Harvest Climate, Maximizing Production, and Garden Consistency, with Dr. Coco

Episode Links:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3JrWT8qkoHsosZKo56M12A
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkpjSp7GXY4&ab_channel=JordanRiver
iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/harvest-climate-maximizing-production-and-garden/id1077793493?i=1000609395387

Jordan River 0:00
Huge sale at thefoop.com starts 4/20 buy two get one free everything sitewide at thefoop.com on 4/20. You’ll hear about it later in this episode. Greetings cultivators from around the world. Jordan River here back with more GrowCast. Consistency is key. Today we have Dr. Coco on the line. So excited to have Dr. Coco back on the show. And today we’re going to be covering a couple of things that we’ve discussed on the show before and then some more we’re digging in a little bit deeper on this recap. We’re talking about keeping climate controlled. We’re talking about moving your plants we’re talking about Dr. Coco’s grow, and a lot more. I know you’re gonna love today’s episode. Before we jump into it though, shout out to Sustainable Village. Blumats are on sale code GROWCAST for 10% off. The best automated watering system you can find. Turn your living soil grow into an automated grow. Go to sustainablevillage.com and use code GROWCAST for 10% off your Blumat watering system only through April. This code is a limited time. You guys know I love the Blumat system. I’m going to get my bed set up again, I’m so excited. This is the watering system that detects pressure automatically. No pumps required you can gravity feed it. No funny drip emitters or anything like that. Just these brilliant little carrots that will turn your soil grow into an automated grow. Check it out sustainablevillage.com. Give them a call if you need a quote or a setup designed for your growth specifically. They do amazing work they won’t sell you anything you don’t need and they will hook you up code GROWCAST for 10% off. Get that automation going now, folks. You will not regret it. You’ll thank me later. sustainablevillage.com code GROWCAST. Go grab those moisture meters and those Blumat watering systems while you can. Okay everyone let’s get into it with Dr. Coco. Thank you for listening and enjoy the show.

Hello podcast listeners, you are now listening to GrowCast. I’m your host Jordan River and I want to thank you for tuning in yet again today. Before we get started as always, I urge you to share this show, tell someone about GrowCast, hit the little send icon on your podcast player and share this episode. Everybody loves an episode of Dr. Coco. Turn someone on the growing you know what to do and of course see everything we are doing at growcastpodcast.com/action. There you can find the seeds, the membership and the classes and all the fun stuff we do. Today we have back on the line as I mentioned my good friend Dr. Coco. Final tablelist at poker tournaments around the SoCal area. And in fine maker of pizza. Oh yeah, he’s also a wonderful cultivator. What’s up Dr. Coco? How’s it going, man?

Dr. Coco 2:35
How’s it go? What did you just? That’s the best introduction so far, man. I like that, my poker skills and my pizza skills, up there in front of the growing.

Jordan River 2:45
Well, you know, you grow pretty good, too. I’m just playing around, the members know what we’re talking about. We did take a trip down to SoCal, me and producer J. Dr. Coco was an awesome host. He does make his own dough and pizza. It was delicious. And then we play a poker tournament that all three of his final table and Producer J takes down. So I just want to one more time. Thank you for that awesome trip, Dr. Cocoa. That was just..

Dr. Coco 3:07
That was a lot of fun. So I look forward to you guys coming back.

Jordan River 3:12
Totally bizarre that we were all sitting in the same final table. So so yeah,

Dr. Coco 3:16
I mean, I’m J won. So our man J ever taken down the grand prize in the poker tournament, wasn’t just like the three of us playing either. There was like, you know, a bunch of other public people there.

Jordan River 3:27
So that’s right. Yeah, it was so fun, man. So good times. Good times, listeners. [Indeed] I do appreciate Dr. Coco coming on the show, talking about cultivation. I get questions all the time about our episodes, man.

Dr. Coco 3:38
That’s awesome. I love it. I love your audience. I love your community. You know, jumping in your Wednesday show and chatting with your people there. Always got great questions and sort of eager participants and all of this.

Jordan River 3:52
Thank you, man. I appreciate it, man. So we’re kind of following up today on questions that I have received around stuff we’ve talked about, kind of just like drilling down deeper into subjects that we’ve touched on in previous episodes. But before we get into that list, I want to talk to you about what you’ve been doing, man? You’re working on some big projects down in the southeast, right? You talked to us last time a little bit about this large scale production facility. How is that going? Where are you at with that?

Dr. Coco 4:18
They’re finally growing now, like any new sort of cultivation facility that comes online, you know, you hit a lot of sort of hurdles and licensing issues and construction issues and plant-based issues and climate issues and all of that. So, you know, they’ve been growing moms since June with the expectation at some point that we would be you know, cutting clones and flowering plants in like, August or September, got pushed to November finally, you know, I went out there and help load the first rooms, room number one, with plants with clones that bred the beginning of January. So those plants are now you know, mid bloom, the other rooms are getting loaded. And it just been, you know, interesting, this is a grow that I’ve been working on for over a year now, you know, in the planning and thinking about plant count and plant density, and you know, all of these issues, it’s all coming to life now, you know, able to actually see, you know, we ran, I designed this guy with a really high density of plants, really short veg time, because there’s no plant count issues there. In the first room, you know, things were getting settled and veggies a little bit too long, probably those plants now denser than we would want, when so kind of making adjustments there and thinking through about how to, how to sort of refine that for the future rooms.

Jordan River 5:56
Even shorter veg time.

Dr. Coco 5:58
Shorter veg time and potentially, also potentially lowering the plant count a little bit. We’re only doing a 14 day veg from cloner to flip, [Jeez!] you know, but the plants were were significantly too big. So reducing that veg, and there’s only so much you can you can reduce there. The place gonna grow during the bowl. You know what I mean? [Yeah, that that initial two weeks], but it gives us a little bit more flexibility to had some issues with the moms. And now maybe we could get away with you know, taking a few fewer clones and, and veggie still for two weeks are taking the same number of clones and reducing the veg time and just seeing how, because they’re also growing eight different strains. So seeing how those eight different strains are sort of growing differently. No, it’s been, it’s been a very interesting process, I’ve been really relieved and sort of satisfied with how a lot of it has turned out and how well certain aspects of that have gone. But of course, there’s always things to sort of refine and to fine tune in that process. So..

Jordan River 7:04
Well I want to jump around because this question is lower on the list. But here we are, I want to talk about this short veggie time man, because that was a subject that I got a lot of feedback on. Okay, one of the one of the biggest beginner questions that I hear out there is, how much is this plant going to yield? How much is this tent going to yield? And I always say the same thing, right, which is, the more plants you have, the less veg time you need to fill out that canopy. And you should be thinking of it in terms of grams per square foot really, is how you can kind of approach that. And that makes sense.

Dr. Coco 7:38
Grams per square foot is absolutely how we calculate harvest potential. Grams per square foot, assuming you have adequate lighting, you can also do, you know, grams per light, so grams per lighting bulb. So when we calculate based on lighting, we do it that way. When we calculate based on area, basically assumes that you have full lighting, and you can do it that way. But yeah, we never when we’re rounding numbers like that in terms of sort of consulting for commercial cannabis farms. You never think really about return for plant. Now some growers still think that way. But like you can’t really project because different plants, I mean, different sizes really makes a big difference.

Depends on how long you vet like if they only have one plant in the room, I’ll have to say no depends on how long you veg this thing. It’s about that canopy size, and then it makes sense it clicks in their head. And when you can shave off two weeks out of the veg time. I mean, again, emphasizing this point time is money. I don’t care if you’re a home grower or especially if you’re a commercial cultivator, you know, 14 days that you shave off, that adds up to a whole extra run.

You think you’ve got it in terms of percentages, like just ours, we’re on a 10 week run in the flower rooms. So we don’t have a separate veg space. Plants go from cloner and the flower room and they stay there. If they veg for two weeks, then it’s a total of a 10 week time period in that room, right, eight weeks of 1212. And then the two weeks of veg leading up to that. If we take a week off that veg, that’s 10%. [Right.] I mean, that’s 10% of the time reduction. What’s a significant savings. [Exactly.] Okay, you’ve cut your production costs by 10% because your production costs don’t really relate to the number of plants, they relate to the amount of time those plants are in that room. [So true.] You increase the turnover time, or you can create sort of more flexibility in your schedule. And there’s tremendous sort of advantages there. So that reduction in the veg time is huge. You can’t really reduce the flower time, meaning you can grow different strains or whatever but most most commercial operators to be honest grow eight week strains they don’t grow oh nine or 10 weeks strains, or if they do they only grow them for eight weeks in flower. But you know, you don’t generally unable to shave time off of that much more.

Jordan River 10:11
Yeah, just by adding more plants. That it’d be really nice if they went faster if they had more buddies around them.

Dr. Coco 10:16
Right. To a certain extent, if you’re under lit, and you then go to fully lit, you can sort of speed that up, but only to a point, right. I mean, to eight weeks, basically. And most drains need that eight weeks to fully mature their flowers. So where you can save time is that, you know, I talked to growers that veg for two months, I talked to growers the veg for longer than two months. And they think that they’re they’re sort of growing efficiently. But you’re not. I mean, if you’re vegging for two months, in an indoor grow, you’re not growing efficiently, just straight up period. You could be, you know, improving your efficiency by reducing your veg time to harvest.

Jordan River 10:59
Yeah, they like the bigger plants, and they like the bigger yields. And I will say the one wrench that it gets thrown in here is plant count, right?

Dr. Coco 11:06
Well, yeah, plant count, definitely. So I consult with a big commercial farm in Michigan, and they veg for four weeks, and they need to grow plants that will occupy a little over three square feet, because their plants count limited. That’s so yeah. And it makes them grow in an inefficient way.

Jordan River 11:24
It’s weird that someone would say you have to grow this way. And it results in you growing three square foot plants just to follow the regulate for no other reason than to follow the regulations. That’s bizarre.

Dr. Coco 11:34
Right. And in the state where we don’t have a plant count minimum, our plants aren’t even one square foot.

Jordan River 11:39
Okay, well, that’s what I want to talk about.

Dr. Coco 11:41
That’s the debate now. Should we go to up to giving them one square foot. At this point, they’re getting about two thirds of a square foot.

Jordan River 11:47
That’s exactly what I want to talk about, Coco. Is there a point of diminishing returns here? So let’s put plant counts aside for a second. And the idea is that the more plants you have, the less time you need to veg and fill that canopy. Well, I know you said if I remember correctly, you were in one gallon pots at a certain point. Is there a point of diminishing returns? Why are we planting in four inch pots? You know, I’m saying?

Dr. Coco 12:07
Well, because the plant like a healthy cannabis plant, no matter how small it is, say you just got a healthy rooted clone. Or like a healthy seedling with three nodes on it basically, may flip either those plants to flower and keep them healthy, especially in cocoa under high frequency fertigation. And they’re going to be 24 to 36 inches tall. If you don’t talk them. [Sure.] And they just are. There’s it’s not, it’s not easy, you have to you have to grow in sort of in an inferior way to do something, like starve the plants or like torture the plants or something and you grow smaller plants than that, in sort of following my style of..

Jordan River 12:52
It’s gonna get a certain size.

Dr. Coco 12:54
It’s gonna get a certain size. Yeah. And that’s, that’s the lower limit. And I think we’re pretty close to it. 2/3 of a square foot for plant.

Jordan River 13:07
So precise. In a one gallon, was that right about that? You’re in one gallon weed.

Dr. Coco 13:10
In a one gallon pot. Yeah. [Wow.] In a nominal one gallon pot, be aware that, you know, most pots aren’t truly there their way, right. And those are actually air pots or air pot equivalents. So they’re a little bit smaller than a true gallon, but they’re, they’re considered the one gallon sort of size for that, you know, you’re only giving the plant like, a little over eight to nine inches, like on the side, right? Like in an area, if you’re thinking about this square, it’s a square, that’s like eight to nine inches on the side. We’re gonna go basically from cloner to flip in a week. I think now is what you know, it looks like two weeks was too long, two weeks to plan for grown too big. So the end of that point, plants are pretty small. You’ll gonna have like one big Cola, maybe one secondary branch that has, you know, is notably a secondary branch. Maybe two, but most plants, you know, basically just one cola.

Jordan River 14:12
That Wow! So you just have the self supporting kind of chunky field of one gallon colas?

Dr. Coco 14:19
Yeah, that’s been one of the interesting things about watching our actual strains grow out because some of them grow pretty lanky and taller and whatever. And, you know, you may need to have a scrog net or rather a trellis net set up on them. But yeah, you know, you go from the cloner to flipping really fast if you just have enough plants. It basically, what I was saying, I’m like, okay, as soon as these plants start growing, we need to flip because when you transplant them from the cloner into the cocoa with, you know, be a little grumpy and have to kind of get their feet about and get their wits about them. And that takes a few days, but then they’ll start, you know, noticeably growing again, and it’s like okay, If you’re growing that many plants, then you’re gonna have to flip. They have tried to go denser than that. I mean, I don’t think that this is sort of the actual limit on density. But I think that there are diminishing returns, that you’re not giving your plants enough space to become plants.

Jordan River 15:16
And at that point, you’re also at a certain point, you’re going to have a lot of labor intensive, like if you get down to the foreground, but you got to now seed planting is like a whole fucking thing, you know, getting those clones transplanted, like the labor shifts to. It’s interesting to think about, man, so very, very good.

Dr. Coco 15:30
Yeah. No, well, there’s that’s definitely thought of it. And if you were hand watering, or doing anything like that, we’d never said this is something early on, I kind of thought through about this is you want to reduce the labor costs, plant training is a lot of labor. So growing little plants that don’t need to be topped and trained and tied up and tied down and over and all of that. So that side of it supposed to be sort of less labor, the more labor side of it is it to grow more moms, have more cloning capacity to have, you know, a bigger cloner. And that they call it transplant day where the plants go from the cloner into the pots. So a lot of work to do. I had the privilege of sort of being there doing it the first time with with that grow. And yeah, it was, it was fun, but there’s a lot of work to do. It’s plant based work. I mean, it’s, you know, it’s what we all do for fun.

I’m excited to see how this thing goes, man. And it sounds like that one gallon is the sweet spot with that high frequency cocoa fertigation, cutting down the veg times two a week. I love it, man.

And load that up. So the equivalent there, you know, in like your four by four tent would be putting like 25 plants. [Yeah, that is quite a bit] In a four by four tent.

Jordan River 16:58
Well, wait, I guess not really. I mean, you think about three gallons their square foot, so you could pack in 16. It’s not that unreasonable.

Dr. Coco 17:07
No, I mean, there’s a space between the pots if that’s what you’re curious about the pots aren’t touching each other by

Jordan River 17:12
Just thinking about how many you could pack in of like, you know, a three gallon.

Dr. Coco 17:16
Plants won’t be touching each other. Yeah, you know, after not too long. But yeah, now compare that to the grow I was talking about that I consult for in Michigan, where they have to veg for four weeks, they have a dedicated veg room. And it’s actually a two zone veg room. Because you have plants in the first two weeks of veg and you have plants in the second two weeks in veg in that room. Because they’re also on a two week rotation. So that is supporting four flower rooms that are on eight week flowering cycles. So and there they have a veg space that’s as big as the flowering space is because it’s got two zones in it basically, right. And, you know, if they didn’t have a plant count. That veg room, I would have designed that room as an as a fifth flower room.

Jordan River 18:21
Right. And that changes the production entirely.

Dr. Coco 18:24
It would have changed, they’d have five flower rooms running in a rotation instead of four. And, you know, be producing sort of better, especially for the amount of energy that they were running in that in that grow facility. So yeah, that is not as efficient if you have to sort of dedicate space time energy to just vegetative growth, clocks just taking on that. And if you’re looking to improve the efficiency, if you’re looking to reduce your environmental impact as an indoor grower, the number one thing you can do is shorten your veg time. [I love it.] Get as much harvest out of a shorter grow. Because it’s the amount of time we’re running these tents. It’s the amount of time we’re running our lights and our Austin, if you’re yawning, you know D hues or ACS or any of that other stuff. It’s the amount of time all that equipment that’s got to go on. So if you’re trying to make like the environmentally responsible choice, don’t choose a style of growing that leads to longer veg periods. This is indoor horticulture. And our impact comes from the fact that we’re doing all of these things indoors.

Jordan River 19:43
Right. Anyone can benefit from that right? I encourage any waste anyone wants to garden. I do agree that that is this is how you become more efficient and get a better yield. People think of it backwards. How do I get bigger buds at the end. But you’re saying get the same amount of buds get In the last time, it’s a really, really important mind state.

Dr. Coco 20:03
Exactly. Because like you started this thing, you know, it’s about the canopy size, right? So if I got just my little two by four tent here, and I’m thinking about how to fill my little two by four tent, typically, because I like, you know, spending time with my plants, I like training out the plants, I like splitting the apical dominance and all of that, and it’s a little bit easier to only have like, say, two plants, and the two by four tent. I mean, each plant needs to be four square feet, right? By the time it fully occupies that. And I ended up veggie being, you know, four, or five, sometimes a little over five weeks, which still might sound fast to people. Remember, I’ve got this style of growing that’s all about sort of growing really fast to reduce the veg time. If I went to four plants, if I went to six plants, five and eight plants in there, and I’m thinking about doing this, I’m thinking about Chitwan, I just grow eight plants. And like, you know, if I did eight plants, since eight square feet, I’d be able to flip them in two weeks from seed gets wet to 1212, in two weeks have a full canopy and that, that shaves three, you know, maybe three plus weeks off of my grow. And even if I’ve got to buy more pots, or you know, get more drippers, or sort of set up something on the technical side on that side of it, saving those three weeks is a huge, huge savings.

Jordan River 21:32
Well, is there anything other than adding more plants and having like an optimal fertigation strategy? Is there anything else we can do to shave that veg time? I mean, that’s basically it right?

Dr. Coco 21:43
Dial everybody. Good question. Oh, everything. And yeah, make sure your lights appropriate, make sure your climates appropriate, make sure that your fertilization, your watering, and all those things are on point. But yeah, there’s definitely faster and slower ways to grow plants. And frankly, this is why I love cocoa so much is cocoa is really good at holding the root zone conditions optimally, so that the plants don’t ever sort of slow down. If you’re staying on top of your fertigation, plants never slow down because the sort of sub optimal root zone conditions,.

Jordan River 22:21
Don’t let them skip a beat.

Dr. Coco 22:22
And they don’t skip a beat man. I mean, growers, if you really like the first time you go to a high frequency fertigation through the bolt, through that quote unquote flowering stretch. If you got your game dialed in, the plants grow so fast it freaks you out.

Jordan River 22:37
That’s what I like to see, man.

Dr. Coco 22:38
Ya I know, once you once you’ve done it once, and you’re like looking forward to it the next time you’re ready for it. But I mean, the first time people like they literally freak out sort of doing that. So yeah, there’s the keeping your plants healthy, happy, light dialed in, climate dialed in, fertilization, watering, all of that dialed in.

Jordan River 22:59
And then leave them alone, right?

Dr. Coco 23:01
Yeah, leaving your plants alone. This is one of the other questions right about document not moving the plants.

Jordan River 23:07
Well, that’s, that’s the second side of that equation, right? So you get the you get the tent, humidity and temperature perfect. And the automated watering system is taking care of your fertigation or what have you. Now your job is to and again, like, I am guilty of this, I’m never going to stop f***ing with my plants and enjoying time next to my plants. And I know that I’ll probably lose a little bit of growth rate, but I’m willing to make that sacrifice. But if I wanted maximum growth rate, your job is to not open that tent, right.

Dr. Coco 23:32
Yeah, you know, it does kind of depend. I mean, there are trade offs. So to a certain extent, opening the den and being with the plants, you’re breathing on him, you’re giving them good carbon dioxide, you’re making sure nothing’s going on right. You know, I really do believe that the old saying about, you know, the best fertilizers, the footsteps of the farmer. So you know, being present with your plans is important. I don’t really advocate although I do believe in remote sensing does I have a camera in my tent, right. Where I can like, look at my plants without..

Jordan River 24:06
That’s the difference. Yeah, that’s the difference is being with the plants scouting, things like that. That’s always good. But when you just need to look, I mean, listen, they make these window ports for a reason. Now. [Yeah.] For some reason, that’s not good enough for me, I have to get in there and route around or something. I don’t know. It’s just it’s just you know what I do, but, but I noticed that when I leave town, and Mrs. River takes care of the plants, and she only opens that tent to water it and then she closes it. And when I when I come back from town, I noticed that that’s the fastest growth rate that I have that veg cycle. I noticed that every time.

Dr. Coco 24:06
A few things like yeah, if you leave the tent door open for too long, all it’s harder to keep the climate they’re not getting as much light because the light is spilling out into the room and warms me and like a lizard. The climate swings are really the most dramatic thing though. So it’s the opening and closing of the tent that you got to realize inside the tent, usually the climate is different than outside the time in both humidity and temperature. And so when you open that door, it changes rapidly inside the tent. Oftentimes that temperature drops, if it’s like cooler in your room, and it’s hotter in the tent, the temperature drops, and the relative humidity drops. And the plants gonna have to adjust to that, and it’s not going to kill the plant, you’re not going to notice a bunch of sort of plant suffering symptoms. But the plant is going to spend some time and energy over the course of the next hour or two, making adjustments that change in climate that happened. And those adjustments mean that it’s not going to be growing as efficiently.

Jordan River 24:41
Using the currency that it could have spent other places, whether that’s, you know, growth and veg or terpene production, for instance. And that’s where I want to kind of lead into that, which is I got a really interesting comment, somebody was given pushback, we just did an episode on things to avoid in your grow. And one of the things was messing with your plants too much. And this person said, you know, I don’t think that moving your seedlings around is going to make much of a difference. And I thought to myself, first of all, I said, we’re going to do a deep dive into exactly why you shouldn’t reposition your plants. But does the stage matter? Right, like what when would be the worst time to interrupt that? interrupt that cycle? A seedling I feel like surface area. Okay, so you think that basically the younger it is, the more resilient it is to these types of changes.

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So you think that basically the younger it is, the more resilient it is to these types of changes?

Dr. Coco 27:59
Absolutely try to do everything basically to your plants before the end of the bolt. While they’re still vegetatively growing, right? Yeah, they it’s much easier to recover from injury, it’s much easier to sort of shift around and reallocate energy for the plant. And generally, the consequences of it are not going to be as severe. [Wow.] After the bolt, like when the plants are putting most of their energy into developing and growing their flowers. If you cost them energy doing something else, then they’re not going to grow their flowers as much.

Jordan River 28:38
Right. So that’s when it’s really detrimental. It’s not just slowing you down in your veg rate, you’re literally getting less terpene production because it’s expending some sort of energy currency like ATP or something, where it could have spent a shit that you want it to do that the cannabinoid production and the factory, there’s the trichrome head.

Dr. Coco 28:56
100% correct. There’s a limited amount of energy that the plant is able to harness from the light. And like, I’m also sort of really sensitive that’s like, how much light can we give the plants. How much energy can we give the plants. And we’re limited in time, right? We got like the aforementioned eight weeks, and we got 12 hours a day. And then we got to PPFD limit, right. And so we’ve really and in the last few years, it’s been interesting to see how the technology has allowed us to push those limits right to the edge. Now you get the PPFD limit, like all the way across your tent, you know from corner to corner, basically and run the lights right at that level, but that’s the limit, right? You got eight weeks at 12 hours at that PPFD limit. That’s the energy you can deliver to the plant. And now, what’s it going to do with that energy. If you keep the plants happy and stable, they’ll put as much energy as they can into growing big, beautiful flowers and producing cannabinoids. If you’re stressing the plant out, then some portion of that limited amount of energy is going to be devoted to other things. And you can never get it back.

Jordan River 30:08
To zero sum game and a limited time.

Dr. Coco 30:11
Yeah.

Jordan River 30:11
You’re stressing me out, man.

Dr. Coco 30:14
There’s a time limited. You know, it’s interesting to, I think that’s an important thing to now. [Yes.] That yeah, at that point, and prior to that, your plant is putting most of its energy into vegetative growth. And a lot of vegetative growth is redundant. Even you know, we’ve talked about that the beginning of this show, like how much can we cut this down. But, you know, to be perfectly honest, in almost every grow unless you’re getting down to the point where you’re vegging for like, four days, that’s like perfect, or something like that, you know, you might not be able to shave another day off of that. But a day’s worth of growth during veg isn’t going to be translated into your harvest quality or quantity. But a day’s worth of growth, post bolt is going to reflect in your numbers in the harvest or in the quality or cannabis.

Jordan River 31:06
That’s a really good point, man. I f***ing love it. So that was a really comprehensive answer, again, why we shouldn’t be messing with these plants too much, or changing the climate too much, especially in flowering.

Dr. Coco 31:17
You know, if you’re gonna do other things that like a lot of people do things right at the end of the bolt. And I don’t want to go into a whole nother thing about don’t strip your plants or all this, I’m not a big fan of that. But, you know, if you are going to do something super stressful to the plants, despite sort of, like the warnings against that, step it up a few days, do it like for on the weeks, I mean, not day 21 I can do so much. Which is really sort of designed to be the last day of the bolt, right? The way the bolt basically happens is you got about seven days of transition. And then you got about 14 days of bolt, right? Once you flip them into 1212 and day 21, you see all these like leaf strip a day 21 BS and stuff like that, right? That like do it on day eight, god oh god, that’s like in your thing, because give them a couple of days of good vegetative growth after that to recover. [Okay, okay, I got you.] Don’t push it too close to that borderline where they basically stopped reproductive growth. And now they’d like to be devoting their energy to flowers, but you just injure them. And they’re going to be devoting some portion of that energy to repairing the injuries and what I’m referring to leave stripping or to pruning at that point.

Jordan River 32:39
Well, on that note of those solar panels and receiving that light, I do want to stress this, you know, messing with plants one more time, because you mentioned it on a previous episode, with this idea of shifting plants. The idea that in nature, when you’re outside in the sun, the plant can really control how much PPFD it’s receiving by either facing away from or towards the sun, right? That makes a lot of sense. But here in the Grow Tent, especially under an LED, which is literally just dropping light in a square right down on the your whole tent, essentially.

Dr. Coco 33:10
Lights coming from everywhere and a great time because not only are they like, you know, 1000 different points of light, and you’re led to get ready. But there’s also the reflective walls, which are bouncing light back. So..

Jordan River 33:22
Well wouldn’t they mind being shifted less? Or do you still not want to, for instance, take your pot and spin it in a 180 degree? Because you’ve said before, you know the plants to position themselves very specifically, and it takes you know a readjustment. What do you think about in a tent scenario? Is it less impactful, more impactful? What do you think?

Dr. Coco 33:40
In terms of how bad it is to do that, it’s, you know, there’s going to be situations where it’s really bad. And then there’s gonna be situations where it’s only kind of bad. I’ll definitely give you that. But I don’t ever think that there’s a benefit. And all of the reasons that growers talk about why they’re doing it are really strike me and be like the wrong reasons. One of the most common reasons I think, is because they’re like, well, you know, the plants developing uneven leak. So like there’s more growth on this side facing the light than there is on this other side that is not facing light. So every few days, I’m going to rotate the plant, even every day, I’m going to rotate the plant so you know 180 degrees that all sides to develop at the same rate, which basically means both sides are going to be underdeveloped. And the plant is going to be sort of shifting back and forth a little bit but it neither one of those sides of the plant is going to be in the good light for the full flowering period.

Jordan River 34:40
So plant in a corner. You don’t want to spin that around to sun the other side.

Dr. Coco 34:44
No, you don’t want to spin that around to sun the other side because the leaves that are in the light, and the leaves that are in the shade are not ready for light. So the first day that they get switched, the plants just sort of reallocating its photosynthetic material you’ll see that those light those leaves that are now suddenly suddenly leaves are prepared to sort of handle the bulk of the photosynthesis. And the leaves that are now in the shade. They don’t need to have all that photos in the air, all the chlorophyll and everything sort of in an active state. And so you’re just getting the plant to reallocate its resources and reallocate its energy in ways that are counterproductive to rapid growth.

Which is exactly what we’re looking to avoid. So interesting thought, I’ve heard that same thing. Another reason why someone might spin their plant is to get better access to another side.

For training purposes, I get that, like, if you got, you know, four plants in a tent or whatever, and you can’t like get into the middle of the tent, like look back at that side. And you’re doing some some pruning or some training or something, I get that. Plants can tolerate a lot of these things. It’s not like it’s going to outright kill them. And that’s, I guess my other message to growers is, even if your plant looks healthy, looks happy, it doesn’t mean that, you know, it’s not struggling with something, it’s just if they’re really good at sort of hiding all their struggles until the struggles become very intense. So we can still dial things in and make the plant happier and increase the rate of growth, or increase the amount of the limited energy that the plant is able to harvest. And how much of that gets put into the kind of growth that we really want.

Jordan River 36:30
Yeah, that is a really good point. And yeah, this isn’t like a huge detriment or anything like that. I don’t want this to come off now saying, oh, we’ve got to avoid this thing. But it’s something that you need to consider, you need to have it in the back of your mind,

Dr. Coco 36:40
if you’re moving your plants for the sake of moving your plants, because you think moving your plants is sort of like beneficial to them, or you think it’s really important to have your plant, like be perfectly symmetrical or something like that. Like, I would encourage you to give up on those practices. But like, if there’s legitimate reasons to move your plants, I don’t want you to be like, oh, crap, Dr. Coco said, don’t move your plants. The plants are tough man. Insane, right? Yeah, my wife, a bunch of our house plants over sink to water them. And I’ve always talked her I used to I don’t do it anymore, because they’ve gotten mad. I’m like, Oh, they don’t like that thing. They’re not gonna like that. They’d be happier if you just let them be in water than where they were. And she’s like valve, and she’s got her reasons. And it’s like, I mean, it’s certainly not going to kill the plant.

Jordan River 37:26
Yeah, it’s well said. It’s nitpicky. But I found it to be really interesting, because, like you said, there’s this constant reaction that the plant is going through based on all these parameters, right, whether it’s how open or closed this tomato is, or how much nutrient is uptaking all these things, when you shift the position or shift the position of the light or crack open that tent, and there’s a rush of room temperature or cool air into the tent, those instant reaction processes start to change on the fly in real time, all the time. So it’s just it’s a very interesting point. I agree, I don’t like doing that.

Dr. Coco 38:01
Plants are totally used to doing that outside, the climate shifts, the light shifts, all of that stuff is shifting around, and the plants are making adjustments to it. Some days, it’s wet, some days, it’s dry, some days, they have plenty of water in their roots. Other days, they don’t, they’re constantly making adjustments to that, and they’re growing slow. And when we put them in an indoor setting, right, we’re able to control all these variables, the idea is absolutely not to recreate sort of the conditions they face how tours, which is like a constant struggle. The idea is to give them ideal conditions and grow them as fast as we can, grow them as healthily and quickly as we can and sort of turn that in. So you know, a lot of growers, you know that the little rivets or the edges on the side of the road, you know, that like the rumble strips or whatever that are designed to tell you like you’re driving off of the road? Well, you don’t want to just like close your eyes and like drive by, you know, hitting the rumble strips and be like, Oh, I gotta go back to the left. Okay, oh, I gotta feel it over on the right, I gotta go. I mean, that would be a lot of growers are sort of driving their grows that way where they’re actually doing things until they see bad feedback in the plants, right? And then they sort of step off or they push a little bit in the other direction. They’ll like, for example, keep ramping up the light until they start to see their plants suffering under too much light. Or like all these other things and the message I just want to say is you know, your plants might look perfectly healthy. They’re not going to show you any signs of suffering until you’re way past sort of the point where optimal growth would have happened. So don’t kind of like drive by by feeling out the rumble strips basically try to keep your your grow more into the middle of your lane and a lot of these things have better success.

Jordan River 39:59
They’re poor communicators, they bottle up their emotions, you know. You think they could use more calcium, but they don’t start saying it until they really need more calcium. You know, it’s like somebody who’s too polite doesn’t want to ask for a drink of water. It’s like no, just let me know.

Dr. Coco 40:10
Exactly until we communicate out. And then you’re like, what’s wrong with that guy? Oh shit. Nobody gave him water in five days.

Jordan River 40:17
He’s been at this party for 72 hours and nobody gave him water. And he didn’t ask and now he’s wilting over to terminal wilt. Now he has terminal wilt.

Dr. Coco 40:25
Right. Right. But yeah, it would really just be, it would be like feeding your children based on when they’re like in their faces or whatever. You know, you could tell that they were malnourished.

Jordan River 40:36
You look gone, now it’s time to feed you.

Dr. Coco 40:39
I think Sally’s looking a little malnourished, will give her some rice today or something like that.

Jordan River 40:43
Oh, my goodness, you’re totally right. So you got to dial it in a little further than that you got to get really get to know him even though they’re not very good communicate.

Dr. Coco 40:52
And you agree with me, right? You hear that kind of stuff, like all my friends like healthy are like, Yeah, I keep pushing them until I see the plants wilt or something like that. EC isn’t another thing that conventional growers are seeing more and more and more fertilizer into their plants, until they see the leaf tips curling up on themselves or get a little tip burn or something that’s like, you are so far past optimal fertilization and sort of water management at that point that like the plant is no longer able to manage it.

Jordan River 41:24
I’ve certainly seen that sentiment before that, hey, if I got just a little bit of tip burn, it means that I’m maximizing it, you’re gonna push back against that heavily.

Dr. Coco 41:32
I push back against that. Yeah, I mean, this is like Sally looks a little bit, you know, like, she’s suffering from dehydration or from malnutrition, or something. And you know, you don’t want to ever get anywhere near that point where the plants are physically suffering. Keep in mind, right, plants are designed to evolve, to grow outdoors, where the climate and the light, everything’s constantly shifting, so they can handle a big range of things before they actually start to look like they’re suffering. But they’re not, you know, that the range that actually empowers like the best growth is much smaller than the range that allows plants to survive. So I think those are, those are two really kind of important ideals to that. The consistency thing is sort of the other one that we’re kind of talking around, but I often come out that topic of consistency, they just don’t be changing things more than you have to on the plants. I mean, there are some things that that require changing. And when they require changing, try to change them gradually. And other than that, the general rule that I follow is consistency, keep things consistent. Even if you know the EC, for example, in the root zone isn’t perfectly optimal, the plant will adjust to that. And if as long as it stays consistent, the plant will thrive there.

Jordan River 43:02
I love that. Yeah, that’s a really good point, keep things consistent. Change maybe one thing at a time, a lot of growers I talked to you know, I did the same thing as last run, oh, well, you know, did you change anything. Well, I did this different, I did that different, I did this different that difference, like well, you know, maybe change one thing at a time there.

Dr. Coco 43:18
And there’s almost always like 20 differences, even if it’s just the time of year that you’re growing. So like your last grow was was in the winter, and now it’s in the spring and your climate is different and you don’t realize sort of that and now you’re growing different plants and you change other things. And I love it growers always have like, Oh, but I know it’s this new additive that I’m using that created this difference. I’m like, I’m like 57 things have changed and you’re convinced it’s this one of the different the lack of an additive or something else. So be cautious of that kind of, you know, logical fallacy wherein we recognize patterns, but attribute them to the wrong causes.

Jordan River 43:56
That is a good point. And maybe to wrap that note, you know, every run is so unique. The phenotype does include your environment. I don’t care if you are in a tent, like you said my indoor run from summer to winter was totally different. Even though I’m indoors it still change the temperature of the room just a little bit and you’re gonna see higher feeding and higher temperatures. I saw a nicer dry and cure because I was drying in my closet, not a completely climate sealed space. So in the colder months, I had a nice longer to slightly different, slightly better, dry and cure. It’s just little differences, man.

Dr. Coco 44:28
Absolutely almost everybody. I think if you’re honest, when you harvest plants between say November and April, you have a better dry cure for most growers like in the United States and stuff right than you do on your plants that you harvest you know the rest of the year. [Why?] So you harvest plants in July, and then you’re running your air conditioner then probably but you’re probably still in the in the low 70s even if you’re running at that cool, you know, I mean, you’re probably not but man in January, you know, the room is probably getting into below 60s overnight or whatever. It’s just like, so that temperature difference makes a big difference during the cure, during the dry. So I really agree with you if there’s so many things that change, and it’s so hard to set up really good controlled experiments. But every grower thinks that, you know, they can really easily identify what variable change that led to the different outcome in their specific case.

Jordan River 45:37
Hey, it happens man. Just like that poker hand that I tried to bluff you on. You know what I’m saying? I thought I thought I knew what was going on. I thought, I thought I had a read. But then next thing you know.

Dr. Coco 45:48
You thought I was bluffing Cena cards.

Jordan River 45:52
You had a pair, I know he had a pair. Okay, we’re going off the rails here man. This was an awesome podcast. I like this I like this. And Coco, really quickly, what’s going on at Coco for cannabis? What’s the next challenge before we wrap this episode? What’s happening?

Dr. Coco 46:04
Well I’ve got a bag trying to get some grow like videos going and doing videos. I’m talking about doing a new show when thinking about maybe doing something you know like you do with Patreon. I don’t know but I’m thinking about I want I want to open up sort of more access to me also thinking about doing like an ask Dr. Coco show where people could you know spend more time sort of discussing their questions and a lot of it’s because I have fun doing these kinds of shows with you. So I’m poking around and thinking about developing something there. We got the new this spring auto flower challenge is going to come up in April so if you guys want to grow along with us we’re doing the spring auto flower shops is our next community grow and you know come check out cocoforcannabis.com, we always do our grower love giveaways going on all the time now every month we’re giving away a big light so go check out our deals and discounts page and register for the grower love giveaway.

Jordan River 47:03
Oh yeah, loving the giveaways man yeah you got those big light giveaways people love. What do you got? Which light Do you have up there? Do you have it listed yet?

Dr. Coco 47:10
Yes. So this month we’re giving away one Medic Grow lights. We got the Medic Grow fold eight is the prize. It’s nice.

Jordan River 47:17
Go enter everybody. I want to see it Growcaster take that down.

Dr. Coco 47:20
Yeah, yeah, I know Medic Grow are cool lights is big, you know, 720 watt light, I believe so more than enough power for for all of our sort of tent based growers [Sweet] and yeah, that’s what we usually we usually try to do get a pretty big prize up there, runs for a good month at February is a short month. So that’s, you know, that price will be coming up pretty soon. And it’s super easy to register, we just you know, and we’ve often put GrowCast and Jordan River up there as you know, we follow friends or follow different people or subscribe to YouTube channels and stuff like that to get additional chances to win those prizes. So that’s why we call it the grower love giveaway. It’s a way that we’re able to sort of spread the love back to a lot of members of the community. Give a great prize out somebody and yeah, everybody just feels good about it.

Jordan River 48:07
That’s wonderful cocoforcannabis.com, everybody. Do all the things, sign up for the giveaways. If this airs after that giveaway, there’s another one up there. Go ahead and grab it.

Dr. Coco 48:15
There’s another one. Yeah, there’ll be another prize for March and we’ve already negotiating a big prize for the April.

Jordan River 48:24
It’s gotta be big for 4/20. I like it.

Dr. Coco 48:27
It’s gonna be big and it’s yeah, it’s gonna be big. It’s really the optimal word there for the April prize, but every month we do we do a pretty big light like, so. Yeah, come check it out. And yeah, participate in the grow we love.

Jordan River 48:45
I love it. Love it, everybody, cocoforcannabis.com. Of course, you can find us at growcastpodcast.com/action to see all the action. Get on the green list. It’s free. Stay up to date on the emails. And we’ll see you next time everybody. This is Dr. Coco and Jordan River signing off, wishing you all a wonderful day. Be safe out there. Everybody grow smarter.

That’s our show. Thank you so much for tuning in. Come and see us everybody. We’ve got events. That’s right. The Cultivators Cup is sold out but we’ve got Community Cup Oklahoma. You can come on down to Oklahoma for a wonderful day of education and the Cannabis Cup, growcastpodcast.com/communitycup and of course PestaPalooza, the long awaited IPM class with the great Matthew Gates, the world’s leading expert on cannabis IPM. Now come on down to Pestapalooza. We have two dates. Right now Long Island and San Diego, we’re adding some more dates. Go and grab those tickets everybody. It’s an in depth pest course, that’s going to come with a completion certificate along with a huge bag of goodies. You’re going to get your hands on IPM in this gift bag, you’ll have bio controls you get yourself a badass pair of goggles to help you scout insects in your garden plus coupon codes for viral testing, green stuff included in their seeds, you know we do a right. It’s a whole day of pest education plus a fully catered after party and a massive guest gift bag. It is Pestapalooza. Do not miss it. Come on down, hang out with me Matthew Gates. And if the information in this class just saves you one infestation and crop loss, it is well worth it my friends. Come and learn from the best, get yourself a badass one of a kind Pestapalooza gift bag and enjoy the party in Pestapalooza, baby. Check us out growcastpodcast.com/classes. We’re adding more dates. And I will see you there with Matthew Gates. Alright everybody that’s our show. We’re doing these things in your garden. Stay tuned. We’ll talk to you soon, everybody. Bye bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai