The translocation part is what i was saying when i said that nitrogen is mobile within the plant. Thats where this text to me becomes contradictory. If excess is trying to be avoided and excess nutrients are mobile, then why wouldnt the flush be effective?
Im kickin at 1500 ppm right now and im sure thats just a little excessive for hydro. My plan is not to run straight water for 14 or 12 days. Instead i plan to run 400 ish five or six days before chop and just fill with straight water For those last days. So i understand the summary section you talked of also.
As for you telling me what i want to hear, i dont want to hear anything except the truth on the topic. The truth for every grower is what works best for them. Im reading, learning, and participating in basicly an online study group of professional growers to shape my perspective on flushing, its called RIU lol
This topic has many opinions that are black or white. Im taking gray on this one. I still believe that Uncle Pirates method of reducing feed at the end of the life cycle to between 200 - 400 ppm is what the plant wants at that point in time. He is a No flush advocate but runs very minimal nutrients in the final stages, in essence running mostly water or the f word to me. Theres a big difference from 1500 ppm to 300 ppm so excess nutrients in theory are f'd out of there, right?
The problem i have with that post about drowning apple trees and cigars is that it seems that it has more to do with a good dry and cure like i said, and touches just minimally on the actual flush specifics, aplication, and results, of flushing or not flushing. That my friend is why i am dismissing the post, not because its difficult to understand.
Dude like I said, whole books are written on single aspects of this process. This small forum post simply touches on the basics. You cant expect someone to do your work for you and spend hundreds of hours of their time developing a synopsis of their research so you can get the information you wanted right? Not hear at least maybe on their own site to increase traffic. That post (not the exact thread but one of the more original varieties) is what set me on my quest to research the points made. Anyone that is really interested in their own knowledge of the subject that has the time would do the same. One good place to start is Botany for Dummies (no really it is).
But with that said I like the old School House Rock shows. Do you remember those? Simplified very complex topics and cartoonified and personafied it so that even kids could understand? OK so how about a school house rock version of translocation?
So lets get a few things out of the way. The calyxes (or buds) are the sinks we are talking about. In a immature vegging plant, the roots and leaves are also considered sinks, but they are not-so-much so during late flowering. A sink is a final destination point of as defined by the translocation system. Also most people always refer to the stems and stalk as the
primary storage system which is true, but does not mean it holds the majority of the micro and macro nutrients, especially late in bloom, these are always the roots. They(the roots) serve much like a bank vault that has been slowly filled and built during the plants life.
OK so on with our School House Rocks.
Translocation in cannabis as explained a Ancient Pyramid building society in Egypt.
For our show, let us define the following.
Caylxes (buds) = The pyramids.
Nutrients (both macro and micro) = The rocks
The roots = The rock quarry
The leaves = The cement producing factories.
The Stems and stalk = The rock moving slaves
The Pyramids (calyxes)
Ok this one is easy, the rocks (nutes) get delivered here to build the pyramids bigger. They are the main sinks and do nothing but take rocks and add them to their structure. They are destination only and dont store any rocks for "later use).
The rocks (nutes)
These are taken initially in the roots by much larger super slaves. These super slaves grab theses from the medium as large mountains, then smash them into the quarry into tiny pebbles like rocks for later usage.
The rock quarry (roots)
The rock quary becaomes the main storage unit for the plant because this is the best place to keep the rocks for long term success of the pyramids. The quarry can store many hundreds of billions of rocks during time of plenty (high ppms....1500 or so plus). They also contain slave drivers that are very greedy in watching over their quarry and the amount of rocks that it contains. They have a direct proportional effect on the speed how the rock moving slaves (stems and stalks) work according to the surplus in the quarry.
The rock moving slaves (stems and stalks)
These are the slaves that move the rocks and deliver them to the sinks. There are a few rules these slaves live by. First they are lazy and will move rocks at only the speed the slave drives demand them to. Second they require water to both quench their thirst from working and lubricate the process of moving rocks. They simply take a rock from another slave and hand a rock to the next slave. They do this at the exact same time, so they almost always have a rock in their possession. If their rock is ever given to a sink and used, the slave drivers add another rock to the slaves. So their are approximately 100k slaves in our system so their are approximately 100k rocks in the system at all times give or take a 1k.
Slaves can only handle rocks and cement. They cannot hold water. They do not have the ability to hold water. They cannot replace the rock (or cement) they carry with water. Instead if they do not have a rock to move, they get fat lazy and die within a short amount of time. Their death would also bring on the death of the pyramid building system as a whole. This is where the slave drivers come into play. When they notice the rock quarry getting low on resources, they slow the slaves down. The keep them working slow, until the quarry is reset to acceptable levels. If the quarry gets down to real low levels (lets say 10 times the amount of slaves or 1 million rocks) then this is a catastrophic event and the slave drivers have the slaves working at almost a standstill. That means no growth for our pyramids at all.
Dont worry though, getting to this drastic level is not easy. It actually takes a long period of drought and famine (or lack of rocks). The slave drivers will also slow the slaves downs at other times. One is that they dont like to work in the extreme hot and cold. They sometimes start to slowly slow down work at about 90F and below 50F. But this is just a slight slow down, as would be a slowdown with two weeks of famine (two weeks of drought in a hydro system would be more like two months and result in collapse). But the important thing to take out of this is that the rocks in the system are always constant, the speed they are moved is what is changed.
The cement producing factories (the cannabis leaves).
These are the clerics and priests of our society. They take rocks and a piece of the sun and combine them to make pyramid cement (sugars). It is quite the miracle of the system really. Yet when the quarry starts to run out of supplies (or the large mountain grabbing slaves age and die) the cement producing factories are blamed and sacrificed. They fall near the plant in the desperate hope they will quickly decompose providing more mountains (micro and macro nutes) for the quarry.
Thats the school house rock of it. Also my numbers are simply arbitrary.
**Edit--Just to be clear I am also in the step down nutes group. I am two-three weeks out right now and have my nutes below 700ish. The last week will be 500-600. I dont have scientific backing on this so I dont go around spouting it as a "must do". I mainly do it because I dont notice much of a difference and really dont like flushing my nutes away if I dont have to, even if its not really that much cost wise. Just something I do. Again, I do it...its a quirk of my grow, so I dont run around saying if you dont do it your a idiot...because I dont have any scientific backing. Just feelings.