What Are Salts?

[JJ Bones]

80% of people who think of salts think about what we use on our foods. That is known as sodium chloride.

However when we're talking about our plants and getting salt build-up or flushing salts we are talking about a variety of salts. This salt we have stuck to our definition has been forced upon us. Think of people who say I can't eat salt, that's because they have too much sodium chloride in their system. Anyway onto gardening!

According to Wikipedia:

In chemistry, salts are ionic compounds that result from the neutralization reaction of an acid and a base. They are composed of related numbers of cations (positively charged ions) and anions (negative ions) so that the product is electrically neutral (without a net charge). These component ions can be inorganic such as chloride (Cl−), as well as organic such as acetate (C2H3O2−) and monatomic ions such as fluoride (F−), as well as polyatomic ions such as sulfate (SO42−).

Source: Salt (chemistry) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The ionic compounds are elements which we get from our fertilizer, such as calcium, magnesium, nitrogen, phosphorous etc. The acids used that I've seen most are phosphoric acid, sulfuric acid, and EDTA which are attached to the elements. This is what makes some thing a "magnesium phosphate" or "magnesium sulfate".

To sum it up, when we reference salts in garden we mean minerals.

 

[Milkman87]

A build up of salts inside your pots from all the nuts been pumped in to them. Just a guess lol.
And only giving them a flush will cure the problem! Is that correct?

 

[superredbud]

I am not going to be of any help for you but I have a question that maybe you can help me with. How do you flush your plants? I see on this site guys talking about flushing with lots and lots of water. This only leaves me with dead plants. If you don't mind my asking, what is your procedure? Keep it green.

 

[CoRkyMtnGrown]

I am not going to be of any help for you but I have a question that maybe you can help me with. How do you flush your plants? I see on this site guys talking about flushing with lots and lots of water. This only leaves me with dead plants. If you don't mind my asking, what is your procedure? Keep it green.

A timely demise is your ultimate desire with these ladies to encourage flower(bud)growth,if I'm correct. So if my understanding is correct, flushing for 2wks prior to harvest date removes unwanted salts(minerals) from the roots to give you a more clean rootmass to enhance her true aroma & flavor.