Does everyone flush? Outdoor grow
- Thread starter GrowNMo
- Start date
Nice looking plants! I just chopped one that was maybe two weeks more mature than yours, about 10% amber.
It's pretty much been shown that flushing really doesn't have any effect on your final product. Do it if you want, won't really hurt anything.
It's pretty much been shown that flushing really doesn't have any effect on your final product. Do it if you want, won't really hurt anything.
Mayne
Well-Known Member
nice plants? i see blurry zoomed in pics, I personally think flooding a plant when you need it to explode for final 2 weeks, and messing up the ecosphere is mindless.
Emilya Green
Well-Known Member
If you were following the fox farms feeding schedule you should have already flushed a couple of times, and especially at week 6 of bloom, right before the final bud swell. The reason for this flush is to cleanse the soil of the built up salt that the nutrients leave behind and that restrict further nutrient uptake. Especially at week 6, clearing the pipes for full uptake of water and nutes till the end is critically important. Flushing right before harvest is NOT on the feeding chart (funny that) because the scientists at Fox Farms also know how useless a flush at the very end is... the concept of flushing the plant itself right before the chop to somehow cleanse the plant, is totally debunked old school bro science. Don't waste your time.
What are we flushing again???
We've gone thru this many times. There's absolutely no science to back this process up anywhere. If fact there's science that says its USELESS and detrimental.
Anecdotal evidence is NOT science.
And the science:
Flushing Trial - RX Green Technologies
Quoted from the article:
"Toward the end of the Cannabis flowering cycle, the plant starts to naturally senescence. Plants that are nearing the end of their life cycle will uptake fewer nutrients (thru roots) as they remobilize nutrients from other plant parts. This may explain why little difference was observed in the mineral content of flower flushed for different times."
Soooo what are we flushing??
We've gone thru this many times. There's absolutely no science to back this process up anywhere. If fact there's science that says its USELESS and detrimental.
Anecdotal evidence is NOT science.
And the science:
Flushing Trial - RX Green Technologies
Quoted from the article:
"Toward the end of the Cannabis flowering cycle, the plant starts to naturally senescence. Plants that are nearing the end of their life cycle will uptake fewer nutrients (thru roots) as they remobilize nutrients from other plant parts. This may explain why little difference was observed in the mineral content of flower flushed for different times."
Soooo what are we flushing??
Emilya Green
Well-Known Member
Soooo what are we flushing?? We are flushing the salt that builds up as nutrients break free of their EDTA chelation bonds in order to become mobile in the soil and available to the plant. These salts eventually build up to the point that they are clogging all the available attach points, reducing the cation exchange capacity (CEC) to zero, and when this happens there will be a salt lockout of nutrients. FoxFarm includes regular flushes of the soil as part of their feeding schedule, so apparently their science has identified a problem that your science can not see. Your attached article did nothing to explain why this should not be done.
I'm keeping schtum
Do as you see fit
Do as you see fit
Flushing to remove excess salts during the grow is a good thing, and necessary, but flushing at the end of the grow to somehow cleanse the plant of nutrients, has been shown to be ineffective and is not necessary, and probably detrimental to the plant.
I think its detrimental. Just like fasting before a marathon. That's just my opinion. 
- Thread starter
- #10
nuttin
Read the article I posted.
You cant flush out "salts" and IF you could, why not just wait till after chop time?
Trick question:
@Emilya
Why would removing excess "salts" help the plant in any way?
Cation exchange capacity in SOIL is the reason for "no-flush". If you're in soil-less media go for it.
You cant flush out "salts" and IF you could, why not just wait till after chop time?
Trick question:
@Emilya
Why would removing excess "salts" help the plant in any way?
Cation exchange capacity in SOIL is the reason for "no-flush". If you're in soil-less media go for it.
Emilya Green
Well-Known Member
Bo,
Let's try again. I keep trying to find new ways to explain this to you. Why would you not be able to flush out salt? I don't mean natural mineral salts, although some of them can be moved out with the flowing water too, the salt that I mean is the non-nutritional plain old EDTA that is used to chelate synthetic nutes, one of the most soluble compounds known to man. Water instantly dissolves it and moving water removes it. It is simple physics.
So yes you can flush out this particular salt, and this particular salt has a very nasty habit of building up in the soil as a byproduct of using synthetic nutes, so there is a need to remove it, especially if you fertilize heavily. Letting it build up to the point that it is blocking the soil's ability to exchange nutrients with the roots, results in a salt lockout.
Soil works the way it does because soil has built into it the ability to hold onto salt ions, not just the mineral salts that we desire the soil to hold for the plant to use on the water only pass, but also this dreaded EDTA salt. The amount of salt ions the soil can capture is called the CEC, or the cation exchange capacity. The fact that soil has this capacity does not mean that it is "no flush" as you put it, it simply means that the soil has the capacity to hold a certain amount of charged ions (salts). As synthetic nutes become available this EDTA salt builds up and starts to take up all the ion holding spots in the soil, and over time diminishes the soil's ability to hold any of the beneficial "salts" because it is instead storing EDTA salt. When the soil fills up with this leftover nutrient debris and can no longer hold the needed mineral salts, the water only pass becomes useless in the feeding of the plant... all the plant can see is EDTA and we get what is referred to as a "salt lockout." It also hampers the fertilizer pass, because the plant can get the nutrient only via the fluid path, but not via contact between the soil and the roots, because the soil is only holding onto ions of EDTA salt. This is a real thing, and during the early days of synthetic nutes and indoor MJ cultivation we saw it a lot on these forums, and the very first bit of advice someone would get when showing us a picture of a salt lockout, was the recommendation to 3x flush the soil. This flush saved more grows than I can remember and back then flushing was the most common bit of advice given to the grower with a problem. Now due to the confusion that a few of you insist on perpetuating regarding the fantasized evils of flushing, fewer people these days are flushing these harmful salts away while they are told by the neo-experts that a plant dying at the end of starvation is a good thing. It truly is a remarkable time to be alive, with such experts out there giving us all the pontification we can stand, when in actuality nothing has changed. Flushing is still a thing and it still works every time it is done. It is not harmful to the plant or any microbes and fungi that happen to be nearby. All it does is cleanse the soil so that it can again hold the vital mineral salt ions.
Emilya Green
Well-Known Member
This article explains something that we are not even talking about, or at least I am not. This study assumes the word flushing to mean giving the plant only water for a period of time, such as 1 week without any nutes at all. This is a change of the original meaning of the word "flush" that traditionally meant pouring 3x the container size of fresh water through the soil in one sitting, so as to cleanse the soil... it has nothing to do with the plant or its eventual taste or anything at all to do with the plant, the things that your article is concerned with. Flushing the way I describe the term, means washing the soil, and the article that you insisted that I read because it somehow validates your point, has nothing at all to do with the flushing we are talking about here.
That which the plant has converted to starches and converted to food (not nutrients) cannot be flushed out
The residual sap in leaf matter may, however, contain raw nutrient such as Nitrogen which is not good to smoke
I water cure a lot of bud, and the shit that comes out is astonishing
You only need to flush if you fucked it up first
No idea what @Emilya is on about, but heigh-ho
The residual sap in leaf matter may, however, contain raw nutrient such as Nitrogen which is not good to smoke
I water cure a lot of bud, and the shit that comes out is astonishing
You only need to flush if you fucked it up first
No idea what @Emilya is on about, but heigh-ho
Emilya Green
Well-Known Member
You are correct. If you run synthetic nutes however, a flush may not be totally needed, but it can be highly beneficial at certain points in the grow.
Thanks @Emilya , we don't always agree on watering techniques but no worries, your grow looks good and so does mineHooray! At last we find common ground
Emilya Green
Well-Known Member
Looks beautiful! We don't always have to agree on each and every detail... at the end of it all, we all love growing pot.Thanks @Emilya , we don't always agree on watering techniques but no worries, your grow looks good and so does mine
What is your watering technique?Thanks @Emilya , we don't always agree on watering techniques but no worries, your grow looks good and so does mine
From the bottom occasionally
Emilya doesn't approve
Emilya doesn't approve
