Methinks that at times other people over think the process!
Hence the old saying, "Less is more".
There are generally two types of people when it comes to gardening: Those who let the plant do the work and those who baby their plants to absolute death.
Parents are very similar in that regard: you see the mother that lets her kid run lose and play on the monkey bars and the mother that's constantly holding their child's hand and wont even risk letting him go down the slide.
Plants were here long before we were. They'll be here long after we're gone. They're a hell of a lot tougher and more self sufficient than people think.
The whole "flushing" debacle (and I use that word very kindly in this context) has absolutely nothing to do with soil grows and never did. It was a process first used in and specifically for hydroponics. It also didn't have anything to do with "getting better taste".
The reason flushing was used is down to another simple fact: water, when pure and untreated and left in a closed circle, will go bad. It will also do so very quickly under the right circumstances.
Plants grown in a hydroponic environment are a lot more susceptible to the growers influence as a whole. When hydro growers see their plants begin to struggle just a bit, they would flush the entire system out. That means they just got rid of all the water in the system, rinsed it out with fresh water, let that circulate and clean up everything, then rinse that out and they're right back in business.
But that was it. That's all there ever was to it.
Then of course somebody that wanted to make a much bigger deal out of growing a gardenia in a hanging basket read an article on it and applied it to a 1.5 gallon soil pot and then swore to God the Almighty that her plant just jumped up, ran across the floor into the kitchen and began cooking her a 4 star breakfast.
There are those who swear a similar effect when it comes to taste with marijuana. Well, here's a simple fact:
They're lying.
But it's not their fault. It's human nature. If THEY did it, it surely MUST make a difference. It's like the guy that swears before God that Honda is the best motorcycle or Gibson is the best guitar. They say so only because that's the one they have.
A few years ago some friends of mine got together and actually put the whole "flush" thing to bed once and for all. We all grew one plant. 3 of us flushed before harvesting, the other 3 didn't. We then handed our grows over to an independent party for testing.
We ran 5 panels of test with us growers as the group that covered 2 weeks. The results were handled by the independent (and also a non-smoker soas to remove any prejudice in the matter.) Here's how it broke down:
- Test 1 - everybody gets non-flushed.
- Test 2 - everybody got flushed.
- Test 3 - only one person got flushed.
- Test 4 - only one person got non-flushed.
- Test 5 - half got flushed, the other half non-flushed.
Under a gentleman's agreement of pure honesty and integrity, the results were predictable: In absolutely NO CASE could any of us identify which was or wasn't flushed. Not one of us.
The most hysterical part was the first two tests. In both, I said simply I couldn't tell any difference. Two people (HUGE advocates of flushing and the real reason behind running the test) actually got it completely wrong by swearing the first test had flushed weed and the second contained non flushed.
It was very clear at that point that they were making it up.
In the end, nobody correctly identified one from the other.
So you can listen to all the bullshit if you want and put yourself through more bullshit in your grow, but in the end it's not going to make one bit of difference.