Organic soil grow, necessary to flush?

Matt Rize said:

agreed, one of those "you have to see it to believe it" things. if you have been overfeeding your soluble organics, then 5-15 days flush, depending.

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Why? You are just wasting your damn water and time. Please just read the link......

Passing around good info is one thing. But this advice is just another POT forum myth. Sorry young one.

But just keep on buying those bottles of clearex and whatever else the hydro store wants to rip you off on.

Clearex, 96% water and the rest sugar. lol

plaguedog said:

Why? You are just wasting your damn water and time. Please just read the link......

Passing around good info is one thing. But this advice is just another POT forum myth. Sorry young one.

But just keep on buying those bottles of clearex and whatever else the hydro store wants to rip you off on.

Clearex, 96% water and the rest sugar. lol

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You are such a tool, but its all good. To assume that everyone considers "soil" to be a properly amended media that requires no food is a huge mistake, and you are showing who the "young one" is in terms of greater Cannabis knowledge. You also acknowledge that is may be beneficial to flush if growing in the typical indoor "soil" fashion, meaning a peat based media and liquid food. Your blanket statements and generalizations are the true misinformation.

Who the eff ever said anything about clearex? sha

plaguedog said:

EH?

http://www.soilminerals.com/Cation_Exchange_Simplified.htm

Pretty easy to understand, and why flushing doesn't really do a da/v\n thing in organics.

1) Clay and organic matter have negative charges that can hold and release positively charged nutrients. (The cations are adsorbed onto the surface of the clay or humus.) That static charge keeps the nutrients from being washed away, and holds them so they are available to plant roots and soil microorganisms. ADSORBED.... BEING key here. You dont wash ANYTHING away in your soil by pouring ridiculous amounts of water through it.

If you amend your soil mix with compost or EWC flushing wont make a difference at all....

Now I can see why you would if you grow in pure coco or peat and use bottled products like canna or pureblend. Amended soil mixes are not even close to being the same as those mediums.

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You attempt to define "organics" as soil/tea without supplementation is DEAD. Get with the times. In the 21st century Hydro-Organics and Soil-less organics are MUCH MORE POPULAR. And on top of that, many consider soil-less organics (peat, coco, and/or bark) to be soil. Thanks for spreading antiquated ideas about gardening grampa.

If everyone grew in a "real soil" this website would be BORING. And in REALITY, most indoor grows are a mix of "soil" and "soil-less" media and techniques. Get over it. The youths will lead the way for the future of organics, and your old school "real soil" is not even on the map. If anything, plant based organics will take over, check out jaykush on icmag.

Yeah a tool huh? And you're a punk that thinks you know it all. Keep spreading a bunch BS. Jay Kush knows his shit, go ask when he flushed you idiot. Never.

plaguedog said:

Yeah a tool huh? And you're a punk that thinks you know it all. Keep spreading a bunch BS. Jay Kush knows his shit, go ask when he flushed. Never.

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LOL at this weak reply... jay actually does feed plain water for the last two weeks. I call that a flush. Others may call it something else. What is for certain is that he does not feed tea or molasses for the last two weeks. And he ONLY grows in the ground outside, way different that indoor potting mixes. Either way you have nothing to say about the differences between soil and soil-less, and how flushing relates to these potting mixes.

IMHO

Pre-harvest flushing puts the plant(s) under serious stress. The plant has to deal with nutrient deficiencies in a very important part of its cycle. Strong changes in the amount of dissolved substances in the root-zone stress the roots, possibly to the point of direct physical damage to them. Many immobile elements are no more available for further metabolic processes. We are losing the fan leaves and damage will show likely on new growth as well.

The grower should react in an educated way to the plant needs. Excessive, deficient or unbalanced levels should be avoided regardless the nutrient source. Nutrient levels should be gradually adjusted to the lesser needs in later flowering. Stress factors should be limited as far as possible. If that is accomplished throughout the entire life cycle, there shouldn’t be any excessive nutrient compounds in the plants tissue. It doesn’t sound likely that you can correct growing errors (significant lower mobile nutrient compound levels) with pre-harvest flushing.

Drying and curing (when done right) on the other hand have proved (In many studies) to have a major impact on taste and flavor, by breaking down chlorophyll's and converting starches into sugars. Most attributes blamed on un-flushed buds may be the result of unbalanced nutrition and/or over fertilization and improper drying/curing.

Matt Rize said:

So now environment plays a role, way to back-pedal. Obviously environment plays a huge role, especially for the indoor nation. And even more so for the soluble feeders.

More than one way to do organics. You can't flush, I can. This is why my herb taste better than yours. See "cleanest smoothest smoke" ever in my thread on veganics.

For those growing in soil, either outside or in a true slow release mix indoors, FLUSHING CANNOT OCCUR, THIS IS WHY YOU THINK IT IS USELESS. Your media is full of slow release food that is not exhausted by the end, so flushing would be false.

BUT, for those growing indoors, organically, in soil-less mix, doing a heavy feeding routine. FLUSH! Again, more than one way to do organics, and If you are a heavy feeder (not a slow releaser) then a flush will be beneficial to remove as much chlorophyll pre-harvest as possible. The soil-less nature of new-school organics allows us to remove any leftover food in the container, leading to a TRUE FLUSH.

Don't take indoor advice from someone who grows outside in the ground using only teas if you are indoor using soluble food, WHOLE DIFFERENT WORLD.

I smoke indoor veganics, and outdoor organics (much like maddy's). Best in the world.

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I feel I have to respond to this old thread so I will.
You claim that if you want the most clean weed, you have to flush. Well in that case you might as well water cure your bud and get rid of any taste because that's unhealthy for your lungs too. or better yet, extract the thx from your weed so you don't have to smoke it or hell, do what people do with tomatoes and eat the weed, surely that is much better than putting smoke in ur lungs.

As stated in a bunch of other posts by people, green weed has cloropyill in it and you are going to smoke it unless you water cure because air curing for 6 months will bring out the 6 month flavor.

Now since we are still talking about that's healthy for your lungs, you might as well vaporize your water cured weed also. Sure, it might like taste like nothing but if you are smoking for taste then go eat some strawberries.

I love how these guys get on the forums and talk about how pure and tasty their weed is when they are still smoking chemicals, and yes organically or non organically grown tastes the same to me... Perhaps it's because I bought og kush #18 seeds for their tasty GENETICS. I have tried organic plant food, miracle grow and outdoors with both in hydro and there isn't any difference whatsoever in taste... However with side by side clones, I do notice the miracle grow does grow more mass and bud compared to the organically grown.


Andlast but not least. To those guys who said they taste chemicals when they smoke, ever thought that it could be due to your weed not being cured properly or that tabacco/chemical paper is causing the chemical taste?

Spanishfly said:

I am with madodah. He tastes his own smoke and has come to the same conclusion as me. He is not ´small- minded´ - he just writes what he finds.

IMHO flushing is a total waste of time - it is a fiction propagated by naive kids who have never grown anything else, and are just repeating what they have read.

Do commercial growers of ANYTHING flush their soil so their produce tastes better?? Absolutely not - if flushing did anything they would.

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So if by all rights if what ur saying is true then whatever u put into sumptin doesn't change its odor or flavor, yes? So if I eat a bunch of broccoli and asparagus then go and take a piss my piss will smell all nice and pretty like rose water or will it stink to hell? So then if I go and drink a gallon of water and take a piss again would my piss still smell like hell or would the water have flushed it out? And y don't u do me a favor, go to a farmers market or sumptin similar buy some organic strawberries and compare it to some commercial grown berries and tell me they taste the same. There r plenty of things commercial growers can do to make their produce taste better but they don't care they just wanna sell it to make money. Probably the same reason commercial MJ gowers don't bother flushing, but I bet those same growers flush their plants when it comes to the herb they r growing for themselves to smoke.

kingofqueen said:

Thanks for the reply . I,m new to organics and growing pot in general . I haven,t been worried about ph at all I just let my tap set out and water away with it ,but I grow vegies outside and learned recently that my tap water was raising the ph in my soil over time.
So now I,m on my second grow and dont want that hitch . So I have switched to RO water but it,s PH is 7 and my nutes are akaline.
So I need a trusted tested organic ph down . IDK what to do so I<M using chemical ph down till I can be assured of a good method.
I started checking my runoff too never did that b4. So to sum it up the ph down is my problem now once that is taken care of I<LL be organic .

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I didn't c if u said u were using soil as ur medium or not, but instead of getting a ph down or using RO water and all that stuff, adding sumptin like dolomite lime or peat moss like Rize said would work as well. I mix lime into my soil to help ph issues and it helps prevent any cal/mag issues I see others having.

P.S lol im a dumbass I didn't even notice how old this post was.

Spanishfly said:

They certainly can, especially animal manures that are not well rotted.

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What about organic vegetable-based fertilizers?

i flush, dont see anything wrong with it either, i dont care if you dont so why do you care if anyone else does?

findme said:

...
I love how these guys get on the forums and talk about how pure and tasty their weed is when they are still smoking chemicals, and yes organically or non organically grown tastes the same to me... Perhaps it's because I bought og kush #18 seeds for their tasty GENETICS. I have tried organic plant food, miracle grow and outdoors with both in hydro and there isn't any difference whatsoever in taste... However with side by side clones, I do notice the miracle grow does grow more mass and bud compared to the organically grown.

Andlast but not least. To those guys who said they taste chemicals when they smoke, ever thought that it could be due to your weed not being cured properly or that tabacco/chemical paper is causing the chemical taste?

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Just a note that "organically grown" means next to nothing per se as far as yield\taste\smell go... there are tons of different ways to grow herb organically. Depending on the method and the grower, organically grown plants can produce quite a bit of bud.

Obviously everything is made up of chemicals, and organic soil and fertilizers are made up of chemicals and cannabis buds are made up of hundreds of chemicals... but the fact is that synthetic hydro nutrients contain certain chemicals that organic soil\fertilizers do not. Namely synthetic chelating agents such as EDTA, and these are also taken up into the plant. I am not saying without a doubt that such chemicals impart any kind of taste in the smoke of the finished product but it is certainly a possibility.

I always give a courtesy flush

Has anyone ever flushed with coconut water? i saw a scientist buddy do it a few months back, seemed like a cool idea. Definitely gonna do molasses. Grew in DR. Earth Potting Soil, 100% organic and fed Espoma Tomato Tone. Those nutes claim to not wash away easily anyway so i figure, whats the point in my case, using powdered nutes. (my water has been running out clear for the past month anyway, and my babies are beautiful and shiny, purple trichomes everywhere!)

Jaubry, I've never heard of that or read anything about it. Coconut water is expensive though, isn't it?
Purely for marketing purposes, I've thought about watering my Hindu Kush solely with holy water from the Ganges River.

Matt Rize said:

Have to agree with Nul here. Great post. The taste (smell) has as much to do with genetics as it does with environment. And the quality of the smoke is dependent upon many factors, drying/curing being a large part of retaining good flavor and removing harsh green flavors (but not creating flavor).

People who say they can't tell the difference between a flushed bud and non-flushed bud are tripping. To begin, you can taste the chlorophyll... no argument there. Chlorosis benefits smoke quality by sucking some of the chlorophyll out before drying/curing even beings. This also reveals secondary pigments, and you "eat with your eyes". Curing is really just the anaerobic breakdown of chlorophyll, this is why curing makes herb taste better. If you can get a jump start by removing as much 'green' as possible pre-harvest, you have a jump start on the curing process.

Now, if you are growing with an abundance of slow release food in your mix, then flushing won't work. But if you are in a soil-less mix with little slow release food, then flushing will work. More than one way to do organics my friends, and soil is a loosely used word.

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You sir are right on the money in my opinion...

plaguedog said:

Surely what?

THERE IS NO NEED TO FLUSH IN ORGANIC AMENDED SOIL. It's BS you are not going to remove all the excess nutrients with just water. The plant uses what it needs when grown organically as opposed to hydro, flushing comes from the hydro crowd. Have done it both ways people, it makes no difference in organics. Dry/Cure your bud the right way and it will be plenty smooth.

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This was posted on this thread back in 2010. Is it still true today? I'm a newb with my first grow in organic soil using Roots Organics Grow / Bloom. I'm entering week 4 bloom on 2-AK47 & 2-Pineapple Exp.

prosperian said:

This was posted on this thread back in 2010. Is it still true today? I'm a newb with my first grow in organic soil using Roots Organics Grow / Bloom. I'm entering week 4 bloom on 2-AK47 & 2-Pineapple Exp.

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I think if you are growing organically like say with subcools method with his supersoil then a flush is not needed. This is just my opinion but I think the whole point of flushing is first to get built up salt from unused chemical ferts out of the soil and second is to make sure the plant late in flowering the last two weeks becomes N deficient. I believe most people believe that if harvested with too much N it will give the plant that grassy hay taste and flavor. This flavor can also happen if dried to fast as the chlorophyll will not break down and gets trapped in the plant. If you are growing with liquid ferts that say organic like Botanicare line then I believe a week or two flush will get the salts out and allow the plant to become N deficient. However if you are straight living soil organics I believe a flush will not do much as there is nothing to wash away.

My gosh how are threads like this still in existence?