bigger yields with guano

[maryjohn]

I believe you that it works, I'm questioning the explanation. Without knowing what causes the bitter taste it's not science, it's stoner lore. It's interesting and important, but as I stated just keeping the plant slightly stressed in some way will induce improved flowering.

One more thing to recommend your stem color technique: if excess nutrients do indeed cause poor taste, it's important to limit them from the start, because many are mobile like nitrogen, and are simply being moved to the buds in the same amount they would have been in the first place.

 

[Microbeman]

Crazy, By flushed do you mean embarrassed? Makes about the same sense.

Edit: oops I forgot. Maybe those plants are flushed because they are randy....afterall they are in flower, trying to procreate.

 

[Microbeman]

But to a truly great pot grower, the smell of the resins can tell him/her a lot about the amount of nutrient left in the plant.

ooh....ooh I (within a not for profit) grew 120 pounds of medicinal quality organic annually using no fertilizers (and never flushed) for 7 years and had the most popular medicine on the menu. Does that make me 'a truly great pot grower'?

 

[Microbeman]

This bitterness comes from dissolved salts and minerals, and so cutting the buds and drying them with these salts inside is unhealthy and will make for some terrible smoke.

This obviously comes from using crap soluble fertilizers. As Homer would say....Doh!

 

[REZDOG]

ooh....ooh I (within a not for profit) grew 120 pounds of medicinal quality organic annually using no fertilizers (and never flushed) for 7 years and had the most popular medicine on the menu. Does that make me 'a truly great pot grower'?

Science (botany) doesn't always easily apply to marijuana breeding.
There's simply more to it,than that.
Intuition is equally important,if not more so.
I've got a pretty good handle on bringing isolated,superior traits in particular,"elite/heirloom" cannabis clones,to seed form,and I learn (lots of) something(s) new every single run,and always (excitedly!) expect to.
Back to the topic at hand....
Microbeman....If you grew "organic",then you used (amended into the soil,an additive,to help plants grow,hence) a "fertilizer",no matter how you want to state it.
As to not flushing,"organic" growers that don't flush have assed herb,just like salt-based nute users who don't flush.
Perhaps you managed to perfectly amend your soil for marijuana,and the plants consume everything you've fed them before harvest. To be that consistent,year in & year out,makes you either very good,or very lucky. I'll go with good.
Outside of you,every single grower I've ever known,that knows their shit,flushes their weed. You're the Exception,we should all apparently be So Lucky.
That said,I wish you all the best,and offer my hearty congratulations on the success of your clean-burning,yet "un-flushed" herb.




Cheers!



Note:
I strongly suggest that people who grow marijuana,to smoke,should flush it before harvest.



. . . .

 

[smoke1sun]

In response to a question about the signs of plant hunger, from somebody041...

First... know that your plants are happier underfed than overfed.

An underfed plant can be fed, and this will fix the problem.

An overfed plant cannot be fixed as easily.

Get my drift? Feed lightly and increase as the plant asks for more.

How do you tell when the plant is asking for more?

A well-fed plant will have just the slightest tint of red or purple on it's leaf stems (of course there are a few strains with red or purple leaf stems, so watch for those one getting even darker). If there is no red or purple at all on the leaf stems, it is likely that the plant is close to being overfed. There's a fine line between plenty of fertilizer, and too much fertilizer. Green leaf stems = plenty... so be reserved about feeding when the leaf stems are already fully green.

So, try to keep that color on the leaf stems very light, not completely green, not completely red or purple. In the middle is where I like it.

When my plants start to head toward starvation, they will ask for food by showing more red or purple in those leaf stems. So, if the color is darkening, I know the plant is asking for food, whereupon the plant gets a very light feeding, and the watching of the leaf stem color continues.

After doing this a while, you'll know what amount of fertilizer is working to stop the darkening of the red and purple colorations on the leaf stems.

Another way to judge how much food the plant has available to it is to break a leaf off and taste the juice droplet that forms at the broken end. If this juice tastes bitter, the plant is eating. If it tastes like pure water, the plant doesn't have much nutrient available to it.

This is a scalar thing. In other words, you can tell how much fertilizer is available by the bitterness of the juice. Very bitter is very well fed. Very clean, like pure water... is where you want the plants at harvest time. You don't want to harvest a plant with bitter blood coursing through its veins. This bitterness comes from dissolved salts and minerals, and so cutting the buds and drying them with these salts inside is unhealthy and will make for some terrible smoke.

The trickiest way to tell about plant nutrition takes some real experience. Smelling the resins of the plant.

Smell the resins when you KNOW the plant has plenty to eat. Then smell the same plant when you KNOW it has been flushed of nutrients. There will be a difference. This is the difference a good pot grower should be able to tell.

To a novice nose, most pot smells great. But to a truly great pot grower, the smell of the resins can tell him/her a lot about the amount of nutrient left in the plant. Get used to this difference if you really want to best tools in the intellectual toolbox for growing superb dope.

this is the kind of info i spend days lookin for. More info in this post then most of the multi page threads out there. Thanks

 

[Crazy Composer]

No need to get contentious. I'd be a very busy person if I were to post my opinions about other peoples' techniques. My personality prevents me from preaching my methods where they are not asked for.

In my EVERY experience... a starvation period helps the quality of the pot by reducing the amount of fire retardant elements in the smoke. If it can be proven to me that it is otherwise, you will have pulled off a miracle. I live, breathe, sleep this topic.. I've had pot plants under my personal care for a decade straight... Every single day I have been tending an indoor garden since 1999. I grew before then, too, but the decade-long streak began in 1999 and continues to this day. I've tried smoking product from every stage of starvation, many times... I know what works and why. I know this stuff like I know my name. Telling me otherwise is like telling me I have my own name wrong. Seriously. cc

 

[etinarcadiaego]

Ok wow. I started to look at this thread only because I thought "Hey I have some guano, and hey, I'd like the biggest possible yield" and now I kinda feel like I learned something.

I read this whole thread in reverse, from page 5 to page 1, seeing others responding to quotes that others said, then having to go read the quoted posts, etc.

Some brilliant shit in this thread, I really hope it doesn't go to waste and get lost in the emptiness that is cyberspace or interweb.

Onto my post. So from what I'm reading here I should strive to starve my plant late in flowering? Is that right? I've read every post in this thread, READ, NOT SKIMMED, and I just want to make sure I walk away knowing this one thing . . . .

 

[maryjohn]

Cc, your lore should be respected, I hope I don't come off disrespectful.

Many growers have a knack for growing, but many don't. The more science we have the more growers without talent like myself can pull off effective grows. In the case of the taste test there could be any number of scenarios in which you are wrong in theory but right in practice. Experience gives you a handle on the practice but never the theory.

 

[Crazy Composer]

Do as you like. I'll do what I do, and hopefully that's sufficient.

Peace,
cc

 

[HortProOrganics]

Do as you like. I'll do what I do, and hopefully that's sufficient.

Peace,
cc

REVEREND!!!!!

 

[VerdantGreen]

Being a reasonably (but not hugely) experienced gardener, i would prefer to know what works than how it works. science has a nasty habit of denying certain processes until such time as they can be explained and understood. whilst i would prefer to understand how something works, if it works then it works - end of.

experience is nearly everything.

i agree about the value of crazy's posts in this thread - i actually copied and pasted them (with permission) to my grow diary - and would suggest they were made into a thread with a more suitable title for the content and linked to from the reference library

V.

 

[VerdantGreen]

This obviously comes from using crap soluble fertilizers. As Homer would say....Doh!

you can get crap smoke from organic buds that dont run short of nutrition before harvest. whether you call it flushing or not is semantics but you want the nutrients to run out as the plant ripens imo.

 

[maryjohn]

Except I've had unflushed that was great, and flushed that was horrible, and in between. I believe this topic is poorly understood, so we cling to what works for sure.

CC has it exactly right, and verdant too. If your goal is just to grow, the science is useless. You need tchniques. And from that perspective I too would rather be right in practice than theory. CC I have a problem with ending the dialogue with dismissal like that. I am interested in moving our field forward, and that is not an attack on anyone.

But I'm a curious person, and can never leave well enough alone. When the two types get together enough you get progress. Or war. I'll always be trying to isolate what is truly making a difference, and I hope someone finds it helpful. I've noticed a lot of very experienced people have a whole set of techniques they apply and if you follow all of one persons suggestions you do well but often you can't progress from there. That's because there is no theoretically sound basis for each individual technique, which reduces their value in a sense.

From an empirical perspective perhaps we can say: if you time your feedings based on the flavor of the sap you will not overfeed. But why is this? Is it the time or the timing? Your technique deserves further study, because it could be a quasi panacea.

For starters I would like to know which nutes taste bitter or if they do. If not what is bitter in the sap and why is it a good indicator of feeding.

 

[Crazy Composer]

Get a microscope and find out why what I do works. I'd be interested in knowing why, on an atomic level, but it hasn't occurred to me to get too far into the exact science of it. So what do YOU think makes well-fed pot taste bitter clean pot taste like pure water?

 

[Microbeman]

Simply: When using true organics, one does not feed plants, period. There is no such thing as eliminating plant 'foods' at a certain period, thereby removing nutrients from the plant [the exception to this may be in very tiny growing containers]. If one observes otherwise they are not using truly organic methods. The growing I mentioned previously consisted of using vermicompost (top dressed) and compost tea. How anyone would flush this is as perposterous as us flushing our tomatoes which are ripening now or flushing the other herbs we've grown for the commercial market. I do not consider these fertilizers but I suppose others may.
BTW, I did not even mention science.
Certainly, your methods work for you and that is fine. I only question your explanation as well as the flushing thing of course. That is just plain dum. I hope you folks don't believe that you get grapefruit flavored flowers by watering with grapefruit juice. BTW, just because someone says something that sounds good or is wrapped up in a nice package, does not mean it is accurate. Look at the Compost Tea discourse, which was recently removed as a sticky(?). Always research the facts, look for associated references and mix them with your own observations and experience. In closing I'll ask a question often posed by my friend Jeff Loewenfells;
'Who fertilized the redwoods?' Indeed, who does fertilize the redwoods?

 

[jaykush]

'Who fertilized the redwoods?' Indeed, who does fertilize the redwoods?

fungi?

 

[Crazy Composer]

You're giving advice in a thread that doesn't need your advice, microbeman. You say so yourself. You admit this thread is a different topic from the way you grow.

BTW "true organics" isn't just how YOU do it, it's quite simply feeding organically-derived nutrient sources to a microherd that feeds the plants. Doesn't matter if the guanos are built in the soil or added... it's all organic.

Now... questioning the flushing is truly a strange thing for me to hear. First of all, let me repeat myself... when I flush (properly constructed) organic soils... it means I simply don't add any more guano powder to the surface, and let the plant show signs of starvation before harvest. I want white ash, and the taste of NOTHING but pure plant matter. Therefore it's important for me to have a very light organic soil mix to start with. After a while the organic matter in the soil becomes depleted and it's up to me to add guanos of the exact NPK profile I'm after. When harvest is nearing, they only get water, and the leaves start yellowing up nicely, and the leaf stem juice clears up to taste like pure water, and I harvest weed as good as I've experienced anywhere on the planet.

To me... relying on a heavy organic soil to do ALL the feeding is dangerous because you relinquish the control of fertilization to the soil. If your plants don't use all the available nutes by harvest... you get a less-than-perfect burn and taste. I don't care what anyone says otherwise... it's ALWAYS better to harvest a yellowed, nitrogen-deprived plant than a green, still-feeding plant. To ensure that every plant in my garden fits this harvest criteria, I need to be very good at what I do, and be able to read the plant's exact needs and deliver exactly the right answer. Using a soil with enough food in it to feed the plant all the way through would be soooo easy... I can see why you'd use this for a commercial operation, like yours, but every single plant in my garden is individually pampered and paid very close attention to.

With my method... you can decide when to bump up the phosphorus and reduce nitrogen. I can also bump the nitrogen up a bit in flower when I need to. Just as importantly... I can deny the plants access to ANY nutrients when I'm ready to flush. The result... My joints can be lit with a quick touch of a lighter, not even puffing on it. The buds are a nice, light color, there's ZERO trace of any taste other than dried pot... no nitrogen taste, no green taste, no nothing but pure, natural herb. And in the end I waste ZERO guano because they got only what they asked for. Of course, to be able to grow at this level you'd have to know exactly what your plants are asking for... but once you know it, you can control every plant's needs exactly and individually. This is the way I do it because I don't grow 120 pounds at time... My plants are few, but very very well cared for... and I am intimately familiar with each and every soul in my garden.

 

[VerdantGreen]

i beleive it is the salmon who swim upstream, spawn and then die that fertilize the redwoods and indeed play a huge role in bringing nutrients back up onto the land from the oceans.

microbeman - when you say flushing, are you referring to flooding the pot with water to wash the nutrients out (which i agree doesnt really apply to organics) are are you saying it is impossible or dumb to allow the nutrients in the soil to become depleted in the final weeks of flowering - (imo opinion this is the organic version of flushing)

 

[Microbeman]

fungi?

Yes, of course amoung others like bacteria/archaea and protozoa.