FLUSHING ORGANICS - Blood+bone vs Guanos vs Bottled Organic Nutrients

[Tyrone420]

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[VerdantGreen]

nicely explained tyrone, but i dont think this is particularly good advice. others will be able to explain it better than me, but because of chelation and CEC in good organic soil, the nutes that are there arent always in solution even if they have been processed by microbes - and not all potential nutes in solution are available to the plant. being dissolved doesnt necessarily mean available.
also the very wet soil caused by leaching the medium has negative effects. admittedly you may remove small amounts of ions but not enough to make it worthwhile.

VG.

p.s. ive always thought of blood meal as a fast acting fert, whilst many guanos are pretty slow acting.

 

[Yankee Grower]

also the very wet soil caused by leaching the medium has negative effects. admittedly you may remove small amounts of ions but not enough to make it worthwhile

I'm basically with VG.

CONTAINER ORGANICS DO NEED FLUSHED, REGARDLESS OF WHAT YOU ARE USING FOR YOUR NUTRIENTS. THE AMOUNT OF FLUSHING REQUIRED IS DEPENDENT ON THE TYPE OF ORGANIC NUTRIENTS YOU ARE USING, AND HOW MUCH OVER FERTILIZING YOU HAVE DONE.

That's simply not true.

If anything what you'd want to do is use microbially active teas to help with any nute processing toward the end which flushing is actually counter to. With organics everything is regulated by the microbial life which is also regulated by plant exudes. The plant will only ask for what it needs and the microbes will only give it what it needs...basically.

The big 'problem' comes into play mainly when peeps are top feeding with bottles and exacerbated when they use stuff like fulvic acid especially late in flower.

 

[pray4pistils]

The big 'problem' comes into play mainly when peeps are top feeding with bottles and exacerbated when they use stuff like fulvic acid especially late in flower.

Please elaborate on both claims. How does top or bottom feeding change the plant's uptake of nutrients? Fulvic aids in nutrient transport, but how does that affect the need for flushing? I could see your point if you were discussing Humic acid (which feeds microbes and affects uptake).

Thanks,

 

[Happy Haole]

Another person trying to use synthetic growing mentality with organics......
I guess I should flush my tomatoes too huh? I grew them organically in containers.

 

[Tyrone420]

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[rckymtnthuglife]

Flushing Organics?? Maybe I should get my pH meter out??? 100% soluble liquid organic fert??? Why does my weed taste so damn good and burn so well leaving a light grey ash in the bottom of the bowl??
Love it when self-proclaimed experts want to help the noobs with their own brand of bullshit.

 

[Tyrone420]

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[eugenegreen]

Did someone shit in the pot... And then, try to wash it away with pee?

 

[Happy Haole]

If you know the rate of nutrient release and use the correct amendments in the right amounts, you shouldn't have enough salts to bother flushing. If you use the wrong amendment, flushing won't help. Example if your flowering an 8-9 week strain and you use bat guano which works for about 45-50 days, you're gold. I you use something that releases over a longer term like bone meal for example which releases phosphorus for up to 4 months, that's where problems come in. Either way, flushing is pointless.

 

[Weird]

i dont think that the fully ammended soils let you underfeed enough at the end of maturation to get a proper fade

top dress and organic teas much easier imho

i love the fact that the real art is the state of the secondary metabolites and the calyx they are attached to

i find a lil underfeeding at the end, however you achieve it (naturally the cold soil reduces microbial life ) reduces the composition of the stores (such as N) in the flowers but not the oils

smoother smoke regardless of how white it is

 

[VerdantGreen]

first of all can i urge people to keep this discussion civil. tyrone has taken the time to write a well worded post so lets just discuss the matter at hand and not start baiting, flaming etc.

Blood is not chelated to any extent out of the box, but guano is. The blood was taken from the slaughter house, dried, steamed, and packaged...It is basically proteins (aka nitrogen) and minerals, and proteins are not water soluble...and they are definitely not chelated. The guano sat in a bat cave somewhere, where some chelation already took place naturally. So what percentage of the guano is fast-acting, and what percentage is slow-acting?

i guess all guanos are different, but P guano - the type mainly used for flowering, is pretty slow acting, or at least mine is - mine is called 'rock' guano.

Try mixing blood in water and feeding it to your plants - It's not soluble, and it won't do shit for at least a week, once the microbes take control and chelation takes place. Now, try mixing some guano with water and feeding it to your plants, and it will work instantly...because it has chelated compounds in it already! Once the water soluble residue (chelated compounds are contained within the soluble residue) is washed/absorbed from the guano, it then becomes more slowly available, because the remaining organic mater in the guano (bugs, fruit, etc) is not chelated, and THAT PERCENTAGE is dependent on microbes to make it available. The initial residues are readily available! Not the case with blood.

of course you are right about blood needing to be processed by microbes - but from my experience it IS partly soluble and becomes available pretty fast and is easy to burn plants with. i dont use it for weed for that reason.

Please explain to those reading how leeching chelated nutrients can have a detrimental effect in the last two weeks of flowering.

the detrimental effect is more to do with having really wet soil. if you are using decent sized pots then watering till runoff can make the soil way too wet at a time when it is better, if anything, to have soil a little on the drier side.

VG

 

[Tyrone420]

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[Tyrone420]

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[spurr]

@ Tyrone420,

I tried to read your OP but I don't like being yelled at (re: your extensive use of capitalization), and I find the OP writing style annoying to read, it's like you are trying to write one giant pseudo-haiku (in terms of words per line). For the record, I feel flushing has no place in conventional or organic* horticulture as long as ferts are not over-applied (stated from experience with both growing methods with and without flushing).

*both 'organics in a bottle' and 'biological organic' paradigms

 

[spurr]

This is exactly my point VG - Organic nutrients do not always require chelation within the soil to be available to the plant, because sometimes they are already chelated my friend.

Blood is not chelated to any extent out of the box, but guano is. The blood was taken from the slaughter house, dried, steamed, and packaged...It is basically proteins (aka nitrogen) and minerals, and proteins are not water soluble...and they are definitely not chelated.

DON (Dissolved Organic Nitrogen) is comprised of amino acids, organic acids, proteins, etc. Said DON can be directly taken up by roots as a N source and doesn't need to first be converted into ions by microbes. Also, blood meal does contain ions (as dried mineral salts) which is one reason it can burn roots if over applied.

RE: CEC:

The soil solution usually holds cations in equilibrium to cations held in CEC sites.

The guano sat in a bat cave somewhere, where some chelation already took place naturally. So what percentage of the guano is fast-acting, and what percentage is slow-acting?

Total N = organic N + inorganic N. Thus find total N then subtract inorganic N to find organic N. That said, some organic N is in plant bio-available (soluble) form (as is the case with soluble inorganic N) that the plant can use without further microbial processing within the media.

Try mixing blood in water and feeding it to your plants - It's not soluble, and it won't do shit for at least a week, once the microbes take control and chelation takes place.

Have you done so with de-ionized or distilled water and then read the EC (before and after)? If not you should try it...

 

[spurr]

Organic nutrients, once chelated, are salts...Just like chem ferts.

Organic matter (ex. guano), once mineralized (i.e. the process of mineralization -- solublizied) are in salt (ion) form. That is not the same thing as chelation, which means 'binding to'. Soluble ions can be chelated by humic acid and they can be non-chelated, but they still in ionic (salt) form. Ions are not by definition chelated. I think you misunderstand what chelation means. A chelate is a chemical compound composed of a metal ion and a chelating agent (such as ligand).

A prime example is the use of citric acid to chelate soluble phosphate anions to prevent said non-chelated soluble anions from being made insoluble (precipitation) by 'binding to' iron or aluminum ions (cations).

Both microbes and plant roots exude substances (like citric acid) that can chelate soluble ions in the soil solution and the rhizosphere to prevent said soluble ions from become insoluble.

Here is some worthwhile reading:

1. "Chelation and Mineral Nutrition"
http://www.jhbiotech.com/plant_products/chelation.htm

2. Chemical of the Week: "CHELATES AND CHELATING AGENTS"
http://scifun.chem.wisc.edu/chemweek/Chelates/Chelates.html

 

[spurr]

FWIW, often chelated ions (ex. Ca from Albion, chelated with amino acids) can more easily pass through the leaf cuticle layer and cell membrane but is generally less efficiently used as nutrient than non-chelated Ca that passes the leaf barriers.

 

[Tyrone420]

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[spurr]

I think you are confused, or I am confused about what you think chelates and an ions are, and are not. An ion can be chelated (i.e. become a chelate), but it's still an ion that is bio-available, and an ion can be non-chelated, but it's still an ion in bio-available form.

Maybe Mr.F can chime in too, I might be explaining things poorly, he is better at organic chem than I am.