altitudefarmer
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Ok guys, I'm dialing in the organic "super soil" technique, and so far, I've had to flush all but 3 of my girls, and as I was performing a correctional flush today, I realized that it took me years to figure out how to do it easily and get it right. Not a difficult task, but skipping steps can turn it into a nightmare. I was thinking maybe i could save a noob or two some time, and maybe save their grow. I hate to flush, almost as bad as I hate to admit that I screwed up and need to do it!
This is not the final flush, although it can be used that way, to get your final flush started.
This is for when you have nutrient problems, and the book says to flush and feed with a mild complete fertilizer...
Anyhow, here goes.
First, you need a plant with a disorder, duh. This Purple HeadKnocker is in super soil, and is being seriously overfed, along with a Potassium/phosphorous deficiency, due to pH issues. Organic nutrients will not "burn" your plants, but will cause stunted growth. As you can see her leaves are tiny, and have been that way for a bit now. The first sets of fan leaves died due to the pH problem, and were removed.
Grab a 5 gallon bucket w/lid, and use a hole saw to cut some holes in the lid. This is the collection bucket for our runoff.
Put your girl on top of the bucket, so runoff will flow right down into the 5 gal bucket. If you know whether or not your pH is high or low, you have a good starting point. I'm battling low pH, so I adjusted the pH of my flushwater to 7.7. If you have no idea, start with RO water or pH it to 7. Our target is between 6.2-6.8, in soil. Begin the flush SLOWLY. It's best to use a "shower head" style watering can, so the water is oxygenated and doesn't flood the pot too quickly. You want to avoid an inch of water sitting on top and soaking slowly into your soil. I use 2 cups to start, wait 5 min, and use 2 more cups. After another 5-10 min, your soil should be pretty wet, and you can go a little faster. you still want to avoid a quick flood, or your soil will get packed tightly and cause another set of issues. It's always good to use a fast draining soil, so packing does not become an issue.
When the water has drained through the soil into the bucket, put the pot and plant back into your pot tray to catch anything still slowly draining. Check your pH. I checked it after 2.5 gallons of 7.7 water went through, and the pH checked in at 6.08.
Rule of thumb for a good flush is to use 3x the volume of your pot. This 4 gallon pot will get about a ten gallon flush, because I'm too pressed for time to wait on the last couple gallons, and I only have 2 extra 5 gal buckets.
Since 6.08 is not in the ideal range, the next 4 gallons of flushwater I adjusted to 8.3. When I measured the runoff, it came out to 6.20. That's in our target range, so I finished the flush with the 8.33 water. The 3rd and final measurement with 3.5 gallons of runoff came out to 6.38. Very nice!
Since this is super soil and I know I didn't flush all the nutrients out of the soil, I'm not going to add any ferts. If you were feeding with liquid fertilizer only, your soil should be severely depleted of nutrients, and at this point, you'd want to whip up a MILD batch of fertilizer, and adjust the pH to slightly higher than your target range (in my case, I'd use 6.9-7 when adding ferts).
You can use this technique for just about every nutrient overdose/deficiency that you'll run into. It's often better to correct a deficiency this way, rather then just adding the deficient nutrient. Many times the quick way will throw off your pH or the balance of fertilizers in your soil.
Hope this helps; happy to answer questions, comments, rebuttals, snide remarks, etc... I'll post pics of the purple HeadKnocker in a few days and see how the technique works. Keep your gardens green (and purple, in some cases). Peace
This is not the final flush, although it can be used that way, to get your final flush started.
This is for when you have nutrient problems, and the book says to flush and feed with a mild complete fertilizer...
Anyhow, here goes.
First, you need a plant with a disorder, duh. This Purple HeadKnocker is in super soil, and is being seriously overfed, along with a Potassium/phosphorous deficiency, due to pH issues. Organic nutrients will not "burn" your plants, but will cause stunted growth. As you can see her leaves are tiny, and have been that way for a bit now. The first sets of fan leaves died due to the pH problem, and were removed.
Grab a 5 gallon bucket w/lid, and use a hole saw to cut some holes in the lid. This is the collection bucket for our runoff.
Put your girl on top of the bucket, so runoff will flow right down into the 5 gal bucket. If you know whether or not your pH is high or low, you have a good starting point. I'm battling low pH, so I adjusted the pH of my flushwater to 7.7. If you have no idea, start with RO water or pH it to 7. Our target is between 6.2-6.8, in soil. Begin the flush SLOWLY. It's best to use a "shower head" style watering can, so the water is oxygenated and doesn't flood the pot too quickly. You want to avoid an inch of water sitting on top and soaking slowly into your soil. I use 2 cups to start, wait 5 min, and use 2 more cups. After another 5-10 min, your soil should be pretty wet, and you can go a little faster. you still want to avoid a quick flood, or your soil will get packed tightly and cause another set of issues. It's always good to use a fast draining soil, so packing does not become an issue.
When the water has drained through the soil into the bucket, put the pot and plant back into your pot tray to catch anything still slowly draining. Check your pH. I checked it after 2.5 gallons of 7.7 water went through, and the pH checked in at 6.08.
Rule of thumb for a good flush is to use 3x the volume of your pot. This 4 gallon pot will get about a ten gallon flush, because I'm too pressed for time to wait on the last couple gallons, and I only have 2 extra 5 gal buckets.
Since 6.08 is not in the ideal range, the next 4 gallons of flushwater I adjusted to 8.3. When I measured the runoff, it came out to 6.20. That's in our target range, so I finished the flush with the 8.33 water. The 3rd and final measurement with 3.5 gallons of runoff came out to 6.38. Very nice!
Since this is super soil and I know I didn't flush all the nutrients out of the soil, I'm not going to add any ferts. If you were feeding with liquid fertilizer only, your soil should be severely depleted of nutrients, and at this point, you'd want to whip up a MILD batch of fertilizer, and adjust the pH to slightly higher than your target range (in my case, I'd use 6.9-7 when adding ferts).
You can use this technique for just about every nutrient overdose/deficiency that you'll run into. It's often better to correct a deficiency this way, rather then just adding the deficient nutrient. Many times the quick way will throw off your pH or the balance of fertilizers in your soil.
Hope this helps; happy to answer questions, comments, rebuttals, snide remarks, etc... I'll post pics of the purple HeadKnocker in a few days and see how the technique works. Keep your gardens green (and purple, in some cases). Peace
