Hope everyone is doing fine. There seem to be so many different ways people approach fading plants.
With the consensus that traditional “Flushing” with 0 nutrients solution is not beneficial or even detrimental depending on how long you plan to flush I wanted to start a discussion on what approach works for you.
I’ve seen some starting to cut back on EC at around week 5-6 by like 10-15% each week.
As well as people just going full dose to the end with varied results.
Myself I usually cut back around 20% at week 7-8 depending on the finishing time. And last week going 50%. My HVAC is limited where I’m at the moment so leaf temp for the last weeks hover 77,5-78,5 with VPD 1.3-1.4 but I still retain quite a bit of green color. Maybe I would benefit from cutting more Cal/ Nit and shifting the ratios a bit.
I know that the plant going later into flowering starts consuming less N and Ca and pushing higher VPD even with lower concentrations we’re forcing that Ca uptake. I do not have access to Leaf Tissue analysis to fully dial in.
What approach do you choose? And do you even care about the fade besides promotional pictures etc?
What supplies more ions to the plant, 500 mls at a 3 EC or 1500 mls at a 1.5EC?
Which strategy cues generative ripening? How are you trying to effect osmotic pressure at the end of flower?
Traditional cannabis flushing methods make zero sense to me in a soilless media. Possibly soil if fertilizers were added with watering up until the end but imho this all came from a complete lack of understanding of soilless culture and fear of “chemical” fertilizers.
Not to mention, it’s anecdotally accepted that “organic soil” grown is better… which is never “flushed” Maybe not vegetatively cueing and starving the plant at the end of flower actually makes it better?
My thinking has always been that soil plants dont get flushed/fade so harshly, and they can turn out great, so you shouldn’t need to in hydro either unless youve over-done it, and have some salty mess or something.
Nutrients should taper off near the end, sure, but i think some go too hard.
This is why I decided to start the conversation to gain more perspective. I do listen to Aroya live hours and they do talk about osmotic pressure quite a bit. And before getting sensors and just checking leachate I actually had a completely wrong idea of what is actually happening in the substrate. With this in mind, it makes total sense what Medicine Grower in his thread mentioned about keeping EC stacked through all of his grow for more quality. Steering more on EC requirements of the media than WWC. Thank you for popping in the thread, it does help me compartmentalize and bring me closer to the right track on how to actually think and interpret things.
Actually, I was re-reading your AGT-50 thread and this was one of the reasons I decided to ask as I definitely lack knowledge of properly finishing out the plants nor do I really have an idea when would be a good idea to cut back on N. Specifically talking about post 227:
I usually cut back a bit of N few days after the stretch when my leachate PH starts to drop indicating a preference for more cations. I myself don’t have leaf tissue sampling available to confirm. But from watching Mr. Daniel Fernandez videos specifically on nutrient uptake it shows once the plants start concentrating on flowering leaf tissue concentration shows much less N and higher cation concentration. Correct me if I’m wrong; I know that I’m a moron and English being my second language wouldn’t be the first time I interpreted things incorrectly.
On the other hand, I’m not sure how much N I should be dropping or even if I should drop it later since emdub with all his experience noticed that actually N is one of the most common deficiencies in grows when checked leaf tissue.
Thank you everyone for finding the time to reply it does help to use my noggin once in a while. I know that future forums are mostly for extractions but botany section improved my grow and knowledge immensely in the past couple years.
You can get a beautiful fade without reducing N, assuming N is at appropriate levels in the first place, ripening properly, and running the strain long enough.
I have not had good results reducing N and I don’t really understand the assumption that we should. It seems like to me, hydro cannabis growers have been obsessed with this idea for a long time and then a research paper comes out sort of indicating N inhibits cannabinoid production… problem is you have to take every cannabis research paper with a grain of salt. Have you ever seen a researcher grow anything desirable in the first place, under standard commercial practices, with modern strains? I haven’t. I’m not denying N plays a role in finished flower and excess is not good but no where have I seen anything justifying the hoops people are jumping through to try to lower or eliminate it.
Sell them what they want, not what they need. Pretty much what I think of the vast majority of the products and solutions advertised to cannabis growers.
For plants grown for seed, I keep the npk about equal. I dont notice any detriment to it. When hemp was newly legalized, lots of greenhouse people got a license without any prior experience. I saw a greenhouse of tree sized hemp plants that looked great. They were getting Jacks 20 20 20 through drip. It was probably a waste of nitrogen, but the plants didnt care.
I use the same thing on outdoor plants as I do tomatoes. Calcium Nitrate when they are young and masterblend 4 18 38 when they flower. Fan leaves will turn a little yellow at the end of flower, but it doesnt seem to matter. These fertilizers are ridiculously cheap compared to anything from a hydro store.
What I’ve seen the main thing is not over supplying anything the whole way through, we’ve had issues with high nitrogen in tissue samples and even dropping the input N down it’s hard to get it out the plant by the end of flower.
I’ve gone on the path of mixing my own salts and it’s for sure been a learning experience but I think we are getting there. One thing I’ve learned is watching ph run off is very important and you cannot adjust it with your input, if you watch Daniel’s video on it he explains it well. During stretch i used to get a big ph rise then after day 30 it started to go the other way and no way could I fix it with my input ph, now I control it with the amount of nh4 in my mix. During stretch I increase nh4 and after day 30 I lower it and I’ve had complete control of run off ph doing that.
That’s what I started noticing but with limited experience, it’s sometimes tough to make the right call, let alone correctly make adjustments. Especially if the strategy chosen is more detrimental than beneficial. Then you wait months to get to the same point and try a new one. There’s no way around it experience is vital. I love the f4200 just for that reason. Everyone has years of experience here and you can tell just by reading. Yeah sometimes you do bicker with each other and we all like to be petty sometimes but through discussion or even when shit-flinging starts you can find amazing information hidden or at least an idea to try that is somehwat based in reality. Blue diamond thread has 1k+ posts and most of them are off topic but still there was plenty of good information shared let alone the entertainemnt value of community collectively descending into maddness.
At least I’m on the right track somewhere as this is the case for me. I have one of my zones in worrying range of sometimes hitting 5.4 but usually 5.5. Can you tell me in which video he’s talking about input PH that I could check? I watched the video about “Properly managing your runoff” and Daniel suggests raising the PH and decreasing K and increasing NO3-. I’m not really comfortable raising it to 6.5 and tried 6.1-6.2 with varied success in reaching 5.6 but still some days it’s between 5.4-5.5. I don’t really want to be pushing too much runoff and ruining the EC stacked in the substrate. I think with my idea of cutting N I did it too early and managed to acidify the substrate in the process with some excess K?
Regarding the Nh4 I currently use Masterblend 4-18-38 Tomato Formula which has 0.5 Ammoniacal Nitrogen so if I need more cations, I’m not in an ideal place, to say the least. In my neck of woods, I can only get Masterblend or Athena, but the price is 2.5-3x. From their guaranteed sheets I only see Nitrate in Athena. Would you recommend biting the bullet and trying it out? You’ve ran the line so any suggestions are appreciated.
In the video he also talks about managing ph with nh4, increasing your nh4 will lower your ph and decreasing your nh4 will increase your ph.
I had the same issue with Athena after day 35 that my ph would drop down to the same 5.5 but I’m running a custom mix now and can control it to some degree.
The other zone is doing fine and is between 5.7-5.8 so as is usual it’s cultivar/ environment dependant. Before changing nutrients plenty of stuff to take away from this and make notes for the next run to avoid the same mistakes. Just need to make some upgrades and will try to experiment which direction to take plants for the last weeks and dial it in.
Need to do some research as I feel week 4+ is my weakest area with making correct adjustments.
Thank you everyone for everyone’s input it gave me some ideas and some direction for improvement. Appreciate all of you <3
Note that in most cannabis formulations that are used at high EC values, increasing the pH beyond 6 will often lead to calcium phosphate precipitates in the lines. Due to the high Ca and P values used. In this case you’re very limited in what you can do with input pH, as it absolutely has to remain within the 5.5-5.8 band.
What’s your thoughts on using a small amount of polyphosphate (haifa grow clean) to help keep the system clean, they claim using even 15ppm P from the grow clean can keep it clean.
Although polyphosphates can help, they will still not be able to keep everything soluble at a pH of 6.2 if your Ca and P concentrations are high. Especially if you have any sort of warm temperature in the lines.
Maybe not vegetatively cueing and starving the plant at the end of flower actually makes it better?
