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University of Guelph paper- Flushing is a myth!

BongFu

Member
I've tested flushed and unflushed side by side, there is a noticeable difference in the final product no doubt. Flushed burns better, doesn't spark or sizzle, tastes cleaner near the end of the bowl, and smolders to a much softer ash. There is a big difference, I don't see how people can debate it unless they haven't tried it themselves or are doing things very differently than I nutritionally. I haven't tried it with every cut of every strain but I doubt it can vary much to where it wouldn't be noticeable when compared. If you gave me two nugs of the same cut and one was not flushed I am confident I could tell you which by only sampling one of them to the bottom of the bowl. Maybe it's not a nutrient factor, but the flush definitely makes a difference.

Tell them to test it in a bowl, that's where the answer really is to the questions that matter.


People swear that organically grown tastes better than inorganically grown but in double blind taste tests they have found people can't accurately taste any difference - some say the inorganically grown tastes better, some say the organically grown tastes better and some say they can't taste any difference. I think what needs to be done is scientific double blinds on flushed and unflushed and only then can we get an accurate picture of whether there is any difference re taste.
 

dank.frank

ef.yu.se.ka.e.em
ICMag Donor
Veteran
I'm organic soil. I don't flush. It'd be impossible. My nutrients are chemically bound within the soil via high CEC and proper balance between cations, anions and free hydrogen and oxygen.

That aside, I don't try to finish a plant that hasn't entered senescence in the first place.

https://academic.oup.com/jxb/article/69/4/715/4851198

During senescence, leaf cells are subject to massive physiological and biochemical changes, including a dramatic metabolic transition from anabolism to catabolism which results in nutrient redistribution to newly developing organs (Lim et al., 2007). The transition from carbon assimilation to nutrient remobilization involves the degradation of cellular structures such as chloroplasts (Masclaux et al., 2000).

Given that senescence in plants is a highly dynamic process that is precisely coordinated by a complex regulatory network in response to endogenous developmental signals and environmental cues, investigations of leaf senescence should be accomplished by integrative analyses which allow an assessment of the spatio-temporal, dynamic changes that occur in physiological, biochemical and molecular phenotypes. Großkinsky et al. (2018)

So, no, those nutrients, don't - "go to the buds" - THAT sort of talk is your "stoner science" for you. Assuming the plant places as much value on it's flower as YOU do...fallacy, sir.

They are used to break down chloroplasts in the cell tissues which is what allows for the color change you see in leaves in the fall. These signals, are controlled from within the plant itself in combination with the environment it is exposed to. :joint:



dank.Frank
 
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dank.frank

ef.yu.se.ka.e.em
ICMag Donor
Veteran
People swear that organically grown tastes better than inorganically grown but in double blind taste tests they have found people can't accurately taste any difference - some say the inorganically grown tastes better, some say the organically grown tastes better and some say they can't taste any difference. I think what needs to be done is scientific double blinds on flushed and unflushed and only then can we get an accurate picture of whether there is any difference re taste.

Double blind would be useless in this scenario because - what about cigarette smokers? Am I supposed to assume their ability to taste is equal to that of a non-tobacco smoker?

C'mon. That statement it's is so bias it can't be taken seriously.

You do realize that people have different taste buds and different distributions of those taste buds? Have you ever heard of SUPER tasters? You realize how we taste things is in fact tied to genetic markers?

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-genetics-of-taste-88797110/

A double blind where you have zero control of the individuals ability to taste, only proves that people taste things differently. I taste a difference. That's precisely why I grow in a fully amended organic soil, water only. It's not some plot to save humanity.



dank.Frank
 

Elmer Bud

Genotype Sex Worker AKA strain whore
Veteran
There are mobile elements and they absolutely do get used and depleted from the plants leaves, ie the reserves, if it can't get the nutrition from the roots. That's not even remotely debatable. It's called translocation.

I'll keep doing exactly what I do. Nothing but water 100% of the growing cycle. :joint:



dank.Frank

G `day DF

We smoke flowers not leaves .

Thanks for sharin

EB .
 

BongFu

Member
Double blind would be useless in this scenario because - what about cigarette smokers? Am I supposed to assume their ability to taste is equal to that of a non-tobacco smoker?

C'mon. That statement it's is so bias it can't be taken seriously.

You do realize that people have different taste buds and different distributions of those taste buds? Have you ever heard of SUPER tasters? You realize how we taste things is in fact tied to genetic markers?

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-genetics-of-taste-88797110/

A double blind where you have zero control of the individuals ability to taste, only proves that people taste things differently. I taste a difference. That's precisely why I grow in a fully amended organic soil, water only. It's not some plot to save humanity.



dank.Frank


And yet this is the way science does things :) Not bias - my only bias is towards science and away from stoner talk :laughing:


Oh and read my post about taste being subjective and everyones taste buds are different - hence double blinds with a large cohort... Otherwise its just hippy dribble and Flat Earther stuff... You really aren't selling your opinions too well.
 

dank.frank

ef.yu.se.ka.e.em
ICMag Donor
Veteran
And yet you're the one not re-enforcing your opinion with studies and data to counter and continue the CONVERSATION.

Instead, you're going to act like an impotent child and try to make this some stupid petty back and forth nonsense.

Pathetic.

Contribute meaningful content that furthers the conversation or don't quote me and waste my time. Don't associate my posts with drivel.



dank.Frank
 

BongFu

Member
Well no Frank you are the one denying science - you posted a study that you clearly don't understand to support your flawed opinions. BTW - science is never an opinion. Science might begin with an opinion (hypothesis) and then this hypothesis is tested and a conclusion drawn. You of course understand what source sink relations and the nitrogen cycle are don't you??? So the leaves are sources and the fruit (or in this case buds) are sinks. Under nutrient starved conditions the sinks draw on the sources to provide mineral nutrition. For example, it is well know that under nutrient starved conditions N is mobilized from the mature leaves to younger growing tips and leaves along with developing fruit (i.e. Using stable isotope labeling, it has been shown that N is remobilized from senescing leaves to expanding leaves at the vegetative stage as well as to seeds during the reproductive stage in Arabidopsis thaliana and in Brassica napus (Malagoli et al., 2005; Diaz et al., 2008; Masclaux-Daubresse et al., 2010). - re your point about translocation and my point that translocation actually defeats the purpose associated to flushing due to nutrients going to where they are most needed (i.e. the bud). So some reads for you on source sink relations and the N cycle and nutrient translocation from leaves to fruit


https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4429656/


Note: On the other hand, phosphorus remobilization has been less well-described in the literature. In wheat, remobilization of P accounted for 56–63% of the grain P content (Masoni et al., 2007). In P-deficient wheat, around 58–90% of P in the grain could be attributed to retranslocated P (Batten et al., 1986), whereas the proportion was substantially lower (up to 21% P) when the roots were continuously well-supplied with P.


https://www.mdpi.com/2223-7747/7/1/4/htm



There is a substantial body of literature describing the N uptake and internal cycling of N in deciduous fruit trees, but less information is available for evergreen trees [10,26,27]. In evergreen trees (e.g., citrus), leaves are an important additional sink of N during the winter [10,26,28]. Similarly to deciduous trees, remobilisation of internal N reserves in evergreen trees are crucial for optimal shoot growth, flowering, and fruit set since bud break occurs when conditions (end on winter) are not always optimal for root N uptake [10,26,29,30]. Once N is absorbed by roots or remobilised from storage reserves, it is allocated to the organs that are developing according to their needs. Shoots, followed by fruits are the main N sinks in orange trees, whose uptake rates in Mediterranean districts in the Northern hemisphere is rather constant from April to November, but relatively less N is partitioned to fruits when the fertilizer N is supplied late in the season [28].
 

dank.frank

ef.yu.se.ka.e.em
ICMag Donor
Veteran
Well no Frank you are the one denying science - you posted a study that you clearly don't understand to support your flawed opinions.

What IS my opinion??? Denying science by stating I don't flush and never pull a plant before senescence?

And...I'm the one who doesn't understand.

By all means though, keep talking about pine trees.



dank.Frank
 

Lost in a SOG

GrassSnakeGenetics
Plants stop eating on their own in the final month. In organic alive soil they mostly just eat what they want when they want.

Flushing as a concept is retarded unless you continue pumping salts in well past when you should in which case you still should just lower your feed in final weeks instead of pumping them with nutes like some nazi super soldier and hoping the flush is going to improve things when it was the whole philosophy and understanding of biological systems in the first place that was wrong, imo.
 

BongFu

Member
What IS my opinion??? Denying science by stating I don't flush and never pull a plant before senescence?

And...I'm the one who doesn't understand.

By all means though, keep talking about pine trees.



dank.Frank


Lol I'm just glad you didn't call me an "impotent" child - BTW I think the word you were looking for is "impudent ":woohoo:


To quote you re your opinions ...

“Double blind would be useless in this scenario because” blah blah blah blah (yawn)





“So, no, those nutrients, don't - "go to the buds" - THAT sort of talk is your "stoner science" for you. Assuming the plant places as much value on it's flower as YOU do...fallacy, sir.”



Thanks for sharing :thank you:

 
G

Gauss

People swear that organically grown tastes better than inorganically grown but in double blind taste tests they have found people can't accurately taste any difference - some say the inorganically grown tastes better, some say the organically grown tastes better and some say they can't taste any difference. I think what needs to be done is scientific double blinds on flushed and unflushed and only then can we get an accurate picture of whether there is any difference re taste.

Fair enough, but I'm not saying all that or even talking about any of that. Try it and if you don't agree with me sure I'll eat my shoes, but I shit you not.
 

Weird

3rd-Eye Jedi
Veteran
lol did their system of flushing force false senescence to match the natural phenomenon

many inept people feed the plant and/or flush in such a manner that the nutrient stores are not effected

this trickled top down in agriculture

here is a plant with "forced" senescence for those who don't understand the concept

picture.php
 

SuperBadGrower

Active member
Indeed, it cannot be argued that a blind trial is invalid because people have "different tastes". In that case, all the research in the world would be invalid and we can forget about finding things out, because everybody is not equal. It doesn't matter if you (think you) taste a difference. What matters is that a representative group of people of adequate size can discern a difference between 2 types of the same weed, as BongFu pointed out.

I read this paper "long ago", so from the top of my head:
I'll be the first (?) to remark that this is a flawed study? This experiment was poorly executed (just read the documentation if you don't believe me) and it has not been replicated by anyone as far as I am aware. It's rare for me to read such a clusterfuck of a paper. The main goal was not to discover the effects of flushing.

I would not be quick to jump to conclusions. Realize that a lot of the "anti-vaccination" movement is based one flawed study from the 90s :)

More data would be needed IMO
Of course, the stoner myth of "nutez" somehow leaving the tissue of the plant by means of flushing the medium is complete nonsense, but anybody with half a brain and some time for reading knows that already. It's pointless to argue with people who think nitrogen just flies out the plant. On the other hand, the benefits of "flushing" a medium with salt buildup where the runoff is 6 EC should also be completely obvious to anyone.

So to get a better picture of flushing calls for more chemical analyses and probably taste tests to back that up, IMO. In this study only the presence of some macronutrients is tested. It is no surprise for various reasons that there is no significant difference between treatments. (But it is nice to have it "confirmed", at least in this one small trial)

In defense of flushing practices, we can ask ourselves: is that the complete picture? Do NPK Ca and a few others account for the complete taste profile of the product? I am not a chemist but I wager that the answer is No. Are there qualitative differences between plants that have had to translocate minerals vs. plants that have been "spoon-fed"? I would be the first to admit that I haven't a fucking clue, and this sounds like the next logical avenue of research. (If a stress treatment yields 25% less but is 100% more dank, what do you want?)

Anyway, all criticism aside, cannabis research is young and you gotta start with the basics. A bunch of myths are being put to the test. Another known one is the phosphorus overfertilization.

What's funny to me is that these things actually piss some people off. Many respond with anger. Sometimes it's best to just read your literature, instead of opening a can of worms on the internet by trying to help and educate. Always an interesting discussion.
I gave someone some bud from 2 plants and told them the source was commercial. They could tell with certainty that one of them was "sprayed" (with something bad, I guess) by the structure and taste. The only thing sprayed on any of those plants was tap water, 12 weeks before harvest. Others have remarked that it must have been organic soil grown. I'll tell you you're right when you want.

I don't flush... I do give water for the last 2-1.5 weeks. Lord knows when you follow the bottled nutrients labels and don't water to runoff, you better get a hose! The first time I grew and flushed I saw 8000ppm, haha
 

dank.frank

ef.yu.se.ka.e.em
ICMag Donor
Veteran
F.U.C.K. the troll. I'd smoke it with you, Weird. :respect:
picture.php


@Superbadgrower - Thank you. I wasn't about to explain the difference between a graduate thesis and a peer reviewed, published article. But hey - if I say enough sciencey things I'll sound correct, isn't that how it works. ;)


dank.Frank
 

Douglas.Curtis

Autistic Diplomat in Training
I think the word has been used to mean at least two different things. Some people use it to mean withholding nutrients (N) past peak flowering to get flower that's lower in chlorophyll at harvest. Other people just mean running water through the soil mix to 'flush' the excess nutrients from the medium itself, usually to correct an over feeding mistake.
Just one of many points of confusion in the cannabis world. Ty prohibition efforts!! :D


I find the use of the word 'bud' in a 'scientific' paper to be cute. ;)
I would like to know the accuracy represented by this statement:
thepaper said:
there are no significant differences between any of the treatments analyzed using ANOVA at significance of p<0.05


In my opinion, there is a definite (though very slight) difference in quality between my faded cannabis, and my faded cannabis with a 5 day flush. (hydro) Nobody else notices the difference.

Are their instruments less sensitive than my palate? Or is it the soil and nutrients they (over?)used? lol
 

BongFu

Member
Indeed, it cannot be argued that a blind trial is invalid because people have "different tastes". In that case, all the research in the world would be invalid and we can forget about finding things out, because everybody is not equal. It doesn't matter if you (think you) taste a difference. What matters is that a representative group of people of adequate size can discern a difference between 2 types of the same weed, as BongFu pointed out.

I read this paper "long ago", so from the top of my head:
I'll be the first (?) to remark that this is a flawed study? This experiment was poorly executed (just read the documentation if you don't believe me) and it has not been replicated by anyone as far as I am aware. It's rare for me to read such a clusterfuck of a paper. The main goal was not to discover the effects of flushing.

I would not be quick to jump to conclusions. Realize that a lot of the "anti-vaccination" movement is based one flawed study from the 90s :)

More data would be needed IMO
Of course, the stoner myth of "nutez" somehow leaving the tissue of the plant by means of flushing the medium is complete nonsense, but anybody with half a brain and some time for reading knows that already. It's pointless to argue with people who think nitrogen just flies out the plant. On the other hand, the benefits of "flushing" a medium with salt buildup where the runoff is 6 EC should also be completely obvious to anyone.

So to get a better picture of flushing calls for more chemical analyses and probably taste tests to back that up, IMO. In this study only the presence of some macronutrients is tested. It is no surprise for various reasons that there is no significant difference between treatments. (But it is nice to have it "confirmed", at least in this one small trial)

In defense of flushing practices, we can ask ourselves: is that the complete picture? Do NPK Ca and a few others account for the complete taste profile of the product? I am not a chemist but I wager that the answer is No. Are there qualitative differences between plants that have had to translocate minerals vs. plants that have been "spoon-fed"? I would be the first to admit that I haven't a fucking clue, and this sounds like the next logical avenue of research. (If a stress treatment yields 25% less but is 100% more dank, what do you want?)

Anyway, all criticism aside, cannabis research is young and you gotta start with the basics. A bunch of myths are being put to the test. Another known one is the phosphorus overfertilization.

What's funny to me is that these things actually piss some people off. Many respond with anger. Sometimes it's best to just read your literature, instead of opening a can of worms on the internet by trying to help and educate. Always an interesting discussion.
I gave someone some bud from 2 plants and told them the source was commercial. They could tell with certainty that one of them was "sprayed" (with something bad, I guess) by the structure and taste. The only thing sprayed on any of those plants was tap water, 12 weeks before harvest. Others have remarked that it must have been organic soil grown. I'll tell you you're right when you want.

I don't flush... I do give water for the last 2-1.5 weeks. Lord knows when you follow the bottled nutrients labels and don't water to runoff, you better get a hose! The first time I grew and flushed I saw 8000ppm, haha


Nice to see a well thought out and informed post. I agree with most things you say here - namely, you always need to consider the parameters of a study and think critically about the findings.



Where inorganic nutrient ions are concerned being "flushed" due to feeding only water for 14 or so days - it's plant science 101 to determine this argument/myth is highly flawed; however, the parameters of this study were far too narrow in that while they considered inorganic nutrients in the plant tissue they failed to look at what potentially could be happening at an organic level re carbohydrates/sugars, chlorophyll etc. It, was though a good start in the metanarrative.
 

SuperBadGrower

Active member
I would like to know the accuracy represented by this statement:

In my opinion, there is a definite (though very slight) difference in quality between my faded cannabis, and my faded cannabis with a 5 day flush. (hydro) Nobody else notices the difference.

Are their instruments less sensitive than my palate? Or is it the soil and nutrients they (over?)used? lol

Put simply, ANOVA is a statistical method that can be used compare groups and find out whether the differences between are real. When you talk about a significant difference, that basically means that there was a <5% chance that the difference is based on chance. (This is the p-value, something may said to be significant when p = <0.05)
So, things can be different, but not significantly different. However, to say "there is a difference, it's just not significant!" is definitely not accepted.
In some fields p-values of <0.05 are handled, but this is not the case everywhere. p=0.05 is still a 1 in 20 chance that the result is random.

It's not so much about their instruments and measurements, which seem to be sound. In this case it is about what is being measured. Here, they measured N, P, K, Ca, Mg, some other shit. Those macronutrients are just scratching the surface of what is in there.

If anything, you can see this as preliminary research for others to pick up on. It always starts with the basics

edit: re-reading this it sounds kinda vague, and I'm stoned. To paraphrase that; their measurements and conclusions are Sound. To state that there is no difference between flushed and unflushed plants is would be false. A more accurate interpretation is that there is no difference between macronutrient contents of flushed and flushed plants. (i.e., those plants in this particular experiment)
 
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Tony21

Member
I think the word has been used to mean at least two different things. Some people use it to mean withholding nutrients (N) past peak flowering to get flower that's lower in chlorophyll at harvest. Other people just mean running water through the soil mix to 'flush' the excess nutrients from the medium itself, usually to correct an over feeding mistake.

Combining the two concepts gets me a bit confused. So water is run through the mix in an attempt to achieve low chlorophyll at harvest? I don't think that will work. Even just withholding the N doesn't work very well unless you're using a container size that restricts roots at peak flower.

As to whether cannabis grown with restricted nutrients during flower tastes and smells better, I'm pretty sure it does. It's the same with grapes, more flavorful but smaller. Besides, N during flowering builds more vegetative mass in the bud itself, which if you think like I do that trichome count is genetic, is basically reducing potency by increasing leaf mass. That might be an even better reason to limit nutrients during flower.

Just my 2c, anyway cool discussion!


Interesting post, can you please provide link(s) to back up your assertion that trichs count is genetically determined in the sense that strong big growth dilutes the strength of the buds and slow small growth increases the strength due to concentration of a difinitive number of trichs in a smaller arrw/volume of buds???



Comparing grapes which is a fleshy watery fruit to dried unpollinated seed pods seems a stretch.



Personally I think starving plants only reduces yield, and any effect on taste has the same influence as Thor's hammer has on lightning lol
 

Nifty_PoT

Active member
How important is flushing/leeching of nutrients when you are only making concentrates like rosin or co2 oil? I would think not at all seeing though you dont have as much plant matter in the end product?
 
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