AROYA Office Hours Episode Three (12/2): It's All About Drybacks

What works, what doesn't, where your water is going, and how to improve crop steering during all phases of growth.

In case you missed it, join us every Thursday at 4:20 p.m. ET, for a digital discussion with our experts here on Team AROYA. Our topic next week will be Task Management and how it can be streamlined to help your team do more in the grow room, so don't forget to submit your questions on our YouTube channel or send us a DM on Instagram and we'll add it to the queue.

Until our next show, here's a look back on episode three. Enjoy these insights from our CEO Scott Campbell, and our Director of Customer Success, Jason Van Leuven.

Recipes help you keep tabs.

"This is one of the reasons that we absolutely encourage and love using recipes during those different phases in your growth in your harvest group, because we want to know what are we trying to achieve during that time frame. And a lot of times we know when those plants are really small, maybe we just transplanted, we're not going to necessarily see the types of drybacks that we will later , we're going to be shooting for just trying to get that root zone going and get those roots into the new media so that it can tap into the entire volume of that." -- Jason Van Leuven, Director of Customer Success

Duration over size.

"We're really targeting the dryback duration more than we are the size, because we're not going to achieve that much with really small plants right at the beginning of flower." -- Scott Campbell, CEO

Think about what signals you're sending.

"The reason we do drybacks isn't so that we can remove the water, it's so that we can achieve a particular water EC that we're going for that sends the signal to the plant, especially generatively. And when we send those signals, if we do it in the right way, we can get higher yields." -- Scott Campbell

Don't forget environmental factors.

"The environment is, I think a little bit overlooked sometimes, when we do get so excited about having a red zone data, and shooting for crop steering, making sure that light intensity is going to help us produce the transpiration rates we need for the appropriate drive acts to steer absolutely critical, having your temperature and humidity balanced to get the VPD (Vapor Pressure Deficit) that allows for the most still model conductance as possible. That's going to get those transpiration rates where you need them to be." -- Jason Van Leuven

Harvest groups can get you started.

"A good place to start is running a control harvest group. So having some reference of your data before you make changes is the absolute best way to begin crop steering. And you might say, well, you're not crop steering, but you have to have a great understanding of what we are doing to those plants. You know, how did this harvest group run without necessarily making any changes? And that's going to give you a wonderful baseline. So when you do start tweaking, when you do start to crop steer, you can make moderate some mild adjustments to get to that and the best way." -- Jason Van Leuven

A little stress is good.

"Plants are like humans. They operate best under a little bit of stress. You know, it's like, well, you know, you're ambitious. You want to achieve; you got a little bit of stress. That's how plants do, as well. Too much stress and they break down just like us." -- Scott Campbell

A final word about controls.

"Controls are about telling you what happened or what is going to happen; controls aren't about telling you what should happen. And that's your role as a grower, to figure that out, to use the data and analytics to say, 'this is what should be happening and here are the changes I need to make to my controls in order to achieve that.' " -- Scott Campbell

JOIN THE NEXT SESH

Get on the invite list here, DM us your questions on Instagram, or apply to be a guest and share your own expertise with a captive audience!