Cian [00:00:02]:
What's up Gromies? Welcome back to AROYA Office Hours episode 143. Your stories for free cannabis cultivation Education. I'm your host, joined by our director of applied technology, Jason Van Luben and a member of our customer support team, Pete Steiner. Also today we've got something special brewing. We've been joined by Jeff Hegyi from Xotic Brandz in Detroit. We're diving deep into some hot topics that are going to save you some money and increase your yields. Here's what makes this conversation a little unique. Jeff is running a mixed operation with three single tier rooms, six double stack rooms and a double stack bedroom.

Cian [00:00:34]:
That means he's got a lot of real world experience running both types of systems, single and double tier, and can give us a lot of straight talk on how that actually works in practice. We're also going to cover sensor density and placement strategies across different substrates and room types, budget friendly ways to start taking some data, the real differences between single and multi tier and the effects of heat stratification and double tier setups on your cola development in certain types of cultivars. Jeff brings the real world experience from Detroit's challenging market. So get your notebooks ready, Gromy. So let's get into it, Jeff. You want to start us off and introduce yourself and tell the fans a little bit about who you are and what you've been up to?

Jeff Hegyi [00:01:10]:
Yeah. My name is Jeff Hegyi. I am the director of Cultivation for Xotic Brandz here in Detroit, Michigan. I've been growing since 1999 at scale in the legacy market and about 12 years ago got into corporate cannabis and ever since then it's been an awesome learning experience and I'm, I'm a fool to what I don't know. So I'm always willing to learn and always willing to teach people. I'm not a gatekeeper and I just, I love what I do.

Cian [00:01:42]:
That's awesome. I think that you share a lot of values with us in that regard. It's, I think one of our favorite parts of what we do to be able to get to share a lot of this knowledge and help keep people, you know, being successful whatever way they're running their cultivation out there today. So I want to kind of get into the first segment here of sensor density and placement fundamentals. So I know we've talked a lot about this in terms of what we recommend to customers out there in the field. However, one of the things I run into is that a lot of our recommendations were kind of aimed at single tier setups and now that we're seeing a lot more double and triple tier setups. I'm kind of wondering how you approach the question of sensor density and, and kind of how you've decided to kind of settle on the numbers that you have in your facility.

Jeff Hegyi [00:02:38]:
Yeah, so I would say obviously the 10 by 10 is obviously great. You know, it's a great way to start. It's a great way to approach anything when it comes to that. But as square footage gets bigger, more cultivars are added to said room. You will need more sensors. It's just what it is because you're going to have different drybacks as you're driving plants. Obviously a runs plant is going to drink different than a Cushman's plant. So how do we, how do we approach that and what's the best way, I would say to bring value to the team, but also make, make it make sense.

Jeff Hegyi [00:03:20]:
Like at the end of the day it has to make sense with obviously prices the way they are, yields need to go up and costs need to go down. Hence why a lot of people have switched nutrient companies, going from liquids to salt, so on and so forth. My approach to sensor density, and I know this is going to sound biased, is more the better. The more data I have that I can look at every day, the better I'm going to be able to make informed decisions and steer that plant the way I want to. Now, for all groups, that's a little difficult. It is difficult for some groups to invest that kind of capital into that. And I feel it's very important to allocate funds just as it is to allocate funds for genetics. I feel it's very important to allocate funds for sensors.

Jeff Hegyi [00:04:10]:
So your sensor density is, I would say, at max capacity, whatever that is for your facility, whether you're running a 20 lighter at your home or whether you're running a 200 lighter per room at a, you know, a 50,000 square foot facility. So I think it really depends on what you're trying to achieve. So it's a tough question to answer, but I think more sensor density is better because you just have more data inputs to read off of. Sorry if that wasn't a great answer.

Cian [00:04:45]:
No, I think that that actually is a great answer to get us started off with. I think Jason's original recommendations were always like, know one sensor per 100 square feet as a minimum in terms of what you're going to be wanting to run with. What do you think about the differences, Jason, between what Jeff's kind of Proposing to most growers versus what we've traditionally said to people.

Jason Van Leuven [00:05:09]:
Yeah. Maybe Jeff will walk us through kind of a breakdown of how he's got one of those rooms set up, you know, square footage wise, how many strains he's running in there, irrigation zones, and then how those sensors are allocated as well.

Jeff Hegyi [00:05:24]:
Yeah, sure. So we have some rooms that are single tier. The single tier rooms we're running about four cultivars, the double tier rooms. Each bench is about 50ft long on both tiers. And each one gets two sensors per tier. So that'd be four, I guess you'd say, four nodes is what I. What I call them, or four probes per per tier. So I think that.

Jeff Hegyi [00:05:55]:
I think that the way that the single tiers are laid out I think is a little more conducive for my style of growing because I think I'm always a less is more kind of individual. With the single tier, it's. It's a lot more straightforward, especially when driving that plant the first 21 days. Whereas the multi tier, some of my rooms have. And this is going to sound crazy, but it's what the group wants. We have up to 10 cultivars in a single room. Now, all those are on different solenoids. But I do play musical ball valves in that first two to three weeks.

Jeff Hegyi [00:06:33]:
It's just what it is. I have to jump around to make sure that I'm getting low enough so that I'm rooting in. We're on slab, that I'm rooting into the slab, but also that I'm not making my slabs aquaphobic at the same time. So it is a delicate balance. But at the same time I feel that I feel my single tears. It's just a personal thing. I think my single tears perform a little better when I'm actually trying to crop steer versus my double tier. And I think, like when I was talking to CN before, a lot of factors come into that, especially with the microclimates, which is obviously going to make your substrate dry back faster.

Jeff Hegyi [00:07:19]:
Lights, heat trays, that's just a nature of the beast. No matter how much airflow I have pushing in, you know, my tubes underneath, pushing air down, I am heating those trays. So when I'm looking at, for instance, we're growing a strained black maple. I have black maple on the, on the bottom of zone two and I black maple on the top of zone two. I've noticed that the top tier dries out extremely fast because those lights underneath are heating that tray. Do I think that my yield is bigger up top 100%. I don't know why know that the substrate is warmer and I am feeding more, but I am noticing a way higher grams per square foot on that top tier.

Jason Van Leuven [00:08:07]:
Yeah, I mean I, yeah, I guess to answer CS question here is I think that, you know, starting recommendation, it sounds like, like you're pretty close to what we're working with. And you nailed it when you talked about, hey, the more variables we have in there, the more sensors that we're going to need in order to build a representative sample. Right. Anytime that if I'm working off of say one sensor in a area that's trying to represent a whole strain, 10 strains in there, for example, one sensor in a strain is just really not enough. There could be so many things going on that that plant is not representing it as a population. And I don't know how many times I reference my sensor density, growth behavior, YouTube thing, but basically talking about the statistical performance of it and even at our recommendations, when we're talking about $0.01 per hundred square foot is nowhere near even a statistically significant number. So a lot of times we're just trying to get, get by the luck of the draw, find a plant that is representative and then also think about what is the uniformity across the area of plants that that data is trying to represent.

Cian [00:09:22]:
I love that point.

Jeff Hegyi [00:09:23]:
Yeah, no, I feel great. Yeah, I fully agree with.

Cian [00:09:35]:
So I think one of the things that's really kind of important about that is that you're adapting the needs of how many sensors you're putting in play to how many cultivars you're running at any one given time. And it seems like it's not just relative to square footage for you, but also relative to, like Jason said, the amount of variables that you are encountering in the room, whether that's going to be variables with the way that your substrate is drying back or variables with the way that your temperature and humidity is stratified across those double stack rooms. And I think it's important to remember that a lot of times we give these rules of thumb and they are just that, right. If you encounter a situation where you end up adding more variables to your room, like Jason was saying, you end up running a few more sensors to be able to quantify those variables. And I think also it's important to note that like Jason said, we are looking for kind of the best possible representation. Right. And sometimes that takes a little bit of care and understanding of where you're placing those sensors and being really consistent with how you're placing those sensors as well to be able to get good results out of them.

Jason Van Leuven [00:10:51]:
Yeah. And then.

Jeff Hegyi [00:10:52]:
Yes, also too. I'm sorry, go ahead, Jason.

Jason Van Leuven [00:10:55]:
I was just going to bring up the climate stratification using multiple climate stations. Always at least having one per tier. Right. Even if I'm in a super small room, say I'm at 200 square foot or something like that, if I'm running two tiers, then I need at least two climate sensors. At three tiers, I need three climate sensors. I'm glad you did bring up the root zone heating as well because one of the data points from the substrate sensors is that, that temperature as well. So probably pretty cool to be looking at that stratification as far as. All right, is there a difference in environmental temperatures? Almost always is when we're on a vertically multi tier.

Jason Van Leuven [00:11:35]:
And then what's the stratification in substrate temperatures as well?

Jeff Hegyi [00:11:42]:
Yeah, 100%. And I'm also, I run redundant sensors. So we, we obviously run AROYA climate stations. We run one on the top, one on the bottom of all of our two tier rooms. And I also rhythm as well for our frigation and for our environmental. So I'm running not only that, but I'm running rhythm. And then we have these other like little, they're like just this little green puck. And so I'm running three different, three different sensors and I just want to see where my happy spot is.

Jeff Hegyi [00:12:13]:
Like that's, that's what I call it because AA will say one thing and I, I love Aurora because they're aspirated sensors. They're, they're great. And then I have other sensors that aren't. But I want to see where is that, where is that balance? Where, where is my happy medium? If a Roy is saying that right now it's 65% relative humidity at 72 degrees. Well, what's, what's rhythm saying? You know, and where is my happy medium in weeks 1, 2, 3 and so on. And I think, I think that like it goes back to the sensor density. The more data I have, whether it's has to do with water content, anything to do with airflow, whether I'm using, you know, a Rhythm product, whether I'm using an AROYA product, whether I'm using any, any products, Trollmaster product, having the more data that I can have and I can look at on a daily basis is going to give me the tools that I can therefore steer that, that crop or that garden, depending on how you want to look at it, the old school that I used to do is still in my brain and in my heart, but I have to expand and learn with the times just like any good cultivator would do.

Jason Van Leuven [00:13:28]:
And that brings up something that I've always found is a challenge, and that is how do I analyze dynamic offsets if I am using multiple sensors? Depending on the conditions in the room, that offset may not be constant. Turning lights on. If got two or three sensor systems in there and they say, okay, well I'm plus 5% humidity, turn lights on and X other conditions while it lights off. Maybe it only has a plus 2% humidity on there. And kind of interested in your thoughts on how do you analyze that and then how do you use the data like that?

Jeff Hegyi [00:14:10]:
I'll be honest, it's all over the place. Just be the first one to say it. It's all over the place. And I, you know, I, I think, honestly, I think the Arroya sensors, the climate station, the aspirate sensors are my best readings. I'll just, and it's not me being biased, it's me seeing this data come in. I think a lot of of it comes down to, and I hate to say it comes down to guesswork. For the first couple, you know, for the first couple of weeks when I'm learning those different. When we first started this facility, it was like, hey, this is reading at night.

Jeff Hegyi [00:14:50]:
This one's reading a 5% difference in relative humidity than this one. Where does it really lie? And over time, you kind of can notice little things with the cultivar. Like if you've grown a certain cultivar before, like lemon cherry gelato, you know, you can see certain things that you're like, okay, I know this one likes a lot of light, or I know this one likes a little less water. And I can therefore go back and look at the data, whether it be for moisture, humidity or whatever it may be, and make those calculated decisions. But for the first, when using multiple sensors, yeah, it's, it's, it's guesswork at first and then you start to implement it and I know it sounds crazy. I implemented a degree at a time and I implemented 1% at a time because that's usually I find where the turn is. If I'm like, oh, I'm going to look at my data and I'm going to adjust it 5% or I'm going to turn the lights down 10% and I'm going with these big gaps, I'm not actually getting the, I'm not getting the data. I want.

Jeff Hegyi [00:15:59]:
But when I go 1% by 1%, I know when that thing turns and I always go back to what you guys said a long time ago. It's the Ferrari versus semi truck. If I'm going really fast and I turn that wheel super hard, you know, 15 or 20 degrees, I'm going to, I'm going to wreck that car. But if I just turn it 1%, I'm still on the road. I can, I can make that steer and if it's wrong, I can steer it back pretty fast. As where if I do big adjustments or big maneuvers, it's regardless of the substrate I'm in or the, you know, the PPFD or my relative humidity or any of those things, it's harder to turn back. It's just, it is way harder. So I go very little increments and that's how I apply that data.

Jason Van Leuven [00:16:46]:
Are you meaning to tell me you can't unherm the room after you grew it too warm?

Jeff Hegyi [00:16:52]:
Well, you know, I'm not gonna, I don't want to say it, but they make products out there that claim they can do that. I've never had to use them, but they are. There are products.

Jason Van Leuven [00:17:06]:
From our list. While Jeff gets back and sorted. I know one of the questions on the list was what is the, what's the expected lifespan of the Teros 12 sensor? And this one kind of spoke to me because, and I was telling Jeff this earlier, I started using actually the predecessor, the Teros 12 is the GS3. And it was back in 2017, I believe. And then the Teros 12 came out well within about a year of me starting to use those GS3s, and pretty sure I've got sensors that still work. So, you know, we're running on seven, eight years of those Teros 12s, and they're very robust, electronic. Another epoxy potted in a. I believe it's an ASA plastic housing.

Jeff Hegyi [00:18:04]:
Sounds so weird.

Jason Van Leuven [00:18:05]:
And I wouldn't, I wouldn't be surprised in, you know, another seven or eight years if those Teros 12s are still working just fine. So, yeah, anticipated lifespan, I don't know, it's. It's going to be a lot. You know, it's all solid state electronics in there. Stainless steel prongs. You know, the hardest part really probably is not cutting the wires on them and, you know, making sure whatever they're connected to is as robust as they are. So not a great answer there as far as you know. Exactly.

Jason Van Leuven [00:18:36]:
But it wouldn't surprise me at all to see them you know, going 15, 20 years without, without an issue, they probably go longer.

Jeff Hegyi [00:18:46]:
The other thing I might add is just be careful about handling those units.

Cian [00:18:50]:
Because sometimes if you drop them on the flood tray, you can end up with kind of bent tips on those prongs which can sometimes skew the readings. So just be mindful about that.

Jason Van Leuven [00:19:02]:
Yeah, that's a great point, Pete. You know I, I always liked keeping the little foam, little foam that came shipped on the prongs itself. A great way to, you know, keep safe and, you know, not stab yourself. Think anyone that's been around it, Teros 12 or Teros 1 or lots of them have probably understood how sharp those prongs are. So, you know, kind of, kind of twofold as far as putting those back on when you're not using them or when you're flipping rooms. Is one protecting the sensor and then you know, also protecting the staff that's working with those sensors.

Cian [00:19:39]:
Well, not sure if just audio is working quite yet, but let's jump and take one more question while we are in to that. I know we had one that was requested we go over today. That is kind of an interesting one. This comes from our friend Trichome Valley on Instagram says so I've got a vetted cut of death Bubba. When I grow it or any other gas slash OG type strain, it always comes out musty and earthy instead of gassy. And the nugs get more pointed instead of being more round. Usually I'm at around 800pp, nothing overly high. This last round I only grew one plant of it to try and learn a little bit better.

Cian [00:20:21]:
My flower room was already packed so I had it off to the side getting about 3 to 400 ppfd indirect light from 1000 watt hps. I only watered it to run off once and it had an. It says 17 EC. I wouldn't wondering about if that's a runoff number or got to be right, you know, is, you know, it's a pretty. That's a strong number. No burning. Very happy plant. This plant is super gassy.

Cian [00:20:56]:
Nug shape is round. Just didn't see the yield. So what am I doing wrong? How am I able to put these strains under more intense light and get the same gassy results that I'm actually after.

Jason Van Leuven [00:21:09]:
Yeah, so obviously a couple things here. It sounds like a number of variables that have changed amongst those circumstances. I don't necessarily know that we can pinpoint and exactly say which one of them caused it, but we can lead into this with a little bit of science and think about how do plants behave in those different conditions. And traditionally speaking, when we are at lower light levels, you know, we, we would expect, we would more expect it to be, you know, a little bit stretchier type of plant.

Cian [00:21:40]:
Right.

Jason Van Leuven [00:21:41]:
We're, we're seeing some apical dominance happen. And when we don't have as much light as that plant can take, a lot of times it's, you know, trying to, trying to grow vertically. You know, you can see a little bit of that fox tailing that it sounds like he was experiencing under the higher light levels. Right. So kind of counterintuitive there, but if, you know, maybe that EC level was significantly high, we know that, you know, reducing the osmotic differential by having a high EC in the substrate can definitely combat a lot of the stretching that we see. And that's why we do generative stacking in the early stages of flowering. So what my approach would be is probably try and get a high EC in a little bit more light levels, you know, and then we can also think about, you know, that possibly some, you know, some of the filtered spectrum, you know, what exact amounts of light is that plant getting Spectrum has a pretty large role in the, the flavonoid and cannabinoid profiles of the, the plant. So anything that's producing, you know, or working off a secondary metabolite, those are some of complex notes that we're going to be smelling in there.

Jason Van Leuven [00:23:01]:
So I think about, all right, well, is it related to that? Is it related to the substrate? You see, and I would expect that if you narrow down what variable it was, you can get greater yields out of it by being able to grow it in the higher light levels, Making sure you got CO2 levels correct as well. When we think about photosynthesis, where CO2 plus water catalyzed by light. So anytime that we are trying to optimize, optimize plant growth, we need to have matching levels of CO2 and light. And by matching, I mean one's not limiting that plant growth. So that's kind of probably where I would go to approach it. And then regarding that 17 EC, if that is the runoff number, then that's definitely way up there. If it's a substrate number and you have time series data, if we were peaking at 17, yeah, that's definitely higher than most of where we start with, but certain strains are super hungry. And then also, you know, we would probably see that that EC drop significantly when you do irrigate.

Jason Van Leuven [00:24:12]:
Right. So it, you know, if we were hitting peaks of 17 right before irrigation, you know, when we irrigate, is it going to drop down to, you know, 7, 9, 10? And that's one of the huge advantages of root zone time series data is we kind of get an idea of, you know, what is the dynamics happening with that ec. And obviously, you know, sometimes when we have significant dynamics like that, it's a very generative type of cue. And that might explain the more round buds as well.

Jeff Hegyi [00:24:47]:
Jason, can you hear me? I'm back.

Jason Van Leuven [00:24:49]:
Yeah, you sound great.

Cian [00:24:50]:
Beautiful.

Jeff Hegyi [00:24:51]:
So there we go. I don't know what happened, boys. I'm sorry about that, gentlemen.

Cian [00:24:58]:
All good back and better than ever. This one comes in from one of our Instagram friends, Daniel Rubago. He says, with crop steering, is it possible, is it possible to over bulk? Would you getting. Would be, would getting the buds to swell up more in your, in your ripening phase? I'm guessing he's saying lead to mold issues in the dry room? Well, I mean, personally, from my experience, it doesn't necessarily just lead to mold issues in the dry room, depending on when that happens and just how much plant mass you end up gathering in your room. What do you think, Jason?

Jason Van Leuven [00:25:36]:
Yeah, I actually know a few cultivators that had to find new jobs after they overbooked their rooms. So the answer is absolutely you, 100% over bulk things. Typically you're going to see a reduced quality if we end up over bulking. And yeah, obviously, you know, there's going to be some compromise between quality and yield. And that's one of the reasons that we are able to work with, you know, shifting these strategies and talking about both intensity and duration in respect to what a strain's preference is, because, you know, certain, certain types of plants are going to be very resistant to over bulking, if you will. And so your crop steering strategy that might work great for one strain may end up blowing out another, another type of strain. So that's where lots of good documentation comes into play. It's taking the effort to try and start optimizing each genetic potential from the crops that you have in there.

Jeff Hegyi [00:26:48]:
And.

Jason Van Leuven [00:26:51]:
Anytime we're working with so many strains in a room, you know, when we start getting there in the, say, 10 strands, it sounds like Jeff's got 10 strains in some rooms. We gotta start trying to average out things, right? We gotta start grouping plants that behave similarly, you know, things that, that, you know, as far as environmental factors especially, we gotta work with those. And then I think one of the things that, you know, we used to talk a little bit on the show as well is if we do have limitations to uniformity, say because of 10 strains in a room. And maybe we're on triple stack, which with Jeff was in here so he could chat about this. But let's, let's put plants where they're going to grow best. I used to do it in the greenhouses where certain, certain plants that, that didn't mind being cold, I'd put them up, up towards the, the, the vent and some strains that, that grew better in, in the warmer temperatures would put them out back at the greenhouse towards the, towards the exhausts. And I think, you know, in a triple stack, I think he was talking about that maple strain that you know, grew, grew better with the, the warmer substrate. Well, was that the only variable? You know, maybe it would be best to, to get all of that strain up in on the second tier.

Jason Van Leuven [00:28:10]:
And that's where you got to kind of work with what you have. And so if you have some variation and you have a lot of different genetics, let's just try to try to work with them and make the best of things.

Cian [00:28:22]:
I think that's a great point. And then the other thing I keep seeing too with some people who have adapted rooms, let's say from an HPS setup to an LED setup or from a single tier to a single tier LED to a double tier LED is the, the increase in your H Vac that is going to be necessary to be able to finish out a larger amount of plant mass if you do bulk that to a greater extent. I've definitely, like Jason said, known some cultivators who have, you know, had to find new jobs over things like that and, or you know, have found themselves ripping down large sections of rooms earlier than they would have preferred to just so that they were able to decrease the plant mass in their rooms sufficiently to be able to finish out the remaining strains that were still doing well and hadn't had any mold propagate. So you know, it's, it's definitely possible to outstrip your rooms capacity and it's definitely possible to over bulk your plants and to kind of push the bulking phase a little too far. But, but there are multiple different ways that you can wind up finding yourself with a mold problem in those last couple of weeks or into your drying curing phase when you are pushing those plants to try and get the most plant mass you can out of them without any thought towards, you know, what that's going to do to your quality or your ability to get that product to market and just to piggyback off that scene. You know, having been a post harvest manager for a number of years, just ensure that you got proper airflow going on in that dry space as well.

Jason Van Leuven [00:30:12]:
Proper.

Jeff Hegyi [00:30:13]:
Can you guys hear me? Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say, because I, I got to hear all of that this time, which is actually really good. I got to hear all that I would say. And you know, being a post harvest manager, as you were saying, it does take eyes and hands on the product every day. Like you have to go in there and check it. No matter, like the best thing they say, they say you can grow the best cannabis and you can ruin it in the 9 to 12 days you dry it. You know what I mean? And then it's just, it's just the nature of the beast. I think that airflow is a huge thing. But I also just with anything, we can have, all the sensors, we can have, I guess all the tools at our disposal, but without actually hands and eyes on plants every day, all this stuff, you know, it's just, it's just tools at that point.

Jeff Hegyi [00:31:03]:
You know, you still need to be in there, you still need to go, hey, this, this is doing this, this is, this is driving this way and this is driving that way. What, what are we trying to achieve? And I think, I think at the end of the day, I think it's really about sitting down with your, your group and your core people and figuring out what you're trying to achieve in said space. Whether that be in the bedroom, clone room, you know, post harvest, wherever you're at, even all the way down to packaging. I think it's really, really big. And where does certain things. I have a big cross contamination bloodborne pathogen background, so it does come for me. I'm a big cross contamination guy like you guys were speaking of like molds and botrytis and things like that. Where can we limit those variables? Where those things would come into play? Is it, it, is it better hand washing? Do we have somebody on the crew that likes to take cigarette breaks? So now we're worried about tobacco mosaic.

Jeff Hegyi [00:31:56]:
Are they washing their hands? Are they gloving up when they come back in from lunch? Those, all those little nuances really matter when it comes down to scale cultivation.

Cian [00:32:06]:
100 vectors for disease and any sort of pathogen like that are going to be one of the big areas that you can look at to limit potential formations of things like botrytis and different bud rots. However, one of the big things that I always like to also remind people of is not just those vectors for the initial infestation, but also how are you caring for the ability of your system to prevent against those from spreading further? And how are you managing the amount of. Of plant mass in a room that your system is going to be ultimately capable of keeping at the right kind of, you know, relative humidity to be able to finish out well without hitting those levels that are going to be most susceptible for botrytis to grow?

Jeff Hegyi [00:33:07]:
Sure. Yeah, I'm a big. I'm a big fan of chlorine dioxide gas, both fast release and extended release. I know a lot of people are afraid to run extended release inside when there's plants in there, but I personally never had a problem with it. I know that when we do run fast release, we do shut off our. All of our H Vac. We don't shut it off completely. We run it for two hours with the chlorine dioxide gas and then we shut it off because it is harmful to units.

Jeff Hegyi [00:33:39]:
I've talked to a couple different manufacturers about that, that in the longevity of your equipment while running chlorine dioxide gas. But some things, it's kind of like wear and tear on the equipment versus failed tests or, you know, cross contamination. And some things are just kind of inherent with our. With our, with our. With our job, with our career.

Cian [00:34:03]:
I agree with that. I'm a huge fan of chlorine dioxide gas myself. But. Yeah, there is. But, you know, you've never seen metal parts corrode so fast.

Jeff Hegyi [00:34:13]:
It's true. Yeah, that's what I say. It's true. It's, it's. It's. It's in the name for a reason, you know, I mean, it's a dioxide gas.

Cian [00:34:22]:
It's.

Jeff Hegyi [00:34:23]:
It's oxide. You know, it's going to oxidize things. It's just. That's what it is.

Cian [00:34:28]:
It, you know, it as much as it even is in the name, it's. It's surprising watching that sometimes just, you know, you break a casing open on some electronics and you're like, whoa, that got aggressive.

Jeff Hegyi [00:34:41]:
Yeah, it definitely does.

Cian [00:34:45]:
Well, I want to keep us jumping along the schedule for today, so. One of the last things I wanted to go through with you, Jeff, was kind of. And we were going through it a little bit in this last question, but the stratification that you see in those rooms and how that affects, you know, different choices that you're making with cultivar placement. Um, for example, the. I forget what that was, was a maple.

Jeff Hegyi [00:35:16]:
Black maple?

Cian [00:35:17]:
Yeah, yeah, black maple. That's up on that top layer. That's doing better with the heat from below. Like Jason said, it'd be interesting to find out what the results were if you moved that whole cultivar up to the top level. But in general, how do you make choices when you are looking at two different cultivars and trying to figure out, you know, for maybe your first time running them, where you're going to decide to go and run them and then for the second time you go, or if you're going to call an audible and push it up to the second level when it was on the first. Why and how are you making those decisions?

Jeff Hegyi [00:35:50]:
Sure, yeah. To be honest, if, if, you know, on a perfect day, I like to run it in the single tier. I. It's just, there's more control. I don't have to deal, deal as much with substrate heat coming from the bottom. That's ideal also too. I do base it on the stretch. You know, the veg is very important.

Jeff Hegyi [00:36:14]:
But once you kind of get your veg on lockdown and you know, that 12 to 16 day period, you know, I'm gonna get a plant that's anywhere from 12 to 16 inches being topped once, having nice lateral branches. I really like to see what it does. In the first 21 days, I've had strains that are very slow veggies, but as soon as I put them into flower, they're tripling, quadrupling their height. They're getting extremely tall, extremely fast. So I think how I make those decisions is when I'm, when I'm, I will say when I'm forced to put them in a two tier system. Sometimes I am doing low stress training or scrogging. Just I have to. We get, you know, 14 to 16 days in.

Jeff Hegyi [00:37:01]:
We got three trellis nets going and they're pushing past that. And I know they're not stopping just based on seeing bud formation and the way they're stacking. It's, it's a split second decision where I'm like, hey guys, we got to get in there today and we're going to have to scrog these plants. It's, it's just, it's, it's just part of it. Once, once I've ran it one, usually one or two times, depending on where it is in the room, I can make a better decision on where that's going to go. We have a weekend at Gary's that no matter how I could, I could take it from the clone and put it right in a 4x4 GR10 on a uni slab and Throw it in there and that thing's going to touch the lights. It doesn't matter. It could literally be this tall and that thing's just gonna.

Jeff Hegyi [00:37:48]:
Just run. But then I can have a Cushman's plant that I could veg or when. When people were doing the. The Mac ones, as we all know, Mac1 like to take its sweet time vegging. It didn't like to veg fast, but then when you, you know, it stayed short and bushy. So it's really more of like, eyes on the prize is how I like to put it, is if I get to see it and I, I get to. I guess it's like me, like I was saying, I, I get to touch that plant every day. I can see.

Jeff Hegyi [00:38:22]:
Okay, this thing likes to have a lot of lateral branches, or this thing likes to have extremely long node spacing. If I see extremely long node spacing in the first 21 days, I'm gonna put my bottom dollar that it's gonna be a stretcher and it's going to want to touch the lights. So it's really about just seeing what that cultivar does. And also now, too. As you guys know, a lot of the times cultivars we get. If you're not popping it from seed, even if you're getting it from tissue culture, what they say sometimes isn't what it is. I, you know, I hate to be that guy, but it's like, this is this. And you're like, oh, sick.

Jeff Hegyi [00:38:59]:
I've grown that before. And sure, it might be close, but that phenotype's just a little bit different. It had this much more of this lineage compared to this lineage. So it wants to do this, this, this technique a little different than this one wanted to do this technique, you know, So I, I think it's all subjective at the end of the day. It's. It's very tough unless you grow it. And then also too. Or if you can have someone that has grown that specific one.

Jeff Hegyi [00:39:28]:
Like, if you are getting your tissue cultures from a verified lab and you know that the, the, the person in that lab has grown this cultivar, a lot of those notes coming from those breeders are so important. And I think a lot of the time people are like, oh, no, no, I got it, I got it. The more stuff people can give me, the better. If you've grown it 3,000 times, tell me what you love about it. Tell me what you don't like about it, because I'm going to take all that in and just use that to my Advantage.

Jason Van Leuven [00:39:56]:
I think one of, one of the funny anecdotes, and I ran into this when I was cultivating as well, is a lot of times we abbreviate strains with, you know, just like two, two things and it's like, all right, well, is that Granddaddy Purple or is that Gary Payton? Well, no one who.

Jeff Hegyi [00:40:14]:
Exactly, exactly. That's. And that's the thing. It's like, how do we, you know, how do I, how do I approach those situations? I think, you know, honestly, the first round, everybody always says, when you're in a new facility or you're a brand new cultivator, your first round is always going to be your best round. It's repeated rounds. And what do you do with that data? Anybody? I don't say anybody, but a lot of people can grow amazing cannabis the first time there. They'll knock it out of the park. But then what do you see when they're repeating that process? Do you see them going up with yield in grams per square foot? Do you see them going down? Do you see them leveling out and what changes, like Jason was saying, are made to, I guess, just to make those educated decisions, like, he just brought up a valid point.

Jeff Hegyi [00:41:02]:
Going forward, I'm going to, literally, that black maple is going on one row and it's going to go up top for a round and then we're going to put it down low for a round and it's not going to go, go, you know, back and forth because those are like little things that I may end up pulling an extra 15 grams a square, a square foot. And that's huge. You know what I mean? Just by tweaking it a little bit. Yeah.

Jason Van Leuven [00:41:25]:
And usually growers that we're working with are seeing increases in yields. Maybe it's because we're getting lucky working with them. I, I don't know, helping them, help them utilize the tools, give them as much insight as we can and encourage that they, they do some of their own learning and stuff. And yeah, most, most of the ones, I, I like to think they're getting better. But you're exactly right. How repeatable is the process?

Jeff Hegyi [00:41:54]:
Exactly, exactly. And I speak, I speak in these terms more of like, because I know that this, this goes out to a lot of people and I, you know, I always remember where I came from. Even though I, you know, grew up thousands of plants outdoor and I was growing at scale before, many were, I still remember my first four lighter in my basement. And I know that there's people that listen to this show that are like, you know, they don't have all the tools, they don't have all the money, they don't have all, like, the equipment that we get to play with every day. We're very fortunate and I. I am very blessed to have that opportunity. But I also want to make it easy for people out there that, you know, this is their first round and they've never done it, and. And if I can help them grow a successful round, you know, that's what it's all about.

Jeff Hegyi [00:42:40]:
This. This industry for me, like I said when I first did my little opening with you guys is I'm not a gatekeeper. I don't feel there's any. There's no benefit in me gatekeeping knowledge from people because the more knowledge I give to them, they might know something I don't. And that knowledge, to me could be worth its weight in gold. You never know.

Cian [00:43:03]:
I think that's one of the beautiful things about our industry, is that we get to have this awesome community of people who are really invested personally in trying to further the science and further how much we can really push this plant to be able to kind of fit these. These mythical ideals that, you know, so long, not so long ago, even I thought were entirely imposs. You know, looking back, I want to say like eight, nine years ago, you know, if someone had told me that people would be hitting regularly over 100 grams per square foot, that that would be wild to me. And, you know, here we are today with people, you know, pushing the boundaries of what you think is possible in any given space these days and hitting numbers that I would have just totally thought were ludicrous years ago. But I think that that's kind of the beauty of this space is that there's so many people who are invested in trying to help make sure that other people out there are learning and trying to profit by all the mistakes that those of us have made. You know, just trying and seeing how things worked over the years for ourselves.

Jeff Hegyi [00:44:27]:
Yeah, it's awesome. It's just. It's an amazing. It's an amazing space to be in, and I. I can't be more thankful for the life that I have in this industry. A lot of my friends left the industry and a lot of them continued on the same path I did. So I'm very blessed.

Cian [00:44:47]:
I think we all pretty similar in that regard. Say privilege to be able to do what we do and be able to help everyone try to grow better plants and to get the most out of what they're doing. In this industry. One other thing I kind of wanted to throw at you before we leave off for the day. I know Michigan's kind of a wild market these days, ups and downs. How do you feel operating a new facility in Detroit these days? What's that like?

Jeff Hegyi [00:45:18]:
It's, it's cool. I, I'm, I'm super excited. I'm, you know, I, I'm not a fool to what this industry is doing, you know, I know, like right now a lot of people are getting scared and they're saying it's a race towards the bottom. I think it comes down to a couple things. I think it comes down to quality. I think it comes down to building a good brand and a good team. I think how you treat your employees gives you great employee retention. And I think employee retention in our industry is huge.

Jeff Hegyi [00:45:48]:
If you have happy employees, you're going to have great, great results. You know, right now in the tiers, we're pulling anywhere from 80 to 92 grams a square foot. So we're crushing in the tears. You know, I, I can't, I can't be more happy with that. But I also know that comes down to my team. I could never do this without them. That being said, our metric prices doing not great right now. Yeah, 100%.

Jeff Hegyi [00:46:20]:
But is that across the board, across the country? Yeah. Everybody I talk to, from Colorado to Oregon, California, it's taking a hit. It is. And I think right now in Detroit, it's a very good time to just hunker down and keep doing good practices. I think a lot of people are going to get scared and do what I call the, I call the cannabis industry. And I know sounds terrible, but we're like carnies at, you know, back in five, 10 years ago or carnies. You know, it's like, oh, did you hear what state's opening up? I'm going there. Things are 3200 of, you know, 3200 a pound.

Jeff Hegyi [00:47:01]:
I gotta go, gotta leave. And then they'd leave and they'd go there and they'd ride that wave for a little bit. Well, that wave now we're all seeing is starting to go away because every state's coming online. So I think we're just at a hunker down stage now and just like build a good group, a good core of people and try to take up as much market share as you can to stay afloat. I won't even say stay profitable because I think that is, it's tough now. It's just, it is tough. You Know, like Michigan, we have, you know, they did a thing the other day where they said if everybody in Michigan stopped producing cannabis right now, how long would we have cannabis for? And they say it's a little over two, two years. And obviously it's a perishable item, but it's like two years.

Jeff Hegyi [00:47:47]:
It's like that's all. That's a lot of extra cannabis in the market. So, yeah, I think we just have to hunker down, stay positive with it and you know, no matter what happens, fix it and figure it out. Just kind of like my headphone and mic situation, it's like just, just fix it and figure it out.

Jason Van Leuven [00:48:09]:
Yeah. I think another good thing to do is think about how it happened up in Canada. They went through this obviously a little bit different because it was a national wide legalization, but they way oversaturated the market and saw that as well. So anything that we can learn from what has happened in these, it's going to be helpful. And it sounds like you're right on as far as fairly typical business practices of build a good team. Right. Start to reduce wasteful costs, automate things that you can, make smarter decisions using data and science. So those are all the things that.

Jason Van Leuven [00:48:55]:
Race to the bottom is kind of a tough way to say it. I always think it's just a competition to be the top bop.

Jeff Hegyi [00:49:04]:
Yeah, no, you're right, you're right. That's just, that's the term that everybody's been using lately is the race to the bottom. But it's like any business is going to have competition. Yeah, that's just, it's just what it is. And I think right now too, it, the cannabis industry reminds me of right now of like the beer industry. When everybody was doing like high volume, high volume beers back in like the early 2000, everybody was making an ice beer. An ice beer. So now everybody's trying to hit these 27 to 32% THC, you know, I mean, it's our ice beer era, you know, so it's like, it's like, when will that settle out? And we go back to actually like growing strains that everybody enjoys.

Jeff Hegyi [00:49:44]:
You know, I think that's a big thing. Sienna and I were talking about that as well and I think that's, I think that'll come back. I think that'll be a thing. I think that'll come back.

Cian [00:49:53]:
I think so.

Jeff Hegyi [00:49:54]:
Thanks, Alex.

Cian [00:49:54]:
There's more and more of it, you know what I mean? Every facility that I've been visiting in the past eight, nine Months has had, had a tray, not, not much more but like a tray of just green, never gonna turn purple, skunky, gassy, old smelling stuff that, you know, you, you don't see a whole lot of on the shelves these days. And a lot of these places aren't necessarily growing it as, you know, big money maker for them, but it's starting to pop back into the variety and I do hope that that continues and I do hope that we get to see a little bit more of that. And I think price compression in our market has been rough for everyone. I also think that our industry is still agriculture. Right? And in a big way. Agriculture in the US has been under a trajectory of consolidation for a long time before cannabis has started to really come into the scene. And so I also think that our market is also following a pretty straightforward trajectory that the larger ag market is following. And the increase in our production costs when it comes to energy or when it comes to fertilizer or when it comes to labor pools are not necessarily just specific to our industries.

Cian [00:51:31]:
And I think it's also important to remember that while cannabis does feel like it is unique in some ways in how intense the price swings have been in the last five years, it's also important to remember that we're part of a larger trend that has been well established in agriculture in the US for a long time now, where as some of these smaller farms get up and off the ground and start to expand, they are oftentimes quickly absorbed into ownership consolidation schemes that end up, you know, shortening the, the profitability for a lot of those smaller operations. Because as the larger, let's say, more cost efficient operations come online, that just pressures the rest of the market. So even though that in some ways is intense to last through, what it also is going to mean is that there are going to be winners. And if you're creating quality product and you're able to keep your consistency within a narrow margin, I think that's going to be one of those metrics that really does predict whether or not you're able to be successful. And a lot of that comes down to things like what Jeff was talking about with being able to keep quality staff and make sure that you're not seeing institutionalized knowledge that's been built up over the course of a career walk out the door.

Jeff Hegyi [00:53:00]:
Yeah, no, see, and you're right. And two, it's like a lot of people now, it's like we're looking at people that are new and you know, like I said, I'm 45. I'm seeing people come into this that are in their 20s and they want to build a career out of it. And I want to give those people the tools that, you know, I had to learn the hard way. You know, it's. If I can teach that person because that person's going to go home and they're going to dive into all of the old stuff and all the new stuff and they're going to come back and they're going to go, hey, hey, what do you think about this? And I might say, well, that applies really well. Or I may never even heard of that. Let's.

Jeff Hegyi [00:53:35]:
Let's look into that deeper. I want to give those people, you know, they might be starting out as a $20 an hour employee, but I want to give them the power to eventually, you know, be a director of cultivation or whatever, whatever they wanted, wherever they want to take it. You know, I think it's very important to, you know, the youth's the future. So it's like if we give the people that are coming up behind us the tools to be successful, I'll be successful in the long run because those people are just gonna back me up on anything I need help with. And I. I don't know, I think it's very important to. I always say, like I said, this is my third time. Don't gatekeep, guys.

Jeff Hegyi [00:54:12]:
Spread the knowledge, spread the love. You do that like you will be successful 100%.

Cian [00:54:18]:
Plant the seeds and reap the rewards. Right?

Jeff Hegyi [00:54:20]:
That's right. That's right.

Cian [00:54:22]:
Well, I should probably round us on out towards our finish for the day. We're headed just a little ways past our normal hour.

Jeff Hegyi [00:54:29]:
Mark. Mark.

Cian [00:54:30]:
But it's been an awesome conversation. I'm sure we're going to have quite a few more. Jeff, you're a lot of fun to talk to and I'm going to try to keep tabs on what's going on over there in Detroit from time to time. I want to thank everyone today for jumping in and watching our office hour segment for the day, episode 143. Huge thanks to Jeff Hegyiy from Exotic in Detroit, sharing your knowledge and your real world experience with us. If you want to learn some more about AROYA, please contact our sales team at Salesroya IO if this episode's helped you level up your cultivation game, smash the like button and subscribe. If you haven't already, share this with your grow crew. Your questions drive the show, so keep them coming in DM us, email us, send them into SalesRoy IO or into our Instagram account.

Cian [00:55:17]:
If you like the show, please give us a like or a follow or review wherever you're tuning into from today. And remember, we're here dropping free cultivation education because we believe every grower deserves access to the knowledge that can transform their operation. Until next week. Keep growing, keep learning. Keep pushing the boundaries of what's possible. And like Jeff said, don't gatekeep. All right, guys, we'll see you next week.

Jason Van Leuven [00:55:37]:
Thanks, Jeff.

Jeff Hegyi [00:55:39]:
Thanks, guys.