Episode 42

AROYA Office Hours Episode Forty-Two: Challenges with Strains, Getting Started with AROYA, and Harvest Tips

Join Jason and Kaisha as we dive into your crop steering questions—live from AROYA HQ!

Did you get to catch all of the crop steering education we had on our last session of AROYA Office Hours? Never fear, we gotchu. This week we chatted with Jason and Kaisha about common challenges growers are having with certain strains, how to get started with AROYA, and harvest tips for this Croptober. And don't forget about our advice and guide to drying and curing product.

Enjoy the cannabis cultivation conversation we had and keep reading for E42's key takeaways and full video podcast!

Runoff percentages matter.

“I think right now in the industry most people do talk about runoff as a percentage of what's being fed as the irrigation. I personally would love to see us do it as an overall water content change just because that's what we look at when we are irrigating. Let's say we’re irrigating at 5% and want 1% runoff. So it'd be a lot easier to track because we're not having to do an additional multiplier to get what that runoff value is.” -- Jason Van Leuven

Pictures. Measurements. They all add up.

“Documentation is data.” -- Kaisha-Dyan McMillan

Keep an eye on the tri(chome).

“Usually your trichomes are going to be one of the easiest ways to tell if your plant is right.” -- Jason

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!

Transcript

Kaisha: All right. It's Thursday at 4:20 PM Eastern. That means it's time for office hours, aROYA's weekly session for cultivators to hear from the experts and talk to each other about what they're seeing in their grows. My name's Kaisha, and I'm here in Pullman, Washington co-moderating with my good friend Mandy. Mandy, how you doing?

Mandy: Kaisha, how's it going? Super excited to be here for episode 42. Yeah, I'm also here in Pullman, just in a different room. We got sound going on in a bunch of different rooms. We're also going live over on YouTube. So I'll be monitoring for your questions over there. Don't be afraid to go ahead and send those over.

Mandy: Make sure you're following us on Instagram and TikTok. I'm here to remind you. To but you guys know how we do it. Let's go ahead and get to those crops during questions that we got 

Kaisha: this week. Back to you, Kaisha. Awesome. Thank you Mandy. Yeah, if you have any questions here, you're live with us, be sure to drop 'em in the chat at any time.

Kaisha: If your questions pick, we'll go ahead and ask for you and then also drop your email address in the chat to be entered into a drawing for some swag. Jason. Hey, how are you? Great. It's so weird to be able to just like turn to you. I'm gonna have to consciously do that. Are you ready for our first question?

Jason: Sure. 

Kaisha: I love this question cuz it's a really good overview for us to start with at Pen Bugs wrote in, this is from Instagram, they wanna know, does 25% runoff mean 25% of what's going in? Can you explain runoff properly for us, please? 

Jason: Yeah. So I guess. Where I wanna start is, you know, what is properly. I think right now in the industry, most people do talk about runoff as a percentage of what's being fed as the irrigation.

Jason: I personally would love to see us do it as an overall water content. Change just because that's what we look at when we are irrigating. You know, say, you know, we're gonna irrigate 5% and we want 1% runoff, so it'd be a lot easier to track because we're not having to do an additional multiplier to get what that runoff value is.

Jason: So pretty much. Everything which you're reading of, and if it is up at 25%, also gonna guarantee you that's in relationship to the size of the feed. So do keep that in mind. I have always wanted to kind of just write up a document and talk about why it would be nice if we can standardize this in the industry.

Jason: Obviously some things have made great movement, like looking at EC rather than PPM of. Nutrients. So, at some point we just all need to get together as members that are using this information and say, This is why we wanna do it this way. Maybe we're used to doing it a different way, but what helps us on a daily basis, make easier decisions, make that more transparent as far as how it relates to our plants.

Kaisha: Yeah. Getting in some standards. So we can do our business and get that profitability in there. So, yeah. Love that. All right, I'm gonna keep it moving. And Loci Turner wrote in on Instagram, submitted two questions this week. Really good one. So I'll start with this first one here. Why don't you begin P one before the plant begins to transpire, is it to do with root pressure and guttation?

Jason: You know, we don't see guttation a lot and I doubt we would see it in the morning. Specifically. The reason that we do start is just to allow the plant to get up to transpiration so that it's pulling as hard as it can when we do give it water. It works is one good reason. You know, if you do start a little bit earlier, we're probably not gonna see any detrimental effects to the plants.

Jason: But we may not be able to achieve quite as fast of growth rate as we would if we do irrigate just after transpiration begins. So, some of the studies that I've seen with cannabis talks about full transpiration you know, full photosynthesis taken about 45 minutes to turn on or turn. So after lights come on, say, you know, where plant is ramping up transpiration rates that synthetic growth rate that it's getting and up to say 45 minutes before cannabis is fully active.

Kaisha: I have a silly question. Maybe , what is guttation? I've never heard of that term before 

Jason: Guttation is when it actually water comes out of the cell walls because they can't hold that much. So rather than being transpired through the stomate it's over pressured in the cell walls and actually exits.

Kaisha: I love science just through the, through this membrane. Amazing. Thank you. Learning something every episode. Excellent. Okay. Let me get into the second question that Loci sent us. When growing a strain for the first time, what parameters do you look for in P three? EC spikes in generative, vegetative and ripening.

Jason: Well, obviously if we are running a certain strain for the first time, then I like to kind of be a little bit more abstract when I'm understanding how the plant's growing. Think about, all right, what are the plants that we crossed in order to get this new strain? What is the physical output of the strain?

Jason: So we've been able to see it grow to flower from who we purchased it from per se. Then, you know, we might get some ideas on what to expect and how to dial in those parameters. Obviously if it's also the first time it's like, Hey, is this we're trying to evaluate? Is this the type of strain that we want to run?

Jason: So you do wanna get. Kind of in the right path to being extremely productive. So talk to who you got the clone from and see if they have any recommendations just to kind of help you get started in the right path. As far as getting into the question specifically with P three or dry back, as I usually, typically refer that phase to is phase three, that FA phase as well, is what I meant to say.

Jason: EC spikes, I probably wouldn't get too concerned, especially if it's the, you know, first time I've run it for most cultivars during, you know, a hard generative push where we're say 22 hours of Of dry back outside of that two hour irrigation window per se. Then we'll see ECS in the 1215, maybe a little bit higher, and really what we're watching for there is that our EC spikes don't last too long, and that we have regular enough irrigations that we're not gonna miss a day's irrigation, right?

Jason: So as long as. That that EC spike doesn't happen for too long, that would really be the only concern of those things getting too high up. Best things as you can do. First time you run a strain document, maybe even more than you, you ever would with strands that you run lots of times.

Jason: This is simply just to get you as. Familiarized with the day to day growth rates when you need to start doing your flip planning. So, you know, when we come outta flower, I always like to look at plant height especially, and maybe when we go from generative back to vegetative bulking, then we wanna have our plant height there as well, so we understand here's our choke points at when we're trying to control the plant and optimize how much volume it's taken in our room.

Kaisha: Documentation is data. 

Jason: Yeah. Yeah, my, my favorite way is obviously pictures. Yeah. I can capture tons of information and yeah, it is nice to take me underwritings, like plant height directly in the system so that you can chart 'em. But you know, at the very least when you're taking a picture, have a yard stick tape to your your trellis pole in the background. That way you can get at least some type of idea if you don't have time to document, you know, every other day, plant height or every other, every three day plant height. 

Kaisha: Awesome. Yes. Excellent. All right. We've gotten a write in Mandy, What do we have going on over there?

Mandy: Yeah. The questions are rolling in. So yeah, from Six Millimeter Beast they wrote in, what does the little triangle next to the battery icon mean? I think that they're meaning in the app, in the AROYA app. 

Jason: I, let me look at it specifically just so I can jog my memory. I think it's some type of yield or warning sign, if you will. So, I'm guessing that's on the dashboard, unless you're talking about the signal triangle. I guess I could share my screen here if that made things easier, but maybe they just wanna send a screenshot into our support team and have that selected and we'll jump right on 

Kaisha: it. Yeah, excellent. Get us a screenshot so we can get you some direct customer service over there.

Mandy: Cool. Cool, cool. Great. Well, yeah, we'll do that. And back to you, Kaisha. 

Kaisha: Thank you, Mandy. All right. King Green Beast wrote in, why do the majority of consumers say finished product comes out better in Coco versus Rockwool? Any thoughts on that?

Jason: I mean, I know, I think we dropped on this a little bit last week. Probably because some of the product that they're getting out of Rockwool wasn't grown as, as well as some of the coco's, more forgiving. And you know, we talk about this being, you know, Rockwool's kind of like the Ferrari of growing medias where it's gonna get you.

Jason: Some pretty awesome performance, but it's gotta be taken care of very well. You know, if you hit a curb on the way, Rockwool's not gonna recover as easy. So some of my coco would be more like what we consider a Jeep. It's going to not be nearly as picky. If we miss irrigation, it's gonna saturate better.

Jason: If we. Don't keep it above that low water content. It does have some amount of cec, so if we make some mistakes with nutrient mixing, then it's gonna buffer that out better than Rockwool. So, you know, my guess there would just simply be that. Possibly some of the product they're getting from walk.

Jason: Rockwool growers, some of those growers might be better off with coco. Now that being said, from my personal experience I can't necessarily tell a quality difference from the Rockwool growers who are. Addressing, you know, performance concerns. So if they're able to keep a very tight ship as far as environment irrigation and nutrient factors, they're gonna produce a really high quality product as well as something that like coco.

Jason: So, and typically you can produce actually a little bit more out of Rockwool if you are pushing it really hard with a very well controlled system. So. Keep those things in mind. A lot of times we will talk to people when they're thinking about switching from go to Rockwool. Those concerns.

Jason: So, you know, take a look at your systems. Do you operate exactly as you expect to operate? And can we follow some of the crop steering irrigation parameters? Have we read the white papers from the manufacturers of that rock wall? All those types of things. So, and then again, obviously, you know, substrate ties is key. Make sure that you have the right amount of substrate volume for the size of plants that you're trying to. 

Kaisha: Awesome. Thank you for that. Jason. Just a reminder to our folks who are live, if you have any questions, now's your chance to get some answers from the expert. Just one today, all right, we're gonna keep it moving. We got great questions from Instagram this week. All right. Sergio Pja wrote in, I always see people bragging about praying leaves. Is there such a thing as too much praying? 

Jason: In my opinion, no you don't. Usually what is going on with praying is that the plants are pretty happy. You know, you've got ample tucker pressure in the cells, and so rather than wilting, they are raw, nice and standing up.

Jason: And actually in a lot of times at nighttime, we'll see the plants relax if conditions. Really good. A lot of times they won't relax quite as much. Obviously we do want those plants not to always be push and hard, but in, in a pretty decent environment. If they are happy, they'll be slightly praying at night, if you will.

Jason: And so, you know, for my opinion, too much praying, no, your plan's just growing as fast as you can possibly get it to grow. 

Kaisha: I need to go my plants at night and see if they're praying. I've never done that before. My two girls, I have only have two. Wow. 

Jason: Yeah. So there's some really fun stuff you can do. I used to use security cameras for doing time lapse videos of my plants and check out how much they'd relax overnight.

Jason: And, you know, you can actually start to measure it and be like, All right, well, you know, some of our families or, you know, drop dropping three inches at night. And we're actually working on some products to kind of track that type of information. If you got an. Android cell phone. You can throw an app on there and use it as a time lapse camera.

Jason: Super fun. Thanks. And, you know, you can look at a whole growth cycle. Shoot that down into a minute or two minutes, and you get to see how fast your plants are growing on a day to day basis and kinda understand, all right, here's the times that thing really got crazy. Or, Hey, I can tell when I got an effective generative response from the plant because it stopped stretching. We can see it right in the video. So that's really fun things to do. Started reading up on diurnal behavior. That's diurnal. So basically day and night behaviors of plants, and that'll give you an idea of what the industry knows about the effects of light, how the plant responds.

Kaisha: This plant is endlessly fascinating. So good. I have an old Android Perfect for the job. Great. Oh, right. Keeping it moving. Kevin Green, Kevin's greens wrote in, If I'm adding humidity to the room and I have hard water that I'm not filtrating, will that calcium have an effect? 

Jason: Yes, it will. So, gonna address kind of two ways in the question here, because you're asking will it have an effect, I'm guessing you're talking about in relationship to the plants, right?

Jason: That's gonna like, depend definitely on the type of humidifier you have. If it's like an ultrasonic humidifier, it's probably not actually gonna get much calcium into the air. So probably not a huge impact on the plants. What it will have an impact on is your humidifiers themselves other types of humidifiers.

Jason: If it's just like a misting agent yeah, you're definitely gonna start to see a white powdery buildup on stuff. It can be hard on equipment, you know, we'll see it on our sensors every once in a while. So our recommendation always is to use RO in humidifiers. If you can't, or excuse me, in humidifiers.

Jason: If you have the opportunity to obviously if you don't, then try to do the absolute best job maintaining, cleaning your equipment at least every cycle. 

Kaisha: . Okay. Wonderful. All right, moving on. We are just powering through these questions, live attendees. We wanna hear from you. YouTube. What's up? How can we help you today? Let us know. All right. River City Grower, a good friend over there wrote in a great question. When using a soft wood meter after harvest, what are the water content parameters you shoot for in WC percent. 

Jason: Yeah. So this is this is a great question and I like it for a number of reasons. One is, obviously using a soft wood moisture meter is better than using nothing to document and test your equipment. We have a drying cannabis, the complete guide document right there at aroya.io/resources. I think our team might try and throw the. The link in here. And it's gonna talk about Exactly, you know what?

Jason: Moisture contents that you're trying to shoot for to one, prevent mold, so be lower than a certain amount so that you don't have product lost from bacterial growth. And then the other side of that is obviously trying to keep enough water content in there that we can maintain quality and weight on that product not lose terpenes, other volatiles to the air.

Jason: And so, For the specifics of that a lot of moisture, content sensors, very likely, like the one you're using, are gonna have some type of accuracy on say, plus or minus 1%, right? So if we're shooting for a water content of 11%, which is very realistic, right in the middle, trying to keep our quality up and make sure our product's safe that means an accuracy would be.

Jason: We would be between 10 and 12. Well, one of the tough things here when, why we like to use water activity rather than moisture content would be because if we are at say, 10%, you know, the meter shows 11, but we're. Off by 1% accuracy. Your product's gonna be down there at say .53 .55 water activity, and that's gonna be drier than you actually really need.

Jason: Conversely, if we see 11 on that meter, it's off by 1% and we come out at 12, we could be up in that say, 0.66 range, which adds actually above the 0.65 limit. So that's one of the struggles with some of the lower grade moisture content sensors. You know, if you are using obviously loss on drying type of moisture content, you can get a little bit more accurate than that, but now you're deteriorating the product.

Jason: You have a longer sample cycle, all those types of things. So obviously our recommendation is if you can, you know, get some access to Aqualab, it's a dew point sensor that is gonna give you an a water activity rating to 0.03 accuracy. And so that means that, you know, you can nail that moisture content at 11.16 to 11.28% to make sure that you're getting the best outta your product.

Jason: So, Yeah, dug into the details pretty deep there. If you wanna check out even more with some good graphics that explain it better than I can just verbally get get on that complete drying guide and read through the whole thing and see how it can help you improve your product. 

Kaisha: Awesome, Jason. Yeah, thanks for reminding our listeners, our attendees out there. We have a great resource hub on our website, aroya.io/resources, our complete drying guide. I link to it in the chat here but also head over to our resources page. We have so much going on over there, so much goodness.

Kaisha: Okay, baby got drybacks just dropped in a question. They wanna know what's the hardest strain to grow in your personal experience. 

Jason: Oh, well, it's been a while since I was growing a lot of unique strains. We had a, let's see, was we, Our sunset sherbert was actually kind of picky. Ironically, you know, some of those sherbert cuts have been crossed and been extremely effective.

Jason: So that, that was one that was a little bit smaller. And then I think I had a candy jack that was definitely pickier than I could grow real well. 

Kaisha: So, are those sativa's? 

Jason: You know, I honestly couldn't tell you. 

Kaisha: I know they, they're all hybrids anyway, right? Everybody. I'm just curious. I was just wondering what the traits were and I wonder what made them so challenging.

Jason: I believe both of 'em were more indica leaning cuz they were typically short and bushy. From my experience, I've found that the heavier sativa, at least with the growing morphology that would indicate that it's more sativa, say stretcher, and longer. Typically those are a little bit less picky from my experience, and that they'll just eat it up. So, 

Kaisha: Oh, these magical plants. Wonderful. Oh, all right. We got in another live question here, just here for the memes 22. 22 wrote in. They wanna know what are the main ways AROYA helps increase the quality of my final product? I love that question. 

Jason: Yeah. So let's start at the very beginning and talk about the ways that it helps people stay consistent with their growing cycles. Obviously by documenting your harvest groups, you can take the ways that have produced a high quality product and replicate them. You've got enough data logged that you can understand. All right. When we fool with this variable a little bit, maybe we get higher yield, but less quality. So, Not, but with that variable.

Jason: So yeah, start, you know, starting in as early as clones, you can start documenting some information in the system. And then when you get into veg, we always encourage people to use water content sensors in their veg blocks as well. So say if you're in a four by four starter, Rockwool cube, get some TAs twelves in there, start getting an understanding of how fast your drybacks happen and how much faster they dry.

Jason: They happen as the plant gets bigger through veg. I was working with a client the other day that cut seven days off their veg time by using our system 

Kaisha: seven days. That's amazing. 

 Jason: I mean, that's that adds up quick. If we're running five and a half or six cycles a year, getting a whole week back means that we get another month and a half of of flowering out of those plants.

Jason: So very cool to hear that they basically just optimized the dry back rates of their plants to know when to irrigate. So that's that's definitely a huge factor. Obviously we've got the documentation factor throughout veg as well. Keeping your environment. On tabs, having a system that's monitoring if your environment is on tabs.

Jason: So I think those are all playing into consistency, which should be making sure that you are increasing the quality of your final product. You know, another ways. Listen to these shows, kind of take advantage of some of the knowledge that we've spent a lot of years and a ton of time interacting with researchers, clients to basically distill what has been successful.

Jason: So, you know, make sure you're dropping on these. Take advantage of our knowledge. Yeah, through flower, do some crop steering. That's definitely gonna help your quality. You make sure you are getting a timely bud set and optimizing you know, using osmotic potential and some differences day, night differentials, all those type of things that we talk about to get the biggest expression out of the plant, both physically and chemically.

 Jason: So, probably could go on forever. About how much we can help you achieve quality with the system. And obviously we're doing our best to keep implementing features in the system that allow you to use it easier to document other features of how your plant's growing and overall, if your job's easier and you get a little bit more time to spend with the plants you're going to be able to read 'em as well physically.

Jason: So, that's one of my favorite things about technological advancements was I went from being able to be in the grow for, you know, maybe an hour or two a week. To being able to be in the grow an hour or two a day at least taking pictures and trying to understand that the differences and strains that we could continue optimizing 'em.

Jason: So yeah, use, don't feel like it's slave to your technology. Use your technology to increase how much time you actually have to spend hands on with the plants. 

Kaisha: Yeah. And at the end of the day, you know, we're, we always talk about, we wanna make growers' lives easier, but you know, we're in a period where it's about profitability. You've got results that you have to account for, and this kind of, this data, all this extra information, really just helps you be able to do your job better and ultimately have better profitability. If you've got that consistency locked in, if you're able to shorten your production times, all of that. That's better for your company, better for your bottom line, right? 

Jason: Absolutely. 

Kaisha: Wonderful. All right. We just got a question in the chat here, and I'm gonna say your name wrong, but gta, do you wanna unmute yourself and go ahead and ask it, or should I ask for you?

Kaisha: All right. I'll go ahead and ask. Actually, they wanna know, they're looking to set up a meeting with the AROYA team to figure out how we can take advantage of AROYA. So what's the process generally for anybody who's interested in sitting a meeting with us?

Jason: Yeah, so the best way to get at meeting as quick as possible would be jump on aroya.Io and top right in the system there's gonna be a get started and. Type in your email, press get started and it's gonna ask you to sign up for a meeting with our sales team and why this is easiest for us? Cause we can ask questions so that when we jump on the meeting, we know, you know, what some of your goals are, what facility type you are, all that information to help make sure that the face to face interaction on the video calls is.

Jason: Effective as possible and make the most of your time and our time, and get you guys an idea of how much it costs, what the set of processes are gonna be like once you do purchase and what you can expect as an outcome after you've begin successfully using the system. 

Kaisha: Yeah. Weta so much really appreciate you asking that question. That's so good. Good to walk that folks through the process here. And thank you for joining us today. It's great to have no folks. Mandy, looks like we got a live question in there. 

Mandy: Yeah, we did. We got a question from Canadian grower. They wrote in, they wanna know which countries do our sensors work in right now, and can we explain why they're not sold in some countries.

Jason: Yeah, great question. So right now the radio chip that we're using, it's has to be licensed by FCC here in the United States. And for some of the other countries, we haven't necessarily gone through the licensing to Legally release it in other countries. We're definitely working on making some changes to the radio and trying to get licensed cuz we'd love to start getting into Europe and some of the other countries where people are struggling to get our equipment but really would like to take advantage of it.

Jason: So our apologies, we are doing our best to make it available across the world, 

Kaisha: Global. But the information office hours is global. You can access us from anywhere. All of our resources on AROYA dot io, you can access us from anywhere and hit us up if you have any questions at any time. Because we can all learn from crop steering for sure.

**Kaisha:** Wonderful. Okay. So Jason we're just kind of hanging tight. Hey, live attendees, this is your chance. If you have any questions for Jason, you can ask him, answer 'em live. So drop that in the chat. And. Michael has a question. Michael, you wanna unmute? You want me to go ahead and ask for you?

Kaisha: I'm gonna go ahead and ask, Chime in if you have anything else. Yep. Poor signal. We get that. Okay. Michael wants to know what DLA do you prefer for veg flower, and how long do you take to transition to full intensity?  

Jason: Yeah, awesome question. Obviously, I always love talking about light. If you get me started on it, I usually go on a tangent after talking about light for a while, because it's 

Kaisha: your world, Jason. We're just living in it. 

Jason: It's one of my favorite aspects and where we're at with with cannabis and some of the LED technology that, that people are working on. And photo morphogenesis, all that stuff. Back to the question DLI do I prefer for veg and flower?

Jason: How long to transition to full intensity? So, let's start with flower. Usually by the time that I'm. You know, even a week into flower, I'd like to be at full intensity. So 45 is a really nice DLI to be at. Obviously, this can depend a little bit on what your spectrum is coming from. Your lights are they, LED, are the hps just because that can affect the rates of your plants, obviously for hitting the chlorophyll receptors at chlorophyll A and chlorophyll B.

Jason: Then the lights are gonna be a little better at getting the plant to grow, even at the same DLI from a sensor. So yeah, it, you know, if you can get up into that 45 range, usually that's a start of high performance. And if you've got sufficient CO2 supplementation, sometimes you go a little bit higher.

Jason: Different strains, you're gonna accept those higher parameters, slightly different as well. So obviously making sure you're documenting how they how they respond to that. For veg, I like w at a pretty high intensity. So, you know, maybe going from somewhere like say, you know, 15 For DLI when you start with, and maybe up to say 30 maybe even more depending on how big you, you veg those plants out.

Jason: And probably, you know, the, one of the most important things that I like to talk about which historically has been under controversy in that, is when we go from our 18/6 light cycle to our 12/12. Some people are like, Oh, we're going through transplant stress and you know, we need to baby these into light intensity.

Jason: Well, when we break down the science of it, and cannabis isn't actually a very picky plant it's gonna eat up a lot of light if we can get it to it. And so if we're under an 18/6 light cycle, we we have 18 hours that it's accumulating energy, right? So our DLI is our intensity x by our duration, right?

Jason: So if we've got an intensity of say, 500 micromoles and we're at 18 hours, when we transition to a 12 hour timeframe, we're gonna have a smaller DLI unless we up the intensity. What the plant is feeling is that it's actually lost some of the amount of energy that it gets to continue growing. So rather than babying the lights when we transfer from veg to flower and looking at the intensity and be like, Hey, we need to match the intensity.

Jason: Well, we actually really need to match the DLI, meaning that we need to up our intensity by about 33%. That's how many less hours that we're getting when we switch from 18/6 to 12/12. So we need to make sure that we make that up in the 12 hours that the plants are getting light. So, you know, if you're hitting them with 500 micromoles at the end of veg in the 18/6 light cycle, then you need to up those to say what, 6 50, 700 at, you know, at least 33%. And so, I guess I didn't do that math perfectly in my head, but yeah, make sure that you are getting the same DLI when you come out of veg and start flower.

Jason: That's probably one of the things that helps a lot of people that aren't doing it. You know, next time I'll chat with them, be like, Hey, yeah, we're seeing explosive growth during that are root in and they can start their generative stacking, steering a little bit earlier. They have happier plants so.

Jason: Yeah, those are obviously really wide range rough numbers. I, what I would do is keep it up in the light intensity until you find the edge of success. These plants love the light. So obviously if they've got roots, it's not super likely that that you're gonna push 'em way too hard if you're within reason of light, light intensity.

 Jason: So, Yeah. You know, if in veg up it a little bit every few times, see how they respond. You know, and flower, maybe if you've got some some R and D rooms play with the spectrums and try and document what your lights specifically do. If you're from a reputable manufacturer, they're all gonna have a spectrum analysis available from the manufacturer on that light as well.

Jason: So keep that in mind. You know, if you're using a few different manufacturers in your facility, like I see a lot, don't necessarily assume that they're gonna affect the plant perfectly. The same with with that DLI. So, kind of just minute details, but hope that answers your question. 

Kaisha: Yeah. Michael, great question. Thank you so much for asking, and if there's anything else that you wanna know, please drop that in a chat. I have to say I Oh, here we go. What did he, Right here. Thank you. I like 34 veg and a transition to the 43 through 48 range when favorable conditions prevail. Gavita 1930s. 

Jason: Michael, you should be answering the questions here instead of me.

Kaisha: That's it all about that resource sharing. Thank you so much, Michael. Yeah, I was gonna say, you know, we're in Croptober. Very exciting. I'm not nearly as experienced with cultivation as the rest of y'all. Like I said, I have two plants left. Do you have any advice for me after I fly home? I'm really just trying to make sure I know when it's time to harvest.

Kaisha: Any advice for this? Little home growers doing it solo for the first time 

Jason: When to harvest? Yeah. Well if you're dependent on the seasons, then before they freeze would be a good time to do it. Yeah. If you're not too worried about the plants dying like I do in my garden about this time of year the strike homes.

Jason: So, Okay. Usually your trichomes are gonna be one of the easiest ways to tell if your plant is ready to harvest. You know, if you're doing something like a live live resin or some fresh frozen type of output , probably not for you. No, not for me. For other people you know, just before they search during cloudy or right as they're starting to turn cloudy, that's when you wanna harvest.

 Jason: If you are going to, to flower. That cloudiness is gonna begin to become amber. And you know, if you want sometimes little bit more flavor. You know, my favorite time is when we see about, say, 50 to 60% of those trichomes. Nice. In amber. Ah, okay. I like the white, the real clean white product.

Jason: I think there are some people out there that are, can prefer after the strike homes get a little bit more amber than that as well. Starts to see a little bit of red in there. You probably missed the ideal harvest time. 

Kaisha: Okay, then I've gone too far. Okay. I think I'm on track. Thank you for that. I do have an AROYA jewelers loop. I will be magnifying and looking at those trichomes. I'm very excited about that. But yeah, this is my first time doing it solo. And they look beautiful. 

Jason: And one of the things that I used to do I had a digital camera for our microscope at the cultivation facility. And I would take a picture and log the age for that cultivar as well. So when I started to see that trichome change colors, ideally would capture it before it even became cloudy, and then take a snapshot every day and we could say, Hey, you know, after we see some cloudiness in that, let's expect to be down in three days.

Jason: And then obviously if you do a really good job, then you know that exact timeline from. When you begin to plant, and that kind of comes into consistency. Hey, if we can just control all of these other variables, our production planning becomes so much easier because we're not having to shuffle some of our organization around, and we can make sure we've got our staff prepped our equipment, you know, supplies needed to take care of that product at the right timeline.

Jason: So, obviously if you're in a greenhouse, it takes some amount of years to get that all documented because of our cycle, spring to summer, to fall to winter. Sometimes those are gonna have unintended effects that you can't control. You know, talking about natural sunlight suggesting our spectrum even if we ha do have supplementation.

Jason: So, yeah indoors gonna make it a little bit more repeatable. But I always enjoy. Challenge of greenhouses too. 

Kaisha: I love that. Considerations for Croptober. lucky for me. I am my only customer, but for the rest of you that's really great. Run down on just this time of year. It's just so exciting for me anyway. All right. Well I think that closes out the session today. We don't have any more live questions in, so you guys are all covered. We appreciate y'all for joining. Any final words before we sign off, Jason? 

Jason: No good luck getting all the product down for you outdoor growers and probably indoor growers, keep listening in, keep asking us questions. Y'all, our audience is the ones that makes this show work. So that's it. Keep keep participating if you can. 

Kaisha: That's it. Thank you Jason, for yet another great conversation to my co moderator. Mandy, thank you so much for that.

Kaisha: Thank you all for joining us for this week's AROYA Office Hours. We do this every Thursday, and the best way to get answers from the experts is to join us live. If you have any questions about AROYA, feel free to book a demo. Our experts will talk you through how it can be used to improve your cultivation production process.

Kaisha: But as always, if there's a topic you'd like us to cover in a future episode of Office Hours posted in the chat, send us an email at support.aroya@metergroup.com. Or send us a DM over Instagram. We do love to hear from you. And like Jason said, we are here for you. We record every session. We'll email everyone in attendance and link to the video from today's conversation.

Kaisha: It'll also be on the AROYA YouTube channel. Be sure to like, subscribe and share while you're there. And if you find these conversations helpful, please do spread the word. Thank you so much Jason, and thanks everybody. We'll see you next week. See 

Jason: y'all. Bye.

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