Flush or don’t?

[No Pain]

Seems like that’s what my plants do too, No Pain. So I cut the feedings back towards the end, instead of continuing to feed at full strength. Why would I? The flowers are clearly mature, and the plant is clearly winding down, and clearly feeding off of itself and managing its own needs just fine.
When I don’t cut back, the results never look nearly as good to me. Never seen any videos on the subject, just my own plants, and they always seem to tell me the same thing, but I’m going to do a side by side test next flowering round and see how the two harvests compare.

P Chunk

• Weaselcracker
• Aug 15, 2019

PC2

• Weaselcracker
• Aug 6, 2019

ah there is nothing like vine ripened .

 

[Weaselcracker]

ah there is nothing like vine ripened .

Cheers to that
We’re probably flowering a little longer than a lot of folks too, hence it’s a little different thing, re the nute fade out / ‘flush’ thing.

“But how was I to know
That she'd been shuffled before
Said she'd never had a royal flush
But I should have known...”

AC/DC ~ She’s Got the Jack

 

[No Pain]

Cheers to that
We’re probably flowering a little longer than a lot of folks too, hence it’s a little different thing, re the nute fade out / ‘flush’ thing.

“But how was I to know
That she'd been shuffled before
Said she'd never had a royal flush
But I should have known...”

AC/DC ~ She’s Got the Jack

Yes I'm certain that we are flowering longer ...imho if you are harvesting before you see "Fall" colors you are harvesting to early .

 

[CC420710]

Ave

Yes I'm certain that we are flowering longer ...imho if you are harvesting before you see "Fall" colors you are harvesting to early .

and this fall color shows even with nutrients?

 

[Weaselcracker]

I threw a couple P Chunk clones into flowering last week. Will be harvested in another 9 or 10 weeks. I’ll keep feeding one of them till the bitter end, and post how the two compare.

 

[Herby Paisley]

Thanks... No pain and Emilya you guys know your stuff glad to see you guys in the trenches giving out good honest knowledge on how to grow pot properly... too many keyboard warriors spewing out crap they find on the web these days and not taking the advice from true ace growers like yourselves good to see some of you are still around!

 

[CC420710]

Cheers to that
We’re probably flowering a little longer than a lot of folks too, hence it’s a little different thing, re the nute fade out / ‘flush’ thing.

“But how was I to know
That she'd been shuffled before
Said she'd never had a royal flush
But I should have known...”

AC/DC ~ She’s Got the Jack
[/QUOTE My girls are going to have different harvest dates so I will do the same with them. I will harvest the one with nutes this week and her sister is a couple weeks away still so perfect timing to test it. Should have some answers in a month or two.

 

[No Pain]

Ave

and this fall color shows even with nutrients?

yes ..there will be a point where they will just stop feeding and you can see this if you run hydro and monitor the solution like I do (24/7 with a guardian). with photoperiod strains it can be speed up or slowed down by the light cycle during flowering when dealing with autos its all about time and not so much about light schedule .
when it comes to lighting one big factor aside from lightcycle is the spectrum ...I used to have leds that where heavy in the red and they retarded the plant finishing ..that's a short version of a very long story .

 

[CC420710]

yes ..there will be a point where they will just stop feeding and you can see this if you run hydro and monitor the solution like I do (24/7 with a guardian). with photoperiod strains it can be speed up or slowed down by the light cycle during flowering when dealing with autos its all about time and not so much about light schedule .
when it comes to lighting one big factor aside from lightcycle is the spectrum ...I used to have leds that where heavy in the red and they retarded the plant finishing ..that's a short version of a very long story .

I noticed mine seem to show signs of deficiencies but not so much nitrogen which was what I thought was supposed to show. I harvested at about 20 percent amber and fed half nutes till harvest. Growing in organic soil and peat.

 

[No Pain]

I noticed mine seem to show signs of deficiencies but not so much nitrogen which was what I thought was supposed to show. I harvested at about 20 percent amber and fed half nutes till harvest. Growing in organic soil and peat.

a picture is worth a 1000 words . I feel that those of us that let our plants run their natural course should post pictures so that others may see the changes we do . For me it will have to wait until next round .

 

[Weaselcracker]

I threw a couple P Chunk clones into flowering last week. Will be harvested in another 9 or 10 weeks. I’ll keep feeding one of them till the bitter end, and post how the two compare.

I harvested those plants a few days ago.
Since harvest I have been scratching my head over what to say about it.


I knew the results wouldn’t be ‘scientific’, but I did hope to be able to show some clear differences between the plant that was fed to the bitter end and the one that ended with a reduced diet. In my experience I’ve always favoured the ‘vine ripened’ thing where I let the plant feed off its own foliage for the last few weeks.

There were a couple minor problems that made it even less scientific than I’d like, at least when I comes to trying to post about the differences.

Problem #1 was that I left these two plants about a week longer than I should have because I got too busy to harvest them. So they both had a bit of a shabby look, especially the more ‘starved’ one.

Problem #2 was that I didn’t seem to be able to capture the difference between the bud on them with pics, with my phone. In fact I completely 100% failed. To the point where it’s barely even worth posting pics. But whatever...everyone likes looking at pics don’t they?


I put these two P Chunk clones into flower on the same day, and they had the same of everything up until the last three weeks or so. This PC pheno is a good yielder and grows large bountiful buds.

The ‘fed’ plant was fed right to the end at about 2.2 EC. It’s the smaller one on left. I’ll call that one the ‘fed’ one.

The other plant, the larger one on the right, was cut down to about 0.7 EC for the last three weeks. I’ll call that the ‘weaned’ one, since I can’t think of a better word right now.

PC2

• Weaselcracker
• Nov 29, 2019

Fed vs weaned

• Weaselcracker
• Nov 29, 2019

PC2s

• Weaselcracker
• Nov 24, 2019

First impressions looking at them were ‘Wow the one that was fed right to the end looks way better than the other one’. Also, I regretted leaving them both a bit late because the buds on the more starved one looked so ragged. You can maybe see in the pics how it’s quite a bit paler. I worried it was mostly going to end up going straight into the hash trimmings pile The bonus to that of course is that it saves a bunch of trimming ha ha- so I was happy about that. I admit I always really love being able to chop a plant in 10 minutes... I was looking forward to that

First I trimmed up the ‘fed’ one. It seemed decent, though not particularly amazing. The bud had a sort of dry leafy feel to it, not very sticky- a bit generic.

The fed one.

PC2

• Weaselcracker
• Nov 29, 2019

PC2

• Weaselcracker
• Nov 29, 2019

It wasn’t till I brought in and started trimming the other plant that I instantly realized the difference. So much for the ‘straight to the hash trimmings pile’ idea. In spite of the mangey looking sugar leaf, the plant that was weaned was far stickier than the other one. It was gooey and sticky, where the fed plant had been much more dry and crisp.

The unfed one

PC2

• Weaselcracker
• Nov 29, 2019

PC2

• Weaselcracker
• Nov 29, 2019

PC2

• Weaselcracker
• Nov 29, 2019

PC2

• Weaselcracker
• Nov 29, 2019

The fed plant was easy to trim -snip snip. It had a bit of a leafy vegetative feel to it.


The bud of the weaned plant had a soft gummy texture, was stinkier, riper looking, and all around much more impressive to handle, despite looking a bit ragged.


I tried hard to capture the difference with my crappy phone-camera but, IMO, completely failed, The pics just don’t show the texture. In fact they don’t show much of a difference at all. So... wtf... I guess.

What does it mean?

Too many variables involved to make any major judgements, even for my own self. And other people’s grows are going to vary from mine for zillions of reasons.

But the bottom line is- I poured almost three weeks worth more fertilizer into a plant that ended up with bud that looked distinctly inferior to the one that I barely fed at the end.

Could the bud that ‘looks worse’ actually be ‘better’ somehow than the stuff that looks better? Well- I very much doubt it based on my growing experience, but I suppose I’ve been fooled by bud appearance before.
Once it’s all cured I’ll see what the smoke reports say.

I will continue to repeat this experiment a few more times, and will post what I get. Maybe I can get some better photo examples. If the ‘fed till the end’ bud continues to be inferior I will stop experimenting, because I don’t want to be wasting fertilizer, or producing inferior bud.

 

[No Pain]

I harvested those plants a few days ago.
Since harvest I have been scratching my head over what to say about it.


I knew the results wouldn’t be ‘scientific’, but I did hope to be able to show some clear differences between the plant that was fed to the bitter end and the one that ended with a reduced diet. In my experience I’ve always favoured the ‘vine ripened’ thing where I let the plant feed off its own foliage for the last few weeks.

There were a couple minor problems that made it even less scientific than I’d like, at least when I comes to trying to post about the differences.

Problem #1 was that I left these two plants about a week longer than I should have because I got too busy to harvest them. So they both had a bit of a shabby look, especially the more ‘starved’ one.

Problem #2 was that I didn’t seem to be able to capture the difference between the bud on them with pics, with my phone. In fact I completely 100% failed. To the point where it’s barely even worth posting pics. But whatever...everyone likes looking at pics don’t they?


I put these two P Chunk clones into flower on the same day, and they had the same of everything up until the last three weeks or so. This PC pheno is a good yielder and grows large bountiful buds.

The ‘fed’ plant was fed right to the end at about 2.2 EC. It’s the smaller one on left. I’ll call that one the ‘fed’ one.

The other plant, the larger one on the right, was cut down to about 0.7 EC for the last three weeks. I’ll call that the ‘weaned’ one, since I can’t think of a better word right now.

PC2

• Weaselcracker
• Nov 29, 2019

Fed vs weaned

• Weaselcracker
• Nov 29, 2019

PC2s

• Weaselcracker
• Nov 24, 2019

First impressions looking at them were ‘Wow the one that was fed right to the end looks way better than the other one’. Also, I regretted leaving them both a bit late because the buds on the more starved one looked so ragged. You can maybe see in the pics how it’s quite a bit paler. I worried it was mostly going to end up going straight into the hash trimmings pile The bonus to that of course is that it saves a bunch of trimming ha ha- so I was happy about that. I admit I always really love being able to chop a plant in 10 minutes... I was looking forward to that

First I trimmed up the ‘fed’ one. It seemed decent, though not particularly amazing. The bud had a sort of dry leafy feel to it, not very sticky- a bit generic.

The fed one.

PC2

• Weaselcracker
• Nov 29, 2019

PC2

• Weaselcracker
• Nov 29, 2019

It wasn’t till I brought in and started trimming the other plant that I instantly realized the difference. So much for the ‘straight to the hash trimmings pile’ idea. In spite of the mangey looking sugar leaf, the plant that was weaned was far stickier than the other one. It was gooey and sticky, where the fed plant had been much more dry and crisp.

The unfed one

PC2

• Weaselcracker
• Nov 29, 2019

PC2

• Weaselcracker
• Nov 29, 2019

PC2

• Weaselcracker
• Nov 29, 2019

PC2

• Weaselcracker
• Nov 29, 2019

The fed plant was easy to trim -snip snip. It had a bit of a leafy vegetative feel to it.


The bud of the weaned plant had a soft gummy texture, was stinkier, riper looking, and all around much more impressive to handle, despite looking a bit ragged.


I tried hard to capture the difference with my crappy phone-camera but, IMO, completely failed, The pics just don’t show the texture. In fact they don’t show much of a difference at all. So... wtf... I guess.

What does it mean?

Too many variables involved to make any major judgements, even for my own self. And other people’s grows are going to vary from mine for zillions of reasons.

But the bottom line is- I poured almost three weeks worth more fertilizer into a plant that ended up with bud that looked distinctly inferior to the one that I barely fed at the end.

Could the bud that ‘looks worse’ actually be ‘better’ somehow than the stuff that looks better? Well- I very much doubt it based on my growing experience, but I suppose I’ve been fooled by bud appearance before.
Once it’s all cured I’ll see what the smoke reports say.

I will continue to repeat this experiment a few more times, and will post what I get. Maybe I can get some better photo examples. If the ‘fed till the end’ bud continues to be inferior I will stop experimenting, because I don’t want to be wasting fertilizer, or producing inferior bud.

Good input . plenty to look at good job !
now when you stated a dryer feel ...was it like moisture had been leached from the flower , kind of like you would get by feeling one that was overfertilized ?

On the ec note ..everyone grows different and uses different brand of nutes etc... .I really wouldnt be lowering it in my style of grow as i have one that is in coco and has been above 550 ppm , a tad above 1.0 ec on a 500 scale her entire life and is getting close to harvest . I will post a pic when i can . So yes I would agree at 2.2 you would more than likly be throwing money out the window .

Now looking at the two plants it looks like the both almost leached from their fan leaves identically or pretty darn close showing that the plants will stop feeding from the medium and feed from themselves towards the end of their journey . Wouldn't you say ?

Im very interested in the smoke comparison of both products . I feel as you probably already do that the one that received .7 which may be exactly the amount it needed will be smoother and have better flavor . However i am with you on suprises . My feeling/thoughts are simply due to dryer feel between the two .

Since you are so kind and in having the ability to run these side by side test make a suggestion ? Depending on the smoke comparison of course. feed one .7 as you did and the other one nothing which most seem to do when they "Flush" as i feel that in that comparison it will show that a lowered feed till the bitter end is better than no feed .


Thanks again for taking the time to run and post your findings @Weaselcracker

 

[Stunned]

For what it's worth
I flush
Last 10 - 14 days of flower
With progressively colder and colder water
Lower my air temp accordingly
Makes for delightful colors on the sugar leaves and buds

 

[Sashasrs]

The problem as I see it is that we have become victims of our own popularity. Back in the day there were not many cannabis websites or books and the brave pioneers in this hobby used standard gardening techniques and old school methods. Nowadays, every dispensary has a website and grow experts abound... but are they really experts? I can name several websites and facebook pages that regularly offer horrible advice to their growers, labeling anything they can't accurately diagnose as the dreaded Tobacco Mosaic Virus, and giving bad advice about flushing.
First of all, in the last 5 years the definition of flushing has changed... a frightening percentage of new growers have no idea what it really means to flush your soil. And now, with so much confusion about flushing, many people have decided not to do it, or as was just posted, that there is no right answer to the question.
Of course there is a right answer and as the state of the art progresses, we are even wiser today than we were a decade ago about this practice, but even so, because of the proliferation of bad advice sites all over the internet, many people are still in the dark about this practice.
It used to be the quick answer on most online forums when presented with a plant problem, to flush. That has always been a problem, those with no valid advice offering this panacea to solve all problems, and oftentimes it actually worked, but as we know today it isn't always the best answer.
So first of all, what is a flush? Is it the act of giving pH adjusted water? No, that is simply watering with no nutes, it is not flushing. How about giving fluids to 20% runoff each time, cleansing the soil a little bit each time... is that flushing? Again, no... If you have a pile of salt sitting in your soil that keeps accumulating as you give more nutes, and you deplete that pile by 10% every time you water, but you in the process add back 5% with the new nutes, how much have you gained? Not much. If that pile of salt gets to the point that its starts locking out nutrients, does the incremental "flush" solve the problem? Nope.
The only true flush is to run 3x the container size in pure water through the system, dragging out the salt and debris with it. Some people even use sugar water to help dissolve the salt, so that maybe they don't have to run quite that much water through, but the goal is to clean out the soil. 10% wont do that... nor will 20%... to properly clean that medium out it takes 300%.
Do we flush our plants? No... what a silly idea this is. The notion of cleansing the plant of all nutrients before the end, giving only water for a week or (egads) two weeks, does not clean all the collected nutrients out of the plant. It does make the plant think it is dying, so it hastens the end and looks all impressive and all, but what did you sacrifice to get there? You starved the plant of nutrients, important finishing nutrients, right at the end when the plant needed that nutrition the most.
On hearing this, people defend their actions saying that their plants were just fine, great in fact, following this practice... but you can't prove something that didn't happen. These growers might be satisfied with what they ended up with, but they could have no idea to what potential that plant may have reached if it had not been starved that last 2 weeks.
Recent science has proven that water only at the end does not take the nutrients out of the plant. As stated in this thread, people who try a true 3x flush at the very end, or just water at the last week or two, can NOT taste the difference in their product. This is because we now know that neither practice affects the taste, smell, burnability or anything else about the cured product.
Old school taught us to flush at the week or 2 weeks from the end point... a true 3x flush. Why then? And then what, water only the rest of the way, or regular nutes? Here are the old school answers. I don't care what this website or that says about this; you can't always believe everything you read on the internet.
A true flush is to remove salt, debris or excess nutes from the soil... not the plant. Flushes are recommended when there is a major nute change, such as going from veg to flower, or from budset to budbuilding. Flushes are also to remove the salt that builds up in the soil as nutes break down to be used by the plants. After several weeks of heavy synthetic nutes, appreciable amounts of salt build up in the soil, so much so that it begins to restrict water uptake into the roots. Too much salt and you can actually lock out nutrients and the entire metabolism of the plant will slow down. Periodically, it is wise to clear out those salts so that your roots can work unrestricted and uptake the maximum amount of water and nutes that they are capable of.
There is no more important time to do an actual flush than that point at a week or 2 weeks before the end. The buds can swell up to twice their size and weight in that last two weeks, but in a salt restricted plant instead of rapid building of the buds at this point, a slow down in water usage and growth is seen. Doing a true flush at this point opens the floodgates, and allows the plant to draw up into the roots everything that it wants, and the difference that this final flush can make is astounding. For years and years this was common knowledge... but now people seem to have forgotten many of the old ways, and again, I blame the internet.
So after you do this final flush 2 weeks till the end, what then? You are still waiting for the final budswell to finish, the pistils to pull back and the trichomes to turn to your desired point. Water only you say? My answer is, are you daft? You give nutes to make big plants up to this point, and then you go water only at the most critical time??? Please. Use your head. This is not how to grow the best pot you can. Since we now know that the nutes do not show up in the flavor of the final product, what is stopping you from feeding the plant just as you have been doing, right up to the end? Nothing but this odd modern belief in bro science... if it comes off of youtube, it must be correct.
Sometimes, the old ways are the best ways.
Alright, I have had my say. Have a great evening everyone!

THANK YOU! Wow am I impressed! I tried with my last plant to so call flush 2 weeks before a final flush. Sure enough the buds shrank to almost nothing. DONT do it! Very sad situation

 

[Farnheit]

I doubt that flush 1 week before harvest can completely change the taste of entire bud that has been developing for weeks.

I have never flushed so far. Keep feeding until the end

 

[Weaselcracker]

was it like moisture had been leached from the flower , kind of like you would get by feeling one that was overfertilized ?

Hey No Pain. Thanks for the feedback and ideas.

Kind of hard for me to answer that, or determine causes, based on this one outcome. I probably wouldn’t have even posted the results, except that I had said that I would so I felt obligated to come back here ha ha ...

The fed plant was just more mediocre, a bit more leafy and lacked resin.
I am feeding weekly in peat moss whereas in coco you’d be feeding daily using a lighter mix. At 2.2 EC or 1100 TDS I would call that pretty much full strength, but didn’t see any signs of overfeeding in general.

Now looking at the two plants it looks like the both almost leached from their fan leaves identically or pretty darn close showing that the plants will stop feeding from the medium and feed from themselves towards the end of their journey . Wouldn't you say ?

The fed plant was quite a bit greener overall than the unfed one (which was quite yellow) although it doesn’t show that well in the photos. But yes I had the same thought - the one that was being fed full strength definitely was winding down and finishing flowering regardless of what I threw at it. Which is obviously normal behaviour for an annual plant IME.

. feed one .7 as you did and the other one nothing which most seem to do when they "Flush" as i feel that in that comparison it will show that a lowered feed till the bitter end is better than no feed .

Yep. Will do. I will continue to piss around with late season feeding techniques.

My normal routine is to judge my late flowering feeding levels by the appearance of the plant. If the plant is green and vibrant and looks like it has a lot of nutrient reserves in its foliage, it may get only water. Others will be fed lightly. In this case the larger plant was looking already looking a bit yellow by late flowering so I didn’t feel like starving her completely.

 

[Sashasrs]

Hi. These pics are from too much red light , and flushing for a8 days. The plant started eating itself until the big nice buds were gone!! Won’t use only red light during flowering, and won’t flush until the end!!