The "I don't starve my plants before harvest" thread

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wbd

Well-Known Member
Arrogance or closed-mindedness from either side of this debate is a bit premature at this point. :)
 

Rumple

Well-Known Member
Wow, that guy is real mad about this. Ok K0iijn.. I am wrong and you are very correct. I am so sorry for being wrong (happens now and then). Anyone else want to get mad at me for not agreeing with them? How can I be wrong without making folks upset? I can put a disclaimer in my sig or something cool like that.

I just don't want to be mad or make other mad. I want to chill here and rap with fellow growers about opinions and ideas. It's cool if you don't agree with me, we are still growing gods herb on the same earth together. Anyway we can have a friendly chat?
 

shrigpiece

Well-Known Member
Im am fucking sick of these arguments. There are legit reasons a flush would be necessary, and excess (usually alot of it) can cause chemically tasting weed. I just got the grow bible by cervantes to go along with my one by green (both great).
"how to tell when fertilizer will affect taste:
1. leaf tips and fringes are burnt
2. leaves are brittle at harvest
3. buds crackle when burning
4. buds smell like chemicals
5. buds taste like fertilizer"
On page 76 it says "ten to fourteen days before harvest, flush the garden with distilled water or water treated with reverse osmosis"

Im not saying it is always needed, but certainly sometimes is.
Tell me Cervantes is wrong people. Cmon
you do realise that cervantes i on about OVER FEEDING? Not plants that were not flushed
 
Ok here is my shot at this topic I don't post allot but have been at this racket long enough to learn a couple of things along the way. I thought reading this thread would sway me one way or the other but it has not! I have however came to a conclusion on what I think is best and I have to say it is a bit from both sides of the debate!

Ok let me explain how I came to what I think I will try to remember most of my points that brought me to this conclusion!

I have done my own experiments long before this thread was posted I have flushed and ferted right to the end!
I think the arguement about flushing vs nonflush soil vs chem is all bullshit!

Reasoning= soil plants start with high levels of food or good soil but as life progresses the plant eats the food naturally leaching the soil towards harvest witch = best tasting buds!

So what I have learned is if you look at mother nature for the example and how fert levels drop towards the finish date!

Now I am not claiming to know everything this is just what I have came up with listening and reading and experimenting for years!

I think chem or orgainc it doesn't mater the only thing that matters is you start week on food and end week on food call it what ever you want but this will make the best tasting buds period!

The answer is as easy as planting a baby outside in good soil and watch what mother nature tells us! Plants grown organic outside do not have bright green leaves at harvest time they autum off and turn yellow the leftover nitrogen in the leaves migrate to the buds to maintain flower health which reduces total nitrogen in the plant!
The same goes for P and K as the plant eats it the levels naturally decline towards the finish!

So call it what you will but the main concern is to keep the plant healthy throughout the grow and reducing levels towards the end weather you call it flushing or noflushing this is what you want to mimik for quality tasting nugs!

I think the biggest reason we can't come to a agreement is because we have to lable everything just look at mother nature for you answers she has been doing this longer than every individual in this thread and I believe what she teaches me over what I have read in a book or on the internet!!!!!!

In the end we all just want beautiful nugs so keep up the good fight everyone and enjoy the plant we all love at least we can all agree we love this plant and we are all here for the same reason!!!!!!!
 

Mr.Therapy Man 2

Active Member
All I can say is Im glad Im not smokeing your weed because you can bet your ass that it burns the shit out of your nose and just dont taste as nice as my flushed weed.I only flush about 7 days give or take a day or two.I think you start these threads to argue about stuff you know very little about what the fuck your talking about.Some newbie on here will read this bullshit and not flush either and his weed will make you cough and your nose burn like hell when you hit it
 

shrigpiece

Well-Known Member
The OP was not argueing. Just stating theres no proof that flushing is benifitial. Maybe you should not overfeed your cannabis towards the end of it life cycle. Thats quite a statment buddy.:roll:
 

k0ijn

Scientia Cannabis
Wow, lame personal attacks aside...

35 pages later and all of the science, measuring of post counts and grow experience, pictures which prove nothing, etc., not one person has been able to provide compelling evidence that flushing helps or hurts final product.

I mean, isn't that what everyone reading this wants to know -- should they flush or not?

All that science and the question remains unanswered.

Not at all a personal attack, stating the facts more like it.
People should stop posting crap, how hard is it to be truthful with what you post?
People lie all the time, thats fair, but if you're trying to help people and perhaps even educate them on Cannabis growing, at least don't lie then. That'll give you no respect and no credit at all.


I find it funny how you can still have unanswered questions.
Have you read all my posts?

The big debate in this thread is about _pre-harvest flushing_.
Not about leaching in general, which has been explained by all of us against pre-harvest flushing many times, can be useful.
Leaching in general is thought of as to be:

Correcting grow medium errors.
Clearing salt buildup.
And just a general error corrector for solutions or medium in both hydro and soil.

Leaching is used by most growers, because problems tend to occur, even in the most perfect setups.


What we (especially Harrekin, SirLance and myself) in this thread who are against pre-harvest flushing / leaching state, is that pre-harvest flushing has not been proved to work for any of the reasons pre-harvest flushers claim they do it.
Many people claim improved taste, odour, yield, less harsh bud, better burning bud, better ash (whiter, cleaner) etc. etc.
They claim all kinds of wondrous things, which are apparently all thanks to the pre-harvest flush.

Although people claim this, there is no proof for any of it.
There are anecdotes of what people have done, there are stories, there are stories from authors (such as Cervantes, who is known to take information from other writes / growers and post it in his books).

What I have posted in this thread is a scientific study on the nutrient storage in plants, particularly ryegrass.

The study is very comprehensive and explains rather well about how nutrients are stored, where they are stored and what happens with the plants when nutrient levels are too high or too low (abundance versus. deficiency).

I will post the image from the study again showing this:





This explains a lot about the points in the discussion about pre-harvest flushing / leaching.

The study says that "growth requirements are generally achieved before high concentrations are attained".
This is a very important point.
Especially since this is about abundance versus deficiency (the optimal is 'critical').

What this study shows quite clearly is that if you underfeed the plants, the yield is affected quite heavily.
But what it also shows is that nutrient stored in the various parts of the plants change a lot depending on the levels on nutrients available (strength of the solution).

Since most experienced growers don't overfeed their plants but keep well measured levels of PPM, they can stray close to the 'critical' nutrient supply, giving their plants as much as possible without overfeeding or underfeeding.

We are not saying overfeeding is correct, we're not talking about overfeeding neither, we feed our plants as close to the perfect ranges of PPM as possible.

The points of Gastanker was that since plants store nutrients, and nutrients are stored all over the plant (including in the calyxes (buds)) and causing a deficiency will cause the plant to 'eat away' at it's nutrient storage, you will end up with less nutrients in the calyxes, therefore less nutrients in your final product, and the smoke will be less harsh.
You will not end up with 'chem bud' so to speak.

This theory is unfounded, and the study I posted contradicts this theory.
The study says plants are high efficient, they can consume nutrients before high concentrations are attained, and since none of us against pre-harvest are overfeeding, we are not achieving 'too high' concentrations of nutrients.
None of us have 'chem bud', we have all tried flushing, and not flushing, we don't see a difference.
We might even be receiving higher yields (which none of us have recorded however) if the study is the be correct (nutrient levels in the plant greatly affect yield).
What we do see a difference in is when you dry & cure properly versus dry & cure wrongly.
Drying & curing is probably the single most important step in any grow, it can cause mold, it can cause joy and it can be a pain in the arse.
But drying and curing is where your weed either ages like a good wine or crumbles, molds up and becomes useless.
Most people fail in drying & curing, many are somewhat successful, few master it.
I for sure don't master it, I'm trying to however, I invest in drying & curing equipment quite a lot and I am very careful.
That doesn't stop mold from setting in from time to time though, due to slipup or assistant error.


I'm not saying I don't want people to flush / leach their plants if they have problems with nutrient levels, salt buildup or anything else.
I'm not saying that you can't do what you want with your own grow either.
Where my problem lies, is with people trying to get other people to pre-harvest flush / leach.
When they claim all these myths about improvement of: taste, odour, colour, ash, harshness etc. it irritates me that people are just left to believe whatever this person writes, with no scientific back, no factual informational backup.
This is why I post these studies, why I try to show people the facts.


To conclude, I don't believe in the surplus nutrients / substances theory regarding normally PPM'ed weed (as close to 'critical' as possible without overfeeding nor underfeeding) contra flushed / leached weed.
I don't believe that pre-harvest flushing / leaching your weed will give you better tasting, smelling and looking weed.
I don't believe you will yield more either.

In fact, I believe quite the opposite, I believe that keeping nutrient levels proper all the way to harvest, is the best way to get the most out of your plants humanly possible.
When you pre-harvest flush / leach your plants, you starve your plants at the most important phase of growth, late blooom.
You cause deficiency, which leads to (if we are to believe science) decreased productivity.
And most importantly, all the myths about pre-harvest flushing / leaching seem to be false.


:weed:




P.S. I realize I have repeated myself somewhat, from older posts in this thread, but I felt it necessary to get the point(s) across.
 

SirLancelot

Active Member
Fact: Even if a plant has been correctly flushed, the resulting smoke can still be shitty burning and tasting. What does this mean? From a science perspective, this means flushing is a myth - because the method tested only have to fail once to prove there HAS TO BE other variables as to why the resulting pot burns and taste like shit. Any new theory has to work every time, scientificly. IMHO, there are too many variables - WHY does a lot of non-flushed pot taste and burn wonderful? I guess everything is a variable (enviroment, light, temps, nutrients etc), but mostly drying and curing.
Pretty much sealed it up for me.
 

wbd

Well-Known Member
You cause deficiency, which leads to (if we are to believe science) decreased productivity.
There's no practical evidence of this, or if there is then somebody is holding out on me because I've asked for it 100 times (ignoring the guy that tripled his yield when he stopped flushing, obviously). You yourself have stated several times "no difference", presumably that is in both yield and in taste/smoke. My own experience is the same, and is the best conclusion that can be derived from this thread.

"No difference" is hardly compelling in either direction.

But I can't argue with your beef about bullshit reasons behind why some people think flushing is the way to go. I think the science clearly falls short of any reason why flushing could possibly benefit taste or smoke, so you and others are absolutely correct about this.

Then again, it's unreasonable to ignore the significant population that believes pre-harvest flushing is beneficial, those that claim they can taste the difference. I never experienced this for myself, but it's not fair to discount this opinion as it's been stated by too many folks in to varying of a farmer's demographic. It deserves consideration. Maybe there's some other reason why pre-harvest flushing happens to work under some conditions, who knows...

The debate continues.
 

VanishingToaster

Active Member
the guy that tripled his yield was growing 12/12 from seed!! he said so himself. given that technique a could easily believe it went from a half oz to one and a half. folk seem to be ripping him and only showing their own ignorance.

his results aren't however proof of flushing benefiting the final product, but it is very niche to 12/12 from seed.
 

wbd

Well-Known Member
the guy that tripled his yield was growing 12/12 from seed!! he said so himself. given that technique a could easily believe it went from a half oz to one and a half. folk seem to be ripping him and only showing their own ignorance.

his results aren't however proof of flushing benefiting the final product, but it is very niche to 12/12 from seed.
What, are you guys BFF or something? Second time you come to his rescue. Cute. :)

This is what he said:

I stopped flushing and tripled my yield now im a believer in back off the nutrients that last week or two of flower flushing is reserved for fuck up like over nuteing and by backing off i mean real slowly and i feed up until chop and i like to end up feeding them what i started with so like 1/4 recommended dosage.
How am I showing ignorance exactly? It's what he said...
 

k0ijn

Scientia Cannabis
There's no practical evidence of this, or if there is then somebody is holding out on me because I've asked for it 100 times (ignoring the guy that tripled his yield when he stopped flushing, obviously). You yourself have stated several times "no difference", presumably that is in both yield and in taste/smoke. My own experience is the same, and is the best conclusion that can be derived from this thread.

"No difference" is hardly compelling in either direction.

But I can't argue with your beef about bullshit reasons behind why some people think flushing is the way to go. I think the science clearly falls short of any reason why flushing could possibly benefit taste or smoke, so you and others are absolutely correct about this.

Then again, it's unreasonable to ignore the significant population that believes pre-harvest flushing is beneficial, those that claim they can taste the difference. I never experienced this for myself, but it's not fair to discount this opinion as it's been stated by too many folks in to varying of a farmer's demographic. It deserves consideration. Maybe there's some other reason why pre-harvest flushing happens to work under some conditions, who knows...

The debate continues.

Again, if you read the study I posted and look at the image I linked you will see quite clearly that strength of the nutrient solution and thus how many nutrients are available directly affect yield.
If you have a deficiency, yield is decreased. If you have a ~critical amount, yield is close to 90%-100% and if you have abundance, you are around 100% but the nutrient storage levels go steeply up (nutrients are wasted and plant is overfed).

Yes I have stated no difference, I also mentioned that in the post you replied on:

We might even be receiving higher yields (which none of us have recorded however) if the study is to be correct (nutrient levels in the plant greatly affect yield.
The issue is not about no difference, it's about pre-harvest flushers claiming pre-harvest flushing can also increase yield, amongst other things.
All I did was look at the study and it clearly shows that nutrient levels are highly important to final yield (and thus productivity of a plant).
This rings true for any plant, be that ryegrass or cannabis.

I think it is fair to discount the opinions of those who claim better taste, odour, less harsh, cleaner ash.
First of all because I don't hear this argument from many experienced growers, normally it's heard from unexperienced growers.
It's also used a lot by people who have never done side by side flush - no flush experiments.
I think most of the people who claim these taste and odour improvements are just kicking a dead horse.
They're passing on old information that was told to them by someone they trust and like, they have believed it for a long time, and when popular authors also mention it, it almost becomes gospel to them, without any reasoning or logical thinking on their part.
 

spagettiheady420

Well-Known Member
hey wht nutes do you use/ at the end how high are your ppm before you kut, since you dont flush....just curious im not down to argue:)
 

VanishingToaster

Active Member
What, are you guys BFF or something? Second time you come to his rescue. Cute. :)

This is what he said:



How am I showing ignorance exactly? It's what he said...
fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck meeeeeee! you my good man have faaaar too much time on your hands. couldn't even tell you the guys screenie, just remembered it cause all the theory was there but the wrong conclusion, the fact that everyone ripping him hasn't added the 2 + 2 to get the correct conclusion is what my meant by showing your own ignorance.

theres a lot of better things to do in this expansive beautiful world, i really think you'd benefit by going for a walk, take a book, find somewhere nice to sit, really give it a try. Might not be the most productive way to spend an afternoon, some would say its a waste of time, but you know what i say to them ??? i say its better than sitting around counting forum post creating fictional relationships then throwing completely off topic digs at people for these imaginary relationships you've created. i mean what does it have to do with the thread??? why bother??? do u think that little digs will somehow add validity to the point you made? which i'm looking for but can't actually see.

now i know i'm being hypocritical, i can be a bit like that, cause here i am wasting MY time on YOU! what a little troll you are
 

wbd

Well-Known Member
Again, if you read the study I posted and look at the image I linked you will see quite clearly that strength of the nutrient solution and thus how many nutrients are available directly affect yield.
If you have a deficiency, yield is decreased. If you have a ~critical amount, yield is close to 90%-100% and if you have abundance, you are around 100% but the nutrient storage levels go steeply up (nutrients are wasted and plant is overfed).
I read it, it's all very much common sense yet still inconclusive in this context. We're talking about a brief period of deficiency in the final stages of a flowering plant that is not ryegrass. A study analyzing yield of cannabis flushed versus nonflushed would be more appropriate yet doesn't exist, or if it doesn't did not provide compelling evidence of loss of yield in the flushed group. If the productivity loss was that substantial you wouldn't even need a formal study, it's not like cannabis growers aren't weighing their final products. Growers would notice, yet we can't get anyone to step up and make the claim -- yourself included. Theory is just theory.

The issue is not about no difference, it's about pre-harvest flushers claiming pre-harvest flushing can also increase yield, amongst other things.
Haven't seen that claim even once yet. Not saying someone did say it, but it's safe we can all disregard the guy that says flushing increases yield. I don't need a chart to quickly dismiss that one. Not sure why you would even spend any of your valuable time defending such a silly claim. :)
 

rocpilefsj

Misguided Angel
We have some great discussion going on here guys, let's keep the posts relevant to the topic and avoid personal attacks and flaming.
 

k0ijn

Scientia Cannabis
I read it, it's all very much common sense yet still inconclusive in this context. We're talking about a brief period of deficiency in the final stages of a flowering plant that is not ryegrass. A study analyzing yield of cannabis flushed versus nonflushed would be more appropriate yet doesn't exist, or if it doesn't did not provide compelling evidence of loss of yield in the flushed group. If the productivity loss was that substantial you wouldn't even need a formal study, it's not like cannabis growers aren't weighing their final products. Growers would notice, yet we can't get anyone to step up and make the claim -- yourself included. Theory is just theory.


Haven't seen that claim even once yet. Not saying someone did say it, but it's safe we can all disregard the guy that says flushing increases yield. I don't need a chart to quickly dismiss that one. Not sure why you would even spend any of your valuable time defending such a silly claim. :)

I'll have to disagree with you.
I don't quite see it as inconclusive. In most cases of pre-harvest flushing we're not talking about a brief period of deficiency.
Deficiency can set in within 1-2 days, as nutrient are used up rather quickly if not in abundance (which most growers aren't doing anyway (feeding abundance of nutes that is)).
This means that most pre-harvest flushers actually starve their plants for at least 1 week if not 2 weeks.
That is quite a long time in my book. Especially if you take into account that the plants are being starved in the most critical phase of growing, where critical productivity is required and the plant undergoes huge changes (calyxes increase, weight increases etc.).
Even though the study is on ryegrass doesn't mean the basic chemical reactions and the way nutrients are stored aren't the same.
The phloem, xylem and cambium are alike for many plants and the function(s) of this tissue is the same across species and genus.
It's universal biology, the tissue moves around sugars and amino acids in the plant and xylem is key in water transportation throughout plants.
Thus we can extract the theories spoken of in the study I linked and use them on cannabis plants as well, especially the crucial part about nutrient storage, which is the crux of the discussion about pre-harvest flushing.

I agree that a scientific study on flushed versus unflushed cannabis would be more helpful, and more specific, but to simply put aside other valid studies just because they are done on other plants, is wrong.
Plants all have the same basic tissue, and that includes everything from ryegrass to cannabis.
No I would not claim anything I don't know, which is why I'm not stating outright that productivity is lost when you have deficiency in cannabis plants.
However, the studies made on other plants suggests that productivity and yield does take a hit when you cause deficiency.
I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing was true of cannabis.


I have seen that claim many times, you can look in the H&C section, a topic on flushing is posted every day almost, and this has been discussed many times before, not in the depth I'm going to now though.
But I would not disregard what people say about yield when it comes to flushing, since I find the claims of improved taste, odour, harshness, ash etc. just as ludicrous as improved yield. I don't discriminate between claims, I seek to disprove them all.
 
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