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[00:00:00] Kaisha Dyan McMillan: Let's do it. All right. Hi everyone, and welcome to AROYA Office Hours live, whether you're in a AROYA customer or a curious or just super passionate about growing and existing in this exciting industry, these weekly sessions are your chance to learn from the experts about crop, share steering, share cultivation, tips, and tricks and network with other growers doing really cool things in this emerging industry.

[00:00:23] Kaisha Dyan McMillan: My name is Kaisha. I'm going to be your moderator for today's discussion. Just some quick housekeeping before we get started, while we welcome lively conversation, AROYA Office Hours is not the forum for discussing cannabis policy, home cultivation, or complaints about the industry. No matter how valid those are in order to keep these sessions useful to our community.

[00:00:42] Kaisha Dyan McMillan: We thank our attendees in advance for adhering to the following best practices AROYA Office Hours. Isn't the time to ask things like why isn't there on the riot system for home growers. Are you hiring under the regulations in my state? Am I legally allowed to insert activity or what does a AROYA costs?

[00:00:59] Kaisha Dyan McMillan: [00:01:00] Although if you like to book a demo, we would love to talk to you about that. However AROYA Office Hours is the time to ask things like what are some ways to go from manual, growing to crop steering with hardware and software de leafing is the most challenging task. Our team has to deal with any tips on how to do this more efficiently.

[00:01:16] Kaisha Dyan McMillan: This is the data I'm seeing with my grow. Can you help me understand what it means? And what's the difference between water activity and moisture content. So now that's out of the way, if you have any questions, go ahead and type them into the chat at any time. If your question's selected we'll have you unmute yourself and ask away.

[00:01:33] Kaisha Dyan McMillan: So Scott and Seth, I think we have in the studio today. You ready for our first question from Instagram?

[00:01:40] Scott Campbell: Yes, let's do this.

[00:01:41] Kaisha Dyan McMillan: Awesome. Okay. Bad. Wants to know, is it possible to effectively crop steer in 10 gallon

[00:01:48] Scott Campbell: pots? Cool. That is a tough one. And I think 10 gallon pots would typically refer to out outdoor growing.

[00:01:56] Scott Campbell: It's just a guess because I had never seen, maybe you [00:02:00] have up people growing in 10 gallon, pots of indoors. Not

[00:02:03] Seth Baumgartner: too much these days it's become fairly uncommon as it, it's backbreaking.

[00:02:06] Scott Campbell: Okay. But I have gotten this question before. And IBM asked some experts in the field about it and got some different opinions, but what's your reaction to that possible to crop steer in a 10 gallon pot?

[00:02:18] Seth Baumgartner: When we crop steering, a big thing we're looking at is controlling that dryback. And if our media is too big, it's going to be really difficult to actually control that. So if we've got a 10 gallon pot I guess for reference, if you can grow a six foot plant out of a one and a half to two gallon, How big does that plant need to be in a 10 gallon pot to get the same kind of control on your dry bag?

[00:02:36] Seth Baumgartner: Cause we'd rather have it dragging back faster and be able to control it with more irrigation, then only be able to get it about once a day and have, very little dry back.

[00:02:47] Scott Campbell: Does it matter what the medium is that the growers growing in.

[00:02:50] Seth Baumgartner: There's differences in the media, but as far as pot size goes, not particularly.

[00:02:54] Scott Campbell: Yeah. It's just a huge amount of volume to deal with. And the only [00:03:00] suggestion that I heard that could be helpful here is to look at doing a multi-day dry back to feeding the plant on a daily basis. But. And getting that dry bag going over multiple days. So you do get down to a point where either, if we are a natural soil where the water potential or in a soil of substrate in the poor water is he gets to the point where the plant is feeling some stress.

[00:03:25] Scott Campbell: And that, that is possible. I've heard, but that's more of an advanced technique and And I don't I don't know how effective it's going to be. That's the only way I can think of to, to get at that. Yeah. The

[00:03:35] Seth Baumgartner: best way I could describe it as you're going to be running generatively effectively the whole time, because you have to space out your watering so far, it's going to be hard to push that really lush vegetative.

[00:03:43] Scott Campbell: Yeah. Yeah. That's, I don't know Kaisha, if that's useful, but one strategy is to is to do multi-day drybacks, and

[00:03:52] Seth Baumgartner: then I'll say I was going to say it's very important to get a sensor in there because on that 10 gallon pot, you're a person's ability to [00:04:00] judge how heavy that pot is, mixing it up is going to be way less accurate than what the smaller one, even.

[00:04:04] Scott Campbell: Yeah. And it's also, the other thing. On a pot that big, sometimes it's helpful to have more than one sensor and understand what the root zone really is. And then what's going on at each level of the root zone. It's not as simple as just looking at a three by six by 36, a slab or or a one gallon or two gallon cocoa bag it's really a totally different mindset.

[00:04:30] Kaisha Dyan McMillan: Great actually have a question. Speaking of pots is a perfect segue at GU Juan Carlos. He wants to know how do you use the solace and plastic pots? Do you post.

[00:04:39] Scott Campbell: Yes, I was just at some customer sites last week. And by the way, had an amazing time learning about different types of indoor and greenhouse growing that some of our customers are doing visited six of them last weekend and really learned a lot.

[00:04:54] Scott Campbell: And I actually gave some bad advice customer on this and Jason had to correct [00:05:00] me. So actually we'll do a little test and Because I told him to drill some holes in the pot and poke the terrorist 12 through the holes. And then Jason made this awkward face. Like he like he was embarrassed to be seen with me and then told him to do something different.

[00:05:16] Scott Campbell: What do you know what he might've told me? Seth

[00:05:18] Seth Baumgartner: typically like late or at least lately the best results we've found is cutting a slot in the side of the pot with a knife. And that, we're looking at. Figuring out the best jig to use for that to make it perfect. But cutting a slot that's just wide enough to get all three of those probes in and wide enough that you can see all of them fully into the media.

[00:05:35] Seth Baumgartner: So you don't have that air gap.

[00:05:37] Scott Campbell: Yeah. And that's it is a bit is it is a bit unwieldy to go with that. With that round shape, with the flat Base of the terrorist 12, but that was the advice that Jason gave as well. Cut. Something that will allow you to fully insert the terrorist 12 into the, to the medium.

[00:05:54] Scott Campbell: And don't just do it with a few holes. And, it's important that the ends of the [00:06:00] tines that are close to the base of those, of the terrorist 12, that they just not be hanging out in air because then they're going to read the air instead of reading the substrate. And that's what we don't want.

[00:06:13] Kaisha Dyan McMillan: Great. Okay. Our next question comes from bud bros, Inc. How many emitters per plant on Rockwool. And does it matter for crop steering?

[00:06:22] Scott Campbell: Yes. Yeah, it absolutely does. And this goes back to the very fundamentals of. Something that in our quick start guide is called shot size. So you want to take it from the start, Seth?

[00:06:34] Scott Campbell: Yeah.

[00:06:34] Seth Baumgartner: With the remitter set up, what that's going to do is give us a lot more control on metering. Our shot size personally, my favorite is 2.3 gallon per hour perimeters per plant that lets us put it on slow enough, but then we still have the volume that we don't have to run, 15 minutes to get enough water on there for an appropriate shot size.

[00:06:51] Scott Campbell: Yeah. And that's sorry, almost always sees two emitters per. And the and the pressure compensating emitters that [00:07:00] I'm not the kind of Octo bubbler set up, Dr. Bubbler or ways of distributing water over the top of the cube. A practice I used to see more than I see these days.

[00:07:10] Scott Campbell: Almost always pressure compensating, emitters that are just the stakes and then going into the top of the plant, I think because of. Differential in shot size that you would get on something that, that wasn't pressure compensated. Is that right?

[00:07:25] Seth Baumgartner: Yeah. We have a lot more control with pressure compensating and monitors, and we know that as long as we put enough pressure or the appropriate amount of pressure through that line, each one theoretically, is going to put out the exact same amount.

[00:07:34] Seth Baumgartner: Yeah. And then we can also go, with some of the other ones, if we're looking at, flow rates of 1, 2, 3 gallons per. Going down to that 0.3 is going to give us the control to put shots down to a hundred milliliters or less. Yup. When we're in vege steering or 1% shot is actually pretty small.

[00:07:50] Seth Baumgartner: So it's really easy to overshoot it and just wastewater. Yeah.

[00:07:55] Scott Campbell: Yeah. And so control over the shot sizes critical. And the [00:08:00] way that you calculate that shot size is actually in the Quickstart guide that AROYA users. That's one of the first things you do is calculate well, what is my shot size?

[00:08:08] Scott Campbell: And then you have to understand that the medium that you're using, if you're in a four by four cube, and you're begging in it, that's going to give you a certain shot size. And if you put that on top of a slab, that's going to give you a different shot size, and then just doing those calculations.

[00:08:24] Scott Campbell: Correct. And being able to really know that those two emitters are going to give you exactly the volume of of fertigation liquid that you need. Those are all key considerations.

[00:08:36] Seth Baumgartner: And then, the other thing for me that I run into is that testing those. Go put some drip cups out and see how you're administered performing.

[00:08:42] Seth Baumgartner: Cause unfortunately they do a slowly plug up over time. Generally, I haven't found a brand. That's not susceptible to that after a certain period of time. And that makes sense. You're running a lot of salt suspended solids through these things. And if you think about trying to design something, that'll hold pressure, but allow a small amount of something [00:09:00] through anything that's not fully dissolved in.

[00:09:01] Seth Baumgartner: The solution is going to be problematic, right?

[00:09:03] Scott Campbell: Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to write that down cause I want to. I want to take a look at whether the substrate data that we're seeing just from the Charles 12 sensor might give us an indication of whether the emitters getting plugged might be something you can use out of the data.

[00:09:19] Scott Campbell: We don't do that right

[00:09:20] Seth Baumgartner: now, but, and you for sure can, cause you can look at how much you're putting on. So if you say like I'm trying to go for an 8% shot right now w which is a big shot, but if I'm going to go for that, and then I look at the graph and while I'm only getting. 2%, volumetric water content increased, but I'm nowhere near my runoff point.

[00:09:37] Seth Baumgartner: That's telling me that my math is not adding up. So no emitters are not putting out enough water.

[00:09:42] Scott Campbell: Yep, exactly. That's a really good point. Let's see. And I I do. I did have that experience when I tried to do an experimental setup with a tent at home with the AROYA was that I set up a trashcan that had a pump in it where I mixed up the fertigation solution to the [00:10:00] ISI that I wanted.

[00:10:01] Scott Campbell: And then I had a, an open sprinkler on there that would open a valve and turn the pump off. Open the valve, water, the plants, and then turn it off whenever I needed to have that happen. But in spite of the fact that I had some nice automation, I did not have a resilient system in one week when I was on a business trip, all the admitters got plugged in.

[00:10:21] Scott Campbell: The plants got super stressed. They didn't die because cannabis has a resilient plant. But the quality definitely wasn't where it wanted it to be. So that was a learning experience. Oh yeah. And

[00:10:29] Seth Baumgartner: we all rely on these systems, once you've gone to automated. I've been in that situation before you got 1500 plants in a room and your pump goes down.

[00:10:36] Seth Baumgartner: Suddenly yeah, I'd love to fix the pump right now, but I got to go spend three hours watering these plants first and you're really back to new a rough corner.

[00:10:44] Scott Campbell: Yeah. And that is one thing we always ask people too, when if they're saying, Hey, I'm interested in your AROYAce system. What what can I do for me?

[00:10:51] Scott Campbell: One of the first questions we asked back is, do you have a reliable drip irrigation, automated drip irrigation system, because if you don't. Especially if you're [00:11:00] hand watering plants, maybe a AROYA is not the right fit for taking the next step. And we realized systems are expensive. Automation is expensive, but really the expensive thing in the longterm is lack of uniformity and lack of control.

[00:11:17] Kaisha Dyan McMillan: That's a perfect segue into my next question from Instagram and just a reminder to everybody who's on today's call. If you have any questions, please write them in the chat, type them in the chat for a chance so we can get your question answered live. Speaking of uniformity, big, he wants to know how soon do you start feeding bread?

[00:11:34] Kaisha Dyan McMillan: I found it easier to get uniform fruit by hand water.

[00:11:37] Scott Campbell: I wonder say the question again. How soon do you start drip irrigation, as opposed to hand water? I know people who hand water in bed. I mean it does happen and it's just a question of how efficient you want the operation.

[00:11:49] Scott Campbell: So that is pretty common. I see hardly any customers at I don't know of a single customer, a variety that hand waters in flower, but what's your, yeah,

[00:11:58] Seth Baumgartner: right now, I don't think we have any, a [00:12:00] few people have, bought the system while hand watering with the intention of building up their facility.

[00:12:04] Seth Baumgartner: And so we've got a little bit of data on that and it's still useful, but yeah, I at the end of the day, you just, you've got to have that reliable system and even in Vedge, Anytime you're taking away visibility in the root zone and control you're leaving something on the table. Yeah.

[00:12:18] Scott Campbell: Yeah. So I don't, there is a route in phase as well that when you're not going to be watering at all right. You're just, you're, you have the medium charged and ready to go, and you're putting those plants on. You want those roots to come down and in some cases you'll go a day without watering.

[00:12:33] Seth Baumgartner: Is that. Sometimes it usually only a day though, for what we preach. I I like to stake everything right there. Once I transplant over the table, steak, it you're done. You can walk away and then you can watch your graph and see when you need to give that like 1%. Right around day two, day three and start pushing a little bit of solution through there so we can get a lot of oxygen

[00:12:52] down

[00:12:52] Scott Campbell: in.

[00:12:53] Scott Campbell: Yeah, that is a key consideration. It's actually one of the Cardinal parameters for growing that we don't measure today, which is [00:13:00] oxygen in the root zone. It's one of the nine things that affects cannabis growth. And it's just something to keep in mind. That is maybe a little bit of a rabbit hole, but most of the customers, I see, try to agitate their fertigation solutions to maintain some level of oxygen in them.

[00:13:15] Scott Campbell: Is that a common practice? Yeah,

[00:13:17] Seth Baumgartner: absolutely. You don't want that to go stagnant and start growing? You've created a, quite the nutrient solution. There are many different things can grow in there, so you don't really want to have it warm and stagnant, particularly. And the nice thing about that though is you also don't have.

[00:13:29] Seth Baumgartner: Put that much effort into keeping that oxygenated, just like your fish tank. Th the bigger oxygenation for the root zone happens when that drop actually hits the pot, goes down into the media and pulls air in behind it. Okay. Sure. Yeah. And that's actually one of the big advantages that going soilless or rockwool has over say, deep water culture.

[00:13:48] Scott Campbell: Oh, I see. So it, maybe isn't so much that agitation may, might just be for the uniformity of the fertigation solution, not so much for the oxygen. Yeah.

[00:13:55] Seth Baumgartner: And that's where you see like air mixers and other circulation pumps. Yeah. A A lot of [00:14:00] people will circulate their entire reds every 15 to 30 minutes just to keep that fallout from happening on the bottom.

[00:14:05] Seth Baumgartner: Yup. Yup. And sometimes a lot of that stuff can be mitigated through a proper mixing technique too. Sometimes that's the issue when you have some of those

[00:14:13] Scott Campbell: issues. Yeah, that that makes sense. Okay. Kaisha what else? What else did

[00:14:18] Kaisha Dyan McMillan: ready for the next one? All right. Evil go seeds has a question.

[00:14:22] Kaisha Dyan McMillan: What is the minimum moisture content for a cube during dry back?

[00:14:26] Scott Campbell: Th this is a common concern that we try to address. And the first thing to say is that if you're using Stonewall substrate, you will get channeling and hydrophobic properties emerging in that Stonewall, if you drop below 35%.

[00:14:43] Scott Campbell: So the absolute minimum for rockwool is 35%. And I think that But Coco also has a kind of a minimum you'd never want to go under. Is that right, Seth? Yeah.

[00:14:51] Seth Baumgartner: Typically we call that about 20 to 25% to stay on the safe side. And part of that is not so much that you're stressing the plant super hard, but you'll hit a [00:15:00] point where, like Scott touched on it's you'll, especially with the rockwool develop those hydrophobic pockets.

[00:15:04] Seth Baumgartner: And even with the Coco, you'll develop somewhat of the same thing where you find yourself going back with, say a bucket, a solution. Putting that bag in there until it stops bubbling, just because it's running off the top. So you don't want to go too low and, and in all kinds of agriculture, water is actually one of your biggest crop limiting factors.

[00:15:19] Seth Baumgartner: When you look at, if we look at your water content and I can say if we're calling for to your bare minimum, that's an efficient bottom end. If you've spent 10 days total at 35 or 36, instead of up at 40 as your bottom, you actually might see a quantifiable reduction in yield.

[00:15:36] Scott Campbell: Yup. Yep.

[00:15:38] Scott Campbell: Yeah, that's a great point.

[00:15:41] Kaisha Dyan McMillan: Excellent. I've got another question here and just a reminder to everybody who's on today. If you have any questions, type them in the chat, we'll get them answered live. Toddled on wants to know how do you get medium to stack ISI? Can't seem to get the hang of it.

[00:15:55] Scott Campbell: Yeah okay.

[00:15:56] Scott Campbell: So this is something that does take [00:16:00] experience. And the first time that I tried to do it, it was a lot more difficult than. Anticipated for a couple of reasons. The first was that I didn't do a good job of actually getting of charging the Stonewall substrate that I was using. And so it wasn't in a good condition when I started to grow.

[00:16:16] Scott Campbell: And so I did get some root in, I did get plants that were growing, but I could never. Keep that water content in the range that I wanted it to even worry about what the ISI was. And it was just, it was frustrating there's ton of runoff. And like I had all kinds of issues. First point it is difficult to do the second point that the stacking comes from essentially the ability of the plant.

[00:16:39] Scott Campbell: And stacking is what we would refer to as the pattern in early flower, where the top ISI that you hit gets higher and higher each time you you dry back your substrate. And that happens because the plant's getting bigger. It's the water use each day is getting higher and higher. And then each time it pulls that water out, as it [00:17:00] gets more effective at pulling that water out, it concentrates the salts in the substrate even more.

[00:17:05] Scott Campbell: Is that. Generally correct.

[00:17:07] Seth Baumgartner: Yeah. Yeah. That's a pretty good description. I think that the only part you missed there is like, when you're trying to stack you see monitoring your runoff is a huge part of that. Every morning in our P ones, we're bringing that up to peak saturation.

[00:17:18] Seth Baumgartner: And then, I noticed a lot of people like in vege or in bulking are having trouble stacking AC. That's where the sensors come in. Cause you hit peak water content in the morning and then we'll go down, three to 5% and then back up maybe two or three and bounce right below that runoff line.

[00:17:33] Seth Baumgartner: So that way we're not rinsing any salt out of the bottom. And that's the key really? As long as you don't have the water run out of the bottom, that plant uses water and then it leaves salt behind in the substrate. And then beyond that, it's starting to tailor your nutrient regimen to figure it out.

[00:17:47] Seth Baumgartner: What do you see? Do I need to be running in Rockwall versus Coco, which Coco does have some cat ion exchange capacity. So when you're stacking in Coco, sometimes that's a little easier than rockwool. If you're getting more runoff that cocoa will hold on to that [00:18:00] salt a little more, whereas that rockwool, once you start getting run off, you're going to really push salt the right out the bottom.

[00:18:05] Scott Campbell: So if a customer is struggling with this and they have our system in place that they do have visibility into what's going on in the roots. Do you think how hard would it be to give them the advice that would allow them to start seeing success? Is that hard, Seth, do you think?

[00:18:22] Seth Baumgartner: No. No. I don't think it's terribly hard. Like I said, the big thing is watching that runoff and then what I find a lot of people do, and they're not getting the stacking results that they want. They're changing. They're feeding. Yeah, which is not necessarily the safest or easiest way to go about it.

[00:18:36] Seth Baumgartner: You're really, you're chasing something that you might not ever hit. And just understanding, a little bit about those ionic interactions and how well your media actually holds onto that salt. And then realizing that like in rockwool, there, there is no, bond to the media for that salt.

[00:18:52] Seth Baumgartner: It's just the water's gone. So the salt is still there.

[00:18:55] Scott Campbell: Yeah. And I can say that the best growers the ones that are hitting the highest [00:19:00] yields at the highest quality that we work with are feeding at a constant ISI for their entire the entire. Vedge and flower phase. So

[00:19:08] Seth Baumgartner: yeah, basically some of them we'll start off, right out of clone, more closer to that two point.

[00:19:12] Seth Baumgartner: Oh. But usually we like to hit about 3.9 all the way through flower. That's pretty easy to work with, but of course, you're going to be adjusting, your nutrient ratios. And then as you go through flower, you're gonna be getting more micro boosters a little later, back off on your nitrogen, back off in your Cal-Mag a little bit.

[00:19:27] Seth Baumgartner: It is a lot easier to stack and monitor your AC when you have a constant feed, because you can start to predict what, okay, what does that run off going to do in the morning? I can see an expect drop and you see it's repeatable every day and now you can predict what's going to happen. Whereas if you just drop your AC you gotta wait to see after that watering, how that affected the roots zone.

[00:19:47] Seth Baumgartner: Okay.

[00:19:51] Kaisha Dyan McMillan: Excellent. Okay. Our next question comes from space, dog select what's a good baseline ratio between potassium and calcium.

[00:19:59] Scott Campbell: The [00:20:00] answer to that question is I have no idea any thoughts?

[00:20:03] Seth Baumgartner: I think that's highly strain dependent if you've got the ability to modulate that, for sure do it. And that's why using like a Cal-Mag products or calcium chloride products are really. Because you have the choice to back that calcium off some plants are really calcium, thirsty, other strands.

[00:20:20] Seth Baumgartner: You don't really have to supplement much. Yeah. And a lot of this is evolving too, as more and more specific nutrient lines come out to address some of these problems. A lot of these amendments where we're working with non-cannabis specific fertilizers for so many years and finding ways to amend it.

[00:20:33] Seth Baumgartner: And yeah. The market's kind of turning over to where we have a lot more tailored fertilizer product, and now we can just dial for each strain.

[00:20:41] Scott Campbell: Yup. Yup. Okay. Yeah, that that makes sense. And I what's the best way to note that in the journal, if you're making changes. And you want to see what effect it has on a specific strain.

[00:20:52] Scott Campbell: How would you do that?

[00:20:53] Seth Baumgartner: I would go take pictures of that strain and note format and start looking at, at least that's what I have customers do. Hey, take a picture of your plant. [00:21:00] Yep. And we've still got to look at plant health, look for any symptoms of either disease or deficiencies and then go from there.

[00:21:06] Seth Baumgartner: And, one of the best things you can actually do is get a leaf tissue analysis. I see. Okay. And then you can start strain to strain looking at. This one wants a lot more nitrogen. This one needs more calcium and then do that tissue analysis a few times throughout your growth cycle. At what point it's okay, I can take a new leaf later on and start to see that this new growth is very calcium deficient or very, phosphorus, deficient, whatever.

[00:21:29] Seth Baumgartner: And then you can start to tailor your nutrient regimen to match your plant's needs throughout its cycle. Okay.

[00:21:35] Scott Campbell: Yeah, that that makes sense. I wonder do you know of any tissue analysis labs? And I assume they have to be in specific in the state where your. You know where you're growing.

[00:21:45] Scott Campbell: Do you ever get requests from customers about that?

[00:21:47] Seth Baumgartner: I do. And yeah it's highly state to state there's, state to state different places. You can send it or there's some in California though. There are off the top of my head. I can tell you that to go check

[00:21:57] Scott Campbell: some, it might have some references on that if [00:22:00] people or

[00:22:00] Seth Baumgartner: people reach out with email, for sure.

[00:22:02] Scott Campbell: But it is, it is. Something that some of the more sophisticated growers are doing is that a, that tissue analysis and looking at big ag, this is par for the course for a lot of crops. I know they do it a lot in potatoes, for example,

[00:22:17] Seth Baumgartner: potatoes. We, if you look at agronomic studies, that's one of the core foundations of trying to figure out, any improvement in fertilizer regime.

[00:22:26] Seth Baumgartner: That's where you get your data on actually figuring out what the plan is, deficient and I can see spots on the plant or, necrotic, leaf, edges, anything like that, and know that it means certain things, but quantifying what I have to do to fix it. I need that

[00:22:40] Scott Campbell: test. Yep. Okay. So let's just really quick show in the software, how you do that.

[00:22:47] Scott Campbell: So I'm going to go in here to our demo screen. And this is just a demo facility that we have set up this point about taking pictures. It's super easy. If you go and look at a harvest group [00:23:00] that you have growing. So we'll just go into this harvest group we have here. These are all the plants that are in there.

[00:23:06] Scott Campbell: These are the forest strains that exist. If we go anywhere on this chart, we can add a plus and we can add eight. And if we do that, we can add a photo onto that. And that allows me to go in and select a photo from file and upload it to the journal entry here. And then once you do that, your photos are available in the analytics section of the.

[00:23:31] Scott Campbell: Of the tool, although there aren't any pictures in here right now for this one, but here's where they would be. And you can even just in addition to adding pictures, you can take notes as well and say this is what I'm seeing with this plant. And I just upped the ratio of this type of of element in the fertilizer today, for example.

[00:23:49] Scott Campbell: You can do

[00:23:49] Seth Baumgartner: that. Absolutely. And getting it, into arAROYAos or, the same place you keep all your other data is crucial because I can definitely say I've got plenty of notebooks out there that have never been entered into a computer [00:24:00] and I'll look into it. There's some interesting stuff, but man I don't have time to cross reference.

[00:24:06] Seth Baumgartner: Piles and notebooks from five, 10 years

[00:24:08] Scott Campbell: ago. Yeah. Yeah, there and there are there are lots of tools in here that are available and can be helpful to people as they grow. In fact, Kaisha, do we have time to do a couple of tool tips? Because I think there's a few fun things. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:24:23] Scott Campbell: Okay. One of the ones that I absolutely love is the ability to, as you're making changes, to changes to the schedule, changes to tasks, changes to The alerts in here or the length of the different phases. Keep in mind that when you do this on a harvest group, you are changing this harvest group.

[00:24:45] Scott Campbell: You're changing the schedule. You're not changing the recipe, but if you find that this is really successful, For these types of plants that you're going, you can go up here and save this entire thing as a recipe, which I think is brilliant. I [00:25:00] think this is a great feature. Most people don't even know that it exists, but if you found that you had a ton of success and you just want to do it similarly, next time, save that as a recipe and use it.

[00:25:10] Scott Campbell: What do you think set do very many people know about this.

[00:25:13] Seth Baumgartner: Oh yeah. A little bit, but a lot of times they'll just they'll use that same recipe for so long and never go back and change it. Yeah. And yeah it's a wonderful tool. What I love to do too, is, while you're going through any particular harvest or a growth cycle, you've got that recipe go in and make some changes based on, what you did different this time.

[00:25:31] Seth Baumgartner: So if you're looking at it and said, okay, we actually, this round, these particular plants we have are really stretchy. Okay. We're going to run that generative phase early on, maybe even four or five weeks because they're stretching like crazy. I want to mark that down. So every time I run these strands, I'm going to run.

[00:25:46] Seth Baumgartner: The tall recipe on those ones or whatever you want to call

[00:25:48] Scott Campbell: it. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And you can make that that early flower. So let's say that these were the actual plants you were using and growing, you could add more tasks, you could create more targets, you could [00:26:00] change the duration of the generative phase.

[00:26:02] Scott Campbell: For example, all of those things that would change your scheduling. And if you saved it, it would also change the recipe. So it would update your recipe and allow you to improve it as you go along. One, let's see a couple of other things that are top of mind if I go back in here and we're just looking at the data for a particular for a particular range, and this is dummy data, so I wouldn't get too excited about it, but yeah, so we can see here, some plants drawing back and some ECS notice a couple of things on here.

[00:26:32] Scott Campbell: First of all, these are displaying bench averages in terms of ISI and water content. One tool that, that some people use, but and no exists. Let's see, actually, it's not in here. How would I do a dry back? Is that available in this page? Okay.

[00:26:47] Seth Baumgartner: And then there, which

[00:26:49] Scott Campbell: one? This one let's let her load for a second.

[00:26:52] Scott Campbell: That one right there. Yep. Okay.

[00:26:56] Seth Baumgartner: The Internet's a little slow in Washington today. I think. [00:27:00] Yeah,

[00:27:00] Scott Campbell: we are having some internet issues. Yeah. That's not loading. Actually let's do a different one first. Let's go in here and Look at the harvest group. Again, you can do this in rooms as well.

[00:27:13] Scott Campbell: One of the really basic settings is that you can use for diagnostics is just looking at averages versus individual sensors. So if you go in here, you can say, actually, I want to show a room average. So that, that is the fat line that you see here. If you want to, you can also do individual readings, which for the individual sensors, which can be done in this way.

[00:27:33] Scott Campbell: And you see there's. Data points here, but each individual sensor with its serial numbers on here. If you see an outlier, that's really just way out there, super dry. For example, there probably is an issue at that particular plant, like maybe an emitter fell out. We've heard of that happening before.

[00:27:49] Scott Campbell: So you can go and look at this, look at the individual sensor data and besides just. Emitter falling out or something like that. What might you what's what might you use individual [00:28:00] sensor data for Seth?

[00:28:00] Seth Baumgartner: So there's a few things I like to do if I've got. Pretty high sensor density in a room.

[00:28:05] Seth Baumgartner: What I do is when I'm assigning those, I actually, and so the serial number, name, the sensor with the geographic location. So when I'm looking at that, I can go, oh, there's an outlier. It's in zone four in the back. That's a nice tip. But what, when you start looking at these, you can start to see some patterns like F a lot of airflow across the room.

[00:28:21] Seth Baumgartner: You're going to see those pots in the front dragging down faster than the ones in the middle. The ones in the back might not ever dry down nearly as much. So you can start to parse out those differences and then work on, resolving issues with your microclimate.

[00:28:33] Scott Campbell: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Another thing that I like to look at when seeing individual sensor data is the uniformity.

[00:28:40] Scott Campbell: So yeah, looking for anomalies in hotspots and things. In general how well are, is it are these is my drip system doing it, providing the same amount of water to all my plants at the same time. And if you see a huge range in. You know that maybe there are issues with your drip system, if you see a really tight range, and this is, as I [00:29:00] said, fake data, but if there's a real data, you would say, these guys know exactly what they're doing.

[00:29:04] Scott Campbell: Cause their other plants are doing the exact same thing at the same time. Then you then you can say we do have uniformity and we do have predictability in our systems. Exactly. Okay. Let's see, I'm going to stop presenting. Okay, so what other questions do we have,

[00:29:21] Kaisha Dyan McMillan: oh, we have someone on the call who actually just posted a question, Jay, you want to go ahead and unmute yourself and ask?

[00:29:28] J (caller): Sure. We've been getting like, Feed water testing, runoff, water testing, and tissue testing. And we've noticed that in certain with certain cultivars, our runoff pH is getting high, like close to seven or 6.8. And a lot of them the tissue tests all look good. Is there any reason to be concerned or like any improvements I can make?

[00:29:48] J (caller): I drop my feed pH going in to 5.5 down from 5.8. But I don't want to go on the lower.

[00:29:55] Seth Baumgartner: Yeah I think you're, you're right to be worried, but I don't think you should worry too much strapping your feed pH is [00:30:00] about all you're going to be able to do about that. You could change the sea with your feed, but that's going to make things less predictable at the moment.

[00:30:07] Seth Baumgartner: So I would watch your plants and just look for signs of toxicity at first. And one of the bigger things that's going to be a problem there is that probably means that plants plant and a lot of your micros. Being that you end up with a higher pH in the root zone, you might have to supplement certain nutrients more because they're not as planned available, just staying in solution and not being uptaken by the plant.

[00:30:29] Seth Baumgartner: Yeah. So that's your biggest thing to watch out for? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:30:34] Scott Campbell: Any up question on that, Jake is that, does that answer is that Sorry, go ahead. Yeah,

[00:30:39] J (caller): that definitely answers my question. Unfortunately, I don't have zone specific feeds. I just feed to the whole room with the same like nutrient solution for irrigation solution.

[00:30:48] J (caller): So it might be a little tougher for me to resolve, but, I think until I start seeing a real issue, I don't want to be, hand watering specific zones or anything like that with

[00:30:56] Seth Baumgartner: the different feed for sure. And, with micro supplements, a lot of [00:31:00] times the the range between. What the plant needs and where it's toxic is incredibly wide.

[00:31:06] Seth Baumgartner: So a lot of times you can actually, try to supplement what you're finding with your tissue analysis, that some of those plants need without necessarily being toxic to the others. It's just running by them essentially.

[00:31:17] Scott Campbell: Is there anything you're observing in the. That would concern you or is it just the seven pH in the runoff that, that is an kind of an anomaly?

[00:31:27] J (caller): No, it's just the high runoff. They're actually some of the best looking

[00:31:30] Seth Baumgartner: plants in the room. Yeah. At the end of the day, don't, don't ever discount like your eyes and, your judgment, the plant health, like if you've been doing this a while, when a plant is healthy, vigorous, when it's growing.

[00:31:40] Seth Baumgartner: Don't just discount that the next step is finding out okay. That seems to be very tolerant of that. pH seems to like it. Maybe we can try to figure out why, but even if we can, at least we can repeat that if that's what the plant likes,

[00:31:54] Scott Campbell: yeah. I think that's great.

[00:31:57] Kaisha Dyan McMillan: Awesome, Jay, thank you so much for that question. [00:32:00] Absolutely. If you have anything else, anytime, please type it in the chat. And that goes for everyone else. Who's on the call today, but I do have another question from Instagram. Terp cowboy is asking how much light is too much. Can you run super high PPFD without sacrificing TURPs?

[00:32:18] Seth Baumgartner: There's definitely an upper limit.

[00:32:20] Scott Campbell: Okay. I think this is a fascinating question. Sure. Are your thoughts with us? So

[00:32:24] Seth Baumgartner: I was going to say there's a, a surprisingly high amount of light people are able to run these days. That really impresses me, but no matter

[00:32:30] Scott Campbell: what there is to see, what would you call that in terms of PPFD what do you call?

[00:32:34] Seth Baumgartner: Hi. Hi. Oh yeah. When you're hitting 11, 1200, 12 50, some guys were pushing even up to 14, 1500, and that's probably about the limit of what I'd ever tried to push.

[00:32:44] Scott Campbell: Okay. Because of TURPs or because of.

[00:32:46] Seth Baumgartner: Generally because of yield, you're going to get some, you're going to get some bleaching and then you're going to have some other problems with trying to maintain your leaf surface temperature.

[00:32:55] Seth Baumgartner: You're really overloading the plants at a certain

[00:32:57] Scott Campbell: point. And here we're talking about [00:33:00] LEDs. Or are we talking about HBS generally

[00:33:02] Seth Baumgartner: LEDs, because with the HPS, the heat becomes very unmanageable, so you'll yep. You got to keep the lights so far away from the plant that you it's really hard to actually achieve 14 or 1500 micromoles at your canopy,

[00:33:15] Scott Campbell: isn't it also dependent on the CO2 concentrations and what you're able to enrich?

[00:33:19] Scott Campbell: Yep, absolutely. Okay. Yep. So should. Cause I saw a graph once that essentially showed that enrichment and a light intensity that, that the crop yields hit a maximum. Of, I think it was around maybe a thousand or 1100 PPFD with no CO2 enrichment, but then that maximum is quite a bit higher if you are carefully and accurately enriching with CO2.

[00:33:43] Scott Campbell: Is that true?

[00:33:44] Seth Baumgartner: To think about it, that ambient air around us as anywhere from, depending on how close to the city you live or where you're at four to 800 PPM. If you can just run a straight 1200 the whole way. You're eliminating another one of those yield limiting factors, the plant needs so much heat, so much water, so much CO2 and [00:34:00] so much light to, to grow to the potential.

[00:34:03] Seth Baumgartner: So we just want to eliminate any shortcomings along the way.

[00:34:05] Scott Campbell: Yup. Yup, absolutely. Okay. Kaisha,

[00:34:09] Kaisha Dyan McMillan: just for our next one. Yes. Leland Dowling is asking what should my ECB at, in my root zone and run off compared to my feet easy.

[00:34:20] Scott Campbell: Yeah, that's going to depend on what your goals are. And so it's important to start off with a statement of intent.

[00:34:26] Scott Campbell: And this is something that data allows us to do is as the grower says this is what I'm trying to accomplish. And then using data to determine whether or not he or she is accomplishing that. I think I think that's the critical thing, but if he's talking about a certain phase of growth, let's just go with let's just say he's in bulking, so he's trying to bulk on the bud sites that exist on the plants after that early flower phase.

[00:34:50] Scott Campbell: So he's mid flower. What should he be expecting to see in terms of the in-situ the root zone ISI and then the runoff?

[00:34:58] Seth Baumgartner: So Rigzone see, throughout the [00:35:00] day, your goal is to be within that four to eight zone. You can easily go up much higher just as the water dries back. And typically your runoff is just going to match basically what your root zone data says at your peak saturation, because what you're doing is just pushing nutrient solution straight through.

[00:35:17] Scott Campbell: Yup. So let's say for example, that he's running in the high range. For vegetative bulking. And he's up in say the seven range. And then his feed EC is three. Just for an example, if he goes in and gets a lot of runoff, he can push that EC in-situ down quite

[00:35:35] Seth Baumgartner: a bit. Oh, absolutely.

[00:35:36] Seth Baumgartner: Yeah. When we go to vegetable king, that's actually a challenge for some people is to keep their ISI up because they're not able to closely monitor and see when their different zones are getting run off. So they might say, okay this is. My first P two, this one's not supposed to get run off, but because of various different factors, it is, now you're not going to be building you see each one of those is just going to continue to rinse yourself out of the media.

[00:35:57] Seth Baumgartner: Yup.

[00:35:57] Scott Campbell: Yup. And then you're too low. Yep. [00:36:00] Absolutely. You get into that range of being too low. So it really does depend on the phase of growth that you're in what you should expect to see and for example in your in generative you're putting each of those shots in, in, in your P want and eventually building up to the point that you're going to run off.

[00:36:18] Scott Campbell: Correct. And then once you run off, you're done, you stop and then you just dryback for the remainder of the day. Is that true?

[00:36:24] Seth Baumgartner: Yup. In an ideal world, when you're a plant size and media size is perfectly matched. You can do that in later. You've got a, and I've been in this situation before, you've got like a one gallon or one and a half gallon bag and a monster six or eight foot plant coming out of it.

[00:36:38] Seth Baumgartner: It's hard to go generative because you got to keep putting water on it all day to keep it from just getting too dry. So one of the solutions there would be, we're going to hit it with the and then right at the end of the day we're going to still stop our waterings about an app two hours before lights off, but we'll hit it back with not all the way up to peak saturation.

[00:36:55] Seth Baumgartner: If we had a really hard dryback last night and we hit, on rockwool at say, we got [00:37:00] down to 35% I'm going to give it like a 10, 12 probably 25% shots or 10% shot towards the end of the day to bring it back up, to keep us in that safe zone, but still maintain that spacing that way we applied generative stress.

[00:37:12] Seth Baumgartner: Yeah.

[00:37:13] Scott Campbell: Yeah. And I do want to go back to this concept of a, of intent of grower intent because it's really hard. To to be consistently successful without that statement and saying this is what I'm trying to do. This is what I want to do. Okay. Saying that you want to drive plants generative, for example, that's a statement of intent and then looking at your situation, like what is my fee DC?

[00:37:33] Scott Campbell: What's my ECN situ how big are my plants? What's my, what's the volume on my substrate. There are so many different permutations there. I know guys that are growing in states that are limited to play. Okay. So then they're not limited on square footage. They got, they're limited on the number of plants that can grow.

[00:37:49] Scott Campbell: They're trying to grow massive plants because that's the way that they can achieve more yield and be more profitable. And so their strategies are going to be different than the places where you're strictly growing. According [00:38:00] to square footage, their plant densities are going to be different. The morphology, maybe even the types of light, but certainly.

[00:38:05] Scott Campbell: The way that they're driving growth in those plants is going to be totally different. Is that true? Absolutely. Yeah,

[00:38:11] Seth Baumgartner: for sure. Especially when you start to look at states that limit plant count. If I've got a given square footage, but I'm only allowed, allowed to grow six plants say in a tent, Ideally if I had a two by eight foot tent, for example, and I know this isn't really a huge commercial one, but if I'm in there, I want to stuff that thing full of plants and flip them small.

[00:38:29] Seth Baumgartner: Yeah. Get that fastest turnaround time. Yep. If I'm limited to plant count, I haven't got to change my whole idea of what I'm gonna

[00:38:35] Scott Campbell: do. Yeah. And that's why S growers tend to be specialists at different types of growing. And we see people doing tiered growing, for example where the strategy is to keep those plants small and get them through quick, it's about velocity and getting plant counts through.

[00:38:49] Scott Campbell: Absolutely. And it's usually. It's using that, the building that they created a little bit more efficiently because they get two decks in the room, but you can't, you can't be growing six [00:39:00] foot plants. If you've only got if you've got two tiers in, they only go up to four feet, it's just going to be a mess.

[00:39:05] Seth Baumgartner: And a big thing I like to look at is that real estate that, that plant, how much square footage is it taking up and how long has it in your facility? So if you're not limited to plant count, Two week vege flip on small, higher plant density. That's the way you're going to get crops through faster, make more money if you are plant limited.

[00:39:25] Seth Baumgartner: Okay. If we're stuck with having to have a four or a five week vege to achieve the plant size we need that's just what it is, unfortunately.

[00:39:31] Scott Campbell: Yeah. Yeah. And that's why, that's why growing is so interesting is there's so many different ways to approach it. And different strategies, but getting back to the original question the fee DC, the substrate ISI, and then the runoff VC, that'll just depend on on the S the specific phase of growth that the plan is and what you're trying to accomplish.

[00:39:52] Scott Campbell: Is there anything in a runoff? AROYA doesn't have a system that just tests that runoff ISI, and a lot of people are doing that [00:40:00] manually and then just adding it to the journal. Is there anything that would specific, is there anything in that runoff, ISI number that you, is there a trend that might concern you.

[00:40:09] Scott Campbell: If you saw it.

[00:40:10] Seth Baumgartner: So we actually do have a product that can measure that the EST now. Oh yeah. Okay. It's a plumbing issue then you've got to plumb it

[00:40:16] Scott Campbell: into a trap. Yeah. You have to have it in a truck that, that is true. But typically users are using that for FIDI seat and that's a great tool. For monitoring your fee DC, especially for something like a dose of Tron went out.

[00:40:28] Scott Campbell: Okay. And then the room's not getting the right fertilizer, just a, Hey, send me an alert when that happens, but yes, it's true. You can, if you put it in a trap, have the IES to there. That's

[00:40:37] Seth Baumgartner: exactly. Because the first thing I look for in a runoff actually is if you've got an injection system and then suddenly your runoff numbers are going super high.

[00:40:45] Seth Baumgartner: Although your route, Xone see, you may not be going super high cause you're getting a lot of runoff. That would be a good indicator that your injector's not working and you're massively over fertilizing. Yep. Yep. Or, same thing with having an inline EC sensor in your feed. It's really nice to just have a monitor on both ends.

[00:40:59] Seth Baumgartner: [00:41:00] So tank mixing mistakes happen, equipment fails, people fail. Oh. Even,

[00:41:04] Scott Campbell: Even having the eyes off times, I've heard horror stories about the supplier, Drops fertilizer, the dry fertilizer for mixing and it's mislabeled, that

[00:41:13] Seth Baumgartner: kind of

[00:41:13] Scott Campbell: stuff can happen. It does happen.

[00:41:15] Scott Campbell: So you have to be

[00:41:17] Seth Baumgartner: careful, bad batches. It's all out there. It's still normal business.

[00:41:21] Scott Campbell: Yeah. So it's good at S especially in something as critical as fertilizer. It's good to have a belt and suspenders type approach.

[00:41:28] Seth Baumgartner: Absolutely. Yep.

[00:41:31] Scott Campbell: Okay. Kaisha, how about maybe one more? you, What do you.

[00:41:34] Kaisha Dyan McMillan: Okay. Here's this is a good one from Dutchman's thumb. They want to know what is the best way to reduce stretch with crop steering?

[00:41:41] Seth Baumgartner: Apply generative stress, get a little graph, drought stress in there. Encourage the plant to pack on more bud sites and not stretches

[00:41:47] Scott Campbell: much. Yeah. And I, for anybody who, we just talked about that, that two, two tier growing, I seen three tiers out there.

[00:41:55] Scott Campbell: It'd be hard to maybe work in that facility and go up on ladders all day to do your plant [00:42:00] pruning activities and stuff. But I have seen it and yeah, and I've heard that really driving those plants generative will reduce the plant size. And also I've heard that And I'm not a specialist on this, but that the frequency, certain frequencies of light can affect morphology as well.

[00:42:15] Scott Campbell: Is that true?

[00:42:16] Seth Baumgartner: Yeah. Yeah. I That's part of why we try to go for, traditionally, like you had the metal halide is CMH for vege and then your HPS for flower. While part of what we want to do is simulate, at the end of the year, the sun's coming through more of the atmosphere to hit us in the fall when it's ripening.

[00:42:31] Seth Baumgartner: So we get a little bit more of that far red and that's going to help the plant. But up the plants are also adapted to that. They have different Okay, what's the word I want to say beta carotene. That's not it several different molecules inside that target different wavelengths inside your chloroplasts.

[00:42:47] Seth Baumgartner: So when we hit that far red, that's helping the plant make not just chlorophyll, but also different metabolites and build terpene production.

[00:42:54] Scott Campbell: Yup. Yep. Yeah. So Def definitely what's happening in the root zone. Your irrigation [00:43:00] strategies can help you to to intentionally control that, that plant morphology.

[00:43:04] Scott Campbell: I do want to say one other thing before we finish up, which is that I just pulled some plants into a tent. I even have some tomato plants, which technically, I don't know anybody. Who's using a AROYA on tomatoes. Besides set. Okay. So Seth, hopefully Seth can give me some pointers here. I just pulled him into the tent.

[00:43:23] Scott Campbell: I just dropped the little, the little kind of seedlings into some cubes and started watering it. And and I did do a much better job of getting the Stonewall, all saturated for I. I left him in the solution for a full day. And there, everything is going much better right now, maybe next week we can actually drop some data on the screen and show what's happening.

[00:43:44] Scott Campbell: I'm having a little trouble getting the humidity as high as I want. But for anybody who's maybe. Struggling with keeping everything in their garden. Exactly where they want it. Seeing my data will be a real shot in the arm for them because they'll see how bad I'm doing. And [00:44:00] it'll surf has some motivation for them.

[00:44:02] Scott Campbell: So let's do that maybe next week. Cool.

[00:44:06] Kaisha Dyan McMillan: Excellent. Thank you so much, Seth and Scott. Great conversation. Thanks to everyone who submitted a question. All of you, thank you so much for joining us for our AROYA Office Hours this week. This is your time, any questions that you have about a AROYA, how can be used to help improve your cultivation and production process or any topic that you'd like covered in.

[00:44:26] Kaisha Dyan McMillan: Your office hour session. Let's talk about it. Let us on chat, shoot us an email at support.aroya@metergroup.com or shoot us a DM via Instagram. We definitely want to hear from you. We record every session. We will email everyone a link to this session who came today and it will also be on the AROYA YouTube channel.

[00:44:45] Kaisha Dyan McMillan: So please do like subscribe and share. While you're there. And if you find these conversations helpful share with your network and spread the word and we will look forward to seeing you next week. Thanks everybody.

[00:44:56] Scott Campbell: Thanks Kaisha. Yep. Thanks. Bye.[00:45:00]