Rootsruler
New member
@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.
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.
