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Dean
We’re chatting the top growth questions that we received on our Grow support line this year, and we’re going to be discussing them in depth. And I’ve got Andy here to assist me with some some comments on the on these grow questions, what makes our business unique is that we run a full time grow support line, you know, guys can come in basically and send pictures and assist us in assist us in sort of, you know, keeping along with their journey. And it’s not just about the sort of the stock for us, it’s always about keeping up to date and learning, but it’s super busy.

Andy
Yeah, like, quite keen to hear some of these details might say it’s, you have handled a lot more of the technical and sophisticated questions. And I think the market has trended that way, it’s not the easiest questions on the support line anymore. It used to be like, the very basic stuff. Now it’s like, Well,

Dean
luckily, it’s not just me, we’ve got Luke, who also works basically full time on it. So you know, there’s two of us tending to it now. But you know, it’s, there’s always those basics which come through, I’d say the main one is basically how to get started, you know, a lot of people have absolutely no idea what to purchase on the, you know, to what to get? And

Andy
are you finding those are more, more frequent? Like, are they a lot of new new people starting? Or is or is it? Are they I suppose they do take they quite consuming, because it’s quite a lot to share a lot of information to share, or is there just like a sheer vast number of new growers coming into the space?

Dean
I think there’s, I think a lot of the time a new person, a newbie is going to want to ask questions more, someone who knows will know what to look for. So I think that’s why, you know, we’re running grow support, a lot of the time there is sort of it does train to those sorts of questions. But over time, I’ve definitely seen the question hearing evolve, you know, it used to be very, very basic. Now, there’s still a lot of that basic stuff coming through. But it’s a sometimes the starting point is a lot further than maybe what it was a couple of years ago. But there’s always one massive trend and that’s with with, you know, germination of seeds. It’s a tricky task. I’ve chatted about it before, you know, I think it’s one of the more difficult parts of the grower because, you know, over over watering or over attention and definitely affect the germination, the germination of your seeds, but God is getting started are definitely wanting to know a lot of this sort of the dubious question, I suppose is related to germination and the complexes thereof. And you know, sometimes it’s just you’re just unlucky at the times you’re super lucky, but generally a few if you know what you’re doing, then you can definitely get a grip on it and have good results in the future. I’m happy if I get 90% Generally, you know, nine out of 10 Eight out of 10 and we’re always good to go

Andy
and dealing with biology there so

Dean
it’s a living organism when I plant my tomato seeds from startles I don’t expect to get 100% germination now I don’t understand how it can be the same with with cannabis seeds. Secondly, I’d say it’s you know when to when to do things and what to give at those points are sort of always go hand in hand like when do I start what season if they’re growing outdoors in a and then window is the window I started giving nutrients like everyone seems to want that and a lot of the time you have to kind of be like you know it’s you’ve got to just hold off a little bit and things and let things happen don’t as soon as you see your plant start blasting it without water left right and centre and starting to you know feed had loads of nutrients and you know it is it does tend to happen quite a bit of the time that there’s this mega excitement related to relate to to sort of getting started and wanting to feed nutrients I suppose people want to mix something up so we’re boring to just what they think so laying on water

Andy
the plants are like humans that need you know, a double quarter pounder, you know every day to survive whereas plants like literally need like a fraction of a teaspoon of of minerals to basically keep going and operating. And as Yes, I think they just get hyped up like shit I’m drinking all this food and drinks and waters like my plants only had like a tablespoon of this like, you know chemical but yet it’s highly concentrated. So anyway, what’s the what’s the sort of 32nd answer to what do I feed you just put them towards following grow a feeding schedule or something like that.

Dean
Generally, I’d say less is more let’s ease it in for at least the four weeks especially if you’re using like a scrap of soil. You know which a lot of newbie growers are using not a lot of newer people who are sort of questioning in these early stages go hydroponic, a lot of people will go like an organic approach. So you you basically don’t need to feed anything for up to four weeks. And then secondarily whatever nutrients they have. We always told them to give about a quarter to start off with and then maybe half the dose recommended and then to ease everything in You know, once you’re more experienced and you’ve grown that exact same genetic 2030 times, you know exactly that you can push it to, you know, four times the dose at a specific stage. But if you’re still learning, you’re going to get amazing results by just letting the plant do its thing. And assisting here and there. And following sort of the next main question, which is, you know, the IPM programme. You know, how do I keep pests at bay? How do I start it

Andy
people diseases programme, or do they just do they just cover like, they come like, oh, theories later, they’re like, what’s this? It’s like,

Dean
100%,

Andy
it’s absolutely massacred the entire grow dead?

Dean
So it’s not, it’s not really a question of, you know, like, the nutrient question comes up, straight up, you know, what, when don’t give nutrient that’s like day window spray for pests and window spray for moulds that doesn’t come up, it comes up with an image, boom, and it’s just, and it’s dotted, and it’s yellow, and yellow. We’ve got, you know, and like, we always advise to look into IPM if we, if we, you know, someone’s asking, what kinds of things do I look at, we’ll say, okay, these are the nutrients. So these are, this is the IPM programme, at least this will work. But a lot of people go now and then they just go ahead and purchase this, the, you know, they’ll they’ll procure the things that the basics, so then they like, then they’ll come back for support at a later stage and realise, oh, wait, I actually did need to be spraying. Because, you know, they’re unable to hear you, I should have been spraying I should have been looking out for these things. Because when you have an untrained eye, you also don’t know what to look out for. So the early stage of infestation, you’re not going to catch your and you’re going to catch it in the later stage. But at that point, now you’re you’re trying to cure when you could have followed the prevention and the cure always ends up more expensive than

Andy
risky, you know, a lot of them are quite hazardous. It’s maybe stronger chemicals stronger this and that. But I mean, I completely agree it’s, it’s something we’ve kind of all fall victim to is this anomaly that you think that pests aren’t going to grow inside of your house because or live inside of your house? Because you’re like, oh, towels that stare out now. Like this bag is well covered? Or like your DEXA it’s not even just one pass. You got gnats, you got fungus gnats, you got mouths, you’ve got everything spider mites, and it’s just rude aphids. Yeah, it’s just like, all of these things get inside the you know, the bedroom or the cupboard, or the garage or wherever. So, ya know, I fully agree with that. Take advice, guys, IP,

Dean
the classic is, you know, we always say the classic joke on the support liners or is that, you know, we, we we like we just as much as the bikes, it’s super smelly, less nice and leafy, it’s easy to get onto the tracks, you know. So it’s really is something that can can detriment, a lot of hard work, and everything could be going fine. And then all of a sudden, we’ve got an infestation. And you could have, you could have avoided that. And then an exciting next point, our fourth most asked question of the year was definitely related to LED technology and automations. So we’ve seen some really cool lights coming out this year in the mid range in the and on the top end, you know, which has been super exciting. As with with sort of blisworth example, the lumii black being so new, a lot of guys have been questioning the results, what kind of results can you get, you know, and then on sort of the automation side, but also the same thing, like I want to up to the next level, you know, I want to use the best tech and LED has definitely got to a point in 2022, where it’s definitely, you know, a couple years ago, it was sort of stalled behind and now it’s at a point where I really think it’s outperforming and most people want to get into it. So and with the LED comes also the sort of ease of automation. So a kind of techie side of things has definitely been around sort of pushing for higher quality, people aren’t really looking as much they don’t come in now as much. And they they like you know, they want to they think that the lights not important, there seems to be a consensus now that the light is the main thing. So let’s build everything around that and around making it easier for me to concentrate on the things that matter. So you know, the troll master the Nano lacks sort of air cons dehumidifiers, backup systems, on the higher end, we’ve kind of been having a lot of those kinds of conversations, because people don’t want to invest and then it’s not secure. And they don’t have you know, they don’t have, they don’t have the correct components in order to in order to maintain what they’re trying to achieve. So in consulting, you know, we often will sort of break down the end goal for a client, reverse it back and then work it and then work it through.

Andy
And I say it’s nice to see the evolution into that space and like LEDs. I mean, as personally, we’ve learned so much about the LEDs, and they are getting there. I mean they are more complicated and more complex and the things you can do with them are a lot cooler. Uh, but yeah, it’s it’s quite interesting to see. And I wanted to slip in that, that there’s probably a 4.5 question on that. But we’re not going to discuss it too much, because we do have another episode about this, but I suspect there’s quite a few load shedding related questions coming through. So if you guys are having issues with that, do check out our video that we did the other day. And basically, we addressed some of those things that may may help you in that situation. But yeah, anyway, so what’s the first one you got on the cards.

Dean
So our first one has definitely been related to post processing. And there’s been a massive trend into extracts in the sort of, you know, the homegrown space, a lot of guys really want to smoke, smoke, the dank extract, which maybe we maybe we also create a lot of content related to it and talk about quite a lot. So maybe that’s why we sort of tend to have a lot of those conversations. But I’ve definitely seen a trend in the market towards people wanting to definitely learn how to up their curing game up their drying game. And a lot of the time, it’s an angle of getting, you know, a decent amount of good flour and a decent amount of good of good extract. So the extract has been, I mean, we’ve been doing rosin kind of rosin related content for a long time, you know, and that’s definitely super trendy, I think a lot of people are also sort of offering pressing these days, so it’s definitely become more more available. And then on the extract side, we’ve been seeing some sort of more than more solvent based extractions, we’ve been seeing a lot of sort of very cool innovations in that space as well. You know, and I’m seeing more and more people starting to in the past, you know, people would be very scared of extract, you know, whoa, dab, I would never smoke that they’ve all got that story they got to hide at one time. So that now it’s not so much like that, maybe maybe the you know, this new this new people who have sort of become of age that sort of watching all those youtubers smoke those smoke those dank dabs, I don’t really know, or, but then it’s super exciting for me. Because as everyone knows, we also love we also love extracts. So we’re definitely having interesting conversations, guys are definitely making really, really good stuff. We’ve seen people look at packaging, you know, how can I package correctly, so there’s not going to oxidise so then it’s going to be stored correctly? Where do I store it? How do I get the best colour? You know, a lot of those kinds of questions are, are those kinds of conversations are becoming more common? And we definitely from the conversations that we’ve been having, and images we’ve been seeing, you know, there’s a lot of crazy stuff that guys are making. So don’t think that we’re behind on the extra game. I think we definitely I think we’ve definitely seen safe quality product coming to market that’s been tested, guys are caring about, you know, all of those sorts of all of those sorts of things. You know, there’s been a big cartridge push as well, you’re seeing the you know, all the CBD carts coming out. So yeah, it’s very, very exciting on the on the extraction side side of things, and I think going into 2023 It’s definitely as we’ve said, in our previous some of our previous episodes, we think it’s going to continue to become more and more popular, because it is you know, it’s less Prime Material easier on the move more discreet, so it kind of fits a lot of people’s lifestyle these days, everyone’s always on top of that.

Andy
As you guys can see we basically with you guys from the beginning to the end, even with this channel, we’ve basically tried to give as much knowledge and put it out there as we can. So if you made it all the way all the way to the end we really really really appreciate you make sure to leave a like and subscribe make a comment if you have any questions. And you can also WhatsApp us from the link below and we’ll maybe try to answer all of your questions but don’t next time. Guys.