Interesting point, even though the FF FAQ says to not feed them immediately. I did check my runoff PPM and was at 600PPM using 700PPM scale, so am guessing there are some nutrients just not the 1500+ the chart calls for. Hopefully that buys time for the soil to dry a little before resuming dosage.
isn't a flush just a hard watering, in the end? Sure, you ran a lot of water through there, but how much remained when you were done? Exactly the same amount of good clean water that would remain after a f/w/f/w water only session. When you come along every other time and give only water, that is the whole point... to allow the plant to clean up the soil of leftover nutes from the last time, and create a "depleted medium."
The ONLY reason we pH our solutions is so that the nutes are in the pH range where they break free of their edta bonds and become mobile in the soil. If it wasn't for nutes, we would have no reason to pH adjust. Since there are no nutes in a flush, there is no need to pH adjust all of that water.
When you do a flush, check the ppm of the first runoff and compare it to the finish. That will tell you how much you removed from the soil.
When you flush the soil, you are flushing the nutrients along with leftover salts and ions. If you leave the soil in that state there is nothing for the plant to eat and you are starving it right when it is trying to bulk up the flowers.
no more so than when you just give water and let it chew on that for 3-5 days.
Sorry, not trying to be argumentative but the plant clears out the nutrients on the water only pass, the plain water doesn't do it by itself. Does it not makes sense that the plant is still feeding on that second pass, and when you give pH adjusted water, it simply reactivates any leftover nutes and makes them available to the plant? And as a consequence of this action, the soil is cleaned of excess nutes, by the plant itself, every other watering.
Not exactly. Usually when we get to this point we are looking at a plant suffering from salt lockout, ie, all the cation holding spots in the soil are holding salt, not nutrients. This plant is starving and needs food, yesterday. Yes, I advise to clear the salt and then immediately feed.
and taken out of context, it might sound like I said here to immediately give nutes while in the act of flushing, but I did not... I was saying that after you have cleared the pipes by flushing, you should feed/water/feed/water right up to the end with none of this nonsense of trying to starve the plant for the last 2 weeks.
