Flushing

[Breezy]

I'm coming to the end and I need to start flushing my question is when I flush do I continue to use calmag or stop that completely?

[Chowder]

I would flush with Ph'd water only and watch the plants. How long are you flushing for and are you growing in soil, water? There is excellent info on flushing in the GWE site. Cheers and good luck on the grow/harvest!

[PigSquishy]

Here this is the best information I have read to date on the subject of Flushing, including the serious need for a specialize flushing agent beyond pH'd water, otherwise you could lose THC and quality... but hey what do I know, I only listen to experts on the subject.

http://bigbudsmag.com/medical-hydroponics-marijuana-flushing-facts-don-t-be-fooled/

[alltatup]

Greenthumb, I loved that article which convinced me to switch to Flawless Finish. Made total sense!!!!!

[Jason]

Thank you for posting this link. Got some Flawless Finish the other day as a result.

[DW2]

Breezy, I just (last week) flushed the first plant of my current grow. I used 2 tsp per gallon of FloraKleen, ran it (a DWC set up) for four days, drained and filled with ONLY pH'ed water then harvested her three days later. The bud dried very quickly (harvested on 3/10) and I put them into jars last night. I was 'forced' to sample a little and WOW, the flushing really works. The last grows, of which I did not do any flushing, took a very long time to cure, but, I think that the flushing will reduce the time required to cure the buds. Using just plain pH'ed water would be better than not flushing at all, it would cause the plant to use up the available nutrients in the water and those that are already in the plants system. Using the flushing solution, so far, has not seemed to have any bad effects on the buds.

[PigSquishy]

I know exactly what you mean, there is an article here on this website somewhere where the topic of flushing is really gotten into and they get into all the points you made mention of, from taking longer for the smoke to dry and cure, the longer it might be harsh before it might turn smooth... etc... I like you did read that article and the lights did go off for me, and so I asked around a bit to some people I know because what I read here and in a recent article I commented on a link for previously, helped me to realize the importance of not only flushing but also flushing in the right way.

From what I am reading there are important Flushing Agents which can still maintain or increase THC at the end, helping the plant burn off whatever nutrients it needs at the end to make a better, finer smoke, than what you'd get from just pH'd water. In the Advanced Nutrients article they recommended two names for Flushing, asking around I heard House & Gardens as the preferred of the people I know. Up to this point I always thought flushing or not flushing was just a personal preference and that it didn't make a difference, and now I am learning some flushing agents are suppose to really be better than others. Perhaps something you too might want to look more into and provide some insight on what you think having used FloraKleen yourself, as I would enjoy learning more on you thoughts of using it when your buds are cured to perfection in your eyes.

[DW2]

Howdy PigSquishy, I will definitely post an up date on how the flushing results do turn out. I am feeding the last bloom feed to my remaining plant this weekend and will start the flushing cycle next week. I am planning ,for the next grow, to germinate some hermied seeds from the harvest of 7/27/2016 crop. I did not flush those plants then and I can compare (although not very scientific) the results after flushing the new crop (from the same plants?). Anyway, I'm sold on the benefits of flushing and will continue doing it. Thanks for Your information.

[PigSquishy]

After a bit of very intensive study on the subject of flushing and doing more reading on the topic of flushing I can at least firmly state finally that I now finally feel comfortable enough to say I have a firm enough grip on the subject of flushing to know it is much more than a one person's sided opinion on if you should or should not flush a plant prior to harvest. One of the very important things I have learned in my research and learning about flushing is that it will only affect the mature plant(s) which you will gather the buds from, not the seeds from. When a plant creates a seed, it genetically encodes the seed with everything needed to push the seed out of its shell, make the little starter leaves (round leaves) and allow the plant enough of everything it needs, minus the water to grow and live long enough to survive on its own right up the point you need to start feeding the seedlings. Up to this point you do not need to flush or do a thing, it will not affect the outcome of the seeds. Because when we are talking flushing is at the very end of the plant's lifecycle, the seeds have already been grown, the seeds themselves are matured and 100% ready to do what they do... before we are cutting off nutes and being concerned about flushing all the excess minerals and nutes out of the plant itself.

But this is also where things take a unique turn as well, because we find it is important to cut off some nutrients to the plant at this stage, but not all... and if you cut the wrong nutrients at this stage you could cost yourself THC, CBD, etc.. thus losing out on the very things you are after. Compare it to an athlete, when it comes time to weigh in they want to shed water weight and body fat, but not the muscles its going to take for them to get the job done they are there to do. The same goes for our plants, we want to shed the excess of what we don't want, while keeping everything we do want and just like an athlete every team, every player is going to tell you the best products they themselves have found which works for them. The key is pretty much listening and getting yourself a short list of products to try out and find which one works for you so amazingly well you simply can't believe it, then stick to that one as your main baseline and if you still want to shop around for something better, you have a good product which works to get you going until you find something even better yet. Hence why I am always willing to name products, information, links, etc... with the hopes of someone giving me more information to go research and see if they have found an even better product I want to switch over to myself.

When we discuss "nutrients" one thing you need to understand is that minerals such as Phosphorus, which is a mineral will always and forever be phosphorus, it doesn't matter if your plant takes it up and dies when the plant materials rots back down into compost and returns to the earth as soil, it will once again return that same phosphorus back into the soil from the breaking from of the plant material. If you harvest the bud, smoke it and then dump out the ash, inside that ash you are going to be able to find the mineral phosphorus because it will not change from being a mineral. So when we discuss the importance of flushing what we are actually concerned with is having too much phosphorus or other minerals in the bud itself, which will lead to things like the smoke being more harsh, the bud being harder to light, you know that black resin like taste you get from some bud... all of those things can be caused by to much of the minerals being left behind in the bud. Thanks to NebulaHaze's articles here on this site, I even learned by not getting that extra excess nutrients out of the bud prior to drying the plant, can lead to it taking a lot longer to dry the plant, and then that in turn can also affect how long it is going to take to cure the bud as well.

Having read so much of what Nebulahaze has had to say on the subjects of drying, curing and everything else I wanted to straight up know point blank IF IT REALLY ALL DOES MATTER? Does flushing make a serious difference as NebulaHaze states... 100% WITHOUT A DOUBT YES!!! Some bud from the same plant was taken that was flushed and some was taken that wasn't flushed... and then the information on curing and how to cure it differently was all done to different jars and labeled to try to get a better sense of what would happen... Would it all turn out like bud from different plants if the buds were even cured at different humidities for different periods of time? So here is what was learned by the experimenting that was done... The peak of the intensity of the effects all seemed about the same no matter which jar was smoked from, but the tastes, the flavors, even the ways it affected you was all completely different it seemed. Had people not known it was all the same plant we could have thought it was all different plants of the same strain grown by different people with different nutrients... Some was seriously more harsh than others which was amazingly smooth, in the end enough was learned to have a much deeper understanding of the sheer important of really dialing down the drying and curing process as being just as important, if not more important then how the plant itself is grown. Clear there is a ton more to learn on this subject and of everyone who has written things on this subject this is the only place I've found such complete information which really took it from being a personal view of someone's to actually putting it down into information that shouldn't be questioned, but rather learn everything you can from it.

Now when it comes to using seeds from Hermi plants, all I know is that for whatever all reasoning's I have heard of some people doing it, yes... just like yes you hear of people growing bag seeds, instead of buying more seeds of a specific strain. At the end of the day you will never be a better grower than the strain you are growing, if the plant you are growing has a very low THC in its genetics you will never get amazing smoke out of that plant. Really at the end of the day in my eyes it boils down to simply this for me... Why would you want to grow a seed that may or may not produce good buds, great yields and have a much higher chance of a successful complete grow with minimal to no problems? Why spend all that money, time, energy, even risk whatever risks you face from growing it, and not know you have everything invested into coming out a winner in the end for it? Personally if I was dumping all that into a seed, I want to know I'm getting everything I put into it back at the end in yields... why else would I want to go out and weed a garden, pour the hours of work into it and then in the end find out it barely produces a semi-grade product? I certainly wouldn't do it for a single plant in my entire garden medical or otherwise, its always best in my eyes to start with a good genetics from a trusted source whom people like, trust and have an established reputation of good seeds no matter what plant it is I'm shopping for.

[DW2]

I do understand You point about the genetics of the plants/seeds. The 'bag seed' that I have saved over the past years (the seed I'm currently growing was from 2005) was of high quality and has, so far, yielded very good bud. I look at it this way, first, I'm on a limited budget so cost is a factor, and second, by using what seeds that I have lessens the exposure to possible discovery. No matter what propositions or legislations States or municipalities pass, it is STILL a federal offence, so less exposure, less chance taken.
I agree on the flushing, removing excess phosphates, nitrates, and other compounds helps to speed up the curing process. Thank You for the in depth information, You have certainly done a lot of research on the topic.

[Breezy]

Wow greenthumb you made sense of alot of questions in my head lol I'm going to my local supplier today to see what they have for flushing agents .And dw2 keep us updated as I'm coming to the flush and cure stage myself

[PigSquishy]

Okay for years and years I like many others have my personal comments and feelings about AN, and it wasn't until I got tired of buying pH Down all to often did I start to look for another brand, and in the end it brought me over to AN's pH Down (pharmaceutical grade) not the 35% phosphoric acid sold by the other companies most commonly as pH Down. Well I for one wanted an answer what is "pharmaceutical grade" as I know Food Grade is 35%, they couldn't tell me anything more than they buy it by the 50-gallon drum and pour it straight into new bottles to sell at smaller sizes. The also strongly caution using gloves, eye protection, etc... for using this strength, all I know is it takes a 60-ml instead of 1/2 - 3/4 of a Cup of pH Down to have the same effects to bring the pH down to 6.00 when I am mixing nutes for my fruit trees at 50-gallons of water at a time.

While they were on the phone I decided to ask a non-hydro cannabis question to them about a hydro system I have with different plants in it for vegetables because it keeps doing something I am 100% confused by, my PPM's will climb higher and higher and my pH will also always climb at a steady rate as well. This isn't fixed by adding 80-ppm water, or not adding any water... it's always the same climb, and nobody has been able to figure out the problem for it since we built the entire system from scratch its been a problem. The very first thing they told me was its algae and wanted to know the water temps, so we went on a hunt for light leaks in the system never thinking to check for that as a problem, assuming it was all set up correctly. But that was the problem one of the pipes was letting light into the nute water and growing algae in a place inside a pipe we could not see it, killed it, fixed the problem and the system ran like a dream after a year of problems. Suddenly I looked at AN in a new light, they then tried to push their pH Perfect line up on me for solving my problem and promised even better results by using their lineup of products.

In the Maximum Yield Magazine (article online) I read a story on some farmers using AN's products on their vegetable gardens and such to seriously grow some of the BIGGEST stuff I have ever seen, and it did set some new world records, So while really looking into AN's products from different sources like this I found some articles in there by Harley Smith (Grow Class Part 1 & 2 On YouTube explains Nutrients in a way you will really understand it) on things like Yucca Root and how it makes water wetter, and all this other stuff. Which in turn got me to looking more into his name on YouTube, Facebook, etc... and then I found RAW Nutrients and saw they too were a new product line coming out and were seriously setting some new records for growing themselves. But when the guy who a couple years ago grew an 8-lb carrot on their product within a couple hours of me, that caught my attention even more so, so I never did go to AN's product line as I saved so much buying RAW's instead and by the end of the growing season I didn't have any complaints at the farmer's market at all, a lot of compliments though on the size, taste and smell of the produce.

Clearly in the end I think what matters most is what works for you with your water supply, and how it works with your setup, find the one which works best for you at the best price.

[alltatup]

Chowder I've got a hydroponic grow box. Roots descending very nicely on the girls,

PigSquishy If you look at this grow journal, you will see what one guy did with Ace PurpHaze x Malawi using AN nutes:

http://www.bcnorthernlights.com/forums/threads/purple-haze-x-malawi-bloombox-grow.1012/

The buds got incredibly large. He used CO2 as well.

[PigSquishy]

I was looking up a strain the one day as some people were saying it was a really amazing strain, and others were saying it wasn't worth the time to plant the seeds to this strain and couldn't figure out how it was a Cannabis Cup Winner. When I was doing more research on the strain to try to see why some people loved it and why others hated it, I did note a trend and even a comment in a Forum post someplace which did catch my eye. The person pointed out that when it took the Cannabis Cup they pointed out it was grown with AN, and those who were complaining weren't growing it with AN's products... Hum, does that mean that some strains perform even better than others on some fertilizer brands? Which lead me off onto the path of different fertilizers contain different amounts of the same nutes, which became even more interesting when you really dig into it...

One company in the EU makes the claim they have studied cannabis plants for years and have found the best nute levels for cannabis specifically, turn to USA companies, and some will make the same exact claim... but when you compare the ingredients and amounts you'll note they are not the same... Although you need to realize it doesn't stop there, one person I know uses Well Water for their plants, they have a high sulfur issue in the water, it smells like rotten eggs when it comes out the tap, another person uses 80-ppm RO water, still another person has 980-ppm Tap Water which is high in Calcium & Manganese... now taking that water from three different sources and adding AN or another fertilizer companies products to it, you can see how some might make better use of what is in the water already where others could offset the nutes already in the water. Again it comes back to strains as well and what a strain or a plant can tolerate for nutes and what nutes one strain may want more of than another. Which does seem to hold some merit as I've been doing some researching into different Tomato Strains which are native plants to my location and can tolerate the soil conditions here better than any other strain.

[DrPhoton]

Without a doubt ? Cant really know that until a conclusive backed up trial is done to scientifically show without fail that flushing indeed makes a difference. All we can say is "from experience" we appear to notice a difference. As its subjective and cannot be easily represented. So when you work in a world like this, best thing you can do is pick up a book on plant biology, chemistry and see what information is available and make a logical guess based on that.