Flush Or Not To Flush

[MDP]

pistils browning is only a rough guide m8(and could be contributed to by enviromental factors), if you wanna harvest at the right time your gonna have to look at the trichome heads man

[Luke Warmly]

flushing is a myth anyway! - once feed is in the plant- it's in! - there is no "backflow" mechanism - you do not need to flush a compost grow at all, some people just water for the last week

You may be using an organic compost, but Canna is most definitely not organic! 

This is nonsense! sorry but it is! Firstly any experienced Hydro grower will be able to testify by experience *alone* (let alone the establioshed science behind this) that flushing your plants at the end of the grow radically improves the taste and quality of the smoke.

I also picked up you saying elsewhere that it has to do with the 'P' component (Phosphorus) - this is also completely incorrect as any grow guide will tell you, the point of flushing is to allow the plants to use up the excess Nitrogen fed to them during the grow (not phosphorus) and which they dont need at the end Period and YOU dont want in the plants when you cut them down, so with just water they effectively begin cannibalising themselves by using the Nitrogen in the leaves and foliage, hence why they bleach out and turn yellow when you do this.

If the plants were as you say a 'one way system' then it would for one thing be impossible to recover from a Nutrient burn where there is excess Nitrogen that the plant cannot take-up and hence gets burned by it (the only other time that flushing and giving them just PH adjusted water is needed), as if you were correct in what you say, the nutrients would just stay in the plants at the same excessive levels and they would then keep being burnt and just die! This clearly does not happen when you flush in this way either, they recover by consuming the Nitrogen they have stored up so that you can return to a more appropriate level of nutrients in your resevoir and begin feeding again.

I don't know where you got your misplaced views from, but its not a question of 'backflow' or actually flushing the residual nutrients OUT of the plants system, its about denying them any further Nitrogen in the feed forcing them to consume the Nitrogen they have left in their foliage. I had to cut down my last crop early due to a mold infection so couldnt flush and the difference in the smoke and taste was radically different - in addition if you consult ANY expert or grow guide concerning how plants function and feed, you will find that this is no 'myth' at all but established fact and not rocket-science either!

I think as a moderator the onus is on you to help DISTINGUISH between facts and myths not forcefully perpetuate and spread them!!! especially when you are actually 180 degrees out in terms of the veracity of what you are purporting to convey as fact or myth!

If you express your views 'as facts' so strongly and forcefully and are indeed totally incorrect factually, inexperienced growers will take this as gospel and go out and act on these almost 'shouting down' style of expressions (not a great approach as a moderator in itself) as you are for one not just saying 'IMO' or 'its just my view' and secondly you are a moderator not just any old member so you have alot more influence on members/growers!

I have been highly impressed with the quality of news and Joolz' overall effort with this community up until now, this however does not impress me AT ALL!!!

Luke

p.s what do you mean by 'crude mineral formulations' or 'man made' either when referring to Canna - what is crude about them and what Nutrients are 'not crude' then??? It's really frustrating to hear growers with obvious 'soil' bias misconstruing things about Hydroponics in a fashion akin to one of the classic hippy views that always makes my blood boil when blurted out around a campfire at some outdoor party - spouting the classic: 'Weed grown using photons from the sun (not HPS lights) just tastes more real man... like spiritual man' - being really into soil growing is fine in my book, just stick to 'adamant views' about that if unlike Hydroponic growing, you do actually know alot about it!

Edited September 12, 2004 by Luke Warmly

[mindhunter]

...........

mindhunter

[Vlad (the impala)]

where to start?

Sun-grown ganja WILL be more psychoactive than that grown under just an hps - so in this case I'll agree with the "camp-fire" hippy! (a complete spectrum works a helluva lot better than just a "red spike" as from an hps)

imho all hydroponics growing is environmentally (hence morally) indefensible - without reiterating the full argument, it is a system much beloved of accountants, but not consumers of their bland, tasteless, and chemical riddled produce (witness supermarket "tomatoes") - so to choose to grow one's personal puff this way seems rather odd!

As to choosing an organic feed over a crude mineral formulation, it's simple really, an organic feed is a complex synergy of components, numbering several hundred naturally occurring and interreacting substances - they feed a living growth medium, as they have done most satisfactorily in nature for millions of years - crude mineral salts are wrested from the earth, and undergo chemical synthesisation in an industrial process to make the likes of Canna - they loudly trumpet that they are "pure" -yes, pure, crude chemicals! - simplistic, and not in a natural balance, and missing many vital components

but then a "scientist" knows far better than nature

I am also baffled at your "take" on the fact that a plant, when starved, will use up the nutrients available to it, but only the nitrogen?????? - what you need to rid the plant of is excess phosphorous, which affects the flavour, and is known to be carcinogenic in excess.

So, in a nutshell, I fall about laughing at hydro - you feed it a grossly imbalanced feed that makes it grow like billyo for a while, then you have to starve the plant during its last growth period to allow it metabolise all the excesses........with organics there is no need to starve the plant at all - just leave dear old mother nature to it!

As I've remarked before, it may well be possible to bonk in a hammock - standing up, but why on earth bother, use a haystack!

[Guest RAZ]

@ Mindhunter.......

Where's that spoon

[scottyDog]

[Vlad (the impala)]

I seem to have come over all "hippy" about this.............

~I accept that the complex processes employed by nature in growth are not fully understood - we are but scratching the surface of understanding "synergy"

(the way several compounds interreact) - I am content to sit back with my feet up, leaving nature to do the job she does so well, smoking a large organic spliff, free of any crude chemical contaminants.........I am happy to sit in awe at nature's feet - she knows far more than we ever will!

On the other hand, there are those that will try to do the Canute thing.......assuming that from our limited knowledge we can or should CONTROL nature........I'll leave this thread with a chunk of my "sig" -

"One portion of the land is the same to hirn as the next; -for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs.

The Earth is not his brother, but his enemy, and when he has conquered it,

he moves on. .

His appetite will devour the Earth and leave behind only a desert.........................

[oldtimer1]

Hmm a lot of opinions here.

As far as I’m concerned I’m here when I have the time, to help people grow cannabis. Maybe some who come here have a vested interests in canna or Biobizz etc, so what! The board is full of people with vested interests, its an amalgam of all people in the cannabis world and as far as I'm concerned people are entitled to opinions. I believe in organic production, it suits me but I'm not on some crusade, uk420 is here to give every grower good info on growing their own whether they want to grow hydro soil or compost, I thought the idea was to get as many people growing as possible. If I can persuade some to try growing organically along the way so be it..

DeL BoY the way organics works is as a live system with the soil/compost microflora working with crude organic ingredients in varying states of breakdown being made available to plants over time, its a total living system, thats not the way you have been growing.

Using the canna fertilisers will have killed a lot of the micro herd in the allmix, some species completely, so the allmix will not work in the way it was intended to. Even so, it is still a perfectly good medium for plants to grow in and a good percentage of the refined chemical salts in the canna nutrients are directly absorbable by the plant roots. It would have been cheaper for you to have bought a standard multipurpose to use with the cann. Anyhow in your case as you have been growing you will get a better end product by starving them for the last week or two.

As far as flushing goes, there are several misconceptions about flushing in the cannabis world that personally I do not consider to be true, I’ll deal with compost/soil as this is what we are talking about here.. In the cannabis world the term is used to cover several different things. Years ago in the cannabis world the term was exclusively used to refer to dealing with removing an excess of chemicals/minerals from compost/soil after an excess of fertiliser had been applied, by running several times the volume of water through the compost to remove the excess chemical salts.

This works where chemical salt fertilisers have been used and a large overdose has been fed in the short term. Say a 10 litre pot of compost by running 20 to 50 litres of pure water through it would save a plant where it had by mistake been fed double or triple the maximum dose, as long as done before the plant wilted down to much.

Where it does not work so well, is where slightly high chemical fertiliser doses have been used over a long period until the salts have been absorbed my the humus above saturation point and started crystallising in hard salt forms some of these are pretty toxic, start killing roots and can not be washed out of compost in the short term.

Anyhow the using the term flushing under the above circumstances is pretty much correct I think and in line with general horticultural termsused today.

Over the last ten years or so the the term flushing has started to be bastardised as a term in the cannabis world. Referring to removing elements from a plant via the roots into the compost by just using water for the last week or two and believing this happens. It does not happen as far as N:P:K is concerned, roots of plants do excrete various chemical some even work as complex weed killers inhibiting other plants growing close by, but not as fertiliser salts back into the soil, well not until the roots start dying/rotting and becoming part of the humus mass.

So the term flushing as far as removing chemical from the plant by just using water in the last week or two of a plants life may well be an incorrect term to use, if you equate:- to flush, to = to drive out or to wash out with a large volume of water. When as has been said what actually happens is in fact the plant is starved of nutrition and is forced to metabolise any internal excess and then past that into leaching from the leaves to try and complete its life cycle ie: finish flowering and make provision to reproduce its self.

Smoking Nitrates will not give you a headache, but smoking an excess of chlorophyll will. Especially if the plant leaf tissue also contains excessive levels of phosphorus, phosphorus also gives a harsh metallic after taste, inhibits burning, causes headaches, gives a feeling of nausea and effects the throat tissue. It is the combination of these two things that tend to have given hydro and chemically grow weed its bad name as far as smokability goes.

Personally on a hypothetical level I don’t think starving a plant is the long term answer to this problem, as I feel a plant on a balanced diet that remains healthy until cropped, produces the finest end product. But as a short term fix for badly formulated chemical feeds or feeding practises that are designed solely on the bases of one thing only ie yield. That starving plants is one way of dealing with some of problems arising from using them.

[bongme]

Hi OT

How you doing mate dandy I trust.

As far as I’m concerned I’m here when I have the time, to help people grow cannabis. Maybe some who come here have a vested interests in canna or Biobizz etc, so what! The board is full of people with vested interests, its an amalgam of all people in the cannabis world and as far as I'm concerned people are entitled to opinions. I believe in organic production, it suits me but I'm not on some crusade, uk420 is here to give every grower good info on growing their own whether they want to grow hydro soil or compost, I thought the idea was to get as many people growing as possible. If I can persuade some to try growing organically along the way so be it..

Here Here, So now you all know what UK420 means. B)

Bongme

[Luke Warmly]

here here!

[Dormant]

I think a few people are talking at cross purposes

the only flush/flushing I equate to non hydro grows is as OT says, to remove overdosed ferts. Leeching is a different animal.

Flushing in hydro has also been misunderstood around the internet, but has a very important role, i.e. readdressing the balance of minerals that can build up as salt accumilation in the medium and res, as part of an irrigation strategy, or indeed to recover from nutrient burn. Leeching, the process of starving or supplying a lower EC for a week to 10 days also has it's place, but is often called flushing! I notice commercial clearing solutions have also been poo poo'd around here, well thats another area of confusion IMO, but one best left for the correct fourm to avoid further confusion

The confusion continues to abound if non hydro growers jump in with both feet onto important hydroponic techniques, without clarification IMO specially when some readers will not fully understand the confusion. Ironic then that we are all here for the same purpose, yet continue to confuse the reader new to growing

I take it the 'Non -Organic' fourm is not the place to talk about hydroponic nutrients? sorry bout that:)

Dormant.

Edited September 12, 2004 by Dormant

[oldtimer1]

Hello Dormant, this forum is about growing in composts, its divided into two sections, inorganic such as JI and organic such as New Horizon compost.

We are not that formal, so its not that unusual for discussions to possibly drift/range between compost growing and hydroponics especilly when comparing merits of each. I don’t think we want it to be rigid or regimented.

But if a member started a topic here about, or a question was asked about hydroponic nutrients, one of the mods would move it to the Hydroponic forum, Nutrients and Additives section with a click through link left here so the post can be found. That way the members who’s main interest are in hydroponics would discuss the comment/question.

There are some things that may cross over between the different disciplines, for instance 15 or 20 years back an old pal Nesta developed what was later called Nesta juice, I think this was the fore runner of what are now often called clearing solutions. It was made to help deal with the harshness and burn factor that was even more apparent when useing the early hydro nutrient mixes. But the thing was it also helped when used with chemical fed compost grown plants improving the end product a great deal.

[Dormant]

Cheers OT,

I don’t think we want it to be rigid or regimented.

Cool mate, I think the minefield surrounding organic/bio whatever is bad enough already :s As new bio hydro methods become more user friendly, I think the line will blur even more

I'm dying to try Cannas new Bio product when it's available over here. Interesting to note that some of the 'organic' hydro solutions often contain animal byproducts, protiens etc. that would be very difficult to substitute from vegitable matter, and from an eco point of view, the 'organic' hydro solutions often hide this fact. Organic, bio, natural, free range, it's bad enough trying to work out whats gone into the food chain in the supermarket, let alone an unregulated area of plant nutrients eh then compare growth rates/yeilds/time taken and add it into the electricity used equation, assuming responsible disposal of used nutrients, I often wonder weather one method is really that much worse for the environment in the end. When we can all grow outside without a worry in the world, THEN i might consider dirt again

It may come down to an accountant type decision, but I've still got to pay the damn bill ::fuckyou::

Dormant.

[Luke Warmly]

Regarding the forum this is in i apologies to have strayed from soil-growing in my replies - I only noticed when it was too late im afaid but it's my glaring error, i had been reading a few days prior to my first reply a posting by Vlad on this very same topic (he seems to very forthright about his views on flushing on the site, that i did not realise initially) basically the same issue and views being offered here, but in the Hydroponic-based forum - so when i searched for the posting again i was remiss in not seeing that this was indeed, not the same posting or forum.

My apologies one and all, if i could export all of my replies back over to the original posting that motivated me to express my views then i would, seems a bit pointless to go and write them again in the other forum though!

If it seems like i should have paid more attention to what i was up to then that's absolutely right, as i should have!

I will be alot more on the ball next time i promise

Cheers

Luke

[G-Whizz!]

Bah rubbish Luke

We've all done the same, no worries mate.