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here: Issue
#231 - Sunday, September 18, 2016
Dear Fellow Grower,
In today's
issue... - Discover how flush your buds before harvest so they're smoother when you smoke them!
- Learn more about the new LEC lights that are filling the shelves at hydro stores!
- This week's trophy pics feature a Kaya Gold outdoor plant!
Nebula Haze & Sirius Fourside (founders of GrowWeedEasy.com) "At times it is folly to hasten, at other times, to delay. The wise do everything in its proper time."
~Ovid
How to Flush for Smoother Buds by Nebula Haze |
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This flushing tutorial is part of our "how to harvest cannabis" series:
What is the Point of Flushing Before Harvest? (Leaching Extra Nutrients Out of Buds) Flushing is free and easy technique that may improve the quality and smoothness of your cannabis buds before harvest. Sounds good, right? Of course it does! But growers must also be careful with flushing before harvest because if you do it too early you can actually hurt your quality (and reduce your yields)!
The process of flushing involves giving your plants
just plain water with no nutrients for a period of time before harvest. For growers who normally give water to their plants with nutrients in it, you would water your plants as normal with the same type of water you normally use, but you don't add any nutrients. Depending on the setup, growers usually flush their plants this way for a few days up to about 2 weeks.
Note: You still need to pH the water during the flush, because too high or too low pH can cause your plant to absorb extra aluminum and salt out of the water!
Flushing Before Harvest - Quick
Summary
How long should each type of grower flush their plants before harvest?
- Amended Soil Growers: Don't flush
- Soil Growers: Flush 1-2+ Weeks
- Coco Growers Flush: ~1 Week
- DWC/Hydro Growers: Flush for a Few Days
More info about each one in the full tutorial below!
2.) Water plants as normal, except with no nutrients or supplements
You're going to do everything you normally do when it comes to watering, except without any additional nutrients or
supplements. Don't give more water at a time than normal, because this increases the chances of your plants getting overwatered and showing deficiencies/symptoms caused by that
problem.
3.) Watch plants closely for signs of too much yellowing
During the flush before harvest, your plant can
lose its green color very quickly. Although it's normal to see some amount of yellowing before harvest, it's important to harvest before the sugar leaves on the buds themselves have turned yellow. Although this doesn't affect the quality of the buds, it does affect the appearance and buds aren't as pretty. Additionally, once all the leaves have turned yellow your plant won't really mature a whole lot more, and buds can start to deteriorate quickly.
4.) Harvest Your Plants
After the flushing period, your plants
should appear a lot lighter than they did at the beginning. It's time to harvest! Learn more about when and how to harvest plants.
The idea behind flushing is to let your cannabis plants “use up” any extra nutrients contained in the plant and buds. This way there is a much lower level of nutrients left over after harvest, and it's those extra
nutrients that could possibly change the smell, taste or (most often) "smoothness" of your buds in a negative way.
So in soil or coco coir, the grower would give the plant just plain water for days or weeks before harvest time.
This lets the plant use up the nutrients in the soil/coco, and then - theoretically - start leaching extra nutrients from the buds.
In a hydro or DWC setup, flushing is even easier. The grower simply replaces all the water in their reservoir with plain pH'ed water, and the plant doesn’t have access to any nutrients available except for what’s already in the plant.
Flushing is Giving Plants Only Plain Water For Days or Weeks Before Harvest Is Flushing Important?
I used to think that flushing wasn’t that important. I'd still do it most of the time
based on habits I'd learned from other growers, but other times I'd skip it altogether. One of the most common reasons growers tell you to flush is that not doing so affects flavor. I’d tried flushing and not flushing, and I personally couldn’t tell any difference when it came to smell or flavor.
In fact, I got lots of compliments on the taste and flavor of my buds. My unflushed buds didn’t have a
“chemical” taste like others had warned of, and I figured the need to flush was basically a growing myth, or something growers should only do if they’ve given their plant too many nutrients. When it came to flushing, I told myself, “How could the plant be removing nutrients out of buds, anyway?” I also figured that a flush wasn’t needed for my grows since I kept nutrient levels low throughout
the entire flowering stage. I thought maintaining lower levels would prevent any type of nutrient buildup (so to speak) in the buds. I still don’t truly know about the science behind flushing or why it works, but after my last grow, my experience has changed my opinion on flushing.
For my last grow, I decided to try something a little different...I harvested different plants at different points in the flushing process.
While this was definitely not a honest-to-goodness scientific experiment since I was growing different strains without controls, the results of my experiment were more than enough to change my
mind.
I grew three plants. I had one plant I didn’t flush at all, one that was flushed for a couple of days, and one that got flushed for a little more than a week.
Are LEC Lights Good For Growing? |
In San Diego, LEC grow lights have begun to fill the walls of our local hydro store. But what are they? Are they LEDs or something else?
An "LEC" is a brand name by the company Sun System. LEC stands for "Light Emitting Ceramic". It is basically a rebranded ceramic metal halide or CMH grow light.
CMH grow lights have been around for a while, but these newly redesigned LEC versions have some neat features that make them attractive to the small-scale grower.
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What I Like About LEC Lights - Electrically Efficient & Long Lasting
- Excellent Source of UV Light Which Can Increase Trichome Production (they're easily the best option for UV light besides the sun)
- No-Glass Design on the 315W
- Be Able to See Plants in Full Color
- Great in the 315W Size (Yields 4-9 Ounces)
Example of LEC-Grown Bud - Notice the Unusually High Trichome Production
What I Don't Like About LEC lights
Conclusion
I think these are a really interesting class of grow light that are just
starting to get popular. I feel like the 315 LEC can be a really great choice for the small scale grower looking to harvest 4-9 ounces at a time and wants the highest quality bud possible. It's also for growers who want to be able to see their plants in full color, so plants can be enjoyed in all their natural glory.
They're easy to use like other HID lights, and in my opinion
they are more intuitive than using LEDs (as it can be hard to optimize the LEDs to be the best distance from your plants).
I love my 250W HPS, and I don't plan on changing it any time soon, but I will say that if I didn't have a grow light and was in the market for something new, I'd be eyeing that 315 LEC!
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Thank you for all you do! I've learned so much from this site, and I'm hopeful to get involved in growing on a larger scale. My summer four are ridiculous!
I love Oregon!
Thanks again,
Joel |
We encourage you to forward this email to a friend in need!
Who Runs This
Newsletter? |
Nebula Haze:
I'll be honest with you, when I first started growing, I struggled. Now, it is my mission to make it easier for new growers to
get started as well as help advanced growers get bigger, better yields with less time and money. We are updating and adding articles every single week and our goal is to eventually build a comprehensive growing resource so anyone and everyone can grow if they want to! If we all share the knowledge there's more buds in the world for everyone :) |
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Learn which seed sources are personally recommended by Nebula Haze |
Sirius Fourside:
Sirius Fourside is a hobbyist grower who has gained the bulk of his experience growing in water as a medium (deep water culture,
bubbleponics).
"Growing cannabis is a relaxing hobby in and of itself, but it also saves you money and keeps you from having to deal with shady characters. Cannabis is much
easier to grow than people give it credit for, and growing in water doesn't increase the difficulty much, if any. But whether you want to grow in water, coco, or a different medium, we'll show you how easy it can be!"
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