Welcome back to Office Hours Live! Today Seth, Jason and Cian dig into the nuances of nutrient management and the transition into the bulking phase. We’re hitting the fundamentals here, folks. We’ve also got practical insights into handling runoff, EC stacking, and understanding market demands for cannabis strains.
Here are some of our favorite quotes from the week:
Understanding EC and osmotic differential
“So when we talk about decreasing the osmotic differential, basically it just means we're increasing what's in the substrate for EC. When we're increasing the osmotic differential, we're lowering what the EC is in the substrate. And so that kind of actually has some amount of regulation on how quickly that plant is pulling nutrients from the substrate, solution from the substrate, variegation from the substrate. So when we go from generative stacking to bulking, typically we're looking to reduce our root zone ec. So we're actually increasing the osmotic differential between the plant and the substrate.”
— Jason
Benchmarks for financial success
“There's so much variability in cannabis that this same basic program that we talk about – generative, vegetative, generative – can be tweaked slightly enough for different strains that we do see pretty massive yield differences depending on how they're applied. So it really is in the best economic interest of every grower out there to try to optimize it for every strain that they have.”
“I meet a lot of people who can reliably grow 1.8 to 2.5 pounds of light on pretty much any strain they're given time, over time. Unfortunately, depending on what your overhead costs are … we're hitting a point where that's just not competitive anymore. We are hitting a point where 80 grams is kind of the benchmark for the industry right now to stay competitive in the marketplace versus how much it costs per square foot to produce this crop.”
— Seth
“There's a point where a lot of growers get so obsessed with how the plants look and plant health, and they make that their personal KPI versus the real KPI?
“Some plants go into that last week and look, let's say, very ripe, and maybe they’ve got some pretty rough looking leaves. But some of those are the ones we see like the best terpene expression on, best cannabinoid expression, best variety of cannabinoid expression, and usually best smoke quality.
“So it's important to keep track of that because if I just use my grower's thumb and eyes as an indicator, I might not always hone in during week seven on the details that are actually going to make the crop go from $900/pound to $1,400/pound after I harvest it. And that ultimately is way more important than how we feel our plants look.”
— Seth