OHL Ep79
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[00:00:00] Kaisha: All right. What's up, Grommies? Welcome to Office Hours, your source for free cannabis cultivation education. My name is Kaisha. I'm your moderator, and this is episode 79. Here's how we do it. I'll keep an eye out for questions in the chat. Drop them anytime. And if your question gets picked, we'll get right to it.

[00:00:17] Kaisha: We're also going live on YouTube. So if you're logging on over there, post your questions. And if yours gets picked, we'll do our best to cover it during the show. Also, shout out. We are live on Instagram. Same idea. If you got questions, send us a DM. [00:00:30] Jason, how you doing? Me and you are such buddies today.

[00:00:32] Kaisha: I'm wonderful. How are you? I'm doing good. Awesome. Well, let's get right into it. And I understand it's a beautiful day for a feature update. Let's give our friends a little overview of what's going on with our mobile photo upload feature.

[00:00:44] Jason: You bet. So, in the web interface, We've been able to do mobile, or excuse me, we've been able to do multiple picture uploads through the comments or tasks section.

[00:00:55] Jason: A great way to document if you're going in your grow room, taking a few pictures, maybe by each [00:01:00] zone. And then right now, we have now released the ability to do that from your mobile app as well. So if you're using a mobile app on iPhone, Android, iPad, etc. Then just go ahead and Do a new task or a new comment and add as many pictures as you want in there, up to 250 meg, which That's gonna be quite a few pictures, so that's plenty.

[00:01:23] Kaisha: But that's a big game changer. A lot of growers have been asking us for that feature update, and I don't know if you watch the program, Jason's a [00:01:30] big fan of taking photos, right? I am.

[00:01:32] Jason: Yeah. It's it's something interesting because. When you walk in a room, you know what you want to be looking at, and it's a great way to communicate what a grower in the room is looking at.

[00:01:42] Jason: A great way to document the harvest group as time progresses. How do you expect this strain to look at this day, at this age, as we start to make improvements? How does that change the morphology of the plant? All that type of stuff. And so it is also a way to just go back and look at something that maybe you weren't [00:02:00] Taking advantage of analyzing at that time.

[00:02:03] Jason: So tons of times I'll go back, five, six, seven years of pictures that I've taken and try and apply something that I've learned recently to what I used to deal with. , so valuable.

[00:02:15] Kaisha: Awesome. And it's actually a perfect segue to this first question that we got into. So take Advantage, mobile tag, mobile photo uploads, multiple photos now through the mobile app.

[00:02:24] Kaisha: Enjoy that. Keep us posted Roya customers. But we got this question here from Bookham Ghetto. [00:02:30] They wrote in, hello. I'm one year into working in the industry, I mean cultivation and wanna take notes and document our grows. What kind of information, stats, benchmarks can I use on a daily basis from zone fill to harvest?

[00:02:44] Kaisha: What's your suggestions, Jason?

[00:02:46] Jason: Yeah, so I'm going to start this off with just, assuming that you have a data logging system like AROYA that's keeping track of your HVAC and some of your substrate conditions. That being said, if everything's mostly dialed in, what I [00:03:00] always try and make sure that I have is plant height.

[00:03:02] Jason: RUNOFF PH, and then RUNOFF VOLUME. Those are basically the three that I like to see at least every other day, if not every day, if we can. And those are information that's going to really help you dial in your growth cycle per strain. So, obviously there's a ton more that really does need to be documented.

[00:03:23] Jason: And these are things that, you may or may not have to document. On a very regular basis, depending on how well dialed you're in. [00:03:30] So in the ROYA system we've got the manual readings option, which is a great way to be able to chart this information right into your harvest group. And the default options that we have for manual readings right now are dry back, moisture content, spot EC, leaf temp, spot water content, spot pH runoff EC, runoff volume.

[00:03:50] Jason: Feed pH, feed volume, flower diameter, node spacing, plant height spot temperature, water activities to model conductance, CO2 levels, and what [00:04:00] basically is going on here, and there's a few more in there what basically we're doing there is trying to either validate some of the handheld measurements that you're taking just document any of the work that you are in there.

[00:04:09] Jason: So if maybe you're trying to troubleshoot a HVAC issue and you've got two climate stations in there that are, showing a little bit different value, You might come down to some airflow in the room or something, go and take a few spot measurements with with a handheld unit and plot them right into AROYA.

[00:04:26] Jason: And that way you can analyze that data right on top of each other. Same [00:04:30] thing with like EC or runoff, and if you're trying to dial in, get an understanding of how much difference you have from your feed EC to your substrate EC, getting it right from the Taros 12 and AROYA to your runoff EC, get that plotted right on top and you'll start to see some of the trends.

[00:04:47] Jason: That you'll learn to get used to and some of that information, kind of once you get a facility and situational set up, you may not have to take them as regularly as the first three that I mentioned. [00:05:00]

[00:05:00] Kaisha: Fantastic overview. Book them down. Good luck out there. We're going to keep it moving. We already got some questions here on YouTube.

[00:05:06] Kaisha: I'm going to, VeggieToad505 looks like submitted a few, so I'm going to do one at a time here. So the first question, would you mess around with FeedEC before FeedPH? to fix pH runoff?

[00:05:21] Jason: Would I mess around with feed EC before pH? Yes, I would. Absolutely. So, when we think about, our feed EC [00:05:30] and I guess the answer is yes and no, right?

[00:05:33] Jason: I wouldn't modify what my feed EC actually is, I would just change the amount of runoff that I'm pushing through there, right? And so basically what's happening is when we have a nutrient level in the substrate. Sometimes the plant's going to eat different amounts of nutrients in composition, different elements in that composition.

[00:05:51] Jason: And so we might start to be seeing a deficiency in one element. And let's say if we, we push more runoff, usually it's going to start to stabilize that. However, [00:06:00] if we are just low in our feed EC, We may need to up that EC just to make sure that we can have the amounts of runoff that we need in order for the crop steering strategies that we're trying to deploy.

[00:06:11] Jason: So, so I guess it's a yes and a no question because it depends on what you're running into. If we're seeing substrate ECs at two or two and a half, then it's probably time just to up your feed EC and you might be able to resolve those pH issues simply by supplying the plant with a sufficient level of.

[00:06:28] Jason: Ions of each type in [00:06:30] the composition of that nutrient

[00:06:34] Kaisha: awesome veg veto. If we, if you have further clarification, feel free to drop it on YouTube, but they also had a couple other questions here. The next one was, am I right to say when it comes to soaking blocks to just pH. to 5. 5, and use RO water, then first irrigation, use nuke water. Am I, is that?

[00:06:57] Jason: Nuke water, yeah some nutrient water.

[00:06:58] Jason: Probably not best to use [00:07:00] nuclear water. Okay. That's for plants like the radiation. Yeah, that should be fine. In, in certain situations it is, it's absolutely okay. And sometimes a better way to do it. If we're just trying to get our compressed coco to be uncompressed so that we can get our irrigation spikes in there before we do any planting, then that's absolutely fine.

[00:07:20] Jason: You just want to make sure that you have charged that substrate with nutrients before we're getting plants in there. So as far as that that five, five value I like to be in that five, [00:07:30] four, five, five value for rockwool's for coco, it's just going to depend a little bit on the manufacturer and how well buffered those were coming in the supply.

[00:07:37] Jason: So that's something where. Just just get started with them, do a little bit of pH ing after you've soaked them up, say maybe if you're at 5. 5 and you soaked them up and your next set of runoff comes out at still at 5. 5, then you may not need to drop it quite that low for Rockwool, or for coco, excuse me, usually for coco, we're looking at feeds of 5.

[00:07:56] Jason: 8 to 6. 0 for our pH.[00:08:00]

[00:08:02] Kaisha: All right. Excellent. Thank you for that. Third question here from Vegito. When feeding 3EC, is that more for higher PPFD and CO2 rooms? If you were not dosing CO2 or high light, would you still feed a 3EC?

[00:08:20] Jason: Great question. Yeah. So really what, what's going to come down to is we're always trying to have our variables balanced, right?

[00:08:28] Jason: And so when we think [00:08:30] about how much CO2 is in the environment obviously photosynthesis is CO2 plus water catalyzed by light is, going to be how much food we can build for that plant. And so when we think about, all right, if I have lower CO2 levels, there is a chance that you can get away with lower ECs.

[00:08:49] Jason: That being said, lower PPFDs that being said, in most situations you might as well be supplying them with enough that they're not going to run into some deficiencies. And then just [00:09:00] reduce the amount of runoff that you're getting out of there. And basically the whole point of that is that with certain nutrient compositions, we may or may not be matching exactly what the plant is eating.

[00:09:13] Jason: And so I would definitely have some substrate. sensors in there and start getting some of your runoff ECs, take a look at what those values are. And if you had a substrate sensor in there, you can start to understand, all right, well, even at 3EC and our other levels, PPFD and CO2 [00:09:30] lower than optimal, are we running out of nutrients?

[00:09:33] Jason: I mean, is that plant uptaking more than we're supplying at that 3EC? And a lot of it's going to depend on, light levels and, Strain dependent. Strain type.

[00:09:44] Jason: Strain dependent.

[00:09:46] Kaisha: All right. Vegito I think we, we covered it. So yeah, let us know if there's anything else you want us to talk about here. We are getting some questions in on Instagram. Let me run this one by you. I'm reading this how it came in. All right. [00:10:00] When talking dry back, am I supposed to ask up my dry, my day dry back and my night dry back for my generative and vegetative steering?

[00:10:10] Jason: I think I understand the question. Yeah. So, what I call for a dry bag percentage is going to be basically, your highest water content during the day. So where are we at after our P1 irrigations? Most of the time it's at field capacity. That's usually what we're trying to achieve on a daily basis when we are in the right size [00:10:30] substrate and we have healthy plants.

[00:10:31] Jason: So yeah, it'll be the amount of water content loss in the day, plus the amount of water content loss overnight. And that's going to be the dry bag percentage.

[00:10:44] Kaisha: Boom. Thank you for that. Thanks, Instagram. Keep them coming, y'all. Alright, we've got some more live questions coming in on YouTube. Taylor dropped a couple for us. Let's start with this first one. Can you achieve high enough substrate ECs to gen steer with a 2. 5 [00:11:00] input? Or do I really need to get up to 3.

[00:11:03] Kaisha: 5?

[00:11:04] Jason: There's a lot of variables that are coming into play here. Obviously we just talked about two of the most important ones related to EC levels. CO2 and light. So it's hard to say without tracking it. That being said, you put some substrate sensors in there with some time series data, and it'd be pretty easy to see if your nutrients are going to be able to stack or not a little bit going to be dependent on size and media versus the size of plant.

[00:11:26] Jason: And in most of the situations that I see for most nutrient [00:11:30] types, two fives, usually just not enough to get there. And we see that plant starting to eat more nutrients than we're actually supplying to it so that our EC is not stacking because there's no concentration of nutrients happening when we get some runoff transpiration or evaporation.

[00:11:49] Kaisha: Cool. All right. Taylor dropped a second question here. What defines a gen steer? Am I gen steering if I achieve 30 to 35 percent dryback, [00:12:00] even if my EC isn't spiking in my substrate? Or is the Hi C what defines my gen steer? Thanks.

[00:12:07] Jason: Yeah, actually, I love this question because it seems like a lot of times people are referring to, stressors being generative steering and all of that stuff.

[00:12:15] Jason: And what it really comes down to is when we're talking about how to make those hormone balances change in the plant, mostly in hydroponic situations, we are going to be using that osmotic differential between the substrate and the plant itself. [00:12:30] So if we think about it, here's the cells and the plants.

[00:12:32] Jason: They have tugger pressure. That's one of the reasons that they're pulling up water and nutrients is because of the osmotic differential. And so really what's happening is when we're in a hydroponic situation like coco, rockwool, or any of the soilless medias that are used in most popular cannabis cultivation, indoor specifically, and especially the matric potential doesn't, the amount of, so matric potential is the amount of vacuum that the roots have to apply to the [00:13:00] substrate, right?

[00:13:00] Jason: Right. And so if we take rockwool, for example that matrix potential is very linear. And so that substrate can go to pretty much almost 0 percent water content before the plant actually starts to feel a significant irrigation or drought stress as traditional crops refer to it. So absolutely.

[00:13:18] Jason: Yes. When we're talking about generative steering, it's typically making sure that EC has some amount of rise. And to bring back the last question. In here, you have to be supplying it enough [00:13:30] nutrients to allow that thing to stack up. And so typically when we see these charted up, you'll have a much steeper slope on your EC climb when you're generative steering versus when you're vegetative steering.

[00:13:42] Jason: And actually early in flower, typically what we'll do is we'll have, smaller amounts of runoff and we're not going to be pushing them back down as far when we irrigate. So actually see a little kind of a stair step at each day is going to climb up and you see for a while.

[00:13:59] Kaisha: Awesome. I love that [00:14:00] question too. Taylor, thank you for dropping those. Those were good ones. It's going to be rapid fire today, Jason. I'm going to keep it moving. We got another one here on YouTube from McRobbins85. They want to know, have you looked at volume of water content at the time of harvest and its effect on final quality aside from it affecting drying times and the amount of water that needs to be removed?

[00:14:21] Kaisha: You got any thoughts on

[00:14:23] Jason: I haven't done a lot of trying to analyze this and yeah I think really the question is breaking down is we want to be hitting field [00:14:30] capacity every day even during ripening. Traditional sense we usually do. And so when we're thinking about, all right when we're ripening, we might be reducing the amount of, or we're trying to reduce the amount of nitrogen that's going into these plants at that time.

[00:14:44] Jason: Basically reducing carbohydrates on there so we can have a cleaner burn. And one of the things that's going on with that is we are trying to supply either just slightly less nutrients or a modified nutrient composition. And what the volumetric water content is, I would still typically be [00:15:00] hitting my field capacity on a daily basis because I would want to be using the right size substrate for the size of plants that I'm using.

[00:15:07] Jason: And so during ripening, it's very likely I'll be at a 25 to 30 percent dry back. And that means that even if I'm hitting field capacity in something like coco or rockwool, I'm going to be at a pretty low water content, even when I go to harvest. And that being said yeah it's definitely okay to not irrigate the day that you're going to harvest.[00:15:30]

[00:15:32] Kaisha: Oh, good. Thank you for that. My one little cola having plant. I'm harvesting her this weekend, so I'm glad to know I don't have to water her beforehand. Thank you for that. Thank you for that question, McRobbins85. On a similar note, we got this question in from IronArmor last week. We weren't able to get to it, but it's timely.

[00:15:50] Kaisha: They wrote, is there any difference between full saturation and field capacity in a growing medium?

[00:15:57] Jason: Good question. In [00:16:00] application sense, no, there's really not when we're talking about, what is field capacity? Well, field capacity is when our substrate has is holding as much water as it can without having some amount of runoff.

[00:16:13] Jason: And so that just basically is based on how much pore space we have, and some of the physical molecular interactions between the substrate and water itself. And so when we're talking about field capacity, it's. [00:16:30] It's just going to be, how much can that hold? And so usually for something like rock, well, we see those numbers and say 75%, right?

[00:16:38] Jason: So if we've got rockwool block that was one gallon of substrate, and I guess metrics a little bit easier to work with this type of stuff, but let's say, we're going to one liter substrate, the volume of it. If our field capacity is at say 70%, then that's going to be. 7 liters of water that [00:17:00] substrate can hold.

[00:17:04] Kaisha: Cool. Thank you for that. Thank you for that question, Iron Armor. We posted it again today. We knew we wanted to get to that one today. We appreciate your patience on that. All right, we're going to keep it going. We got these posts, these questions posted on YouTube recently from Diana. Two questions. Number one, can you use VPD with 1, 000 watt lights?

[00:17:24] Jason: Yes. I mean, you can use vapor pressure deficit I think regardless of the light supply.[00:17:30] I'm guessing that this question is trying to lead into the difference between leaf surface VPD and air VPD. And really what's going on there is when a plant is growing, it's transpiring. And so there's always going to be a slight microclimate right around the stomates in there.

[00:17:48] Jason: And that's usually what we're trying to do when controlling our VPD is optimize the stomata conductance. So if the air is too dry. Then our stow mates are going to close, start to [00:18:00] close up a little bit simply because they're trying to retain water. So that plant doesn't go into a wilting status. Vice versa.

[00:18:07] Jason: If the humidity is too high in the room. then those stomates are also going to close up. So with VPD, we're balancing humidity and temperature to try and optimize those stomates to be as open as possible. And that's what allows the most gas exchange for the plant. So it's going to be able to get higher levels of CO2 in there, and it's going to be able to process more it's going to [00:18:30] photosynthesize faster, the more that those stomates are open.

[00:18:32] Jason: And so, obviously. When they are transpiring, we have that microclimate around the leaf, and when we're looking at things like, 1000 watt HPS, they have a little bit higher far red spectrum, right, than something like LED or CMH type bulbs. And so, What's going on there is that radiation, that far red is going to be actually forming the leaf surface a little bit more.

[00:18:59] Jason: So typically,[00:19:00] if we're looking at the VPD at the leaf surface for something like a HPS light, 1000 Watt HPS light, that VPD is going to be a little bit higher even when our air VPD would be the same in a room with LEDs, right? And that's simply because that temperature is up a little bit and if humidity is going to be the same as it would be with an LED then Because that temperature is up and humidity is the same, our BPD would be a little bit higher and really, what it comes down to is one, making sure that we have the [00:19:30] appropriate airflow and two, that we have taken some leaf surface temperatures and compared them with our air temps so that we can get an idea of how much offset we have from our typical air BPD that we're monitoring on a time series basis.

[00:19:45] Jason: For And that's what we can control. So wait, usually we're always talking about VPD as far as air temp, because how do we control leaf surface VPD? Well, we're doing that with our air VPD. [00:20:00] And so making sure that you have good airflow throughout the room. So it's uniform. That's how you're going to be able to get that leaf VPD where you want it to be.

[00:20:10] Kaisha: Excellent. Well, it sounds like Diana is working on dialing in the room environment here, because the second question they submitted, is it bad to turn off the CO2 for a few minutes and let fresh air into the room?

[00:20:24] Jason: No. I mean, I. I always recommend having the CO2 turned off that lights off or actually, just a [00:20:30] little bit before lights off.

[00:20:31] Jason: Let's get that CO2 turned off and allow the room to approach ambient CO2 levels and really what's going on is when we're talking about how a plant is growing during the day it's transpiring, right? It's building the sugars that it needs to grow. And then when our lights go off, it's actually It's going to be respiring and it'll actually be putting off some amount of CO2 into that room when our lights are off.

[00:20:56] Jason: What's going on during plant respiration is it's actually processing [00:21:00] those sugars that it has built throughout the day during transpiration.

[00:21:06] Kaisha: Oh, we got a comment actually on YouTube, Richard posted, I turn off CO2 an hour before lights off. So there it is. Yeah. Keep us posted. All right. IG Live. What's up, everybody? We got a question here from Kush Happy 760. They want to know how much percentage of dry back do you look for before you start watering?

[00:21:26] Kaisha: Is it 2 5 percent or do you guys do

[00:21:29] Jason: more?[00:21:30] I'm guessing that's between irrigations. Yeah, 2 5 percent is a great way to shoot. Really. For me I don't take that percentage, like a hard rule as far as, Hey, I need to make sure that I hit that by the time that I irrigate. Again, I usually go by looking at, all right, how many times do I want to irrigate?

[00:21:49] Jason: How far do I want to do a growth response? Vegetative growth response in this plant. So I'm stirring extremely vegetative. I'll do more shots, right? So a little bit shorter [00:22:00] duration between my shots. Yeah. And then vice versa. Obviously, if we're trying to be a little bit more balanced during our P2s, do a few less shots.

[00:22:09] Jason: And so you'd have a bigger percentage. And what it kind of comes down to is, well, how much water do we need on there in order to maintain some level of field capacity, like water near field capacity during our vegetative stages? And how much balance do I want to have with that? And so take those two factors in there and, if you want to [00:22:30] irrigate, say, six times during your P2s, you'll want those irrigations to be about twice as much as if you were irrigating 12 times.

[00:22:43] Kaisha: Boom. Awesome. Thank you for that. All right. Here we go. Richard posted a couple of questions. We're going to start with the first one here. How do you stack EC properly when you flip from veg to stretch?

[00:22:58] Jason: So yeah, [00:23:00] how do we stack it properly? Well, a few things kind of happen here. One is making sure that we're at a good timeframe in the plant life cycle. So have we taken plant heights when we're coming out of edge and we know that, Hey, this plant's usually going to stretch another 30 inches or another 40 inches, depending on what strain it is and its growth parameters during stretching the rest of flower.

[00:23:21] Jason: So that's one consideration. And also with that consideration is are we rooted into our final media? So if we are transplanting right at the [00:23:30] time that we flipped from 18, six to 12, 12 light cycle, we want to make sure that we do some specific irrigations for a few days, usually anywhere from three to seven days, as far as making sure that those roots have been promoting promoting growth throughout the new substrate.

[00:23:46] Jason: Right. And I think one of our other questions here a little bit later is going to lead into this as well, but we, we want to make sure that we're looking at the water content and where it's going. And so how do we make sure that we stack that EEC? Well, [00:24:00] it's by one having appropriate plant growth two it's by making sure that our feed EECs are enough to supply nutrients more than just what the plant is eating.

[00:24:12] Jason: And then the. Third one, and probably the one that takes the most monitoring during application and kind of on a day to day basis is how much runoff are we pushing, right? So typically when we are trying to stack ECs, we'll have less runoff. And that's just meaning that, Hey, some of the [00:24:30] residual EC that we'd added, hasn't all been eaten up by the plant and we're not pushing it out the bottom of the substrate.

[00:24:37] Jason: So it might be slightly higher the next day. And that's really. The objective here is just try and let's get that hormone balance in the plant altered fairly reasonably early in flower, so we can promote more bud sites, tighter node spacing, and change the physiology of that plant into something that's going to be reproductive as early as possible.

[00:24:59] Jason: [00:25:00] And, the theory is here is that, all right, if we encourage this plant to be a reproductive plant, then we can kind of lean back onto the bulking stages later, and we can say, all right, well, now that we've built these parts, let's make them as big as possible rather than the plant being like, Hey, I'm just making stock stems and leaves as big as possible.

[00:25:21] Jason: It's making buds as big as possible.

[00:25:25] Kaisha: So Richard dropped another question here. So when I hit [00:25:30] Dryback ECO only goes up by two to three EC overnight, Why isn't my EC shooting up? I am feeding two EC, but I have heard people stacking up with two EC up to 10 to 15 EC. What advice would you recommend?

[00:25:45] Jason: Making sure that you're in an appropriate sized media.

[00:25:47] Jason: And so a lot of times, if we're in media that's a little bit too big, then we may not see that EC stack up quite as fast. Another thing, at 2EC, I guess we answered this earlier, that's lower than my experience says this [00:26:00] is where we want to be for FEDC when we're in when we're in flower and, most of the nutrients that are tailored for cannabis these days you don't have to get worried too much worried about nutrient burn especially if you're way down there at 2EC.

[00:26:13] Jason: So. Up here, you see a little bit, make sure your pH is checked and really what it has to do with is also plant size and strain type, right? Some strains are just way hungrier than others. Maybe the, what you're looking at, it's a three increase or two or three increase and you see overnight [00:26:30] dry back is maybe that's just a lot hungrier strain than who you're comparing to.

[00:26:37] Kaisha: Fantastic. Thank you, Jason. Richard, thank you for those questions. We know you're, I think there's some conversation happening on YouTube, which we love. So keep us posted. Let us know how things are going back to Instagram here from a question from Carter grows hard. He wrote any way of slowing down dry backs at night?

[00:26:58] Jason: Let's see. Slowing [00:27:00] down drybacks at night. So this is going to have to do with, most of the time overnight where most of our water loss is typically evaporation. There's a little bit of transpiration going on as well or water used during those lights off. So one way to do it would be have a media that doesn't lose as much water content for evaporation.

[00:27:21] Jason: So if you're in slabs, for example, that one. That's a media type that loses about as little as any media that I know of simply because it's enclosed. [00:27:30] Now, if we're in a short two gallon coco like mesh bag, for example, got a lot more of that substrate that's exposed to air. I guess the question that I'd like to know is, other than just decreasing our water usage, what's the goal of reducing that dry back overnight?

[00:27:49] Kaisha: All right, Carter. Yeah. Send us a follow up. Let us know what's going on over there. In the meantime, we're moving on to another question here from Micah Robbins, 85. They wrote, For [00:28:00] ripening, what are some nitrogen free sources of calcium other than calcium chloride? And pros and cons of each. What would be your top recommendations?

[00:28:11] Jason: Other sources of, did you say nitrogen?

[00:28:13] Kaisha: Nitrogen free. Oh wait, nitrogen free sources of calcium other than calcium chloride.

[00:28:21] Jason: Calcium chloride is usually the one that I turn to. I'm sure there is quite a few other ones. I'm just not super familiar with which [00:28:30] ones would be the best to use or why.

[00:28:33] Kaisha: Cool. Okay. All right. Moving on here. We got a question from a guy named Jason. I don't know if you guys know each other. Just really a statement. They're looking for the max PPM of nitrogen in bulking. Any considerations for Jason? Jason?

[00:28:49] Jason: Parts per million for nitrogen during bulking. I, usually I'm just looking at a fairly well balanced nutrient line.

[00:28:57] Jason: So if you are mixing up your own nutrients. [00:29:00] And I would definitely make sure that you're consulting a well qualified nutrient person. Most of the time when I make recommendations that on here, it's going with a proven line that, that has EC levels that, that we're trying to shoot for.

[00:29:14] Jason: So, it might be something where just run a couple of different tests. And this is also going to be strain specific because when we're talking about. The elemental balance in a nutrient mix, different strains are going to pull it differently.[00:29:30]

[00:29:33] Kaisha: Alright. Thank you for that. Good luck out there, Jason. Okay. We got another question in from Instagram. Somebody's looking for some advice about defoliation day 21. Heavy or not, what do you recommend?

[00:29:48] Jason: So I always try to do a little bit less defoliation than the harder, hard strips. And simply my idea is that I want to make sure that I'm optimizing my [00:30:00] canopy, right?

[00:30:00] Jason: And so when we're. Looking at, well, what does that mean? That means that we're getting enough light penetration to increase the number of A buds that we can get, right? We're trying to avoid lower larvae buds as much as possible. And also making sure that the airflow throughout the canopy is is sufficient.

[00:30:18] Jason: And that's some of the goals of that defoliation. Anytime that we are stripping the plant, if we do a little bit too much, It's going to signify kind of a regenerative response in that [00:30:30] plant, and that's definitely not what we want, right? That's going to be it's confusing because when I say regenerative, you think, Oh, cool, it's generative.

[00:30:37] Jason: No, what regenerative is, we've taken so much energy sourcing materials off of that plant that it's now going to change its hormone balance and say, Hey, I got to grow more leaves, right? I need to be able to harvest more light. Yeah. And so obviously on the other side of that is we want to strip enough to manage that canopy.[00:31:00]

[00:31:00] Kaisha: Thank you, Jason. We are on Empava right now. Instagram Live, YouTube, questions are coming in fast and furious. We love it. Thanks, y'all. Love the conversations that are happening over there too. We're going to do our best to get as many of these as we can. Let's get to the next one here from Thomas. They wrote, How do you achieve a tighter node stack with stretchy strains?

[00:31:21] Jason: Yeah great question. I mean, it's. It comes down just to why we do crop steering, right? And so when we have those stretchy [00:31:30] strains, we try to hit them hard and fast with pretty significant generative type of cues. And so that's going to be meaning that, Hey, when we get into flower, we're going to want to make sure we're stacking that EC as quickly as we can.

[00:31:42] Jason: Right. And it's definitely can be a challenge sometimes especially if you're dealing with other challenges like that. Maybe not optimal sized media or maybe you haven't documented what size your clones need to be coming out or not your clones, your your veg plants need to be coming out when you go into flower.

[00:31:58] Jason: And so making sure that [00:32:00] easy, you get it stacked up as quick as possible is going to be the best way to reduce the stretchiness in those I mean, typically they're more sativa type plants or some of the old land race stuff. So, the other side of that as well as making sure that we don't go.

[00:32:15] Jason: back into our vegetative, our bulking type of cues too early. I've many a times worked with people and it's that we grown a new strain and they're like, here's the general framework for how long we want to be generative. And every once in [00:32:30] a while for, a specific strain, go back to bulking vegetative.

[00:32:33] Jason: And we see that thing, blow up like inch and a half a day of growth. And then we know we want to run that generative a little bit longer. And so typically, the strains of those types are, we're going to push that generative steering per, a number of days longer than we would balance strains.

[00:32:54] Kaisha: Wonderful. Thank you for that. All right. We've got some follow up happening here. So Jason written, [00:33:00] wrote earlier looking for the max PPM of nitrogen and bulking. This time he posted, what do you think of calcium sulfate as a replacement for calcium nitrate? Oh, that's a follow up for a different question.

[00:33:11] Kaisha: Any suggestions for calcium replacement? In South Africa, our only option is a three by seven by 14. All right. So we got an international guest over there. So yeah. Yeah. Calcium sulfate as a replacement for calcium nitrate. Any experience with that, Jason?

[00:33:27] Jason: It should be okay. I do the research [00:33:30] on what, effectively in other types of plants and in other nutrient lines, is that an acceptable option?

[00:33:36] Jason: Yeah.

[00:33:40] Kaisha: All right. Yes. Okay. Let me sit through so much conversation. Love it. Yes. Keep talking about it, y'all. We love that. Okay, we're gonna move on to Instagram. We got a question from Nicole. Looking, she's looking for best tips and practices for properly rooting into a Hugo cube. After [00:34:00] properly saturating, dunking for two minutes in veg tank solution, how long should you dry your cube back before transferring clone into Hugo using LED lights?

[00:34:10] Kaisha: Each room has 90 to 100 lights, environment on point for the most part, vegging for two weeks, then sending down to flower and just to Hugo all the way. From pH to EC and timing, what was your best tips and tricks would be? Please and thank you. Alright, Jason. Go ahead, Tam. [00:34:30]

[00:34:30] Jason: Alright, I like the details in there because it helps answer exactly what the question is, rather than me trying to just shoot in the dark.

[00:34:38] Jason: So, for optimizing rooting in to Kugos I think the first thing that I want to address there is for me personally, I don't feel that two minutes is long enough to dunk my Hugos to make sure that they have reached full saturation or full field capacity. That being said, every time I do it, I'll still see bubbles, five, 10 minutes after I've dunked [00:35:00] those substrates.

[00:35:00] Jason: And that's one thing that we really absolutely need to make sure that we're hitting is that first wet up. We get all of the wetting agents out of that rockwool and we get it charged up with our nutrients. And so, as, as far as the values for what we're getting it at, I like to do my initial soak up at 5.

[00:35:20] Jason: 4 for rockwool, those hugos your feed levels depending on your nutrient manufacturer usually we're going to be at something like 1. 5 [00:35:30] to, 2. 5. Some of them are all way up, getting started at 3. 0. So I would follow as a baseline, the manufacturer's recommendations for that. And so let's get them up to field capacity.

[00:35:42] Jason: Now we got the Hugos ready for the clones in them, right? Typically after you've got them soaked up, it's not going to take very long for them to run off all the extra. So I wouldn't be worried, too worried about getting those clones stuck right in, right after those plants those hugos [00:36:00] aren't gripping if you don't get them in right away, not a big deal at all.

[00:36:03] Jason: And what we're doing is realistically we're going to be supplying every once in a while, a small irrigation typically, we're looking at three, five times a day just a really small irrigation because we want to make sure before those ruts have I've penetrated the Hugo that we're just getting a slight refreshment, and that's also gonna help bring fresh oxygen into the substrate.

[00:36:25] Jason: One of the really the goal here is that we're not bringing it back all the way up to field [00:36:30] capacity though. Right. And so let's say we're at 70% when we put that clone in, well, if we're losing maybe higher percent water content a day, we don't want to irrigate that much, right?

[00:36:44] Jason: So we'll irrigate maybe. One to two percent overall, those three shots, so basically the idea is here is when we're looking at a curve and this is why time series substrate data is so crucial is because we can go back and look at [00:37:00] yesterday and be like, Hey, we got back up to field capacity, even though we were trying to run in and.

[00:37:04] Jason: Now, however much you gave it is too much. And so basically, for those first three to seven days, depending on your root growth, let's let's identify how much water content loss we have every day. And then just make sure that we're getting an amount of irrigation to it. A lot of times, for the first.

[00:37:24] Jason: Three days, we can do those irrigations and make sure that those roots have penetrated. [00:37:30] And then we may or may not even need to irrigate for a few days once those roots are in there. And if that block is still at something like, 55% water content I'd probably let 'em dry down for a day or two and then start my traditional flower irrigations.

[00:37:47] Kaisha: There it is, Nicole. Good luck. Let it keep us posted. Let us know how it's going. All right, we got a follow up from the earlier question from Carter about slowing down dry back at night. They wrote, because they're [00:38:00] dealing with Hugo, my max EWC is 65 and I'm getting in the mid 20s. Night VPD is a 1. 2 early flower.

[00:38:10] Jason: Yeah, I mean, you could probably drop that night VPD a little bit, which would reduce amount of evaporation. Another thing that you could do is. Put toppers on your ego blocks. Both of those solutions kind of feel like band aids to me, as far as really what's happening is you probably just, those plants are running out of substrate.[00:38:30]

[00:38:30] Jason: So yeah, some options there is you might run a little bit larger substrate or it might try to work off of a little bit smaller plants in there so that you can still do your generative steering, whether that be stacking or ripening.

[00:38:45] Kaisha: Cool. Cool. Thanks for the follow up, Carter. Awesome.

[00:38:47] Kaisha: All right. Cap and Capon wrote in from Instagram. What's the best PPFD at starting week three? Also, I see people hit 1200, but when I do, it gets burned. [00:39:00] What do you suggest, Jason?

[00:39:01] Jason: Week three, a flower, I'm assuming he means. Yeah. From my experience I usually like to be at full light intensity by, at least.

[00:39:10] Jason: Day 7 to 10 in flower. So really what the goal is here is those plants are growing fast. We need to get them lots of of light. Cannabis is extremely light hungry. And if you're seeing light bleaching or photo bleaching as sometimes they call it. I would definitely try and get an idea of [00:39:30] is it happening in specific spots?

[00:39:31] Jason: Is it happening in specific strains? One of the things I would definitely look at is nutrient content. Sometimes, we can push a little bit higher nutrient content and those plants are going to be more resistant to that that photo bleaching. How far away from the lights are they?

[00:39:45] Jason: Do we have hot spots? Those type of things. So I guess there's a lot of factors in there that, he's the best thing you can do is document, but being at 1200 in week three and in most situations that's a great place to be, [00:40:00] I'd to be at 1200 by day seven or 10.

[00:40:03] Jason: And so I would try to analyze what else is going on there. It's probably not just the light intensity, but

[00:40:09] Jason: Sweet.

[00:40:10] Kaisha: All right. Also from Instagram, we got this question. Hi, could you please talk about active, passive intakes and exhausts? To being in fresh air in a small grow setup.

[00:40:25] Jason: Active to passive to exhaust. [00:40:30] I

[00:40:31] Kaisha: don't know if they, is that something we can give an overview on today?

[00:40:34] Jason: I mean, I think I could hope that I'm not way off this question, but active intake would be a fan blowing into your grow tent or your closet.

[00:40:44] Jason: Passive would be leaving your closet door open or the tent door open and then the exhaust would be a fan blowing out of the that small aerospace. I mean, it makes sense to me. I'm pretty sure I'm pretty sure I missed like what they were [00:41:00] actually trying to ask there, but my apologies.

[00:41:02] Jason: Give us more details on how we can help that out.

[00:41:04] Kaisha: Yeah. Drop us a few more details, especially about what you're dealing with specifically. It helps us a lot. Awesome. Okay. In the meantime, we'll move on to this question from Instagram. Somebody posted, if a strain is sensible to stress and tends to harm, is it good to not generative during stretch?

[00:41:23] Jason: You could definitely, try a more balanced solution. That being said that plant might be responding to [00:41:30] stress itself from another, environmental factor or irrigation factor. And so sure, the first step that I would take if I do believe it's related to. The cue strategies is relieve relieve some of that generative push that you're putting on it and see if it doesn't respond a little better.

[00:41:51] Kaisha: Cool. Cool. All right. Vegito dropped another question here on YouTube. When watching EC on charts, what do you look for? First shot [00:42:00] EC 3. 5, second shot EC 3. 4. Does that tell me it's eating or just runoff? Does my question make sense?

[00:42:10] Jason: Yeah, I think so. So, really what I'm looking for is so traditionally, as long as we're EC as we start to irrigate, that EC is going to start dropping towards our feed EC.

[00:42:25] Jason: I guess, regardless of what that PDC level is when we're irrigating, the [00:42:30] EC is going to get closer to our feed EC, right? It's going to try and refresh it at that feed EC. And so, during, if your EC is higher in the substrate than it is in your feed, your first irrigation traditionally is going to drop that EC a little bit.

[00:42:46] Jason: So what it's very likely is happening is the substrate's just getting closer to your feed EC, right? And and so I guess that kind of rolls into is like, all right, what are the goals of stacking? Right. And one of the goals is stacking [00:43:00] when we're trying to do it fairly quickly is let's not bring it all the way down to our FEDC.

[00:43:06] Jason: Let's keep it up a little bit higher than yesterday. How do we do that? Reducing runoff, make sure that we're feeding with enough nutrition. And and then having optimal environmental conditions. So that sounds pretty typical. Usually within a short period of time, right after our field capacity has been reached that EC is going to have stabilized at its lowest amount for that day.[00:43:30]

[00:43:32] Kaisha: There you have it Veggie Toast. Sounds like you got a lot going on. So looking forward to hearing about your progress in the coming weeks. I'm going to move on to some previously submitted questions. I love that we have so many questions. The best. King Greenby submitted this a while ago. So here we go.

[00:43:47] Kaisha: If you are restricted to just three irrigation shots of reaching saturation during P1, would increasing the electrical conductivity levels for these P1 shots Because of an inevitable runoff, [00:44:00] provide any benefits compared to your regular setting for P2? If so, by how much should the EC be raised? Example, increase the EC to 4.

[00:44:11] Kaisha: 5 specifically for the P1 shots while keeping P2 at the usual 3. 0 level. Does that make sense? Jason?

[00:44:20] Jason: I think so. A lot going on there. So, I mean, it sounds like facility constraints as far as what's going on there. Obviously runoff shouldn't always be inevitable [00:44:30] because we can control the durations of those irrigations, which in turn is the amount of volume that's going in there.

[00:44:36] Jason: So one of the things that I would first do is just, try and maybe upgrade some of the facility capabilities that I have. So, whether I'm sharing batch tanks and I have to do offsets for lots of rooms and that's why I'm reduced on the number of irrigations I can do, or if it's because maybe my irrigation controller is not as flexible as typical ones on the market at this point, then, I'd probably just, Try and make it so I can follow [00:45:00] a little bit more detailed strategy.

[00:45:05] Kaisha: That sounds like great advice. Excellent. Okay, thank you. Moving back to Instagram. It's on and popping over there. We got this question. Looking for some advice how about right out of a clone dome into a four inch Hugo block and veg for four to seven days. Then stack the four inch block on a six by six Hugo to flower it to be able to grow a little bigger plant.

[00:45:29] Kaisha: I [00:45:30] guess they're kind of wanting to get your thoughts on this strategy.

[00:45:33] Jason: Definitely wouldn't be something I would recommend. When we think about Hugo six by sixes for in a two tier or three tier grow room where we don't have a lot of vertical space, we can support a little bit smaller plant, maybe a three foot, maybe a four foot plant.

[00:45:48] Jason: Then a Hugo's a good way to, six by six Hugo's it's a reasonably decent option, right? But you know, by doing that four inch block in between you're not going to be making any headway clones can go read [00:46:00] it into six by sixes fairly easily. So, if it was me, I would just go right from the clone to the six by six.

[00:46:07] Jason: You can still optimize your reading in parameters there during veg. We've got less labor, we've got less supplies and really what we think about is. When we're adding vertical substrate volume we're not giving that plant actually much benefit. So, if we think about having a four by four on top of a six by six, our water table's still down towards the bottom half [00:46:30] of that six by six.

[00:46:31] Jason: And what's happening is that plant gets older. Most of what's in that four by four on top is just gonna be root crown anyways at that point. And so I. I guess for me, I would rather just go from clone cube or clone plug right into a six by six, or if I was growing a lot bigger plants and I don't get me wrong.

[00:46:52] Jason: I love the four by fours for vegging simply because it's a great way to make sure we're optimizing the plant's growth. We can [00:47:00] get more of them stacked into a bedroom, but I would end up on a slab especially, for growing bigger plants, I would just go plug to four by four. onto a slide.

[00:47:13] Kaisha: Cool. Cool. All right. We got less than 10 minutes left in the show. The questions are still coming in. So I'm going to try to get to as many of these live ones as I can. We got a post on Instagram here. They're looking for your preference regarding flush EC trigger warning. Get it down as low as possible.[00:47:30]

[00:47:30] Kaisha: Go for it, Jason.

[00:47:32] Jason: This is a great question because the reason that I don't call it that is because I like having some level of EC in there. I want to be able to support that plant development until we cut it. Yes, we are trying to optimize the chemical composition of it and encourage that.

[00:47:47] Jason: It's got those signals to ripen as best as possible, get as high levels of THC, make sure that the terpenes are at the right maturity, all of those things. So typically, the way I answer this is, are [00:48:00] we reducing the amount of nitrogen that, is going into our feed? We look at most two part salts on the market.

[00:48:06] Jason: The vendors offer some default format for, reducing their part A or supplementing it with another component there for the last week, 10 days for signifying ripening and what the goal is, there's reducing the amount of nitrogen that we're getting into the plants, reducing the carbohydrate build, trying to shoot for that nice clean smoke by not having access to those [00:48:30] compounds available.

[00:48:31] Jason: So typically what I shoot for is my feed EC being around half if I am not changing my nutrient composition if I am changing my nutrient composition, usually I'll go between half and three quarters.

[00:48:49] Kaisha: Great advice. Thank you, Jason. All right, we got a follow up here from the question about, oh, where'd it go? A clone dome into a four inch Hugo block and bed for four to [00:49:00] seven days. They posted here, how about the six by six onto a slab? Get your thoughts on that.

[00:49:07] Jason: Still not the ideal solution, simply because, yeah, we might as well be just doing a four by four in that case.

[00:49:14] Jason: We're going to save some costs on. Materials, we're going to have more space in our bedroom because of those block sizes yeah really the thing there is for, two tier, three tier or any really short grow spaces available when we're growing smaller plants, say, no more than four [00:49:30] feet, then Hugo's a good solution.

[00:49:32] Jason: Clone to Hugo. Now if we're growing bigger plants, five foot, six foot, because our facility allows it we're trying to optimize some of our labor costs. Grow the biggest plants we can, so we can get the most yield off of 'em every round. Then, you might as well be in a four by four.

[00:49:46] Jason: That simply because, like we talked about, as that plant matures, a lot of that substrate towards the right, the top of the substrate is gonna end up being crowned. We're not getting a lot of absorption from the plant.[00:50:00]

[00:50:02] Kaisha: Cool. Cool. All right. Thank you for that. Okay. Richard dropped a question. They're wondering, should you change percentage shot from VEG STEER to GEN STEER only regarding P1 phase or can you use 3 percent for P1?

[00:50:18] Jason: I personally keep my P1s the same per generative hand for VEG DATA STEERING.

[00:50:28] Kaisha: So, so quick. I wasn't [00:50:30] ready. Thank you.

[00:50:30] Jason: I can, I can talk about it more. I mean, really my goal is there. All right. So. One to two hours after lights on, I want to get my field capacity or get my water content up to field capacity reasonably quickly. And so that's the goal, whether I'm in vegetative or generative.

[00:50:46] Jason: And so, we'll do four P1 shots over the course of one hours of irrigation, right? So it'd be a P1 irrigation every 15 minutes until we're at field capacity.[00:51:00]

[00:51:00] Kaisha: Beautiful. Thank you for that. All right. We got a couple more here. We got a write in here for Instagram. What is the best way to steer when focusing on quality? Also environment. Yeah. Looking for some tips when we're steering for quality.

[00:51:19] Jason: Yeah. So, I mean, steering for quality, typically we we're going to have a fairly balanced steering method One of the things there is making sure that we're not going [00:51:30] overboard on, on any of our our inputs, there's some older theories that, Hey, if our light levels are too high, that we might lose out on quality.

[00:51:38] Jason: Some of that's true, it's really just coming down to make sure that our environmentals are optimized for plant growth. So, early stage VPDs and that. Around 1. 0 mid flower at about 1. 2. If we're not worried about any molds or mildews with that plant, we can keep that VPD at about 1. 2 until harvest.

[00:51:56] Jason: If we do have molds, mildews concerns, then we'll, maybe [00:52:00] push 1. 2 to 1. 4 during that range. And sometimes, you're restricted by your HVAC constraints. All right. If we don't have good control of our humidity It might be more difficult to push our nighttime temps down to encourage anthocyanin production, some of those more complex terpene profiles.

[00:52:16] Jason: So I guess really the strategy here is understand how does that cultivar react to what you are doing to steer it. Right. And for some of our when we talk about quality, a lot of times we're talking about, density[00:52:30] color levels of THC, levels of terpenes, and so it, it's going to be coming down to how hard are we pushing it with our generative queues when we are pushing it with our generative queues I always talk about Blue Dream, right, that I'm still going to push it pretty hard with generative simply because, that thing's trying to be stretchy, it has a tendency that, my lower buds are going to be larger and less I get that node spacing right.

[00:52:53] Jason: Making sure that I am doing my canopy maintenance, that my light levels are sufficient for encouraging tensity in the lower [00:53:00] buds, that type of thing.

[00:53:03] Kaisha: That's great overview. Thank you for that. We love that question. All right. We've gotten so many questions coming in. I'm going to just drop this one. This is in our question bank. I think we've had this a couple weeks. Seems like a good one to close on. So Holy Nose wrote in, during final weeks of bloom, how would you implement a combination of veg and gen steering?

[00:53:24] Jason: Yeah. So, when we think about ripening typically it is kind of our, [00:53:30] Are more generative cues. But that being said, if we are dropping our nutrient levels, that would be more of a vegetative cue. And so that's kind of the real balance there is we're watching our we're watching our, DPD is being a little bit higher.

[00:53:42] Jason: That's typically a generative cue. We're usually only doing P1 irrigation. So that's a generative cue. That being said, our, Temperatures are going to be highest nighttime, daytime temp difference. That's going to be a generative cue. But as we're dropping that nutrient content, that's more of a vegetative cue.

[00:53:59] Jason: So [00:54:00] that, that would be how things are offsetting each other, if you will. Obviously if you're trying to balance them more, I mean, it could throw a P2 shot in there, or you could reduce your nighttime, daytime differences. But the goal here is that we are trying to signal that plant to, to finish its life.

[00:54:17] Jason: That being said, if we see lots of white hairs still popping towards the end of ripening, it might be a strain that just doesn't go away. needs a little bit longer, or we need to modify how long we're ripening or the parameters that we're using to signal that [00:54:30] ripening.

[00:54:33] Kaisha: Amazing. We covered a lot today, Jason. Thank you all so much for submitting all your questions. Instagram live showed up. YouTube showed up. It's good to see everybody. If we did not get to your question today, try again next week or, join us live. That's the best way to do it. Jason dropped some serious knowledge today.

[00:54:52] Kaisha: Thank you for that. All right. And to our producer, Chris. Thank you for holding it down. It's been a great session. [00:55:00] Thanks everybody for joining us for this week's 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, book a demo at AROYA.

[00:55:09] Kaisha: io. One of our experts will walk you through all the ways the platform can improve your cultivation production process. If you have a topic you'd like us to cover on Office Hours, post questions anytime in the AROYA app. Questions in the chat or on our YouTube. Send us an email to sales at AROYA. io. DM us.

[00:55:26] Kaisha: We're on all the socials, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Social [00:55:30] Club. We want to hear from you. And we'll send everybody in attendance a link to today's video and post it on the AROYA YouTube channel. Be sure to like, subscribe, and share while you're there. We'll see you at the next session.

[00:55:39] Kaisha: Thanks everybody. Bye.