heh... most of the things a select group of morons were arguing with me in my thread from last year, are repeating said things verbatim in the current thread. good to see that though, in my thread for new growers I listed foliar feeding an flushing as important, last year mr Estevez was vehement that plants do not uptake nutrients and undesirable elements into the buds ie cadmium arsenic so needless to say im surprised that he had an about face on his way of thinking, last year he said something along the lines of "plants go and uptake some heavymetals yeah ok!!" than posted some internet meme to really drive his point home etc... all kidding aside purplicious, a flush is necessary, studies have shown that just about every type of fertilizer, including organic, have levels of cadmium , as well as just about every type of soil, including fox farms. it has been proven that flushing alone with 2 times the volume of the soil container can reduce 50% of cadmium from soils. recent anti pot studies have shown that there is almost 5 times the cadmiums in marijuana smoke as is in cigarette smoke. the way I remove cadmium from my grows is hitting ti from all angles:
1 before the grow starts take all the soil you are going to use in the pots and flush them individually before planting seeds, 2 times the volume of said pots
2 while using organic or inorganic, aerate the water youre going to use for fertilizing but take a stocking and fill it with perlite or coco and tie of the end, let it sit in your aerating fertilizer water( with an aquarium pump and airstont) over night, studies have shown this can remove 60-70% of heavy metals from the fertilizer
3 flush once a month with aerated water but make sure the drain pan is free of water to promote faster drying, this also has the side effect of increasing growth as is seen in nature after heavy rains.
4 use a reverse osmosis filter or zero water filter, the ph will go down to 5.0-5.9 range but tds will be guaranteed in the 0-10 ppm range, which wil eliminate the salinity problem from chemically treated tap water. use this water for flushing watering and feeding
im researching several other methods for removing heavy metals from soil and fertilizer via my pub med account