I’ve been growing for a really long time now and have a pretty good system for flushing that works for me (which I’ll gladly share), but the more I interact with other growers, the more I’ve come to discover how different growers can be.
The purpose of this discussion is to see what other growers are doing with their flushing regimen. So what are you up to? Do you flush? If so, how do you do it and for how long? Do you use a flushing agent like Drip Clean from House and Garden or Florakleen from GH?
My flush recipe seems to work quite well, regardless if I’m running salts or growing fully organically: I add the same volume of fresh water as the size of pots in which the plants are growing (i.e. if I’m growing in 7 gallon pots, I flush with about 7 gallons of fresh water). I do this twice on the initial day of flushing. We call this the two-step flush. After the pots are allowed to fully dry (a healthy plant should be fully dry within a day or two of that initial two-step flush), I begin adding fresh water for the last 10-14 days of flowering. You can see the visual effect of the flush in the plant system. As no more nutrients are available to the plant via the root system, the plant will begin pulling the remaining available nutrients from within it’s own internal vascular system. The leaves will begin to turn yellow (this is good, don’t freak out) and some of the lower water leaves will begin to dry up and shed - it’s ok to pull these leaves, the plant no longer needs them anyway, plus it opens up light for lower levels of the canopy.
By the end of that 10-14 day flush period. Your plant might begin to look like this Blue Cheese:
So what are you doing to flush your crop?