For growers that believe in flushing, this is a cut and paste from a fb post I saw this morning. I personally dont flush, but slowly reduce the e.c over last 7-10 days as plant growth slows, simply to avoid wasting nutes................................................................# I got this from another group and asked them for permission to re post - it explained the facts not the fiction behind flushing - if you want more details check out Professor Bugby on YouTube or the University website where he is the head of his department of you want to see more scientific rather than anecdotal evidence - this is one of a great many studies on the pros and cons of flushing
Pseudoscience: flushing a plant removes minerals and chemicals from the plant during any stage of the plants life.
Science: flushing a plant causes stress to the plant. The plant starts to cannibalize it’s fan leaves to keep its cellular functions. It DOES NOT cannibalize it’s buds as they’re the sexual reproduction part of the plant and preserved as best as the plant can.
What do we smoke and consume? We do not consume the fan leaves, we consume the budding portion of the plant which is largely unaffected.
Flushing cannot remove “chemicals” or improve taste - but it may actually cause more harm.
You cannot flush chemicals out of a plant, the plant cannibalizes it’s fan leaves until chlorosis and necrosis take over then move to the buds. Flushing causes nutrients from the medium to be removed and causes cannibalism of the fan leaves... not the buds. Plants will try to preserve their reproductive organs as opposed to taking their function away, just like nature.
Can not remove minerals from a plant once they are in the plants tissues. Some can be relocated and is why we get leaf colors/fade but not all of them can be. The biggest two minerals responsible for a crap taste are Nitrogen and Phos. Nitrogen sparkles when burning and Phos burns the back of the throat. Both make for very harsh smoke and cause headaches. Flushing removes absolutely zero from the plant and only seeks to starve the plant during the ripening phase reducing overall yield and potency.
It’s the same aspect of thinking that you can’t put a car battery on concrete. The battery technology that can’t be set on concrete has NOT been used in over 100 years. These are also known as an old wives tales.
The only way to remove anything from the plant is decomposition, burning or chemical stripping with harsh solvents. LAB testing has been done on flushed vs unflushed to show mineral content in the flowers. Even Advanced Nutrients did this and their results showed higher mineral content as well as higher heavy metal content in the flower and thusly they pulled those test results from public view as it was against their rec to flush using their flushing product which is a scam.
I can find research and testing that shows flushing does nothing, there is not data or testing or research that says flushing does anything except starve the plant. I’ve tried both methods extensively with a strain I’ve grown for 9 years that harvest a plant a week, 52 weeks a year and every time the non flushed grows bigger buds and has bigger yields. Both taste identical. It’s all about the cure not the flush. Do some research and you will see it’s a myth that is just people’s opinions not actually science.
The term flush to an actual horticulturist doesn’t even mean what most marijuana growers think.
Scientifically speaking, it is absolutely POINTLESS. The plants feeding system is essentially composed of two parts, the zylem and the phloem. The zylem brings in water, nutrients, and yes, heavy metals sometimes. The zylem then transports this through the plant to the phloem where it is then distributed through the plant. The plant will not reverse this process because you flush the medium you're using. It is a one way street and you're not pulling anything out of the actual plant.
Flushing to maintain a medium’s PH or to remove nutrients from a medium from over feeding are reasons to flush, not to remove anything from the plant.#
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