(Dark) green leaves at harvest time?! Come on guys, stop overfeeding & flush fully

[FRIENDinDEED]

im glad i founf this thread agian and its very active. i noticed the forst couple pages had some bickering going on, so that just means that things are getting resolved and figured out.

now since i find this to be a very important aspect of growing, i decided to gorw organically in order to avoid having to flush, and many others on here have said that once you grwo organically where as all your nutes are in your soil and all you have to do is water, tehn is it possible for me to be able to flush somehow and i jsut dont know it?

to me it makes sense that the plants yellowing leaves would indicate that there is an energy drain going on, so best it be in the late stages of flowering when the plants are almost done, but how is this achieved when using a soil mix like the famed "moonshine man mix" or the like?

 

[Ajunta Pall]

Some strains will not get that 'autumn look' and just go pale. Others will go yellower and in rarer cases some stay green. It just depends on the genetics. But if you give a good flush I find if your plants get pale that is sometimes the best they will do and will still burn clean. Just my opinion on the subject.

TGT

I thought the yellowing of leaves during flowering was due to the plant dying. The yellowing is the plant taking all the nutes the leaf stored over it's life. So what role does genetics play in this process. If the leaves are green, then that means that the plant is still photosynthesizing. It has all the nutrients to sustain itself after a harvest.

I grow outside mostly, and once I harvest them they are literally half dead. if not more so.

 

[Guest]

Flushing brings out awesome autumn colours:

Rez Sour Diesel IBL NYCD pheno:

Trainwreck:

Petrolia Headstash pheno Herijuana:

None of these cuts produces any colour if grown without a good flush, all the most colourful and pretty plants I've seen have been well flushed, it brings out the colours although the flavour and taste improvements are the big reason. The other big bonus with flushing well is that it makes revegging much, much easier, my success rate with revegging plants grown in coco was 2 out of many before I flushed for 2 weeks, since I began flushing that long, I've managed to reveg every one I've tried to, which is at least a dozen plants.

A friend has a few of my clones and I'm walking him through his first grow and I'm gonna flush them from 3 weeks from harvest, I normally do 2 weeks, but after trying Truecannablisses Cheese and Casey Jones at the 420 Cup, I am trying his 3 week flush as he says thats the secret to the immense smell and taste of his sample buds. We both grow in Canna coco with Canna nutes, and my Cheese buds looked the same as his but had somewhat less smell and taste, so in one way it was nice to know I had done a decent job with my first Cheese run last year and the end product looked the same, but also very informative to see first hand how a 3 week flush can amp up the flavour and smell a good couple of notches.

One thing I forgot to ask True and need to next time I see hiom, is how the hell did he (and ojd too) get such immensely smelly weed into Holland????

 

[British_Bulldog]

One of my posts was actually referring to the aspect yours are showing, with the colourful autumn leaves, and this was the result of lower night temps.

Hi GP,

As I said earlier m8, and did make a point of in another posting today, but the server's deleted my explanation: the colours are due to low night time temps, not the flush.

The flush will force the plant to use what food's left, and the leaves will yellow.

However, if the night time temps are low then you get the colours too.

I discovered this in 2001 when I was having problems with huge buds (such a problem, I know, lol......and all these plants were topped too!!) - the insides of the buds were molding due to the immense sizes, so what I had to do was keep an oscillating fan on them during the night time too, thus blowing colder air on them, and as a result I saw the yellowing leaves change to some amazing colours, like orange, red and purple!

If you did an experiment and increased the lights off temps, then you wouldn't get the colours.



Peace

 

[Whatever]

B.C. - I hear ya and others have had similar input. It's a bit difficult to get into a discussion in this thread about some of the details you mentioned and respect your point of view on those things and understand. My main point is I've never had a problem getting super smooth smoking weed with this method regardless of leaf color at time of harvest while it definitely was an issue when I ran hydro and would NEVER think about harvesting hydro weed unless it was flushed properly. Even then I can still detect a difference favoring the organic over hydro stuff. Sure you can have imbalances but that mainly comes down to your mix and your water source is very important also. If your water is hard less lime. If you use RO then you need more lime to buffer. You build your mix to accommodate your water source. Yeah you can add too much of something but if the additions are balanced my experience is it won't negatively affect the finished weed. I basically said earlier my goal is to get the nute additions measured right so the plant, and microlife cause they are much hungrier than people think and go through tons on N, uses up what's been added because anything over is a waste really if you are not recycling your soil. If you build an area that has too much nutes for the plants to use it simply won't use it. This won't necessarily cause the plant to become overloaded, cause lockout problems or flavor issues. It'll take from that area what it needs. Say if you put in a spike of blood meal ...ooops...but if you balance the blood meal properly with bone meal then all is good. Yes you have areas of varying pH but that's part of the reason to do things that way. Roots will congregate around food sources. Microlife will also congregate in certain pH zones.

It's a system that works but takes a bit of experience to get dialed in properly. I've tried all kinds of stuff and now I'm playing with how I think nature 'designed' this plant to grow which is what? The philosophy I currently subscribe to is in nature you don't see it regularly dumping nutes on the plant like bottle feeding a plant. It's basically just add water. The nutes are already in the soil and roots seek out areas of concentrated food to survive.

I hang with Rev who writes regularly for Skunk. It's the way he does things. It appealed to me, tried it and works great. I'm still on the learning curve so definitely not an expert.

EDIT - I do thoroughly mix in certain amendments globally so the layers, zones, pockets. top dressings and spikes are not the sole food source for the plant.

 

[spicecowboy]

British_Bulldog:


Thank´s for starting this thread on a topic that seems to be pretty much neglected.

I´d like to tell you my opinion.

Zoolander for instance mentioned that his final product burns to a gray ash, and has a tasty smoke.

So no matter what he may have done wrong, or could have done better, he seems to be content with his results.

I wish I could tell the same aout my buds.

I have eleven years of growing experience under my belt, as a soil grower, both In- and Outdoors, but have to confess that even tough my buds normally turn out trichome covered, aromatic and potent(the hybrids as well as the landraces), I am not allways happy with the burn and taste of the final product.

I tried many different ways of drying an curing, and the best cures were allways the unintentional ones, like letting a few popcorns sit somewhere, forgetting about them and then being surprised that they turned out better than the ones I gave all my attention.

Proper drying and curing is a very important step to get a high quality product, but I´m sure that you can screw it all up in the first place by overfeeding the plants and harvest them with a bunch of nutrients being locked in.

Some people literally fatten their plants with very high, almost toxic levels of nutrients, and then a few days before harvest flush the hell out of them which won´t do much besides unnecessarily stressing the plants.

My opinion is that with a rational feeding regime you won´t need a flush at all.

It would be enough to give the plants nothing but PH adjusted water 1- 2 weeks before the chop if you avoid too much nutrient buildup in the first place.

That seems to be much easier to provide with a soilless medium, because you can exactly decide how much and what kind of nutes the plant gets.

In a soil grow it´s very important to get a soil mix that, besides providing a proper PH for Cannabis growing, is not preferted too much.

An example:

The soil mix contains enough organic fertilizer to provide the plants with all they need for the fist 3 weeks.

As they begin to show first minimal signs of deficiency you can give them a low dose of nutrients(half of the dosage recommended on the bottle) and see how they develop during the next days.

Another interresting thing is that many people believe they would go the "organic" or "bio" way by growing in soil, not knowing about the fact that most soil mixes are allready pre- fertilized with "chemical" mineral nutes, often in very high doses, designed for plants with a much longer life cylce than your average indoor Cannabis.

For instance: On my last grow I used a very expensive soil mix with the right PH for Cannabis, containing Guano as fertilzer and an overall great appeal(nowadays I usually just have to play it a bit between my fingers and take a whiff to know wheter it´s good quality or not..)

What I did not read was the small printed part on the bag stating that the soil mix also contained a special mineral Nitrogen fertilzer that get´s very slowly released and "provides the plant with enough Nitrogen for at least 3 months".

I guess that´s the main reason why my buds have a pretty bad taste this time.

Green, pretty harsh and bowls won´t stay lit.

It seems that my buddies are pretty content with the samples I gave them to try.

But they smoke tobacco mixed spliffs, like I also did in the past.

But now that I smoke pipes and bongs with pure bud, the taste became a much more important factor, and I could kick my ass for having needed years and years of growing until I began to think about this topic.

That´s why I´m happy that I found this thread.

Any tips would be highly appreciated, and please correct me where my assumptions in this post were wrong.

Peace,- and keep it green(but not TOO green, lol),


spice

 

[B.C.]

im glad i founf this thread agian and its very active. i noticed the forst couple pages had some bickering going on, so that just means that things are getting resolved and figured out.

now since i find this to be a very important aspect of growing, i decided to gorw organically in order to avoid having to flush, and many others on here have said that once you grwo organically where as all your nutes are in your soil and all you have to do is water, tehn is it possible for me to be able to flush somehow and i jsut dont know it?

to me it makes sense that the plants yellowing leaves would indicate that there is an energy drain going on, so best it be in the late stages of flowering when the plants are almost done, but how is this achieved when using a soil mix like the famed "moonshine man mix" or the like?

Ideally if you've been adding a bioactavated tea through out the grow, there isn't going ta be any goodies left in the soil. Plus the microherd never makes "excess" food for the plant, so no flush is nessesary. In my case, I use fox farms tiger and big bloom. I get heavy handed with the tigerbloom somtimes, it's strong, so ta make sure I get it all out, I catch the last week of the transpiration cycle ta make sure it's flushed. I give them bigbloom by itself ( it's nothin but a bio-tea ) a couple of times ta help break things down and then nothing but water. That sudden void of nutes when the plant is still useing em so fast insures they're nute free and clean. Most of the time it makes the fan leaves turn yellow. Some strains more than others tho. I hope that answers yer question. Take care... BC

 

[Whatever]

My opinion is that with a rational feeding regime you won´t need a flush at all.

Nice and agree. I think part of it is people push their plants too hard sometimes thinking more is better and my experience is the opposite.

 

[cocktail frank]

some autumn goodness

some autumn goodness






this is called PA Bubba Haze, named by the man who found this particular cut from seed.
it is a cross i made combining bubba kush x abusive kushaze from rez.
abusive kushaze is (abusive ogk x ssh)

 

[evilunclephil]

Damn frank, that's a beautiful woman!

 

[etncrew]

i just popped a boner. day 57 and i've got a few lower fan leaves yellowing. the flush has been on for about a week now

 

[Maj.PotHead]

Maj.PotHead are you trying to communicate with moi? If yes, it's nice of you to offer me that bud to taste. PM me & I'll get you a PO Box#. Photos can be very misleading. From the thumbnails they look tasty.

I'm in straight Pro-Mix & we leach with a 10-25% PBP Bloom type nutrient in the last couple weeks they get that every watering. Only the last couple waterings will be plain no pH'd tap water. I've stopped all N except what's in the PBP after 2-3 week of bloom.

lol no buddy my nephew Sirsmokealot is a member here also INB is also a friend and member but down for the next yr

 

[cway]

and they still got another week or so.

 

[Guest]

In fact, the more I look at Ty-Stik's pic the more I like it, nice one Ty, you've done those girls proud man and I bet they smoked well...Would you care to give us a smoke report on them please?

The smoke is smooth and heavy as Hindu Kush should be, has an earthy taste and no coughing your lungs out when you burn one. The exception is when too much flame is put to the bowel and that results in throat burn. Duh.

I have 3 patients that I grow for and they are very pleased with the draw, taste, aroma and the medicinal value from the higher THC.

Thank You for your positive comments. Growing is truly an enjoyable following.

Respects,

tystik

 

[TGT]

I thought the yellowing of leaves during flowering was due to the plant dying. The yellowing is the plant taking all the nutes the leaf stored over it's life. So what role does genetics play in this process. If the leaves are green, then that means that the plant is still photosynthesizing. It has all the nutrients to sustain itself after a harvest.

I grow outside mostly, and once I harvest them they are literally half dead. if not more so.

When the leaves yellow they are using up the remaining nutrients, that you are correct about. Genetics comes in when some plants just don't go yellow or autumn color easily like some plants do no matter how much you leach. Like I said earlier it is rare as I have only run across a few strains that I have grown that have done this - but I do have one now that is like this. I don't know if this is due to the plant not releasing the nutrients from the leaves or if the leaves just stay green even when the nutrients are almost all gone, but it is a genetic trait. Thats what I mean't - I hope this answers your question.

TGT

 

[phatnuggetz]

"im glad i founf this thread agian and its very active. i noticed the forst couple pages had some bickering going on, so that just means that things are getting resolved and figured out.

now since i find this to be a very important aspect of growing, i decided to gorw organically in order to avoid having to flush, and many others on here have said that once you grwo organically where as all your nutes are in your soil and all you have to do is water, tehn is it possible for me to be able to flush somehow and i jsut dont know it?"

what are you kidding me, just cause you grow organics doesnt mean you should'nt flush in the end, especially if your in soil. That why I switched to hydro, flushing is totally different then flushing in soil, in soil you must flush 2 gallons of water to each gallon of growing medium to properly flush, thats a bitch. plus just because something is organic doesnt mean it wont taste like shit when not flushed. Its all shit guano bat shit, why would you not flush that. I flush for 10 days in my hydro system with clearx and change the res twice plus in the last 12 hours I dehydrate my plants with quality cure product and i think its as good as you can do it to flush.

 

[Guest]

B.C - ALL the posts I did on every thread last nite are gone ... Grrr, some of them took me awhile to write too!

Anayways, one post on this thread was asking if this plant (below) is 'autumn colour' or just fukd with nute burn and deficiencies hahaha.



Cheers.

 

[Whatever]

That why I switched to hydro

LOL...I went from GH in rockwool and AN in coco to organics in soil. I don't know what your problem was cause I haven't had one yet with shit. A plant can't absorb shit. Like someone basically said earlier...

My opinion is that with a rational feeding regime you won´t need a flush at all.

I chuckled when I saw the thread title. Joeshmoe and Subrob didn't seem to think my J1 tasted like shit and that stuff was pretty green when harvested :wink:. Sure I'll get better at it but until then no problemo really.

 

[phatnuggetz]

I never said I had a problem with soil, I just said it was a bitch to flush container gardens of soil. why you would go from gh to AN to organics is beyond me. I am with rezdog and his thread about the big secret http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=79104 , that organic herb is not as good as herb grown with refined nutreints , it taste like shit, not as cristally, and just not as good. so why you would go from AN to organics..... and if a plant cant absorb bat guano then why would it even be in soil or fertilizers?

 

[perakko]

here we go again, let's try to keep this thread about flushing and not about endless ranting between hydro and soil growers.

personally it's hard for me to swallow that you don't need to flush at all, with organics? even though the herb smells and burns fine always, i still get pretty bad coughing from poorly flushed organics, and that's got to be the worst part of smoking.