Seth [00:00:00]:

Cool.

Kaisha [00:00:01]:

All right. How's it growing, friends? Welcome to Office Hours, your source for free cannabis cultivation education. I am Kaisha, and I'm back in studio co moderating with my good friend Mandy.

Jason [00:00:11]:

Mandy, how are you?

Mandy [00:00:12]:

Hey, Kaisha. We're here for episode 65, also going live over on YouTube momentarily. So if you're logging on over there, make sure you send us your questions, and I'll get those to the team. You'll know how we do it. If you're active on social media, be sure you're following us on all the platforms. So we're on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Social Club, and we got a ton of crop sharing questions from you guys this week, so let's get right to it.

Jason [00:00:37]:

Back.

Mandy [00:00:37]:

Over to you, Kaisha.

Kaisha [00:00:38]:

Thank you, Mandy.

Mandy [00:00:39]:

All right.

Kaisha [00:00:40]:

If you're live with us here and you have a question, feel free to type it in the chat at any time. And if your question gets picked, we'll have you either unmute yourself or I can ask for you. Seth and Jason are in the house. How are you guys doing today?

Jason [00:00:51]:

Good.

Seth [00:00:52]:

Yeah, doing fine.

Kaisha [00:00:55]:

Excellent. Well, it sounds like you're ready to go, and I'm starting out with a juicy one. So I'm going to read this whole question, but it's asking for an overview, which you all know I love. Okay, so just in the grow wrote in. Hi. I wanted to get some clarification on you guys. Suggested feed schedule for Vegetative and generative feeding. When in Veg, is it generally suggested to give bigger shot volumes earlier in the day? About 5ft a day. Then for stretch, as I understand, you want to start feeding more feed with smaller volumes to encourage stacking of the nodes, about eight to 10ft for a day, but with smaller shot volumes. Then after stretch, do you suggest that I start lessening the amount of shots but increasing the shot volume in the morning to achieve water concentration level early in the day? Basically, my question is, does Vegetative watering generally mean less feeding events and generative stretch mean more feed events then bulking? We should go back to bed with less shots but more shot volume. Finally, when finishing and ripening, should we go back to more feeds, smaller shot volume? Thank you so much for your time.

Mandy [00:02:07]:

Do you all get all that?

Seth [00:02:09]:

Yeah, I think we can sum that up pretty quickly here. A little bit backwards there. Your typical generative feed is going to be fewer large shots early on in the day with that long dry back period and with a Vegetative feed or bulking, that's going to be more frequent small shots. And when we're talking about any of these type of strategies, typically we want to look at our p one phase, whether we're in generative or Vegetative, as the time that we're going to try to approach field capacity with our plants. And that's just so that we have some control over runoff and we don't have a bunch of different plants running off at different times throughout the day.

Jason [00:02:48]:

Yeah. Easiest way to do it is just to start thinking about P ones and P two S. And I don't know exactly what P stands for. I'm guessing it's phase program.

Seth [00:02:57]:

Phase. What controller are you using?

Jason [00:03:00]:

Yeah. And so for generative, let's get up to field capacity fairly quickly, whether it be one, two or 3 hours and then we let things dry back for the rest of the time. And then for Vegetative, we're looking at getting our P ones in, getting up to saturation, and maintaining a high water content for an extended duration of photo period. So usually we're talking about 8 hours, sometimes 10 hours if you're in a smaller media for doing Vegetative. And kind of some of the plant science behind this is thinking about each irrigation, bringing fresh oxygen and encouraging a plant growth response. When we're doing that, that plant is going to be pulling water every time that we do it and it's going to be growing vertically faster. So when we do larger drybacks, we're decreasing the osmotic potential between the substrate and the roots, which is going to make it so that plant stacks up a little bit shorter. And so that's usually why we talk about generative stacking. One, because we're trying to get those node spaces nice and tight. And then two, usually we're trying to let the EC rise up a little bit throughout that generative stacking period. And then vegetative bulking. After we've initiated reproductive hormone balance in the plant, we're kind of encouraging as much growth as possible into those blood sites. Yes.

Seth [00:04:25]:

And then, I guess, to round that out when we go back to Ripening for those last two weeks, typically, sometimes more we're going right back to that generative growth or generative irrigation strategy where we're bringing it up to field capacity with as few large shots as we can early in the day. Usually one, two, 3 hours after lights on. Typically twos.

Jason [00:04:45]:

Right.

Seth [00:04:46]:

Where we start that out and then trying to irrigate for as short amount of time as possible. So if we can get a two hour irrigation window without achieving any channeling, that's exactly what we're looking for. And then a long dry back. And then, as always, I love to highlight, we're always leaning one way or the other. There's rarely a run out there that people don't run into some modifications to these. Right. A lot of times you won't have your plant to pot size perfect. So in ripening, like, yeah, we want to go that classic generative strategy, but hey, we might have to put on a P two in the afternoon just to make sure we don't over dry it overnight.

Jason [00:05:24]:

Yeah. And when Seth talks about as fewest shots as possible, usually we're talking about four irrigations within an hour. So irrigate 15 minutes later, irrigate again 15 minutes later, irrigate again, get up to build capacity in about an hour. And so if we saw yesterday's dry back at say, 15%, we might do 4% shots that'll give us just a little bit of runoff, and then we can collect our manual readings, check PH and EC, and then that runoff if we need to. That being said, if you have fast flow rate drippers, sometimes you want to break that up into even more irrigations. And so really what it comes down to is the duration, what I call irrigation window. So that's from first irrigation to last irrigation, how much time is that? So for Generative, we're looking at usually one to 3 hours, depending on media size and application in those cases and then vice versa. A lot of times for vegetative steering, we'll keep the same p ones as we had with Generative. We're just adding some p two S to keep that field or that water content up.

Seth [00:06:39]:

And there's a few modifications. I will say if you are in, let's say you're not in a one gallon pot, you're in a two gallon or bigger pot. There's ways we're going to work with that to try to optimize that bulking. So if you're in a bigger pot that's not getting as much of a dry back, we might really focus on some of those really small shots. So we get that stimulation. But we only have so much opportunity. If we dry back 10%, let's say ten, 1% shots would be the max granularity I could have on that irrigation schedule. And if we're going into bulking, a lot of times that's kind of where we'll optimize like, hey, I had four irrigations, I want to get eight or ten on today. As part of my bulking strategy. Sometimes I will take that p one and double the number of shots I have and cut the volume in half just to take advantage of the fact that I am putting water on. And I know I can use that time to stimulate plant growth because sometimes the alternative is taking it all the way up to field capacity and then just hitting runoff all day and pushing a bunch of water and fertilizer through the root zone and having it just run to waste, which is not what.

Kaisha [00:07:47]:

There it is. Thank you all for that overview. Respect the technique. All right, sending it over to Mandy. What's going on on YouTube? YouTube? Wow.

Mandy [00:07:55]:

YouTube. We just created something new there. Wow, that was a great overview. You all just lose my mind. Thank you for that. And thank you guys over on YouTube for these questions. Blaze wants to know. He has a couple of questions. Hey, guys, how do you avoid overwatering young plants while veg steering? And what are your protocols for fixing plants that are overwatered?

Jason [00:08:19]:

First off is have some way to monitor water content and water usage in veg plant structures. My favorite way to avoid it is use an appropriate sized edge in media. So if we're looking at something like rockwool, start off in a four x four. If you're going to end up on slabs, veg them in the four x fours and then get on the slab in flour. And that's going to be one of the easiest ways to make sure we're not over watering is don't have too much water holding capacity in that substrate. For cocoa, there are cocoa starter blocks. Sometimes if you have really productive plants, you can go right from a starter, like a little plug into a one gallon media. In that case, just make sure that you're doing a great job with your rooting in practices and go from there. As far as if you have plants that too much water. What happens is, if the plants have too much water, usually we're not getting oxygen refreshment because we can't irrigate enough times to that point, and then the roots get lazy, so they're not going to start engulfing the bulk of the media. And so roots are always seeking out areas that have more water content. And when we're irrigating, we're pushing water through the substrate, and that helps those roots reach out, get the corners, get the bottom, and take advantage of that media. My terrible way of saying it is anytime we try to fix something with plants is don't do it next time. Seth might have some super secrets on it.

Seth [00:10:02]:

I mean, if you're saying you're over watering, you already admitted the problem. Step one usually is to try to correct those cultural habits. And I know in veg, a lot of times, there's still quite a few growers out there that don't have automated irrigation. And veg, to be realistic, right, like in veg, we don't typically need nearly as much light. We're going for a lower input room, typically, than the flower room because that's where we're actually pulling dollars out of. So looking at your holistic veg approach and saying, hey, even if I am hand watering, what is my root in strategy? Because if I just stick a plant in and then water it with a vegetative irrigation strategy, that's not rooting in, and that's not exactly what we want to be doing. Even if you don't have substrate sensors, you can always go real old school and get a load cell in there, get a scale and go in and say, hey, how much did this pot weigh? When I transplanted the plant in, I'm going to go back and keep weighing that same pot. I'm going to flag it and see, okay, have I lost 1015 20% of my water content and use that as a line to make my watering decisions. And then a big part of the next big step, too, is moving to automated irrigation. So you can put on a 1% shot, even if it's 1% of a 0.3 gallon cocoa pot. And that's part of the key there, too, is if I'm just walking around with a hose or even having automated irrigation. But I'm making that call based on, hey, I walked around and picked up some plants. I'm probably, you know, my my hand scale is just never that accurate. It's always biased, right? Compared to what the last package is, something I picked up that had a weight on it says getting that real accurate look, even if it is, like I said, really simple, even with a load cell. And then the other one is hey, if you are still hand watering, using smaller or bigger pots, looking at an intermediate media, going with a four inch pot, even if it is a cocoa perlite mix and a four inch hard pot that you then transplant into your bigger pot. Having that smaller media, like Jason was saying, it really helps the plant seek out that water. It doesn't have to try as hard. And then if you've got problems in the facility, you're like, hey, we're just not going to overcome this with equipment immediately use the old crutch perlite. No one wants to admit it, but that's what you got to do sometimes if you just can't stop over watering or if you're having a family member come water your garden that doesn't know anything about weed, things like that. Just look at maybe where you do have some weaknesses in that system and figure out what you can do to pad yourself and set yourself up for success. I mean, that's a big part of all this. Even we're talking about rooting in is going back to the root cause of the problem. What is it over watering? What could it be? While we put too much water on, what's our actual water content? We have media that's too wet? Or do we also have some environmental problems in the bedroom? Sometimes when we're looking at plants that are struggling to root in, we got a combination of massive over watering and too dry. That's super common to have in bedrooms where we don't have this huge crop putting a lot of moisture into the air at all times. So, hey, if it looks like at 80 deg, we're actually at a point, not point, but 1.4 VPD or 1.6 or something. Those small clones that are trying to root in are not going to be nearly as efficient because they're already in drought response mode, which is not how we're going to really get good rooting in. They're just trying to stay alive. They don't have the means to efficiently grow in that type of environment. So even if you are just struggling with rooting in and you're saying you're over watering, really look at all the other environmental factors. A lot of times what I like to do is say, hey, why am I struggling with this at this particular facility when I know that I've seen other people have success and no problems doing the same thing? What's different here than there? Because a lot of times, and we say this a lot, there are great products on the market. It might not be your media, it might not be your nutrients. It might be a really small operator error or limitation that the facility has that you just haven't singled out yet. It's hard to place blame without quantifying everything. So start there.

Jason [00:14:29]:

And kind of just to talk a little bit, I love using scales. I just use some kitchen scales. They're pretty cheap on Amazon, and you can get a few of them, leave them under your block. Really what you're doing is taking the weight of the block when it's dry, tearing that out, and then as far as plant weight, you have to kind of account for that as a negligible impact. Do keep it in mind as the inputs that we're putting in are adding weight to the plant. But I'm just going to share a quick, simple math thing that we talk about. And I like to use grams and milliliters because obviously 1 water equals 1 gram of mass. And just because it's easy at about one liter, if we're looking at a four x four x four, we've got 1030 actual substrate volume. And so if we come in at, say, 70% water content at field capacity, that means that we're going to have 700 grams of weight in there. And so before you irrigate, take your weight, after you irrigate, take your weight, and next day take your weight. And then you start to get an idea of water loss in that substrate. So definitely recommend just use fairly simple math volume and flow rate calculations to decide, how big a shot do I want while I'm running in and after my plants have established a good root zone in that new media, then what kind of vegging shots do I want to add in there? So just break it down by volumes. And if you have the kitchen scale, use some weight.

Seth [00:16:19]:

Yes, and that might sound a little scary sometimes, but you can keep it real simple by just taking your hydrated block at transplant, weighing that, and then remember that 1 gram/ML rule. Go to, like, let's say you're using a two gallon cocoa. Go look at what the manufacturer specs are. They and I'll really stress this when we're talking about gallons, is it a US or Imperial gallon? Because that will throw off your measurements from time to time. But you can do this really simply based on manufacturer information. You don't necessarily need to build a spreadsheet like Jason has there or do any of that. You can just say, hey, I had about a gallon. How many milliliters do I want to see leave this block before we go back and bring it back to field capacity? And usually we want to see 15 to 2020, 5% minimum total loss in water before we're hitting that P one strategy again. And it's really important to remember that rooting in is its own irrigation strategy. You could say it's leaning generative. You could say parts of it might lean vegetative, but we're rooting in. We're trying to steer the plant to produce more roots and establish itself, not necessarily looking to produce a specific above ground morphological response with this irrigation strategy.

Jason [00:17:35]:

Thanks for breaking that more simply. I wasn't trying to make it complicated. And the one thing to also keep in mind is we'll talk about some manufacturers in a four x four or six by six by four or any of those. A lot of times those are just rough dimensions. And so if you're noticing in my calculations, I actually use the metric measurements provided right from that manufacturer. That's just going to help you stay accurate with that information.

Seth [00:18:07]:

Yeah, take advantage of that because I have pulled out a tape measure and I can tell you that growd end definitely sizes everything based on metric units. So it's not exactly four inches by four inches by four inches. It's all in centimeters and milliliters. So get that info.

Mandy [00:18:25]:

Get that info. Oh, my gosh. And that was great advice. So much great advice. We're still getting so many questions over on YouTube, so keep sending those in. We got another question from Blaze. When translating into cocoa, some say you should buffer the medium with cal and mag. What are your recommendations for large scale facilities?

Seth [00:18:46]:

I mean, make sure your nutrient mix that you're using to charge up your cocoa initially is actually at a high enough EC. Make sure it's PH correctly. Look at what cocoa you're using. If I've got a new brand of cocoa that I'm using, new to me, I like to take some either Ro or Deionized water, hydrate a block, push that runoff and see what's coming out of there. Do I have a lot of red coming out? Straight up dirty cocoa? Do I have a lot of sodium, a lot of salt coming out of it? Because that cocoa came from a really salty environment and it hasn't been rinsed properly. So baselining there and then with a lot of different nutrient programs. We are supplementing calcium and magnesium, super common to have a calm ed component. Make sure you've got that with your mix in proportion to everything else. So if you were mixing at a 2.0 and now you're mixing at a 3.0, make sure you put that much more proportionally CalMag into your mix so you're not deficient on anything. You've got a balanced mix ratio specifically for cocoa. The cow mag is not necessarily specifically useful in cocoa, but for a long, long time, we had all of these different fertilizer products out there that the closest thing that you could say you're selling it for was tomatoes, right? Or other vegetables, hydroponic vegetables. Cannabis is a very calcium hungry plant, and calcium and magnesium are two nutrients that can be limiting to the uptake of other nutrients. So typically we want to make sure that we have plenty of calcium available for the plant if it needs it. That's also part of why in most commercial mixes that you see around now, especially for your early flower stretch mix, we're looking at calcium nitrate as a primary nitrogen source. That's because we also get that calcium, which is very essential to healthy growth in cannabis. So to answer it, yes, use it, but make sure you're using as a balanced part of your program.

Mandy [00:20:44]:

Sounds like the way we used to talk about cereals and eating breakfast and stuff. Yes, with some considerations you probably might need. That awesome. We're going to keep going down our list. TD wants to know, does the Terrace Twelve tell you how much EC or Ppm of each nutrient, or just the overall EC of the medium? Can we give them an idea of what the Terrace Twelve reads?

Jason [00:21:09]:

Water content, electrical connectivity, and temperature of the substrate. So the answer is no. What it's looking at is how well does an electrical current run through the media that it's in, and that's what it's telling you. Just like any electrolytes looking at Gatorade, for example, if you put a chart as twelve and some Gatorade, it's going to tell you how much ions are passing electricity in that substrate. Anytime we're looking at salts, the more salts we have, the easier it is for electricity to pass through that substrate. So answer is no. It doesn't tell you the individuals. There's really not much equipment on the market that can do that for you at this point. They're really expensive lab stuff, but nothing in situation that I know of.

Seth [00:21:57]:

Yeah, there's not a sensor that I know of that would, as a probe, be able to differentiate what salts you're getting. You could pull your run off sample and go try to get that analyzed. But typically the big thing is we've got electrical conductivity measured in decimals per meter. What we do know is that at 3.0 or 2.0 or 1.5, every Ppm meter out there is using electrical resistance or conductivity to figure out what that Ppm reading might be. So the raw data expression would be in DSM, the refined version that a lot of us are used to seeing off of our Ppm pen is actually a conversion based on Ppm 500 or 700. So 3.0 would be that's what experimentally has been tested and proven with that meter. If I go and mix up a 1500 Ppm solution of an ionic compound and then dissolve it in water or not, it isn't dissolved, it's mixed up. If I mix that up and test it, that reads at 3.0. So even when you've been looking at, say, a Ppm meter for years, it's always been extrapolating off of that. Ppm is just easy to think about as a cultivator because that's milligrams a liter, right? Like if I'm mixing up any quantity of salts into water, I can calculate the weight that I need based on, hey, I want X amount of Ppm. I have X number of gallons or liters of fluid that I need to mix into here's, how much salt I need to be putting into it. And then also we can look at the individual salt components and break down how many PPMS of what nutrient you're getting in there. Typically though, when we're looking at this, unless you have a really weird condition or you're using a fertilizer, you know, nothing about what's coming out of there is much less important than how well you're balancing how it goes in and what's going on in the root zone. We can even look at tissue analysis results and say, hey, you've got X amount of Ppm in tissue of this, this, and this, calcium, nitrate. We can go down the list. But it's not always even that going to be directly like, hey, you need to supplement boron or molybdenum or phosphate. It's like, oh well, the plant didn't get enough in. Is it a missing component or is it just an issue in how it was delivered to the plant? Or does this plant really suck at uptaking that particular nutrient?

Jason [00:24:28]:

This is where keeping an eye on that runoff PH is really the first easy indicator of how well nutrients are staying balanced depending on the plant's nutritional needs. And kind of my rule of thumb is if you see that PH drift too much, especially with a specific strain and you're used to using that nutrient line, then go send in for leave tissue analysis and get an idea of, hey, what is this specific strain hungry.

Seth [00:24:57]:

On to extend that? A lot of times, even at a high level, a lot of times what we're going to be doing to fix nutritional deficiencies is either if you're using a product that doesn't have something you need, adding that right back to that CalMag supplementation question. A lot of times though, we find if there's not a PH issue, sometimes it's just more feeding at a 3.0 versus a 2.0 can make a big difference for a lot of plants. Or getting that root zone EC from say between a 2.0 and a 4.0, getting that up. So we're between a 4.0 and an 8.0. Let's say that way we just have enough available nutrition for the plant. So while it's interesting, don't overthink it. I guess it's my best advice when you're worried about what exactly is coming out of there because we can only act on a certain level, right?

Mandy [00:25:52]:

Totally. Thanks. Y'all, Eduardo has a question about pest management. Can pest management be treated or cured during flower? During the flower phase? I noticed a little bit of pests on my plants during day six of flower. I've been spraying antifungus be safe spray during their sleep and been keeping up with VPD.

Seth [00:26:14]:

Do we have any advice know what.

Jason [00:26:17]:

Pests you're trying to deal with you can use definitely some type of predatory biological, some other type of bug to help neutralize pests, but you have to know specifically what you're dealing with. So go stick it under your microscope and Google search some things. You can probably actually drop the picture into Google search and it'll tell you which bug that is. So that's my favorite way, is try to use non chemical methods in flour, especially towards late flour, because any of that stuff might have some residual. Seth's probably got some chemical recommendations.

Seth [00:26:58]:

Yeah, I don't mind spraying at all, but typically I try to do it up to about week two in Flower Max and then I'll switch over to using some biologicals. If you're on day six of flower and you've got what you would suspect as a spider mite or aphid infestation or something, there's always organic options. You've got things like your Doctor Zyme, a boatload of different horticultural oils out there sold as different pesticides that are pretty low impact. Personally, if I can get it on pre flower set, usually I'm going to go with something like Botanicard Max or Piganic or good old bug bomb of some sort, some kind of pyrethrin that's going to go in and really knock down things heavily. And then after that I'll switch over to bringing in beneficial insects. And part of that is just because this is integrated pest management, not extermination, but we've got to strategically really bring the hammer down sometimes to keep these populations under control. There's really nothing about that, no other way to go around it. And then also if you haven't been growing a long time and let's say this is your fifth run and you're noticing this stuff coming back and getting worse at different times, facility cleanliness and maintenance. I mean, if you're not doing a really good job cleaning out your room between rounds, how can we expect the next run to be bug free if they've actually taken up residence inside of your growth space and you're not getting rid of them on a regular basis? And it's frustrating. Sometimes you're there steaming out cracks, spraying the pressure washer bleaching, everything. Sometimes you do, I mean, it can get weird. Sometimes you'll break out a caulk gun and start caulking up cracks in your concrete floor or cinder blocks or anywhere that these bugs can hide.

Jason [00:28:58]:

To kind of build on that. Integrated Pest Management. One of the best ways to help avoid pests is have as healthy a plants as possible. Definitely. Take a look at your environments, some of your Pruning practices, making sure that you're creating a consistent environment. And if you have encountered some pests, every once in a while you can tweak your environment a little bit to something that helps reduce how quickly they reproduce.

Seth [00:29:25]:

Yeah, and certain basic practices like if you're bringing genetics into your facility. I personally don't bring rooted plants into anywhere that I'm going to grow. I. Want to be able to go get my own clones, where I'm going to take those, isolate them, quarantine them, and I'm not transporting any kind of media into my facility with me. And ideally, I'll be able to take those clones in somewhere. Like I said, quarantine them oftentimes be able to do either xerotol or some kind of sanitizing dip. I prefer bleach, and then rooting those out and being able to quarantine them for at least a few weeks while I watch and just see, like, hey, did I accidentally bring anything in and not clean it well enough? Because once it's in, patient zero doesn't matter in your garden because all the rest of them are sick now, so we want to avoid that. And then another one is just looking at certain, maybe facility design features or practices that do promote pest residence and spread. Like, if we've got our mom's, cloning and veg all happening in one room, that means I really don't have a chance to clean that room out if the room is always full of plants. So if I have something like, let's say, root aphids, if I can never clean the moms out of my bedroom, those root aphids are just going to be going back and forth between all those incoming veg plants and those mom plants. So, all right, what's the solution there? Well, we need to fix the facility here and make it so we can isolate things the way we need to. Or if not, hey, we're going to be doing a lot of root drenches. We're going to be dealing with pest management, not extermination. Right? They always go back to that. And then another one, too, is just practices on site. If you've got eight flower rooms going, try to structure your day. So you're moving from the youngest to the oldest room. So if part of your choice for the day is like, hey, my responsibility is I check, clones manage veg. Let's just say I'm running a small two flower room grow with two employees here's, Seth. I know I'm responsible for clones and checking all my rooms every day. Clones are going to be first, followed by veg, followed by then going into the flower rooms. And if I have to pick my flower rooms, I'm going to go into that youngest one first and go forward, because as we get farther and farther into flower, there's less we can do, right? I'm not going to be out there spraying PyGanic at week six all over my nice frosty buds. So if I do have an infection in there, now I'm stuck with biologicals. I don't want to be in a spot where I could carry that pest back to a younger room where it might have even more of an impact because it's affecting plant health at an earlier stage.

Mandy [00:32:10]:

Awesome. And let me clarify, I read his question wrong. He meant to ask you guys about powdery mildew. So I'm sure some of your advice will still answer that question. So his question is about powdery mildew and how he can avoid that. And I haven't noticed any mold since treating it and they're on week two of flour.

Seth [00:32:30]:

So if we have any advice, I'd probably try to get some sort of environmental sensor in there so you can see what it's doing overnight. And just make sure you stay out of the environmental conditions. Where we typically see powdery mildew form, just like mold petridis powdery mildew, we see that at lower temperatures and more humid environments. If you go outside all around, like, let's say Seattle, maybe sometimes parts of the Bay Area in the winter, you'll see powdery mildew on all kinds of different plants. And that's just because it's the right time of the year that it can thrive. I know where I live every year my zucchinis and squash just get taken out by powdery mildew in the fall. But that's right when the overnight temps and humidity really get into the sweet zone for powdery mildew to grow. So my guess, there's probably a decent chance your room is getting cold at night and you don't have a Dhu running or something that's keeping up with that.

Mandy [00:33:25]:

Awesome, thank you for that. We have a question from Chris over on YouTube. This is a little bit long, so bear with me. Take a deep breath. Sorry. Chris wants to know when we first enter veg. We're having a difficult time reading, reaching ten to 15% drybacks without a shortened irrigation window. What should be prioritized hitting ten to 15% drybacks in p three? Or ensuring that our irrigation window is long enough to not induce ripening cues and or would shortening the p two shot interval to one and a half percent dryback to induce more shots? Help us bridge the gap with a shortened window. We're running 1.5 gallon cocoa pots under 1000 watt HPS bulbs, and we have a heavy defiliation in the week before going into veg as well. Thanks. Love the show. Let me know if you want me to drop that in the chat.

Jason [00:34:20]:

I think we got it. He's basically just saying, hey, during veg, my plants aren't transpiring enough for me to hit ideal drybacks. Do I reduce my window? I would probably just decrease the size of the shots and or maybe the number of shots. And so we're still vegetative irrigation, but we're allowing the plant transpiration evaporation to be faster than the amount of water that we're adding to it throughout the day.

Seth [00:34:49]:

Well, some to remember, too. And this is why it cracks me up sometimes, the terminology we use that we have vegetative steering in the middle of Flower when we're talking about actual vegetative growth, too. In that cycle in the plant's life, when we're looking at different strains and what our goals are, we might be running quite a few irrigations in a day. A much more traditionally vegetative irrigation style for some strains. Others we might actually be going somewhat generatively just so we can already start to stack node sites and keep that plant stature smaller. If I'm dealing with something that's typically known to get really lanky and stretch out and I know that I can't have an eight foot tall plant on my table in the room and I also am trying to manage, let's say these four cultivars are all going to run at the same time, okay? That means that they're all getting the same amount of time in prop the same amount of time in the veg room. One of them I might be pulsing eight or ten times a day, giving it a true P one, P two feed. Other ones I might only be giving them three or four feeds generative P one style. Just trying to keep that down. So when we are in veg, that ideal dryback is nice. During veg after transplant, that's one reason we are waiting for that overall dryback to come in is so we've got a sign that the plants are rooted healthily. If you're not achieving a 10% to 15% dryback from your peak water concentration down to the next day before you irrigate. So like Jason said, maybe just pull some of that off, don't give it so much. Shorten up your irrigation window a little bit, try to get more dry back. And then also if you're really struggling with it, you might have kind of messed up that rooting in period. And that's kind of where we need to be is actually waiting for a deep dry back while we're just stimulating that root growth.

Kaisha [00:36:43]:

Awesome.

Mandy [00:36:44]:

Thank you for that. We have a couple more minutes to get through some questions before we want to show you guys something new we have in the platform. Chuck wants to know what's up, guys? I was wondering, if you are growing with synthetics or readily available food, will the plant less likely to get root bound? I've grown in soil with a one gallon pot and I feel like since the food is less available immediately that the pot gets more root bound, does that mean that soil plants will need a slightly larger pot? Correct me if I'm wrong or what do you guys think?

Seth [00:37:21]:

If you're going full organic inputs, typically you probably are going to need a bigger pot in order to get everything in that you want to. And a lot of times when we're talking about going that route, we're looking more at like full term outdoor growing just because it takes so much time for certain components to break down. So if we mix up, amend that soil and go ahead and try to flower out in it, we know that, hey, our nitrogen source is going to decompose and last for so long. I'm going to try to time my amount and put the right amount in at the right time. So I might let my soil cook for a month, maybe two months. Just depends on what I'm trying to do. But there is a lot harder art in that. And typically, you do need a bigger pot. Soil takes a long time to develop, and you need a lot of different things happening inside of there to actually make those nutrients available. So the root bound thing has less to do, probably with soil versus soils, because if we look at even your classic cocoa bag at the end of an eight week run, if I pop that bag open, I should see mostly roots. A lot of the cocoa will have washed away at that point, I would say the synthetic nutrient issue or not issue, the synthetic nutrients versus the organic really don't have much to do with the root binding. It's more about how much work you want to do in your grow room to help keep that soil alive or keep pests down.

Jason [00:38:50]:

Yeah, I think as far as substrate size, when we look at growing in a one gallon cocoa, typically if we're hitting a big plant, that cocoa is like almost solid roots. By the end of it, we're providing synthetic nutrients, so the nutrients are instantly available. Really, all the cocoa is doing is making a place for the water to be held while that plant is accessing it. Whereas usually when we're in a living soil, we're going to have to have more space for those roots to reach out, access that surface area to the biologicals that are breaking down throughout that process. So typically, we're going to want to have some types of mycorrhizal in there, encourage lots of surface area access to those roots.

Seth [00:39:42]:

Yeah, something to think about, too. And this is true with all agriculture. If we looked at traditional organic sources of, let's say, nitrogen, if we're looking at putting cow manure out in the field, if you want to get the just because of the total nitrogen content in that compared to salt. Fertilizers. The amounts of different types of compost you'd have to put on to achieve the same nutrient load in the soil is just immense. Incredibly, literally bulky. Would take so much time and effort to get it out there that you're trying to say, hey, at a certain point, if we want to break it down to fossil fuels, am I hauling this organic material around, using fossil fuels to put on fields, or am I burning some fossil fuels to make fertilizer? At the end of the day, we start to hit an efficiency breakover.

Mandy [00:40:32]:

That's a great way to think about it, and that's a great question. Chuck, we'll get to your other question next, but I do think that we have something to show you in the platform, so I'll pass it back to you. Kaisha.

Kaisha [00:40:41]:

Thank you, Mandy. Oh, my God. So many good questions this week. All right. But we do want to be sure that we walk you all through a new update in the Aroya platform. So, Beth and Jason, what's new with our notification center?

Jason [00:40:58]:

Yeah, so basically we have expanded the features and notifications available on your account or other members in your facility's account. First off is just kind of clean things up as far as how they're displayed here and make it a little bit easier to deal with. We've broke it out into data type alerts, hardware type alerts, and then task type alerts. And so you can now enable push notifications from the web app. These will be pushing to your mobile via the mobile app, but you don't control whether you're getting those on or off. Historically, you have to go into the mobile app to do that. Just makes it a little bit easier to manage how you're getting the information that you want to see. And also you can now subscribe only to specific rooms. So if you're a cultivator that only works in rooms six, seven, and eight, you can ignore, turn off the rooms that you don't want to be informed about. So maybe I'm only curious about flower one and five for EC and I can say save. It says preferences saved. And in this case, I'm only looking at specific rooms. That's the meat of it. Pretty simple but effective.

Kaisha [00:42:16]:

Nice. Thank you, Jason. And then what are the benefits of the alerts? Why would anybody want to sign up for those?

Jason [00:42:24]:

If something breaks or if someone at your facility makes a set point wrong, gives you a heads up. You can't always be in the garden watching the parameters. You can't always be on the computer or on the mobile app watching the parameters. So if we see our humidities, maybe I get a text message every evening at photo. Period off. Well, I know that probably need to do a little bit better job managing how my D humes are running, make sure that we don't run into some PM issues. Yes.

Seth [00:42:57]:

And I think one thing I find that this helps growers do, just alerts in general, but also through our recipes function, we have the ability to set what is my target range and what is an actionable alert. So as a grower cultivator, you can spend time tuning those to action items only. And then once you have everything set up through Aroya in terms of your recipe and everything else, now you can start saying, okay, I'm going to get back to the garden. Aroya is going to alert me when something needs my attention. So the goal is you're not only sitting here analyzing data all day, you can still go do your job and just use this to help economize, keeping an eye on things and avoiding disaster because, hey, I mean, people have to go home and sleep sometimes. Like Jason said, you can't always be in the grow room. And also, I think most growers out there don't want to only sit at a computer either. So this will help them balance that.

Jason [00:43:57]:

Yeah. One of my favorite ways to set alerts is to look at some previous runs, and if they performed as expected, HVAC irrigations were all what you imagine are right. Then use the highs and the lows from that to evaluate. Here's what happens when nothing in the room breaks, when some points are right, when all the equipment works, when irrigation was appropriate. And that way you're not getting alert fatigue. One of the worst things that you can do is set your parameters too tight. Be like, hey, I absolutely have to be on these ranges. And then you start ignoring alerts if you get too many of them. So definitely be conscientious when you're setting those. Make sure that they are signifying emergency or a warning situation.

Seth [00:44:46]:

Yeah, I mean, your example, Jason, with one employee working only in certain rooms. That's exactly part of why we expanded the granularity and these alert options, just because we want them to be as effective as possible. And if that means, hey, I'm responsible for irrigation in two rooms, I'm going to focus on those. That way, I don't get an alert whenever everyone else is messing up and learn to ignore it. It's too easy when you're getting notifications from, let's just say at any given workplace. Right. You might have Aroya Slack gmail. We live in a world now where a lot of places have four or five different programs that you're getting alerts from throughout the day. I know I've gotten a few since we've been in this podcast.

Jason [00:45:33]:

One of the things that we always encourage that people do is use the alerts through the harvest group, and this is going to allow those to be better tailored for what your conditions in the room are during that time. And one of my favorite little secrets is to add Harvest Day and disable all of my alerts on the Harvest Day so that my phone doesn't get blown up when we take the sensors out of the plants. And so usually for Harvest Day, I'll try to set it one or two days just in case I'm right in that range, and then have your alerts and targets disabled for that period. And really what this is doing is making it so your alert ranges are following the plant lifecycle. We're changing environmentals and irrigations throughout that process, and so we can have those alerts just slightly tighter to what we're ideally doing during that time.

Kaisha [00:46:29]:

Yeah, you all don't sleep on alerts. The whole idea is to make your lives easier. And just like you guys are all making continuous improvements, we are, too just doing what we can to help you do your job. So, Seth and Jason, thank you so much for that overview. And everybody out there, when you try the new Notification Center, let us know what you think of it. All right, mandy sending it over to you what's going on in YouTube.

Mandy [00:46:51]:

Yeah. Thank you, Kaisha. No more alert fatigue. I love that. Yeah. Let's get back to some questions while we have some time in the show. Chuck wants to know, I was wondering if you are stacking EC, how often do you drain to waste or waste until sorry? How often do you drain to waste or water until runoff? Since the stacking will have old nutrients, do you recommend every few days or week? My concern would be fluctuation in PH. I notice when I stack EC, after a few days, the PH slowly lowers down.

Seth [00:47:26]:

Yeah, I mean, the pretty hard rule I live by is three days is the max. I like to go without runoff, and that's for that reason, is that PH drift. So ideally, and that's something that technology like the T twelve allows us to do is you're going to be pushing a little bit of runoff every day to try to reset that ionic balance and stay on top of your plant's nutritional needs. But without technology, it's very tough. Like back when we were only looking at runoff, for instance, it was really difficult to really fine tune what your EC was doing in the root zone. And we have the ability now to say, hey, we can look at the graph every day. We can actually push an amount of runoff that's so small it's impossible to even collect. But we're going to maintain our PH a little bit and try to replace that ionic balance. But again, without the technology, it's really hard. That's why for years a lot of us were running at lower EC situations because it's a heck of a lot easier to run low EC water a plant heavy and try to be rinsing it up to your feed EC every day than it is to play with fire going high EC and have zero visibility on drifting PH.

Mandy [00:48:38]:

Use the tools at your disposal. Growers. That is it for the questions on YouTube for now, so I'll pass it back to you. Kaisha.

Kaisha [00:48:45]:

Cool. Thank you, Mandy. Yeah, we got a few more write ins that we've got, so let me go with this one. Just for style, go to comment on YouTube. They wrote, is it necessary to reach field capacity when hydrating and if so, and if I'm trying to generative steer and I want to hit 20% to 25% dryback, but I can achieve that dryback every day, should I just go down in media size? Did all that make sense?

Seth [00:49:14]:

I'll address the media size right away. If you're hitting a 20% to 25% dryback every day, I don't think you need to go down in media size. You sound like you're either right in the pocket or potentially, if we looked at your whole grow on a whole run, possibly on the ragged edge of being in too small of a pot, and then to answer the first part, we typically want to hit field capacity every day. Part of the way we're steering these plants is we've got a water reservoir, right? We've got a gas tank, and there's no reason not to top it off. The plant does not care if it's 55%, 60%, or 40% that you get it up to. It's living in the salinity of that environment and also dealing with how long it's been since the last time you gave it a nice oxygen shot to the root zone and told it to grow. So there's no reason not to bring it back to field capacity. 2020, 5%. Keep doing what you're doing, man. And the only real concern is if you are hitting that last two weeks ripening there, and suddenly you're going to more of like a 45 50% buyback or something crazy where you're wilting your plants and at that point, you're losing the ability to ripen generatively. And that's where you might want to say, hey, I need a bigger pot. I need more gas in the tank to be able to drive this load all the way to the finish line.

Kaisha [00:50:36]:

Awesome. Thank you so much for that, Seth. Just for style. Keep us posted. Good luck out there. All right, we got a write in from our good friend Dave Ray. You wrote, we have been battling some higher reservoir temperatures lately in the low 80 degree range. We keep the res sterile by adding bleeds to keep ORP around 300 to 600. I know high water temps are not ideal, but what issues can the high temps cause, if any?

Mandy [00:51:01]:

Any thoughts on that?

Jason [00:51:06]:

Temperature of irrigation is going to also affect the temperature of your leaf surfaces. The plant's using water to cool itself through transpiration, so higher temps might end up seeing higher amounts of water being used. Obviously, dissolved oxygen, any gas dissolves better in cooler liquids. And so typically we're shooting for that 70 degree range, say 67 to 73 degrees. Tank temperatures, one to provide as much dissolved oxygen capabilities as possible, and then two would be help that plant regulate its temperatures itself.

Seth [00:51:50]:

Yeah, I mean, the dissolved oxygen issue, once you hit 80 degrees, starts to become pretty significant. And another symptom, I guess, that ends up happening when you have that situation is the warmer we get that water, the more anaerobic bacteria likes to grow inside of it. We have low dissolved oxygen the right. I mean, there's this thing called an incubator, and you grow all kinds of nasty microorganisms in a lab, but those incubators sit at 80, 85 degrees quite a bit of the time. That's where things really like to grow. So when we extrapolate that to the whole water system, if I can't get my res down, I know I'm going to have more biofilm in the res. I'm going to have more biofilm in my irrigation lines that are leading from my res out to anywhere in the facility. And then all those lines that are between the res and the room. And let's say they're on the ceiling of the room, too. If I've got water that's hitting, let's say, 85, 90 degrees, and I'm just cooking nutrient soup in there, over time, that BioFill is going to build up to a point where if we were to cut that pipe in half, it'd look like a clogged artery. So the high water temperature not only is not optimal for plant health, but really it's an issue for facility maintenance. And once your irrigation system starts to plug and you've got, let's say, 10% to 40% variance across your emitters, well, now nothing you're doing is accurate. You're chasing your tail because some plants are getting 90% of the water they should be because they only have a 10% plugged emitter, and others are getting 10% of the water they should be because they have a 90% plugged emitter. So get that problem solved really quickly before it cascades into others would be my advice on that one.

Kaisha [00:53:38]:

Every decision really does matter, doesn't it?

Seth [00:53:42]:

It's a challenge in some places. We definitely have some clients in some warmer environments where it is tough to get that water temperature down and all right, well, we might have identified a spot that takes a little bit of precedence on putting money into the facility over getting those brand new grow lights we wanted next round. Or over switching nutrient companies like, hey, now we need to solve a fundamental problem in the facility and prioritize that before thinking that just getting I don't care how much chlorine dioxide you inject into your water or hypochlorous you put in hot water is going to grow things. So you got to solve the root problem, not try to band aid. It.

Kaisha [00:54:26]:

Fantastic, you guys. Thank you so much. All right, we have one question left. I thought this was kind of a fun one. Let's see what you think. Scott wrote in asking, do you guys do facility tours in pullman for companies interested in your products? I have a t three in Seattle and would be eye opening to see your guys'software at work. What advice do you want to give scott?

Jason [00:54:47]:

Not traditionally, but that being said, if you're interested in seeing how it works, hit me up and an email or let's get a phone call going and talk about some options. We do have a facility here that we work with in a partnership that's got a lot of our equipment. So hit us up, and I'd be happy to show you how it works.

Seth [00:55:08]:

Absolutely. I mean, the one thing I will clarify where jason and I are usually sitting is a factory. So not too much actual plant sensing going on there in action. But we do have clients that we work with that are happy to give tours and see it, let you see what's going on.

Jason [00:55:27]:

And while you're here, come check out how we manufacture electronics. If that's interesting to you?

Seth [00:55:32]:

Absolutely, yeah. I like to clarify to people that it's really not exciting. There's no beautiful weed plants at my office. I got, like a fake one and chunk of rockwool. That's about it, actually.

Kaisha [00:55:45]:

I don't mean to brag you all, but I'm going to be planting some seedlings this weekend. So I have weed plants in my office all the way in Northern California. I don't know. I don't know what seeds I have available. Yeah. Whatever I get, I'll grow it. Fantastic. All right, anything else over on YouTube?

Mandy [00:56:07]:

Andy? I think that is it for the show for today. Thank everyone for your questions and the shout outs. It's always a great time with you all.

Kaisha [00:56:17]:

Fantastic. So good. Southern, Jason, so good to see you. Before we go, who can we thank for these fly hats that you're wearing today?

Seth [00:56:25]:

I've got my North Country Farms hat on. Got a shout out to Jacob Nelson over there. He hooked it up.

Jason [00:56:33]:

Good old Cena hat.

Kaisha [00:56:35]:

Tried and true. Yes. And me and Mandy, we are supplied, fitted by Aroya.

Seth [00:56:43]:

All right.

Kaisha [00:56:44]:

Nothing but the best. All right, that's it. Thank you, Seth and Jason, for another great session. Mandy, thank you for co moderating with me. Couldn't do this without you, chris, thank you for holding it down and producing some magic in the background. Thank you all for joining us for this week's episode of Aroya Office Hours. We do this every Thursday and the best way to get answers from the experts is to join us live. To learn more about Aroya, check out our demo link on our website. One of our experts would be happy to walk you through all the different ways our platform can be used to improve your cultivation process. As always, let us know if there's a topic you'd like covered in a future Office Hour session. You can post questions anytime in the Aroya app. Feel free to drop them in the chat, send us an email at support aroya@metergroup.com or send us a DM. We are on all the socials. We love to hear from you. Thank you so much for your time. We record every session. We'll email everybody in attendance the link to the Day's episode. It also live on the Aroya YouTube. Like subscribe. I cannot talk like subscribe and share while you're there. And if these conversations are helpful to you, please feel free to spread the word. Thanks so much, everybody. We'll see you next time. Bye.