How do I flush during flowering?

[Luke Skywalker]

Gross Feeder - Plant that can absorb and tolerate large levels of nutrient salts.

 

Tomatoes and cucumbers as well as most quick growing plants fall into this category. Vegies as a general rule are, but not always. Cannabis certainly is.

[jimbojones5678]

Just thought I would end this thread with the results of flushing Lukes way...

 

I flushed it down from 0.3 runoff to zero EC and the PH has only moved 0.1 over 3 days and the EC is rock steady!

 

Great results - thanks for the info.

 

Jimbo

[John Citizen]

I would regularly run pH adjusted, perhaps a mild solution, (like 0.4 ec) through the system with each change of nutrients. You can do this every two weeks or so, although if your water quality is suspect, (over .5 e.c. out of the tap) it's certainly a good idea to do this weekly.

 

Run fresh, pH adjusted water (with or without mild nutrient) through the system for 10minutes at a time, and then check the e.c. of the solution. In RTW it's a bit quicker to do as you're not recirculating the same salts over the media. Once that 10mins is up, allow the pots to fully drain then check the e.c. of the runoff/reservoir. You want to flush until you get the e.c. to within 1 point of the solution you're flushing in.

 

i.e. I have a plant in a recirc system and after a 10min flush with 1.2 e.c. (0.4 ec nutes and 0.8 e.c. tap water crap) solution the tank reading is around 1.6. After dumping this and then refilling and running a second flush, it might be down to 1.3 or so, which is the target e.c. You can eventually get the rootzone back to the same e.c. as the water it's flushed with, but this takes a lot more flushing than it does to bring it within 1 point and this is for all practical considerations plenty clean.

 

Some don't flush during the grow at all, and that's perfectly fine provided you're not seeing a regular rise in the e.c. to dangerous levels, (above say 2.8 or so). Check the runoff from the pots, see how many points above the input solution the e.c. is and then you can decide whether a flush is a good idea. During the early stages of growth you may not need to do this much, but once the plants reach the flowering stage they certainly benefit from it IMHO.

 

Lucky bastards like me with R.O. water are able to leave flushing to once every two weeks, but those with crap water are well advised to do a regular weekly dump, flush and reformulate.

 

Hope that helps, and if I've described things a little abstractly just let me know and I'll try and put it more concisely.

 

 

Hey Luke,

 

Not sure if you're onsite much nowadays but i've always found you a treasure chest of knowledge and experience so i'm throwing this out here in case you're around:

I have always been interested in RO systems but am yet to test one out - my girls are generally happy so RO has never been a priority but im curious to know how much i can improve their nute uptake in the hope of even better end results. With this in mind do you have some basic info on RO systems? - specifically an overview of how they work and what impurities RO removes from the water....

 

Thanks in advance,

JC