Flushing & Leaching & Final Bud Swell

re: Flushing & Leaching & Final Bud Swell

Bobrown is actually one of the most knowledgeable organic growers on 420. Yeah go check his plants.

I've got no interest in wading into this thread discussion again other than pointing that out - and - I haven't pre-harvest flushed in about a year. I just feed at a sane level and taper off the nutes at the end and then keep them on a very low level high P/no N bloom supplement through to the end, at about 150 ppm. They finish better than ever, and yes I spent many years flushing.

I don't know about most knowledgeable but I certainly am always studying and reading up on my down time. Spring time is almost here.. well after the blizzard we are about to have. Thanks for the kind words.

Like I mentioned earlier, we can all have our cake and eat it too but a lot of growers use chems as a short cut to get the end product. WC you are one that uses them to the advantage and can meld good methods with sustainable and more importantly reproducible results.

Consistency is a way to understand how you are doing. Repeatable results means your process is dialed in. I have absolutely no issue with that. You are not being wasteful.

Organics is tough... one mistake and it's compost building time. That's the down side.
 
re: Flushing & Leaching & Final Bud Swell

I've been growing plants since I was about three, and that's always been organic. Not that I know what I'm doing really - but I have the big compost pile, worm bin, etc and that's how my family has always grown stuff- simple gardening running more on intuition than any real botanical or scientific knowledge.
In the veggie gardens I just wing it- you can only mess up so badly.
I don't have a climate for growing cannabis outdoors. Actually I'd way rather be growing organically but I'm just going to have to move towards that dream at a snails pace. Growing some half decent herbs and vegetables seems way less daunting than switching my precious plants over to a style that I'm not too knowledgable about. I see a real learning curve if I was to try and grow decent bud indoors- so I've been sticking with what I know for now.
My bottled nutes for the indoor grow are 'organically derived', or 99.9% so anyway. Wtf that's worth I don't know. I've got no idea how to make a good organic mix cannabis, have no time to mess around right now and screw up the carefully balanced house of cards that is my grow, have trouble sourcing the ingredients here, etc. There's a whole lot in favour of staying on with the bottled stuff until some ingredients fall into my lap and I have more time to mess around learning how to make a good soil mix and not screw it up too bad. The bottled nutes have worked fine for me. The problems I've had, and I've had lots, couldn't be blamed on the nutrients. I really want to feel I've mastered a lot of the variables of this style before I switch to another.
 
re: Flushing & Leaching & Final Bud Swell

Its nice to have this thread going back on track guys

like really nice , lets hear more ideas


Personally the 4 day dark period is something i have never done but look forward to trying.

And as a experiment with 6 hrs of light on each of the 4 days.

It will be a test although i need to test it again against 4 days of full darkness and again against 4 days of no darkness wait I know what that does , not much.

truly it should be run at the same time with clones to be scientific but Im not publishing a paper just screwing around.
 
re: Flushing & Leaching & Final Bud Swell

Weaselcracxker I like the sounds of your method of reducing the nutrients to 150 ppm for the last few weeks it makes sense that it works well for you.


I have read more then once that a light nutrient mix flushes the plant out better then water. Its something to do with the waters electrons or molecules ability to extract waste from the roots.

I'm baked Vaping early Bud right now and forget just what the nutrients do in that regard.

Do you use 150 ppm for food or a way to get the roots to release waste or what ever ?
 
re: Flushing & Leaching & Final Bud Swell

To put it very simply- I'm just leaving them some food to finish better with.
To elaborate more on it- I'll just quote from what a very experienced career commercial grower told me.
The two video links in this quote aren't working - so I'm not sure if 420 doesn't allow them (?) or I have to tweak the URL or something. I've never posted a video link on 420 before- so I don't know. Will have to get back to this later.

In short; flushing, the way most people do it, is bullshit
By reducing the ppm of your water to under 150 it allows the plant to utilize the micros (even if the process is slower) while naturally flushing itself. This is what creates those really cool purples and other colors you see in the leafs without it looking like a deficiency.

Here is how I got to this point:

I asked myself: Why don't we flush trees but they still change color?
-----video link----

I looked around and found the answer: Trees naturally flush because the maturing processes tell them it's time to pull the nutrients from their leafs and store it in the trunk/roots. This includes photo period and temperature.

Cannabis growers think the change in color provides a better smoke. When really it hinders production of finishing terpenes and cannabinoids by removing the very low quantities of micronutrients from the plant.
Another video on Liebergs law of the mininum
-- video link----
Liebig...of the minimum - Wikipedia
A great example:
In tissue culture a plant takes around 0.00025mg of copper. if you lose that copper it doesn't grow correctly and in the end it stunts the plant and makes it look unhealthy because it can no longer activate some of the systems it needs to move other nutrients around it.
 
re: Flushing & Leaching & Final Bud Swell

They're youtube videos. When I paste those links in- I just get a blank space in the post- though I can see the URL when I edit. However- the first one is just 'why trees change colour in the fall' and the other is on Liebig's law- so only the first one might be semi- applicable.
 
re: Flushing & Leaching & Final Bud Swell

Ive heard of Liebig's law of the minimum.

It makes sense to let the plant have access to at least the minimum of its requirements , so it can complete all processes without getting hung up.

Next time I'll try the law of the minimum with flushing.

it makes sense to me and its what I want to try with the light schedule with 6 hrs on , the minimum approach.
 
re: Flushing & Leaching & Final Bud Swell

I see a lot of plants on the forum that are completely maxed out on their feed- and in those cases I really think they do need flushing.
 
re: Flushing & Leaching & Final Bud Swell

I'll go one step further and say if the leaves are green at harvest the flush duration was insufficient.

As far i have noticed a fertilized plants leaves stay mostly green and buds taste better when the leaves have died off naturally.


It takes time for the leaves to die off and many people harvest a good two weeks early.

Those last two weeks the plant needs to consume those stored nutrients and minerals , if you cut early you cut with them.
 
re: Flushing & Leaching & Final Bud Swell

Hey guys. I never really thought much of it until it was brought up about the nitrogen toxicity of my plant. Quite a while back I tried to correct it by flushing the soil. However I don't think I pushed enough water through. I think I only poured an equal container size through and I think I ran outta water er whatevs but clearly it's still struggling. ( no nutrients added since flush. A month or a lil more ago). You guys recommend trying it again? I'm still short on water that's been left sitting out to evap chlorine. I think I got 55 gallons for an 18gallon container. ( ran outta buckets )
Another side question if you guys don't mind, how important is it that you try to evap residual chlorine? ( not getting an RO system and 60 litres ish a week so not buying water lol so figured better than not?? But in short time I'm curious if it matters. Not sure if this info helps, it's basically Chinese to me
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re: Flushing & Leaching & Final Bud Swell

In the past I used rain water to avoid the chlorine and fluoride in the water , after checking the local water supplies system I found they used UV light for sterilization combined with chlorine just at a lower amount.


Its not so hard to get rid of

When the rain water ran dry I would aerate tap water in a 40 gallon poly trash can with 3 air pumps for a few days before use the first 24 hrs the most gets expelled filling the room with a strong smell of chlorine as bad as a busy public pool.

After 24 hrs could just smell it when my nose was a inch away from the water.


Now i use a inline charcoal filter , charcoal remove chlorine.

to be honest you don't need to worry about it , Chlorine is not that bad , it keeps the roots clean until it turns inert or evaporates. Although in organics it may kill beneficial bacteria with chemical fertilizers it matters little to none.
 
re: Flushing & Leaching & Final Bud Swell

I'll go one step further and say if the leaves are green at harvest the flush duration was insufficient.

As far i have noticed a fertilized plants leaves stay mostly green and buds taste better when the leaves have died off naturally.


It takes time for the leaves to die off and many people harvest a good two weeks early.

Those last two weeks the plant needs to consume those stored nutrients and minerals , if you cut early you cut with them.

I cringe when I see people cutting bright green plants. However you go about it- I think it's best to let them ripen properly and come to a good finish. That goes for most kinds of harvest plants- fruit, and veggies that I know. Flushing shouldn't be necessary if you feed sanely, but it's sometimes a good tool to have in the equation.
 
re: Flushing & Leaching & Final Bud Swell

Its nice to have this thread going back on track guys

like really nice , lets hear more ideas


Personally the 4 day dark period is something i have never done but look forward to trying.

And as a experiment with 6 hrs of light on each of the 4 days.

It will be a test although i need to test it again against 4 days of full darkness and again against 4 days of no darkness wait I know what that does , not much.

truly it should be run at the same time with clones to be scientific but Im not publishing a paper just screwing around.



For me 4 days of dark is 3 more days longer its going to take to dry my flowers.

Here's the deal, when you harvest a plant.. no mater what plant, they are not "dead", all we did was disconnect the root meristem from the plant. Go to any flower shop, flowers still alive and going strong. Same with canna after harvest.

I USUALLY see more pistols shoot out AFTER chop. I hang the whole plant, no trim, nothing ... just the plant upside down from a rope.. actually hang them in our bedroom with a fan on them for some aroma therapy. Yes indeedy. Ever get high trimming? It's from the terpines in the air as you manipulate the plant. How about your skin if you trim without gloves.. no dry skin even in the winter time.

This plant has many many useful purposes.

LEDBud.. what lamps are you running .. I've tried a shit ton of LEDs .. I am migrating to VERO 29 COBs currently.

Regarding the run down to the end with plants and nutrients. I grow in soil so what happens with my grow is the soil is loaded up with enough nutrients for the plant to finish. They use what they need and nothing more. The thing I like to see is the plant starting to use up the STORED nutrients in the fan leaves. We see that when the fans start to turn colors and fall off.. sorta kinda like a tree in the fall when the tree looses it's leaves. That's the process of senescence and completely normal.

We want that in our canna gardens, that's the plant blowing out her stored nutrients (doesn't matter the source) and trying as a last resort to reproduce. Which a lot of people call "bud swell". It's just a normal process all plants go thru.. not too many plants go thru a 4 day dark cycle in nature.. unless the end of days.

Somehow humans are smarter than mother nature or we can somehow "outsmart" her, I'm going with fools errand.

I vote for "chop n drop", make room for the girls waiting in the wings to get their shit on. 4 days x 9 grow cycles a year... 36 days of lost flowering time. That for me is a lot of time I need to be using for flowering.
 
re: Flushing & Leaching & Final Bud Swell

Hey bob currently using two 600w hps cool tubes with five Mars 300w panels with 850w power draw in a 4' x 6' x 7' tent.

I'm making some 100w cob lights to use for next rounds plants and take the cool tubes down.

I have 4 100w full spectrum Chinese cobs and 4 80mm fan / heatsink combos to cool them. and hang separately.

Today two Cree cxb3590's arrived as they are expensive next month I'll buy two more then run the 4 off the same power supply.

I still need to decide what heatsinks to use for the cree's

The 200w mean well driver will run 4 3590's at 50w each , their highest efficiency and costs $10 more then the 100w driver.

I might make up 4 cree 3070's cobs they are 1/2 the price as 3590's and are rated for 100w vs 135w of the 3590's

So far for next grow 850w in panels and 400w in cobs the tent its 30sq.ft , it works out to 41 w.sq.ft

They say the minimum is 35w sq.ft with LEDs.

The trick to larger crops is use all of the floor space , cover it with green growth the bare spots should be avoided , its a good goal something to shoot for.

This works for Warehouses and equally well in closets for maximizing the potential of the space.

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I'm not sure why your getting more pistles after you chop the plant ? it should be going threw senescence

Here's some background on it

Plant senescence is the final stage of development during which the plant recycles the valuable cellular building blocks that have been deposited in the leaves and other parts of the plant during growth. These reusable nutrients are then stored in the plant until they can be used in new growth or sent to the seed to provide a nutrient store for the next generation. Maintaining an efficient senescence process is therefore essential for the fitness of the plant or its seed. Senescence is a complex, highly regulated process that requires new gene expression and involves the interactions of many signalling pathways. In crops inappropriately timed senescence can reduce final crop yield, and in many vegetable crops significant postharvest loss is due to senescence. Unravelling the regulatory mechanisms that underlie senescence may have significant impact on increasing future food production

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I agree we humans are not smarter then nature rather nature created us we are a extension of it by its design we are its smartest extension so far.

As such we can and do manipulate nature its actually what makes us successful , give us a inch and we take a mile we are taking science to new bounds with interstellar space travel our next conquest its in our nature our drive force.

The way I see it we are nature incarnated
 
re: Flushing & Leaching & Final Bud Swell

HEy LB, I like what you said there... in my experience, senescence starts slowly but shortly after we flip from VEG to FLOWER... starts off slowly then ramps up as the plants get older and as the need to reproduce gets stronger the senescence ramps up.

You can see this happening in the garden. Not long after flip some of those HUGE big early fans start to turn color and yellow a bit. That's the plant using translocation to move stored nutrients in the fans, to HELP build flowers. Diverting energy into the reproductive parts of the plant. This is why I DO NOT trim off fan leaves.

This process is by design. The young fans in the beginning of the plants life are sinking energy (energy sink), as the plant matures and begins the process of reproduction (flower building) those big fans turn into an energy source much like the soil, or your bottled nutrients. As the plant uses up the stored energy and nutrients stored in the fan leaves she will also grow new smaller fan leaves and those smaller leaves will also turn into energy sources late in flower.

You can see this happening with plants that turn colors, like fall colors on trees ... which btw are going thru the same process. Although many trees won't have reproductive parts until the following spring BEFORE new leaves appear.

We see this process take place here in North America every summer.. the dog days of summer... lots of plants sort of go dormant in July, shortly after the days start to become shorter. Many flowers and veggies sort of take a time out... then ramp up in August and September knowing the end is near all the while leaves are changing colors falling off ... but fruits are plentiful. Good for us right?

We can use this process to our advantage.... cool the grow room in flower coming down the stretch, this promotes the senescence process and we can see that in the colors that usually start to show in those big leaves...and also build larger flowers cause there is ample energy for the building of larger flowers.

After chop the plant is still alive, we won't loose yield as we still have physics and biology in play here. The only thing we are doing is letting the plant dry out and die. So we have this big beautiful purple orange plant but after we trim off all those colorful leaves we have bright green sticky flowers left. At least that's the goal right.. then curing process to improve flavor from the terpenes and around we go.....

We are manipulating the timing of all of this with indoor growing. This is true. Genetics will become a vital role going forward with regard to yields. We may see seeds only for indoor use or for outdoor and indoor... something along those lines. We are still very early on with this type of genetic manipulation. Manly for the last 10K years its been manipulate for outdoor success only.
 
re: Flushing & Leaching & Final Bud Swell

Hey bob that was good stuff too, I want to expound on your quote in particular not that you don't know it yourself mostly so others might gain insight.

We can use this process to our advantage.... cool the grow room in flower coming down the stretch, this promotes the senescence process and we can see that in the colors that usually start to show in those big leaves...and also build larger flowers cause there is ample energy for the building of larger flowers.

We are manipulating the timing of all of this with indoor growing. .

I'll just jump right in here

In nature as the days grow shorter temperatures drop lower , the nutrients become unavailable in the soil. After a millennia of adaptation plants react naturally to a drop in light hours followed by cooler temperatures and the subsequent reduction in available nutrients.

This can be done at home by the grower using temperature nutrient strength and of course light cycle.

its natures way so people mimic her indoors

its all we have to work with in that regard so we use it by all accounts it really does work to combine all three aspects and manipulate them.

For me if a plant does not get flushed it stays green forever and ever and ever this is why people harvest green plants at 10 and 11 weeks.

A flush not only makes the Buds burn and taste better it speeds up senescence / the end of life cycle.
 
re: Flushing & Leaching & Final Bud Swell

With that in mind choosing when you flush is of particular importance in regard to harvest size and quality.

If the flush is done too late the Buds could over ripen while waiting for the leaves to yellow , flush to early
and the Buds won't grow to their full potential.


So when to flush ?

its subjective look into what people do with your soil type.

in dwc I will wait until the white hairs turn brown and start to shrivel into the now swollen Calyxes then flush for 10 to 14 days depending on how fast the plant fades.
 
re: Flushing & Leaching & Final Bud Swell

Flushed my soil ( twice ) and it's only getting straight water for 5 weeks and still no yellowing?? She's on week 10. Eventually she'll finally start to turn yellow ya think? ( she's growing a new crown on week 10 so pushing out all new white pistils and gained about an inch in height over the last couple days, pushed out new leaves at the very top too... this will be the third time.


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re: Flushing & Leaching & Final Bud Swell

I would not know I have no clue what the plant looks like or whats in the soil

Its actually next to useless to solve someones problems you need to figure out your problem you did it.
You have all the details being your the one who's tending it.

I will guess a accumulation of nutrients from previous overfeedings is keeping it green

Newbies love to overfeed , it can take a few years before people relax on it.

We all start somewhere it took me a few years to understand less is more.
 
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