What is your biggest question about growing cannabis?

[Slyvie]

Anyone try amended coco? I read PH is less maintenance with soil and dry amendments - would the PH be similar if using coco with dry amendments?

[Rootsruler]

@midwestweednerd

I would agree with most of what you are saying other than the flushing part and living soil. Flushing will most definitely remove both nutrient and microbe from the soil. Will it remove all? No but it will remove enough to curtail any real meaningful effect the microbes have in delivering nutrient ions to the plant.

AFAIU, most people flush their media to remove nutrient from the media so that the roots don't have access to it to be able to replenish whatever they are using up in the phloem of the plant. This will trigger the plant to start using whatever sugars it has already produced during the photosynthetic process that it has stored in the leaves and branches. The reasoning behind this is that cutting off nutrients to the plant will get them to use up whatever they have in the plant itself hence having a cleaner flower at harvest. This is usually done a few weeks prior to the anticipated harvest window.

While this may in fact be what is occurring one of the negatives I see in doing this is you aren't providing the same levels of food the plant has been using missing out on the last few weeks where your flowers can fatten up along with the curtailing the full production of cannabanoids, terpenes and other VOC's that help with the entourage effect.

In other words I see it as starving your plants along with heavily stressing them when the volume of water used to flush gets run through the soil media.

One of the goals I always try and achieve when I'm growing is to provide as stress free an environment as I can for the plants to be able to max out their performance. Any time used to recover, or worse stunt, is wasted time and energy and decreases the performance the plant is capable of.

BTW, the way I understand it, flushing came about from soil growers using salt based fertilizers over fertilizing their media toxing the plant.

[Rwise]

I dont see any dif using or not using molasses.
I also dont see any dif flushing or not.
There is an article here that says 3 days dark does increase THC content. I wonder IF that would go for pulling the plant and hanging it upside down in the dark while it uses the last of it's moisture.

[Bluey]

I have read in a couple of recent studies the following.

1. Using hydro nutes in soil grows does not impact the micro organisms function or quantity. The salts in the hydro nutes do no harm to the soil.

2. Using molasses likely only increases the sugar weight in the flowers but more research required.

I love how we have a number of different approaches to producing the best weed we can. I am always on the lookout to make it the best experience for the end user, which is me.

[Rwise]

For me what I get when pollinating an auto with pollen from a photo is mostly autos, maybe I just got lucky.

[MidwestWeedNerd]

I’m a organic soil grower but I just consider myself a OMRI grower. I don’t use anything that isn’t OMRI listed in my cannabis grow. I have never read the article on flushing or listened to many opinions on it. Flush is probably something salt based growers started using hydroponics. If you’re growing in a living soil the plant only takes what it’s wanting. And it would be virtually impossible to flush everything out of it to become a blank medium. If you’re growing hybrid style using soil and bottle nutrients that are not OMRI then I would think yes you may need to stop using it for a week or two before harvesting. Use blackstarp molasses for the last few weeks with the watering. Let microbes come back into the picture because salts kill em. The molasses will feed the microbes, mix with the salts to help leech them out and provide micronutrients to the plant so it’s not starving during key development periods. I have used bio bizz all the way up to harvest , my ashes are white my joints and bowls don’t crackle when lit. Proper watering, dialed in environment, good genetics harvest window and drying, curing and storage are way more key.

[Ckbrew]

Cross breeding question. If I cross with pollen from a feminized photo that has been forced to male with a feminized auto, what will the seeds be? Feminized presumably, but photo, auto, or something else?

[Bluey]

I agree with roots & ckbrew.

I don't think flushing does anything but remove nutes from the medium and stress the plant.

I think flushing is a good idea when things go wrong such as correcting pH or correcting a nute toxicity or salt build up, otherwise I wouldn't stress them out.

I don't think it does anything to improve the smoke or product or whatever it is your making. The dry and cure are critical for that. Low and slow is a good approach for me. Others do the opposite and it does change the effects at the expense of harshness.

[Jacci]

Do you remember where you found the photo " pre-flower right next to a spot that doesn't have a pre-flower yet, so you can compare."?

[Ckbrew]

Imo a quality dry and cure is more important for taste than flushing.

[BreezyGreens]

My goal is a not-harsh-tasting endpoint, and I'm considering flushing because I'm feeding weekly with non-naturally derived fertilizers, and that seems to be the recommendation from the main article.

My first impression is that flushing could matter more for smoking since lots of things we don't want end up in smoke. My second thought was that the widely accepted observation that flushing helps flavor can be true, but we may stray into folk reasoning explaining why it works, especially for oil-based infusions/extractions. I'm not sure how many "ions" (if that's even what contributes to off flavors) are going to happily hang out in a greasy nonpolar solvent.

Still, flushing could matter for oil infusions. I'm probably thinking about this way too much, but there are plenty of non-"ion" molecules that are happy in both polar and nonpolar solvents (amphipathic, if you feel like jargon today). There are others that can more or less "surround" and bring polar molecules into nonpolar solvents (forgot the term for that). And generally, plant biology changes in a huge number of ways to accommodate stressors like low nutrients. It's totally conceivable that flushing matters for oil-based infusions/extractions.

That's why I asked. But most people smoke, so if there's no answer to whether flushing matters for oil infusions/extractions, it's all good.

[Rootsruler]

I'm assuming your goal is to "flush out" as many impurities as possible? My take is "flushing" your media does nothing other than remove whatever remaining nutrients and microbial life are in the soil stressing your plant out. I understand the want to not harvest with the phloem and flowers full of ions thus "contaminating" your oil but I prefer to taper down the feed solution so as not to stress the plant out at the end. Doing it this way will allow the plant to naturally pull whatever stored sugars it has in its leaves trying to makeup for whatever is lacking in the tapered feed solutions. That's were you see the leaves start to "fade" at the end near harvest.

[BreezyGreens]

Unsure if this is the right place to put this, but I have a question about flushing after reading the site's article about it.

If I plan on making an MCT oil infusion with my harvest, is flushing recommended?

(Growing in soil, feeding weekly.)

[BreezyGreens]

Thanks! This is all super helpful and confirms that I'd need to grow photoperiods indoors, so I'll be sticking to autos in pots outdoors for now.

[Rootsruler]

I have questions.

My chaotic "system" works great for veggies, but would it work for photoperiod weed?

Yes

Also, does an earlier start change photoperiods' veg-flowering cycle, or no matter what, outdoor grows are at the whim of the weather until October due to hours of daylight?

An earlier start would allow more veg time before the season changes and naturally flips to flower. The hard part is knowing when to "early start" them. I've been stung too many times thinking that there was enough light in the day to keep them from flowering so here in the US the days get longer around May-June. That's probably when I would attempt to plant them. If you can supplement whatever light hours you need with lighting like in a greenhouse start time won't matter.

Finally, do things like hours of shade from shifting sun angle as the growing season progresses and nighttime light pollution (year round; unchanging) throw off photoperiods' veg-flower cycles? When grown outside, do they need more than 6-8 hours of full sun for a solid veg cycle and pitch blackness at night?

I would be more comfortable with 10 - 12 hour days of direct sunlight. Night time light allowance is no brigher than a full moon.