry backs in coco, for instance, but data's key.

[00:23:11] Seth: If I can push it from 65 to 20, cool. But I'm going to moderate that and say, okay, what's my EC doing? My easy spikes from six to 24. When I do that, I might bring it back up at like 35%, not 20%. So, dry back number's important if you're not seeing a decent one, but if [00:23:30] you are seeing over 10%, really focus on your EC and then just watch your plants to make sure they look healthy.

[00:23:37] Seth: And you're one thing, we can't iterate this enough. If you're experiencing that low dry back and it's not a V P D or light related issue you're probably gonna have to correct it with pot size on the next run or incoming plant consistency. .

[00:23:51] cut this: Those were

[00:23:51] Mandy: all really good tips. Thank y'all for that. I'm gonna keep going down our list.

[00:23:56] Mandy: This one's about lighting. Bob Farms wants to know. [00:24:00] I'm really trying to dial in my DLI and trying to push my pfd going from veg to flower. Should there be such a drastic drop in the DLI or should I try to compensate the drop of DLI by raising the light intensity to match my numbers from veg to flower?

[00:24:16] Mandy: So if my DLI and veg maxes out at 35 and I do nothing to my light intensity, my DLI and flower will go from 35 to 26. Please advise. Thank you.

[00:24:26] Jason: The answer is yes. Do not drop your DLI through almost [00:24:30] any part of the flower cycle if you can avoid it. So obviously daily lighting integrals, the number of hots that are hitting the leaf surfaces for a specific area in the entire course of the photo period.

[00:24:41] Jason: So if we are at 18 hours for our lights on duration, we'll need to up our intensity 33%. When we go to a 12 hour photo period we wanna make sure we're getting the same amount of energy to these plants. If we look at the very basic of plant growth, we're looking at the chemical equation for [00:25:00] photosynthesis.

[00:25:00] Jason: We've got CO2 plus water catalyzed by light, and that's giving the sugars basically the food for that plant to grow. And if we decrease our light by 33%, that's six hours. That being, the same intensity of light. So a lower dli when we go into flour. You're gonna lose a third of the amount of photosynthetic capabilities of that plan, that's definitely gonna delay how quickly that you can build your flowers.

[00:25:27] Jason: And if you are in a competitive [00:25:30] timeframe for producing bud, then you're gonna lose out on growth time.

[00:25:36] Seth: Absolutely. And I think one thing to really bring up here, Jason, is that, when we're talking about matching DLI coming from veg to flower, we're not talking about going from, four 50 P F D all the way up to say 1200, right?

[00:25:49] Seth: We're talking about usually more like a 200 P F D increase. So matching dli, if your plants are showing signs of stress, look at all your other variables. But I know we've seen it proven out[00:26:00] many times and grows all over that matching DLI works fine with healthy plants. You're not gonna torch 'em with that increased intensity.

[00:26:09] Seth: However, if you only get 300 P F D in veg, you're not gonna be able to do it or you're, it's gonna be slower. Just like Jason said, you won't have the total amount of photons and not as much photosynthesis.

[00:26:21] Mandy: Y'all, it's been so long since we've asked a great lighting question like that. Thank you for that. Keep sending those over. But until then, I am gonna pass it back to Kaisha for our [00:26:30] online questions that we got in through Instagram.

[00:26:33] Kaisha: Thank you Mandy. Yeah, love it. This is such a good, it's so good to be back on office hours.

[00:26:37] Kaisha: We love these conversations. Since we were talking about runoff and ec earlier, I'm gonna bring up this question from golf. Ma wrote in, I'm seeing my substrate ec is lower than my runoff EC in week two of flower. That isn't normal.

[00:26:53] Jason: No, that's not that normal. In most cases

[00:26:57] Seth: it is if your substrate EC is lower than your [00:27:00] feed ec off.

[00:27:02] Seth: Yeah. , if you're going my first question be, are you using liquid nutrients and do you have a sensor in there? Because that's highly likely that's what's happening

[00:27:14] Kaisha: There it is. Golf ma. Let us know what happens. Keep us posted. I wanna speak to a comment. Billbo, you wanna unmute yourself and speak to your comment you dropped here in the

[00:27:22] cut this: chat?

[00:27:23] cut this: Sure.

[00:27:25] Seth: It's coming

[00:27:26] cut this: from having

[00:27:27] Bilbo: done it both ways, but having a place [00:27:30] where you can

[00:27:30] cut this: log all the different

[00:27:32] Seth: decisions.

[00:27:34] cut this: over multiple harvest groups really

[00:27:36] Bilbo: helps compare apples to apples. I have been victim of, sporadic information going into different systems and never really being able to compare information when I'm trying to

[00:27:50] cut this: correct in future

[00:27:51] Bilbo: harvest groups.

[00:27:51] Bilbo: And I felt like it was appropriate to just put it in the comments that, your information really is your key [00:28:00] metric that you can use to, well, maybe it's not a key metric, but it's certainly a major point that you can use to affect your decisions in the future and learn from what you've done in the past.

[00:28:12] Bilbo: And I think that the platform as it continues to expand offers a lot of these places where that information can be input and really create a log whether it's of a individual

[00:28:23] cut this: bar or an entire room, if it's mono.[00:28:30]

[00:28:31] cut this: Yeah.

[00:28:31] Kaisha: Totally like, love that comment bill. But at the end of the day, it's really about like growers setting the parameters for what it is that they're trying to achieve and, best based on your own knowledge. And being able to like log your data just gives you the support to be able to do that.

[00:28:47] Kaisha: Really the recipe ideally when you look back at all at historical data, right?

[00:28:51] Bilbo: Yeah. But as a grower, you're constantly solving, 50 different problems from mechanical ones or cult of our environmental ones, [00:29:00] or I p m I mean, there's a litany of problems that you face.

[00:29:02] Bilbo: So, good record keeping I found in the past is usually the difference between, a minor success and a major success, or a

[00:29:11] Seth: complete write off. Absolutely. Bba, I mean, I think you brought up something really important and that's, that we're all human. And we invented things like writing to help us keep track of information.

[00:29:22] Seth: And if you've got even four rooms and flour, man, you've cranked out a lot of crops in two years and most likely you've got [00:29:30] several runs with the same screens. So you wanna be really good at organizing that data. That way if you do run into a problem, you can actually identify it. I know I've got sent it here before, and I'll say it again.

[00:29:39] Seth: I've got all kinds of pictures on my phones with a date stamp. And man, I gotta dig through some files to actually get any other details to identify what's going on. And at that point, that information is less useful and also more expensive, cuz it's taking more of my time to find it.

[00:29:55] Jason: Yeah, and it's kind of interesting, I have been hearing the term data quite a bit here in this [00:30:00] episode.

[00:30:00] Jason: And Really it's about information as well. So data is typically more easy to make comparisons, analytics, and have decisions based on large portions of it. For me, I started cultivating and I was just capturing information. This was all types of things like photos, time lapse videos, and starting to think about, how did this information get captured, get stored, and how to become useful.

[00:30:25] Jason: And I think that's when one of the reasons that data is the first step is because it's much, much easier to [00:30:30] turn into a good decision. That being said, I think the best growers out there are taking pictures every day of their plants, of their cold bars. And making sure that, how the biology of that's performing is tracked visually as well.

[00:30:44] Seth: You can take a quick shirt picker and you can quicker than you can write a note. Uhhuh. I always tell people that it's so easy and we have the technology now. They used to cost money. And take some time. Now it's super easy to get all that information rounded up and put it in a, an accessible spot.[00:31:00]

[00:31:01] Kaisha: Yep. We have AV equipment in our pockets now. Right. Bill wrote the comment here, qualitative and quantitative around the data. That's right. Okay, we're gonna keep going with these questions here. Let's see here. Tyler wrote in, I'm currently using floor Flex Bubblers with one quarter tubing and nothing at the end open flow.

[00:31:21] Kaisha: With this setup, I can't accurately measure my milliliter per shot sizes. What would you recommend to add to the end of the one quarter tubing in [00:31:30] order to have consistency with my shot sizes?

[00:31:33] Jason: Yeah. So somewhere in there you need a, some type of regulator. So a pressure compensating emitter would be one of the most common options to do that.

[00:31:42] Jason: We always talk about low flow that's really gonna help one the consistent or uniformity across the rooms and give you a more predictable amount of water coming outta

[00:31:52] that

[00:31:52] Seth: system. Yeah. So completely on corked like that, you're probably looking at, I mean, depends on what Octa [00:32:00] bubbler system you have.

[00:32:00] Seth: They're probably 20 gallons per hour. Floor Flex does offer inserts to neck that down to two gallons per hour. But personally I would advocate just with Jason saying, making the move to pressure compensating emitters and making your life easier. Or big beds, , I don't know, big pots, big plants, and have the need for 20 gallons an hour or even two.

[00:32:26] Seth: Excellent.

[00:32:26] Kaisha: Great. Dropping some nuggets and some tips over here. All right, [00:32:30] Mandy, I'm gonna send it over to you.

[00:32:32] Mandy: Yeah. Lots of questions about irrigation this episode. Oh my goodness. Wonder what that's about. We had another question come in. Key Capone wants to know how do I get more root growth during the first few weeks of flour?

[00:32:46] Jason: Yeah. So a couple things that are gonna affect how much growth you have. Are we transplanting at the time of flipping the 1212 cycle? Have we already rid in veg? And so this is kind of where you kind of go. You need to think about the [00:33:00] best rid in principles. And so many times I've seen people run in like a rock wool four by four on a two gallon coco or any type of mixed media that is gonna make it even more challenging to do that simply because of the different hydro hydraulic conductivities and other properties between those two substrates.

[00:33:17] Jason: So, think about how much complexity are we adding to the situation when we're trying to run in, and then really break it down into what does your rooting in irrigation practices look like? [00:33:30] So, making sure that we've gotten our lights in check our vpd is where we need it to be. All of those things going on then you can start to deep dive and say, all right, I wanna make some small pulse irrigations just to keep that plant alive, but I'm not gonna give it too much water because I don't want rit stagnation.

[00:33:45] Jason: We always keep that water content high. Those roots aren't gonna reach out and try and seek out the rest of the media. So typically we'll look at doing small irrigations anywhere between say, one and four or more a day during that red end phase and then maybe even let a little [00:34:00] bit of dry back for just a couple of days to make sure that those rates are getting seeked out.

[00:34:04] Jason: But it's a fine balance because obviously when we're transplanting, we don't have the, nearly the root mass. So we do have to make sure that we're keeping that plant alive with some water, but not too much in making sure that it's working to seek the entire volume of the subst. ,

[00:34:22] Mandy: awesome. Great

[00:34:23] Seth: tips. Going into that guys very important thing is veg.

[00:34:26] Seth: If you come out of veg with weak roots, you're not gonna have a good [00:34:30] time transplanting if you're in veg too long. The same problems that can happen, putting a block on a slab can happen with a clone going into a one or two gallon. So, I I wish Jason or I wish I had a whiteboard here. I know Jason doesn't have one behind, but basically what we want to see in that root end period is that water content actually fall, anywhere from 15 to 20% over like, let's say a five to seven day period.

[00:34:51] Seth: But we're not excluding water from it. We're giving it small pulses to help move oxygen into the root zone and stimulate root growth down into the block. But one thing to [00:35:00] remember is if that block is at 70%, we've gotta get some poor space in there for those roots to have oxygen and also seek out growth.

[00:35:07] Seth: So, like I said, I wish we had the line, but you wanna make sure you get an appropriate dry back, but not too much. Same thing goes if you don't keep up with it enough and you dry back way too far too early, you're also gonna hinder that root growth. So it's it's all about babying them, really giving them what they need.

[00:35:25] Seth: I love that

[00:35:25] it's

[00:35:25] Mandy: all about babying them. We always look out for the roots around here. We also pose [00:35:30] another poll over on YouTube. We wanted to know how are you watering your garden? And our answers were hand watering and automatic drippers and no one answered for hand watering and everyone's on automatic automated drippers.

[00:35:41] Mandy: So thank you all for that. I think that's it for the questions over on YouTube for now. So I will pass it over to you, Kaisha.

[00:35:48] Jason: So we expected those results because the people that are hand watering aren't able to have the time to fill out your survey.

[00:35:56] Kaisha: They don't have time to log into office hours, right?

[00:35:58] Seth: They're too busy. . [00:36:00] Yeah. . Hey. Hey. A few of them have over the years. They'll get there, they'll get there. They like to be busy. Yeah. .

[00:36:10] Kaisha: That's right. Trying to make lives easier. Alright, we're rounding out the hour here just to note to anybody who's on with us live. If you have questions for Seth and Jason, now's the time.

[00:36:18] Kaisha: So make sure you drop those questions over on YouTube here on the chat so we can get those addressed for you. All right. We got a question in here specifically about AROYA. John wanted to know how would I reflect [00:36:30] mortality rates of groups of plants and I think they're speaking to, in the system, in the AROYA platform.

[00:36:37] Jason: Yeah, so obviously in the Harvest group you can reflect how many plants are in there and if you are metric integrated, basically when you go from your clone lot to your tagged flower lot you can account for the plants that were in the clone lot that don't get tagged. And that's usually gonna end up as your mortality

[00:36:55] cut this: rate.[00:37:00]

[00:37:00] Seth: Very good. Yep. Much easier to track with tags, but we are working on that part too. More and more analytics are always coming out. We're constantly refining the system to cap to capture more and more data. That's right. So

[00:37:12] Kaisha: stay tuned. All right, I got another question here. Humboldt, oh, sorry.

[00:37:18] Kaisha: Charles left a comment on YouTube a while back and wanted to know what weeks are best to defoliate. Any tips on that?

[00:37:26] Jason: It's gonna be a little bit cult of our dependent. Most [00:37:30] of the successful regimens that I run into are usually around, week three. And typically then, know, later in flour say a week, 10 days before harvesting just to help the team keep stuff cleaned up.

[00:37:43] Seth: Yeah, I mean, some of it's gonna depend on your strategy and your sales strategy. Are you selling only jarred knock that's top grade? If so, we're gonna go very hard, very early. Do you have a lot of market for extracts, B grade joints and things like that? If you do have that market for extracts, we're gonna go more with what [00:38:00] Jason was saying, right around the end of week three, beginning of week four, but it's gonna be strain dependent.

[00:38:03] Seth: So instead of weeks, I'll just say the end of stretch. That way you can get out your tape measure and really figure it. . And then, at the end of that, ideally for in our first default, we wanna remove any buds and branches that we don't think are gonna be desirable. That way we're not wasting more time growing them and doing more damage to the plant later.

[00:38:22] Seth: And then, after a certain point, usually that's, week three to four cleanup, we're not gonna pull any leaves off of buds anymore. We're only gonna take [00:38:30] fan leaves that are connected at elbows and crotches that way. We're not, I mean, anytime you pop a leaf off the plant, there is an oxen response.

[00:38:37] Seth: So the more de leafing you do, the more you're interrupting that growth cycle and telling the plant to take energy away from Bud Development and put it into callous development to cover up all those nice cars you made. So it's fairly conservative, but it is key to go go hard at the times that you need to not get an overbusy plant.

[00:38:56] Seth: And then also, each runs a learning experience, right? If we've got a strain [00:39:00] that we treated one one way that's different this time, take those pictures. Log it some, I mean, I've seen such a diversity out there being, having some stains that will fill out a table and still have rock solid golf balls like a foot and a half deep in the canopy.

[00:39:14] Seth: They're just more efficient at transporting energy around the plant, whereas others that, that lollipop type pruning is very important. And one thing I like to discuss with people the defoliation techniques. Grab your leaf and cut that pet with scissors or your [00:39:30] thumbnail. Leave just a bit of that pet wig on there because the plant actually does have an adaptation to die back.

[00:39:36] Seth: Right there, there's what's called an incision zone at that node. When you pop the leaf off, we actually disturb that incision zone. And again, cause that oxen hormonal response where we get a little bit of callous late flour that can cause some minor hemming and veg type symptoms. So, The safest thing to do is, again, just cut that pedal, leave a inch, half inch twig, and the plant will [00:40:00] dry that back on its own and seal up that, that incision zone.

[00:40:04] Seth: So you're not harm, you're not causing a hormonal response when you do it. That's the big thing. As the plant goes from it's stretch period where it's got a high oxen state, it's pushing roots, pushing long structural growth. We want that to flip over to be, more of a cytokine.

[00:40:18] Seth: And then there's two others we could go into, but we're changing that oxen ratio, oxen to cytokine. So inducing the plant to produce more oxen later in flour is gonna give us more [00:40:30] veg and non finishing characteristics.

[00:40:34] Kaisha: Horticulture at work, this is serious business over here. I also really appreciate the discussion around planning. Depending on what your product is, pre-roll needs are gonna be different from concentrate needs, which are gonna be different from flower needs. So, Yeah. Growers, you got a lot on your plates.

[00:40:50] Kaisha: Amazing. Mandy, what's going on YouTube? Oh my

[00:40:54] Mandy: gosh, what a great discussion everyone. We had another question come in from Dr. Jay. Is there a [00:41:00] training on your home sensors? I really want one, but I'm not sure how to read the graphs.

[00:41:08] Jason: Are we talking about the solus? I don't think our Solis offers graphing yet. So, best way that you can do that is to obviously graph it on your own from that Solus device. As far as reading the graphs check out some of the resources that are are available from maybe rock wool supplier, nutrient supplier.

[00:41:25] Jason: Right now we're seeing both of those companies jumping in and giving great explanations. [00:41:30] Look at some more office hours. We go through and talk about how this time series data gives you some indicators on what your plants are feeling as far as a physiological response to how you're dealing with them mostly in response to environment and irrigation factors.

[00:41:45] Jason: And really that's gonna dictate is how is this planet gonna turn out, morphologically, what are we gonna get from what we're doing to it?

[00:41:55] Jason: Yeah, and I think,

[00:41:55] Seth: correct me if I'm wrong, Jason, but I, sorry, I have to hit on mute. Mandy , [00:42:00] I believe we meter group does have a white paper on volumetric water content. I think that's one of the hardest things for people to grasp when they first start using our sensors. As traditionally we talked about saturation, not vwc.

[00:42:11] Seth: So step one, understand that and what it means. If you're thinking saturation, and Jason and I are talking vwc. , that's oranges and apples. They're not comparable, and you're gonna have some bad results if you do the same kind of number application to those. The other thing, Jason said, start building a spreadsheet.

[00:42:27] Seth: Make your graphs and just have some [00:42:30] good SOPs on when to collect it. If you can get a reading before you irrigate, after you irrigate to make sure you've reached field capacity and look at your ec. And then at the end of the day, that's gonna be a good basic tech to start using those and then building some graphs in a spreadsheet.

[00:42:45] Seth: If you start using the spreadsheet very religiously, you may not need the graphs until the, you hit the end of the run and you wanna actually look back.

[00:42:57] Seth: Awesome.

[00:42:58] Mandy: Oh, and Kaisha, Kaisha [00:43:00] found it. Woo. Thank you. Awesome. Yeah, so we do have that on our site. But yeah it's really all about understanding volumetric water content. You guys, thank y'all for your questions. We're gonna keep going down our list when we have a few more minutes. The garden wants to know, what EC range do you recommend for ripening?

[00:43:18] Jason: So things usually get a little bit wild during ripening. And when we talk about EC range, obviously there's a couple ways to talk about this and we'll take it right from what I talk about as [00:43:30] uniformity snapshot right now of what things are, and then consistency. When we talk about arrange.

[00:43:35] Jason: Why time series data is so important. If I've got pretty large dry backs during ripening, and I might even be feeding at say, half or three quarters nutrients level, or have modified my nutrient schedule to reduce the amount of nitrogen, we could be feeding at say two, five or 3.0. We might see those ECS go way up.

[00:43:54] Jason: If we're feeding at something like 2.0, we might be seeing our reset [00:44:00] ECS down at say two. Well, maybe we're pushing a little bit more runoff. Maybe they're just sitting there, right there at 1, 9, 2, 3. And then since we're doing huge drive, right, EC might be up at 1215, might be higher than that.

[00:44:14] Jason: And so as far as the range goes, it's kind of trying to define is that mean where I'm at nominally for my daytime low ec is that my my spike right before I irrigate the next day. Is the range that, [00:44:30] the amount between those two or is the range where I want to be for one of those points in time every day?

[00:44:36] Jason: And so it's a hard question to talk about. I do wish I had my whiteboard right here because could circle those things and talk about it. Maybe I'll get a pin for my tablet here and we'll work off. We

[00:44:46] Seth: need to, yeah, we need to get a whiteboard in there one of these days. Cause yeah, this one's a lot easier to visualize than it is explained for sure.

[00:44:52] Seth: I just wanna add it, it really has a lot to EC values and ripening have a lot to do with what the EC was at during growth,[00:45:00] so if we didn't achieve a high EC earlier on in generative, we're not gonna be looking for a super high ec that's probably gonna stress the stress, the plant.

[00:45:10] Seth: If we've managed to hit a pretty high ec, let's say like a seven to a 12, During generative, and then we backed it off just slightly to more like a six, two, a nine or 10 during bulking. And then now we've removed those P two s just by that nature. We're gonna get a deeper drive back and a higher ec swing.

[00:45:27] Seth: But what you wanna look out for is sudden [00:45:30] spikes that go well out of the ranges you've been exposing your plant to. That's when we start to see, and it works both ways. If it spikes to 22, 25, that can be detrimental. If we've been hitting a max of 12 the whole time, if it goes down to 0.3 instead of down to five, when you water, like, let's say you flush it out, we've got the same problem that osmotic imbalance.

[00:45:53] Seth: And at this point in the plant's life, we're trying to push it into senescence. It doesn't it doesn't change its [00:46:00] root structure anymore. It's incapable of adapting very quickly to those changes. So that's something to look out for, if you flush it out or you spike it up. That's really putting the plant out of optimal production and also potentially pushing certain things that we've all seen, like herms mother issues that we don't want to hit.

[00:46:19] Seth: And that's especially true with some of today's, rapidly being pushed through different types of crosses. You don't necessarily know when you get cuts if they came from like, let's say a feminized cross where a lot of times that high ec [00:46:30] in the end will get you. So really it's all about crop registration and paying attention to it.

[00:46:36] Jason: Yeah, and that's a really good point that you're talking about the plant life cycle. Because basically what's happening is the plant's starting to learn an EC tolerance, right? And anyone that wants to dive into the biology of of osmotic potential or differential, Go look up. If we get way too high or low in ec, it's going to these cells.

[00:46:57] Jason: The trigger pressure's gonna be affected by a hypo, [00:47:00] a hypotonic, or a hypertonic situation. And if we're achieving the right amount of nutrients, we're gonna be pushing on both sides of isotonic as far as that osmos osmosis goes.

[00:47:14] Seth: I think you really nailed that one. Jason. You're teaching your plant to live in this EC range.

[00:47:18] Seth: That's the easiest way to think about this without trying to stress yourself too much about salt and

[00:47:23] Jason: sugar ratios. Thanks for making it easier.

[00:47:29] Mandy: Thank you guys for [00:47:30] that, Nicki, for making it easier for us to understand that too. I think we have time for another question. This one's also about ec. The inside Dope wants to know.

[00:47:38] Mandy: I'd like a better understanding of why such a range of ECS are effective in growing cannabis, and also a better understanding into the plant responses to vegetative and generative cues. Any recommended

[00:47:50] Seth: reads?

[00:47:53] Jason: To answer the first question, it's because cannabis is a weed. That's why it's very tolerant.

[00:47:59] Jason: It's [00:48:00] one of the fastest growing plants that we know of. And so, as we've en encountered the different levels that these plants can work off of historically, people used to be definitely on the lower side of ecs and a lot of it had to do with how we were balancing the nutrients for them and making sure that the rest of the variables were optimized.

[00:48:17] Jason: Now that we've made a lot of headway as far as the right environments and right nutrient compositions for these plants, the right light levels, CO2 supplementation, they can usually take a little bit [00:48:30] higher EC than what we've seen in the past. So that, that's why they've got a pretty big EC range.

[00:48:35] Jason: It's very strain dependent as well. We'll see some strains perform substantially better at higher ecs and some of 'em that start to do a little bit worse if we go too high with

[00:48:45] Seth: those. Yeah. One thing I wanna point out too, when you start looking at information in plant science, it's not that cannabis is insanely different than a lot of other plants.

[00:48:54] Seth: A big part of it is. Agronomy has been a huge factor in plant research over the last a hundred years. So [00:49:00] most of our plant research outside of, botany and really researching very interesting plants that we don't actually commercially cultivate has been approached with the idea that we're going as low input as possible to achieve an acceptable yield while when things are at a low commodity price.

[00:49:15] Seth: That's how we approach it. Fortunately, for cannabis growers, the commodity price is high enough that we can look at using more inputs than traditional agriculture did, and that's where we get into kind of, if I came out of growing blueberries for instance, I am [00:49:30] really, I mean, every scent I put into the water counts, that's all money outta my pocket.

[00:49:34] Seth: Whereas in cannabis, I can, recoup some of those costs by having a higher quality product. So that's one thing to really consider when you're looking back at this. The same principles apply but. Some of the values, just like when you're, if you're built a greenhouse or grow room about five years ago, I'm always go back to it.

[00:49:51] Seth: Small Deltas . We weren't counting on that much biomass in a room. None of the other principles mathematically are the [00:50:00] equations themselves still work. We just weren't plugging big enough values into 'em for humidity potential, if that makes sense. So, read it. Read any information you can get on plant science, especially basic plant physiology, cuz that's where a lot of it does hold true with cannabis.

[00:50:16] Seth: Especially if we're talking about osmotic stress. I'm gonna avoid using grout stress , how the plant responds to infusion of oxygen into the root zone and what's kind of going on there. Understanding how plants work naturally is gonna get you miles [00:50:30] ahead in understanding how you're manipulating them and why they're responding the way they are.

[00:50:36] Jason: Yeah, and it's probably one of my favorite resources is university extensions as well. Meet up with the people that have been doing horticulture techniques for, the last 30, 40 years, and they'll point you in a direction of the, probably the level of information that you need.

[00:50:52] Jason: And for me, I'm a fairly impatient learner, so sometimes I'll find myself on Wikipedia and I'll have like, 10 or 12 tabs [00:51:00] opened up by the time I'm done reading one article. It's like, oh, I don't know what that that hormone is. Let's figure out how it affects the plant's balance.

[00:51:08] Seth: Yeah. There's a lot of basic online free plants about classes, about plant science that you can take and, not have to pay, like I said, not have to pay a bunch, do it at your own pace and just, keep an open mind what you're reading about tomatoes. Is still gonna teach you about growing cannabis, it's still horticulture.

[00:51:24] Seth: We're just gonna, again, adjust those values and the strategies a bit. Learning the science is key. [00:51:30] Learning the science

[00:51:31] Mandy: is key. Oh, that was a good question. The inside dope said, love the education. Well, we love that question. Yeah, I think that's all the time we have for that over on YouTube. So I will pass it back to you, Kesha.

[00:51:42] Kaisha: Thank you Mandy. Yep. This is all about agriculture and cannabis is out of the shadows now, so it's really just kind of learning from other agricultural products. That's what we're doing. Amazing. All right. Got write in from Sean. This [00:52:00] on theme for today. I can't get my water percentage up over 30.

[00:52:04] Kaisha: I'm using two gallon coco with 0.3 drippers. I run it for 25 minutes. I get run up, but percentage isn't going above 30. Am I doing something wrong? ,

[00:52:16] Seth: Yeah.

[00:52:16] Jason: First thing I would do is try to break up that irrigation into smaller chunks. Usually I try not to irrigate for much more than five minutes in duration if my systems are capable of doing so, and that's just gonna help that substrate have a [00:52:30] little bit more capillary effect.

[00:52:31] Jason: Those low flow emitters that two you have are definitely helping. And then also, follow that link that we put in the channel earlier about and validating the field capacity of that specific media. That is definitely lower than we usually see in Coco, but, we don't know specifically what what model of or what brand Coco we've got working.

[00:52:50] Seth: Yeah. Try to break that up into four or five irrigations that are much shorter and then hop on next week and ask us again. I think you'll have a lot better success getting that field cap [00:53:00] up. All right.

[00:53:02] Kaisha: So Sean, if you're out there, let us know how it goes. Okay. do what our experts recommend. All right, I'm gonna keep it going here.

[00:53:09] Kaisha: We got a few more minutes so you have any questions. We have left here I'm not gonna pronounce this right, but Ganet Boem wrote in, they want to know what ours are for runoff nutrient disposal. What would you guys recommend?

[00:53:22] Jason: Depends what you can do with it. Don't open it in the storm drain.

[00:53:28] Jason: It's fun that I [00:53:30] think a lot of us. Sad to see what happens with the nutrients. In an ideal world we, we're hitting it with a UV treatment or a reverse osmosis treatment where we are cleaning out that, that water and reusing it with some amount of pre levelized nutrients.

[00:53:46] Jason: In application. This has become actually pretty challenging for us, the people in this industry, simply because we begin to see nutrient imbalances and recirculation is is something where we have a lot more variables going in than we do when we're [00:54:00] just feeding clean water and adding the nutrients that we know are going in.

[00:54:06] Seth: Yeah, I mean, a lot of it depends on your scale, bioremediation is an awesome strategy, but if you're in an urban environment, that's kind of difficult. This is one of those aspects where the industry is really progressing quickly. So I think in a few years we'd have a lot better answers right now.

[00:54:21] Seth: Responsible wastewater disposal. Follow your local laws. Don't let water with an excessive amount of ppm go off of your property. Make sure everything's with inspect for [00:54:30] your state, county, and city that you live in. So, wastewater plant or by remediation pond is usually the two options. One thing that will be coming though, hopefully the next few years, is being able to convert that into biodiesel by growing algae.

[00:54:44] Seth: We're just, again, the industry's developing and we haven't had this demand for i e d runoff quite yet. Yeah.

[00:54:54] Kaisha: Looking forward to more sustainable options as the industry continues to mature. Okay. I'm gonna ask this [00:55:00] last one that Kevin Perez wrote in, guys, would there be a change in quality in your opinion, if your drawing takes about 30 days instead of 14 through 16?

[00:55:10] Kaisha: For the senses to snap? My understanding is that if the environment stays 60, 60, they'll be okay. What are your thoughts?

[00:55:18] Jason: Usually most producers that I work with just don't have the timeframe in a production schedule. In order to let things dry that long it's probably, you're not gonna see a huge difference as [00:55:30] long as you're still hitting your target water activities in those plants at being at I'd say 16 day versus 30 day.

[00:55:35] Jason: And that's obviously a massive change in the schedule. It's gonna depend on what you're doing with your care process as well. Are we maintaining controlled environments downstream from this as well and how long are we're planning to cure it? So dry process? Yeah. Probab probably not a huge deal as long as the other variables are similar.

[00:55:53] Seth: Yeah. If it's sealed up right over here. Okay. If it's sealed up, you should be okay. But it's a lot harder to [00:56:00] seal a, let's say 200, 400 square foot room than it is a tote or a bucket. So that would probably

[00:56:08] Jason: be more like a 30 day or about 10 14 day dry and

[00:56:13] Seth: 1415 day cure, just on the step.

[00:56:18] Kaisha: All right.

[00:56:19] Kaisha: There it is. Big finish. Thank you Seth and Jason for joining us for hosting another great session. Mandy, as always, thank you for being my [00:56:30] co-moderator and producer. Chris, we appreciate you. Thank you for everything you're doing over there behind the scenes. All right, thanks to everybody who joined us for Office Hours today.

[00:56:37] Kaisha: We do this every Thursday. The best way to get answers from the expert is to join us live to learn more about AROYA. Feel free to book a demo with us and one of our experts will tell you, walk you through all the different ways AROYA can be used to improve your cultivation production process. But as always, there's a topic you'd like cover in a future episode of Office Hours.

[00:56:56] Kaisha: Push the questions anytime via the AROYA app. Drop them in the [00:57:00] chat. Send us an email to support AROYA meter group.com. Send us a dm. We are on all the socials as Mandy outlined earlier, and then we record every session. We'll email everyone in attendance a link to the video from today's conversation.

[00:57:12] Kaisha: It'll also be on the AROYA YouTube channel, like subscribe and share while you're there, and if you find these conversations helpful, please do spread the word. Thank you so much, and we'll see y'all next time. Have a safe flight,

[00:57:23] Seth: Zach.

[00:57:24] Jason: See y'all.

[00:57:25] Seth: Hi everyone. Thanks for hanging in there, .

[00:57:29] cut this: What a great [00:57:30] episode.

[00:57:31] Kaisha: All right, stop