Flushing question?????????????

[oldleave53]

My plants had a mag diff so I gave them a epsom watering. Now my question is after I gave the plants a epsom shot I need to flush so one person told me to flush with twice the container volume and I use 3 gallon pots. So I should flush with 6 gallons of water, and someone else said to flush with twice the water that you usually water with, so that would be betwen 1 gallon or 1 1/2 gallon , so which is it? And do I give nutes directly after.PLEASE HELP!!!!!!!!!

 

[aangst]

I really don't flush at this point. If you haven't added nutes, you can probably do that at 1/4 to 1/2 recommended strength at the next watering. Ideally you want your plants to be a really nice shade of green. If they start turning lime green or yellow on you, up the nutes. If they start turning darker green, you're probably pushing the limit and should hold true or back off on the nutes.

 

[KT420]

Rule of thumb, a flush is generally 2-3 times container volume from all I've ever read. Never heard it's 2-3 times how much you usually water with??? But why do you need to flush? Just cause you watered with epsom? That doesn't make sense either, and how do you KNOW you had a mag def? Your problem may be nute lockout from pH imbalance and/or salt build up, but that is from fertilizer salt build up, from the chemicals in your hydro nutes, not epsom salt, that may be where you're getting the confusion why you think you need a flush?

AFAIK, you don't need to pH flush water if you use RO water, only if you use tap water, cause RO is 0ppm and will quickly take on the pH of whatever it contacts cause it has no buffering ability being 0ppm. So I would suggest to flush with 6-9 gallons of RO water per container, or if you use tap you need to pH it all to about 6.2 first, and then measure the first run off that starts coming out of the pots and see what it is and how far off it is. You want to keep flusing until runoff is within range.

Lastly, I just want to say that if you have hydro nutes (what nutes are you using?) you should really just give up on soil and run 100% perlite hempy buckets instead. It's just like watering soil, you just water once a day with a decent amount of runoff and it's like a feed and a flush all in one everyday. It's impossible to overwater, and since you're watering so often, the fertilizer salts never have a chance to build up. If you're running organics I can understand running soil, but don't know why you'd think you need a flush cause you watered with epsom??? That is not the kind of salt you need to worry about building up in your soil.

 

[Cloudz2600]

^ Pretty much with KT and aangst said. You only need to flush if you're trying to get rid of fertilizer(salts) in the soil. Epsom salt is fine in low-medium amounts. I wouldn't flush anyway if you are just recovering from a deficiency. If you think it's a lockout(too much of something, stopping everything else from being absorbed), stop using nutes and just use plain water for a week or so. I would only flush if you had a nute burn or a lockout. This is why organic fert is better, no need to worry about over-ferting and salt build up.

 

[oldleave53]

Here they are the next day. They are looking worse. Someone said it was diffenatly mag diff and told me to epsom water, so I did. Im not using any nutes yet but I use FF trio. So you guys say I shouldnt flush then I wont, but why are my plants looking like crap and they are just getting worse. I dont wanna lose these plants Ive been waiting to grow these strains for a long time. Anyway the only nutes these plants have gotten is whats in the soil and Im using FFOF with a little Dolamite and Perlite mixed in. Something is wrong and Im going crazy. LOL....... Thanks for any input or advice.

 

[oldleave53]

Some closer pics.

 

[MyPetSkunk]

I had pretty much the same thing happen a while back with a young plant and FFOF/Perlite. It looked identical to pic 1 in your last post. I flushed the 3 gallon pot with 5 gallons of a distilled/tap mix(my runoff was 6.3 so I don't think it was a PH issue), cut of the worst looking stuff, and let it be. It stunted for a week or so, but it is now healthy and all green with no more problems. You can pick out the worst one and try the flush and give it a few days and see what happens. Always good to use a guinea pig if all plants are treated the same.


Edit: On the last gallon of flush I used my nutes at 1/4 strength.

 

[Cloudz2600]

I don't think you'll have noticed a difference in 5 hours... More like 24-72 hours. Deficiencies won't cure themselves right away. Any damaged leaves will not recover. You need to look at new growth and also check to see if any additional leaves are yellowing. The already yellow ones will eventually die, that's. A sign that the problem isn't fixed is if new leaves show issues. When I had a mag def, I actually flushed 3x my pot size container. All the water had epsom salt in it. If the problem is still happening on new leaves in 2-3 days then flush with 3x the container size with water and 1 tablespoon per gallon of epsom salt.

It could be that other nutrients(if you've over ferted) are blocking it. Flushing will prevent further lockout, but without adding epsom salt to the water you flush with you make the deficiency worse. How old are your plants? Odd that you added lime and used FFOF and you're having deficiencies in all of them. How much epsom salt did you use per gallon and how much lime did you mix in per gallon?

 

[oldleave53]

I don't think you'll have noticed a difference in 5 hours... More like 24-72 hours. Deficiencies won't cure themselves right away. Any damaged leaves will not recover. You need to look at new growth and also check to see if any additional leaves are yellowing. The already yellow ones will eventually die, that's. A sign that the problem isn't fixed is if new leaves show issues. When I had a mag def, I actually flushed 3x my pot size container. All the water had epsom salt in it. If the problem is still happening on new leaves in 2-3 days then flush with 3x the container size with water and 1 tablespoon per gallon of epsom

It could be that other nutrients(if you've over ferted) are blocking it. Flushing will prevent further lockout, but without adding epsom salt to the water you flush with you make the deficiency worse. How old are your plants? Odd that you added lime and used FFOF and you're having deficiencies in all of them. How much epsom salt did you use per gallon and how much lime did you mix in per gallon?

I mix the lime when I mix the soil and its 20 gals soil and 1 Tbl of lime for every gal og soil and the epsom bath was 1/2Tbls for every gal of water. The plants are 32 daYs from seed.

 

[KT420]

FFoF may have enough nutes in it that you don't need to be using any yet, and the dolomite should be taking care of cal and mag, but may not be enough. You should ge a bottle of calmag+ if you have access to a hydro store, that's better than epsom and it may very well be a mag deficiency. May not be to lack of mag in the soil though, could be due to lockout from low or high pH. I'm no expert, but I would say let the pots dry out, then water them really good with plain pH adjusted water and check the runoff. With no nutes and dolomite your pH may be too high. What is the pH of the water (tap?) yu've been watering them with and how often do you water? Becareful you're not overwatering, looks like it would be really easy to do given how huge those pots are and how small the plants are.

perlite hempy buckets and chem nutes are soooo much easier.

 

[oldleave53]

FFoF may have enough nutes in it that you don't need to be using any yet, and the dolomite should be taking care of cal and mag, but may not be enough. You should ge a bottle of calmag+ if you have access to a hydro store, that's better than epsom and it may very well be a mag deficiency. May not be to lack of mag in the soil though, could be due to lockout from low or high pH. I'm no expert, but I would say let the pots dry out, then water them really good with plain pH adjusted water and check the runoff. With no nutes and dolomite your pH may be too high. What is the pH of the water (tap?) yu've been watering them with and how often do you water? Becareful you're not overwatering, looks like it would be really easy to do given how huge those pots are and how small the plants are.

perlite hempy buckets and chem nutes are soooo much easier.

My water ph is 6.6 and the runoff is 6.5 and my soil ph is the same ( my soil tester is a gauge instead of digital so its a bit tougher to read but its right at 6.6)..... All the plants were shoing signs of mag diff so I did tye epsom thing and then flushed with epsom and then a nute water 3 days ago and all plants look great exept for the White Widow. It starting to show the same signs again.