Do I need to flush?

Here's my thoughts and the wine may be talking. the beer connoisseur might want to lay off the brews and realize he don't have all the answers.

Preharvest 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 loosing 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.

Drying and curing (when done right) on the other hand have proved (In many studies) to have a major impact on taste and flavour, by breaking down chlorophylls and converting starches into sugars. Most attributes blamed on unflushed buds may be the result of unbalanced nutrition and/or overfert and unproper drying/curing.

budman2069 said:

Here's my thoughts and the wine may be talking. the beer connoisseur might want to lay off the brews and realize he don't have all the answers.

Preharvest 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 loosing 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.

Drying and curing (when done right) on the other hand have proved (In many studies) to have a major impact on taste and flavour, by breaking down chlorophylls and converting starches into sugars. Most attributes blamed on unflushed buds may be the result of unbalanced nutrition and/or overfert and unproper drying/curing.

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Yeah, this quote is good.

Why?

1.) Plants move nutes, ions, and chemicals around in different proportions in order to make the roots suck stuff up. Say a healthy plant is flowering, then one day it just stops getting food. Now it has to divert all kinds of resources to grow new roots and make those roots work.

2.) Realizing the plant's needs and how it reacts to different situations is important. The plant is our friend, listen to it and google a lot. Some plants have hard senescence actions (eg. die in the fall), while others senesce at a much more gradual and less pronounced pace. Unless the grower understand the plants, how will he tell the different between senescence and the plant just killing itself from lack of food?

3.)I don't care if one "flushes" or not; smoke a bud fresh from the plant and tell me how it tastes. This stuff has to be dried and cured to some degree. Whatever "bomb-pot" it might be, it should still smell like grass somewhere in drying/curing. Also, so many people (rl farmers, synth growers) think that just piling on more synthetic nutrients is the way to go. Eg. Load up on the P for fat flowers/fruits. Sure, everyone wants huge awesome buds as fast as possible, but over fert + less dry/cure = omg wtf this tastes like a multi-vitamin was wrapped in grass.

To the OP, please listen to Jerry Garcia and not this beeristalkin guy. I've known Jerry a while and he knows how to grow. Your leaves are NOT supposed to be all dead when you harvest. I've done extensive testing on this myself and a plant that is healthy at harvest has BETTER tasting buds, not worse. I still recommend about 3 plain water feedings at the end but letting your plant starve and die before you harvest is dumb.

mared juwan said:

To the OP, please listen to Jerry Garcia and not this beeristalkin guy. I've known Jerry a while and he knows how to grow. Your leaves are NOT supposed to be all dead when you harvest. I've done extensive testing on this myself and a plant that is healthy at harvest has BETTER tasting buds, not worse. I still recommend about 3 plain water feedings at the end but letting your plant starve and die before you harvest is dumb.

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Yeah I'm just giving it water right now, though it is drinking a shit load. 900 ml every two days seems like I'm barely keeping up. Plus the buds have been fattening like crazy, with new white hairs continuing to come out of the tops of the buds. I think this is gonna be a much later harvest than anticipated, but I don't think my plant will run out of food. The soil was amended with a small palm full of 6-9-0 bone mean, and a five finger pinch of 0-7-0 budswell guano.

none of you guys know what your talking about your all full of shit and your weed sucks. Still none of you can prove what i said is wrong yet. your all just brainwashed by some douche bag who spends too much time on the internet, making a bunch of screen names and using them all in the same thread so it looks like people agree with him, who should be spending time in his shit hole garden.

Wow you're dumb. What are you 12 years old? Why don't you at least find out who you are talking about before you write some stupid shit like that. I've grown more bud in the last month than you've smoked your whole life little boy.

thebeerstalkin said:

your all just brainwashed by some douche bag who spends too much time on the internet, making a bunch of screen names and using them all in the same thread so it looks like people agree with him, who should be spending time in his shit hole garden.

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LOL, I bet Mared Juwan made 2200 posts in the last 2 years just so he could disagree with you on this thread.

just read through the whole thread and there seems to be some knowledgeable people following. this is an area in which i lack this knowledge and hope some of you can help me out. i am growing super silver haze- 56-70 days, jack the ripper- 56-63 and bubba kush- 56 days. i am on day 48 and have just started GH kool bloom which is a ripener (2-45-25) used all three parts GH grow, GH maxibloom and now GH koolbloom. I am on day 48 of 12/12. which at least gives me 8 days or a range of 8 to 15 days for the bk and jtr. When looking at trichs i notice all are cloudy, no signs of amber yet. Any advice as to when i should make the change to no nutrients? My thoughts now is to closely watch trich development and make a decision accordingly, possibly starting the flush for the plant that shows progression from cloudy to amber.

The first time with a strain it is a guessing game. I always end up flushing too early because the buds always take longer than you expect to be finished. With most strains you have at least an 18 day window of optimum ripeness. I say it's best to get the plant to the beginning of this window in good health and then flush from there. Just watch your leaves very closely and keep them healthy.

what am i looking for when watching the leaves?

You want to keep them perfectly healthy. So nice shiny green with no curling or burning. You want your peak feed levels to be during weeks 4-5 for most strains. After that you can start to bring it down in a curve or keep it steady until flush. How your leaves look should determine where the optimum levels are for your plants. If your leaves are fading then keep the feed near peak level. If you experience any curl or burn then drop it down more. This is all assuming that ph and other factors are correct. There could be some sort of nute lockout which is causing fade so make sure that is sorted first.

mared juawn doesn't know shit. Get out of the organics forum with your lockout and ph shit because any real organic grower knows that has no place here . go back in your cfl closet and don't come out you wanna-be grower.

OK I'll go back to my CFL closet if you go back to middle school. Why don't you actually say something about growing to support your argument. This playground shit is getting old. I'm rubber, you're glue bitch.

thebeerstalkin said:

jerry is wrong. of course everyone knows nitrogen puts green in your leaves. and everyone should know that of course you want your leaves as green as could be but you only want that up until the last part of the cycle when nitrogen isn't needed after the calyxes have florally formed. Jerry Garcia is stuck in the 70's with your techniques and unflushed weed because any good grower can tell you that you want your leaves to yellow.

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1) Not everyone knows "nitrogen puts green in your leaves."

2) It isn't about what everyone "should" know.

3) Nitrogen isn't needed in the last part of the cycle? Where did you learn that? I'm pretty sure it's a MACRONUTRIENT for a reason...like the plant needs it all the time.

4) "After the calyxes have florally formed"...

5) "Jerry Garcia is stuck in the 70's with your techniques and unflushed weed because any good grower can tell you that you want your leaves to yellow." Oh where to begin with this one...I'm not advocating unflushed weed. I'm saying flushing is more than the rigid concept you're making it out to be.

Every plant is different. Every environment is different. Every grow is different. Every person is different. To say you must flush for 3 weeks every time or whatever you are advocating is just plain wrong. If my plants only flower for 8 weeks and I stop using nutrients for the last 3 weeks, that means I'm only giving nutrients for 62.5% of the entire flower cycle, and that's not counting water-only or limited-nutrient feedings INTENDED TO REDUCE SALT BUILDUP.

The fact I don't use 100% strength nutrients every feeding allows me to have shorter flush times or longer flush times depending on how I think the plant is maturing. And like Mared or someone else said, when growing a strain for the first time it's impossible to know EXACTLY when the strain will finish, as each phenotype is different and varying environmental conditions will play a determining factor as well.

So the bottom line...flushing is good, especially if you've had overfeeding problems or if you are using synthetic nutrients. You don't EVER want to starve your plant and make it start cannibalizing itself...that is wasted energy that could be devoted to a last push of resin production or calyx swelling.

Or you can make the plant feed itself by eating the very part of it responsible for making the buds so big and juicy in the first place...because "every good grower can tell you that you want your leaves to yellow"

i still dont quite know when to stop feeding tho. stop arguing and help a brother out.

stop when the bud has formed and the calyxes are swollen

oh and jerry how organic do you think you are when you have to water in your nutrients and deal with salt build up??? full o shit.

aeviaanah said:

i still dont quite know when to stop feeding tho. stop arguing and help a brother out.

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From the info you presented, about all I can say is the haze is nowhere near ready. Aside from that, you are only going to get a bunch of different opinions unless we have some idea of how mature the buds are and whether the plant was over/underfed, and what medium they are growing in. 48 days isn't really saying much of anything.

On another note, if these were seeds, you can throw your breeder flower times away. That approximation applies best to clones.

thebeerstalkin said:

oh and jerry how organic do you think you are when you have to water in your nutrients and deal with salt build up??? full o shit.

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What exactly is that supposed to mean? It doesn't matter how organic you think I am.

And where did you hear you can't be organic and water in nutrients? Have you ever heard of organic tea? I don't ONLY water in nutrients either. But I don't recall this thread being about what I use...

What have you ever grown? Anything? I've posted a pic of a few of my plants...I won't bother asking you to post any pics of yours because I'm sure you either don't grow, have never grown, or will just photoshop somebody else's pics and pawn them off as your own.

Stop spreading false information and starting fights in threads by saying people don't know what they're talking about.

thebeerstalkin said:

if you don't let your leaves yellow after they have already become big and healthy then your buds well not taste as good because you have all those sugar starches, nitrogen, chlorophyll trapped in your leaves that well effect the taste and smoothness. let the plant eat away at its reserves and die off a little.

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I just wanted to bump this post, because it really exemplifies the type of person we're dealing with here. Better flush away all those "sugar starches, nitrogen, chlorophyll trapped in your leaves," especially if you're smoking those leaves.

thebeerstalkin just reads this BS on another thread in another forum and spews the misinformation back to some other newb who is seriously seeking advice.