kOijin, thanks for taking the time to chat with me. Where i was going with my question is here, since leaves can store excess food to some degree, and chlorophyll, and the buds contain chlorophyll that all have to go through a chemichal reaction to reach an optimal curetime. And we intend to dry the buds and small amount of leaf debris that inherently stays after trimming to smoke. Wouldnt the OPs claim that unflushed buds vs flushed buds dry time be noticably different be correct? The time, i belive was the main point he was stating and its relation to doing or not doing a flush. The res of the OP was just his take on everything else which may grab people the wrong way but i believe hi main point makes sence, do you?
There are a few variables which can change how quickly the plant material dries.
Let's assume that the two plants were grown to the same extent, with similar calyxes and hydration.
The only difference; one was fertilized all the way to chop. The other was given only water 2-3 weeks (or whatever time) up to chop.
There would not be a difference in those two, drying wise, since the hydration which saturates the plants would be equal and therefore evaporate equally.
The difference in nutrient levels would not affect the drying time. I'll get back to the difference in nutrient levels further down.
Whether there would be a difference in chlorophyll and how large/small it might be is very difficult to say.
Most growers don't let their calyxes wither, and therefore most growers will basically hover around a normal chlorophyll level in the sugar leaves and calyxes.
Some may have deficient fan leaves, others might not.
But the part of the plant we're smoking does usually not vary in moisture level, nutrient levels nor chlorophyll levels.
What truly affects the drying time is the water potential, the tissue water content so to speak.
To clarify; The water retention and moisture inside the plant determines how long it takes to dry the plant (including the calyxes).
Of course variables like humidity, temperature etc. would all affect the time, but I assume we're talking exact same variables for both and thus it's irrelevant.
The difference in levels of nutrients, I would stipulate, is not great enough to be noticeable.
What you see is a 3 times higher nutrient concentration in normally fed plants vs. a deficiency (which pre-harvest flushins causes).
But the concentration in normally fed plants is really not that high.
In facts it's rather low.
When we measure how large the concentration is, we measure in ions in millimolar (mM).
And what you see is around ~0.5 - ~9 ions in the leaf material, in normally fed plants.
In deficient plants you see; ~0.2 - ~3 ions in leaf material.
The levels are really quite low, if you look at how many ions you have in a grain of salt it's: 6.97 X 10^17.
This number is very large, if I were to type it out for you it would look something like this; 6,970,000,000,000,000,000.00 -
I've probably made an error there typing it out, but you get the point, it's around 6.97 quadrillion.
And yet some people claim they can taste, smell and feel a difference (harshness wise etc.) between pre-harvest flushed weed and normally grown weed.
I find this strange.