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

[MrFista]

Hmm. I've been on the back seat letting the information roll out on this one.

Hilarious. First the mainstream advice to add nutes to flowering cos they need N and whatever else gets spouted. Then, there is too much N and whatever (cos you put it there) so you got to flush it back out.

RIDICULOUS!

What's it to be, the plant has too much, or too little.

Basically both exercises contribute eutrophication to lakes streams and rivers, feather the nests of fat men with no scruples, and waste the time and resources of many many individuals.

I'm backing spurr's chemistry. It's more complex perhaps but he's got the idea of what's going on in media correct. This is not croneyism we've certainly disagreed before.

This whole flush thing - again people think they can control (increase/slow) organic nutrients uptake by the plant. This is plain wrong. The plants and microbes control this. You can throw ions at them, but why? Nature will make all the ions your plant needs if you build your soil correctly.

The idea of flushing is to get that starved look, which should be natural senescence. flushing for senescence is not natural, it's false advertising.

If you think flushing is so great I'd like you to consider the following: Plants outdoors after a dry season smoke better than plants after lots of rain. Anyone who's had outdoor from a dry season knows this to be true. Obvioulsly the plants have the water to survive, but not being flushed (heavy rains) is advantageous to the grower in terms of quality and preventing issues with rot, pm etc.

Flush, as in toilet.

 

[SilverSurfer_OG]

Great debate peeps! Lets keep it all nice and civil y'all

Tyrone, what are we flushing? Just N? It does leave a harsh taste and can cause headaches... so i see a logical reasoning.

I use a mostly soiless medium and do plain water for last week and only small amount of molasses 2nd to last.

I believe the size of container used is critical to any flushing done. For example I tried to flush a soil medium in 10litre container for last week or so. The plant responded by wilting and looking very sad. My plants seem to very much enjoy a dry ending to their short lives.

If i was say in a 2 litre container with a wide surface area I believe a flush would be far more beneficial... or at least much less detrimental.

So I guess what i am saying is its horses for courses and needs a fast draining medium to have any chance of success

 

[spurr]

Flush, as in toilet.

My rule: when its' yellow let it mellow, when its' brown flush it down! hehe, from when we lived on fixed water source from a well.

 

[MrFista]

LOL - it applies. Yelow being senescence, brown being nute burn.

 

[spurr]

lol, that didn't dawn on me, nice one!

 

[guest2012y]

Just a side note that it had occurred to me a few years before I even knew about IC mag and other "canna forums" that flushing really didn't make a difference in the quality of my smoke. I just kind of stumbled upon that observation by accident or something. People would say,"Don't forget to flush"..and I'd just nod my head and say,"okay". Those very same people that thought I "flushed" my plants smoked the herb and went off forever about how smooth it was. I never told them I didn't "flush".

 

[Birdo]

I am humbled by the accumulation of knowledge here...
thank you to clackamas coot, verdantgreen, and spurr.

I couldnt agree more. Awesome thread, great posts. Thanks for blowing this humble beginner's mind.

 

[Yankee Grower]

If you think flushing is so great I'd like you to consider the following: Plants outdoors after a dry season smoke better than plants after lots of rain. Anyone who's had outdoor from a dry season knows this to be true. Obvioulsly the plants have the water to survive, but not being flushed (heavy rains) is advantageous to the grower in terms of quality and preventing issues with rot, pm etc.

One thing I was taught is to time your watering so you pick your plant just before it experiences drought stress. This only has to do with the last watering though.

I am assuming they use caustic soda (or some other alkali) to extract the humic acid in the first place.

No. That's not the process they use to extract humic acid and one of the reasons I like their products so much. If not in public domain I can't help you figure that one out.

Going back to the issue of micronized lignite...you can even foliar spray it and get great results...and this with a 15 micron product. Not too shabby for something that's insoluble and needs to go through an extraction process for lignite to be any good. Also looks to me, unless I'm reading the graph wrong, it performed better in their study than a 6% liquid HA extract...

http://www.humates.com/pdf/MVR Product Information.pdf

If you've seen graphs of particle distribution for micronized powders and there's quite a bit of material that's larger than 15 microns. I've reason to believe their claim of 15 microns is a bit off. Working with micronized lignite is like working with smoke...it's very difficult to handle...there's ways around that but not the 'typical' micronization process just like BioAg does not use the 'typical' process(es) to make their HA/FA products.

 

[Yankee Grower]

Just a side note that it had occurred to me a few years before I even knew about IC mag and other "canna forums" that flushing really didn't make a difference in the quality of my smoke.

It's all in how it's grown not any 'flush'. You can't flush out the 'damage' you've done while growing and yeah senescence is a factor here. You can see that much easier in outdoor plants.

 

[VerdantGreen]

Great debate peeps! Lets keep it all nice and civil y'all

Tyrone, what are we flushing? Just N? It does leave a harsh taste and can cause headaches... so i see a logical reasoning.

I use a mostly soiless medium and do plain water for last week and only small amount of molasses 2nd to last.

I believe the size of container used is critical to any flushing done. For example I tried to flush a soil medium in 10litre container for last week or so. The plant responded by wilting and looking very sad. My plants seem to very much enjoy a dry ending to their short lives.

If i was say in a 2 litre container with a wide surface area I believe a flush would be far more beneficial... or at least much less detrimental.

So I guess what i am saying is its horses for courses and needs a fast draining medium to have any chance of success

good post, and its a good point that pot size is a major factor in what choices you have. 5 gallons plus you better just leave it up to the plant (unless its a very big plant ). with smaller pots, providing you are growing plants to fill them ( say half to 1 oz per gallon of soil ) you may have the choice of either stopping feeding them, or dialling in your soil mix so it becomes depleted of food towards the end (i know some may disagree with this but i am adamant that its possible to so this in a medium sized container with a good sized plant).
thats about the nearest you can come to 'flushing' with organics imo.

VG

 

[Yankee Grower]

Let me ask people this...what do you think are the major contributing factors to poor quality smoke. Is it chlorophyll, N, MG or ???

 

[smoketrichs]

I've got a test that I want to try out on one of my plants this harvest. My plan is to flush with a highly diluted hydrogen peroxide solution (1 TSP/Gal) a week before chop. Idea is to kill off the microherd, so no food available to roots; I'm hoping this'll promote more nutrient intake from the leaves.

 

[Yankee Grower]

I've got a test that I want to try out on one of my plants this harvest. My plan is to flush with a highly diluted hydrogen peroxide solution (1 TSP/Gal) a week before chop. Idea is to kill off the microherd, so no food available to roots; I'm hoping this'll promote more nutrient intake from the leaves.

Here's what will most likely happen...you use some H2O2 and kill off SOME of the microherd. To kill them all off you'd be pouring straight 35% onto your soil. The ones that die off will then release anything they had processed/locked up in their little bodies so you will in actuality be releasing a lot of nutes in a form your plant will uptake. Then the soil dries a bit, the H2O2 gets reacted out some then due to the increased O2 levels in your soil the microherd growth will accelerate. You then kill them off a bit and not totally and the cycle I outlined starts over again. From what I understand any microherd growth/processing/activity cycle is disrupted for about a day after the application of H2O2.

1 tsp/gal is not a lot of H2O2 for one and the main thing you'll do is superoxygenate your soil. Bacteria reproduce very fast and will recover very quickly. By trying to kill off your microherd your basically destroying half of the 'intelligence' in a soil grow with your plant being the other half.

EDIT - Plants/microcritters/nature has evolved over millions of years and depending on what you believe humans for less than 10,000. Humans are stupid in comparison to nature. Not saying you're stupid bro but with organics just get out of the way and let nature do it's thing. Nute companies will never reproduce the intelligence of nature and are really only 'helping' us dumb humans...lol.

 

[smoketrichs]

Here's what will most likely happen...you use some H2O2 and kill off SOME of the microherd. To kill them all off you'd be pouring straight 35% onto your soil. The ones that die off will then release anything they had processed/locked up in their little bodies so you will in actuality be releasing a lot of nutes in a form your plant will uptake. Then the soil dries a bit, the H2O2 gets reacted out some then due to the increased O2 levels in your soil the microherd growth will accelerate. You then kill them off a bit and not totally and the cycle I outlined starts over again. From what I understand any microherd growth/processing/activity cycle is disrupted for about a day after the application of H2O2.

1 tsp/gal is not a lot of H2O2 for one and the main thing you'll do is superoxygenate your soil. Bacteria reproduce very fast and will recover very quickly. By trying to kill off your microherd your basically destroying half of the 'intelligence' in a soil grow with your plant being the other half.

EDIT - Plants/microcritters/nature has evolved over millions of years and depending on what you believe humans for less than 10,000. Humans are stupid in comparison to nature. Not saying you're stupid bro but with organics just get out of the way and let nature do it's thing. Nute companies will never reproduce the intelligence of nature and are really only 'helping' us dumb humans...lol.

Informative stuff indeed, thanks for the quick reply! Based on what you're saying, I may try it as a mid veg stimulant. What would you recommend dosage wise? 1 TBS? Thanks!

 

[Yankee Grower]

Informative stuff indeed, thanks for the quick reply! Based on what you're saying, I may try it as a mid veg stimulant. What would you recommend dosage wise? 1 TBS? Thanks!

I don't recommend you use it but you can. I've seen peeps use it up to 1 tbs per gallon. If you really want to get into H2O2 learn about ORP first. H2O2 in soil grows is not necessary. A friend played around with using a very small amount of H2O2 in brewed teas with his microscope and in that full water enviro the bacteria were not happy and he could not tell regarding the fungi cause they move so slow. I believe Tom Hill uses H2O2 in his teas after they are brewed and adjusts for a specific ORP value. One thing that can cause problems is changing the pH of a brewed solution as there's a resultant change in osmotic pressure and microcritters can go boom...lol.

I've yet to see any formal info about about using H2O2 in soil grows and think it might make an interesting thesis. I talked to Dr. Ingham and she's never looked at it. I've talked to Solvay, who is one of the world's leading peroxide manufacturers, and they could not provide any definitive info either about H2O2 in agriculture but have done some work with their calcium peroxide product.

If your soil structure is good, watering techniques OK, blah, blah no need for H2O2.

 

[spurr]

No. That's not the process they use to extract humic acid and one of the reasons I like their products so much. If not in public domain I can't help you figure that one out.

Here is the down low on Bioag:

1. humic acid:

They only offer one pure humic acid product, "humisolve". And it is a dry proudct. They use the same process to extract humic acid (HA -- i.e. humic substnces) from raw material (i.e. oxidized lignite; aka leonardite) into solution as every other source of HA liquid: alkali chemical/s (ex. caustic soda). The reason they use alkali chemical is it's the (only?) method to extract HA from humic matter like leonardite, lignite, etc.

Humisolve is dry HA product, to make it from their liquid HA they use a unique lower temp drying process called "dry to dry". Most other companies who make dry HA product (all from HA liquid) uses high temps (up to ~1,500'F), sprayers, etc. The fact Bioag uses "dry to dry" would make Humisolve my dry HA product of choice (if I used a dry HA product).

So, if you use Humisolve (or "TM-7") you are using HA produced via. extraction with strong alkali chemicals.

Their other humci acid product bioag sells, "TM-7", is Humisolve that mixed with 1 secondary nutrient (S) and 7 micronutrients. What I think happens is they mix those ions with the liquid HA (to chelate the micronutrients), then they use "dry to dry" method to make the dry TM-7. I think that is what they due because they claim the micronutrients are chelated with humic and fulivc acid (both come from the liquid humic acid, not from Ful-Power fulivc acid AFAIK).

I think using a HA liquid product might be a better bet (in terms of quick efficacy) than using dry HA product from either the dry to dry method (used by Bioag) or the other, higher heat methods. The reason is liquid HA product does not need the extra step, to make it dry.

What impresses me about Bioag is they care about the source material that made the leonardite they use. They try to source leonardite that provides very heterogeneous humic substances; they the consider source material that became the leonardite. ex. water type and trees vs. grasses, etc. Humisolve and TM-7 are "derived from [leonardite formed by] fresh water cretaceous [e.g. mostly trees, not grasses] humate deposits."

I think I may get some Bioag Humisolve and try it, I very much liked what I read and found out about the company and it's products. If you have used humisolve or TM-7 you were using alkali extracted HA product.


2. Fulvic acid:

Bioag only sells one fulvic acid (FA) product, "ful-power". It is the same product sold in all states, incl. OR, CA and WA. The label of ful-power in at least OR, but I thin also CA, states ful-power is "humic acid liquid"; but it's not. There is no humic acid in Ful-power, it's fulvic acid. Bioag had to label it as "humic acid luquid" to get past OR label laws about fulvic acid, the ones you adn CC were referring to. Best it is only fulvic acid in OR, CA, etc.

Ful-power is created using a using facultative anaerobric fermentation process, using facultative anaerobes, I think yeast. The microbes exudes enzymes that can effectively and efficiently cleave fulvic acid from the "raw material". The raw material is (I assume) micronized leonardite (or maybe kelp). The enzymes are able to better cleave FA from the raw material than use water-extraction methods.

I am going to start using Ful-power as my FA source...

Going back to the issue of micronized lignite...you can even foliar spray it and get great results...and this with a 15 micron product. Not too shabby for something that's insoluble and needs to go through an extraction process for lignite to be any good.

That wasn't my position, and still isn't. My position is that it needs to be microbial processed for it have affects on par with soluble humic acid products like HA liquid, or Humisolve (mixed into water).

My position is that micronized humic matter (like leonardite or lignite) has immediate beneficial affects to plants, like benefiting soil biota, chelating micronutrients, etc. However, due to the low solubility (plant bio-availability) of micronized humic matter the direct affects upon plants will be much lower than that of soluble humic acid (extracted with alkali and kept in solution or dried).

I fell mixing micronized leonardite in media (esp. when media lacks good compost or good vermicompost) is a wise idea; but micronized leonardite or lignite does not replace humic acid, and the effect us humic acid.

I would be interested to brew ACT with humic acid from leonardite and micronized leonardite. I would like to see how they affect the microbe populations. It would be best to provide the same % HA by weight with the humic acid produc and the micronized leonardite.

There are many microbes in the phyllosphere, both fungi and bacteria. They can process the micronized lignite there just like microbes in soil can process micronized lignite.

The pic in that advertisement, of the side by side with corn foliar spayed with "micromate" (micronized leonardite), does not tell the whole story. The pic was taken after at least 4 weeks past when the plants were sprayed, giving plenty of time for microbes to process it on leaf. And I am sure some over-spray hit the media and that would have also benefited soil biota and thus the plant (over a period of weeks). That pic is neat to show micronized leonardite does help, but it's doesn't show or state how it helps...

The only reason I questioned your claim was you were claiming (or at least that is how I took it) that Humicarb (micronized lignite) was more effective than soluble humic acid for the plant in the same time period. And it's not.

15 microns is still small, but generally outside of what I understated to be true micronization, i.e. a few microns. Some companies I source rock dusts from claim their products are micronized even though in some cases the average particle size is 70 microns. I think the industry usage of the word micronized is pretty liberal.

Also looks to me, unless I'm reading the graph wrong, it performed better in their study than a 6% liquid HA extract...

http://www.humates.com/pdf/MVR Product Information.pdf

You aren't reading it wrong, but the grow side by side was really flawed, as was the reporting of results. The biggest invalidation of the side by side is that Micromate was applied as foliar and soil drench, but the liquid humic acid was only applied as foliar. And the side by side was over a period of weeks.

Also, "6% foliar" doesn't tell us the usage rate for foliar spray. That could mean they use a HA liquid that had 6% HA (by weight) mixed into some unknown volume of water, that would dilute the HA to an unknown weight (i.e. probably pretty weak). Or, "6% foliar" could they made a foliar spray with 6% HA (by weight); but that would be a huge amount of HA to apply, so I doubt that is what they did.

Basically I am claiming that graph has little value due to the experimental flaws in the study and flaws in the reporting. That siad, the PDF was a good read, thanks. You have made me want to use both raw humic matter (micronized leonardite) and humic substances (like I do now).

If you've seen graphs of particle distribution for micronized powders and there's quite a bit of material that's larger than 15 microns. I've reason to believe their claim of 15 microns is a bit off.

FWIW, micron claims of powder is usually made by 'on average', and less than (or greater than) X percent of powder that will pass Y micron (or mesh) size screen.

in Working with micronized lignite is like working with smoke...it's very difficult to handle...there's ways around that but not the 'typical' micronization process just like BioAg does not use the 'typical' process(es) to make their HA/FA products.

Yea you should use a dust mask, when particle sizes gets to only a couple of microns they can enter lung tissue! (AFAIK). That is why I won't touch "nano-sized" powders, and they are starting to show up in cosmetics, perfumes, etc.; those will even pass skin barriers due to there size!

What is un-typical about the micronization process of humicarb or micomax? I doubt anything, it's just grinding and screening AFAIK.

The bioag humic acid is normal alkali exacted HA but the bioag fulvic acid is pretty neat I must agree.

 

[Yankee Grower]

FWIW, micron claims of powder is usually made by 'on average', and less than (or greater than) X percent of powder that will pass Y micron (or mesh) size screen.

Like this info from Reverte?

Yeah that's for a milled product, above is for CaCO3, but for something like a nano precipitated CaCO3 product, meaning man made, you can pretty much get rid of any 'curve' in that graph.

http://www.reverteminerals.com/eng/producte_detall.asp?ID=61

What is un-typical about the micronization process of humicarb or micomax? I doubt anything, it's just grinding and screening AFAIK.

It's actually Micromate and not micomax and no biggie but no...the process(es) for making Micromate and HC are different and you won't find that on the web.

The bioag humic acid is normal alkali exacted HA

You sure about that?

Here is the down low on Bioag:

Have you visited BioAg yet and talked to Dr. Faust or are you just going off 'published' info?

I very much liked what I read and found out about the company and it's products

As I thought

There is no humic acid in Ful-power, it's fulvic acid.

Yeah FP is actually a fulvic product and the best out there IMO.

And I am sure some over-spray hit the media and that would have also benefited soil biota and thus the plant (over a period of weeks). That pic is neat to show micronized leonardite does help, but it's doesn't show or state how it helps...

That was one of my first thoughts when I saw that...so I called them and talked about it...did you? Soooooo...they foliar spray and 'some' of the micronized lignite gets down into the soil, then it reacts with the soil biota providing the benefits all in the space of like 4 weeks start to finish providing those results...eh? Still pretty damn good for foliar spraying micronized lignite IMO instead of an extract. Image what it can do when used in the soil...which their chart shows...and confirms what I've seen elsewhere...but 'how' it helps is not just about what happens when any overspray hits the soil

 

[SilverSurfer_OG]

Yes thankyou Verdantgreen.

Thats the point i missed. The plant has to fill the container with its roots and be drinking up a good watering in a day or three for a flush to be beneficial. I find they can stop drinking quite abruptly in the end cycle and thats when a flush becomes a soggy mess. Not so much of a problem in coco dominant media.

I usually top dress and use a quality liquid feed or tea every water up to week 5 or 6 of flower. I find if i let up on the feed the plants turn yellow pretty quick. So in that sense a flush is just part of my feed and starve cycle. But its usually just a double dose of plain water. I think the plant takes care of most the work when i just lower my fertiliser rate and switch to molasses...

In large pots/beds/fields etc a flush is pretty redundant unless a possum pisses on yer plant

 

[Yankee Grower]

I find they can stop drinking quite abruptly in the end cycle and thats when a flush becomes a soggy mess.

Yeah the plants are 'dying'...senescence. Flushing right at the end is probably the worst time to go that route in part because of what you have seen. As VG said using too big a pot can also be a problem. Normally I would not like to see a plant go more than 3 days in a container before needing water.

 

[spurr]

@ Yankee grower:

Yes emailed with with Bioag and Mase Verde (sp?) a few days ago...gimme some credit