Okay everybody, I went to my grow guru and asked the same question, about skipping the leaching
There appearantly is a difference between leaching & flushing. Also the two terms get mixed up alot. What abudsmoker is referring to is called flushing.
Leaching on the other hand is the practice of stopping yr nutes two weeks prior to harvest.
Leeching is done for a couple of reasons, first it can flush out excess salt and mineral buildup. Second is that it is useful for flushing out other organic waste products in the medium that are introduced by the roots and microrganisms. Third it can refresh stagnant voids in the medium(areas that are either wet or dry spots, or devoid of oxygen, deviant ph, etc).
Organic nutes are not as heavily derived from salts and thus that need is reduced however the other advantages still apply and perhaps more so since organic growing fosters a thriving herd of microorganisms in the medium, and ph flutuation is more common.
Pre Harvest Flush is usually cited as being necessary to use up or flush the mobile nutrients N,P,K,Mg and to restrict the immobile nutes resulting in a finished product with fewer chemicals resulting in a better quality smoke.
The key here is really not to create a difficiency of immobile or mobile nutes during the flush, thus the use of mollases, but instead to create a tapering off so that after 7-10 days the plant is right at the end of its resources for harvesting. Flushing too long and without supplying immobile nutrients can result in stunted finishin. Flushing is a good practice with both organic and chemy nutes. It takes practice to get the timing just right, and once again strains differ widely. If your plant is dark green at harvest you have probably have not got it right, and if the leaves are all falling off you have probably gone too long.
In spite of all this, I did use my nutes up til harvest and noticed no adverse effects, who knows what I'll try this time...
Peace
ACTUALLY,
Leaching is not stopping your nutes, and rather leaching and flushing can be used almost interchangebly.
Leacing is used more in a negative connonation in farms when a nutreint is being lost due to regular watering
flushing is washing out excessive nutrients on purpose, and it is sometimes said that "by flushing, the excessive nutrients are
leached out"
From gov ag site "As water drains from sandy soils, it often carries nutrients along with it. This condition is called leaching."
From agriculture dictionary- Definition
noun
the loss of nutrients from the soil caused by water flowing through it, which deprives the soil of nutrients and may pollute water courses
As for the molasses you have it a little confused. molasses has lots of potassium to make plants function and provide a whole bunch of metabolism process their energy, but thats a whole other discussion
Molasses actually provides your plants with a "carbo load" as advanced nutrients likes to call it.
Molasses also feeds your beneficial microbes-bacteria, fungus etc.
Molasses is always good to add but can keep plants alive well during flush by providing carbs and potassium (k) and many micro nutrients.
From a garden website:
"For gardeners, blackstrap molasses (unsulphered) is the best choice because it is the most nutritionally valuable of the various types of molasses since it contains the greatest concentration of sulfur, potash, iron, and micronutrients from the original cane material. So it's not just the sugar content that makes molasses useful, but its trace minerals.
Molasses is also an excellent chelating agent, which means that it can help convert some chemical nutrients into a form that's easily available for organisms and plants to use.
People get confused on all this mumbo jumbo but look at some science and definitions before claiming facts"
Hope that clears things up for everybody, especially videoman
And you don't have to flush OR measure your PH. It's great. Check it out, it's worth the extra penny.
