The plants absorb what they need from the soil. If you ionically bond cantaminants like heavy metals to macro or micro nutrients and the roots uptake it you can cantaminante the plant cells. This much is true. But if you feed your plants a higher ratio of P or N the plant won't uptake the higher levels of P or N and deposit the "excess" in the plant cells and it won't cause a buildup of those higher nutrient ratios in the flowers.
I'm specifically talking about hydroponic applications. Thank you for the great insight. Help me out here man. I am observing a remarkable difference in both flavor, burn qualities, and the aroma of developing flowers after switching fertilizers. I switched from jack's 5-12-26 to maxi bloom. I run RO water. The jack's flowers burned clean and tasted fantastic. For lack of a better description the maxi bloom flowers just don't taste right. They also burn to a dark ash whether smoking a joint or a bowl. Never a clean gray ash finish. That's a contaminant of some kind. After doing a bit of reading it appears there is an industry problem with heavy metal contamination in technical grade phosphorous that is used in the fertilizer industry. With your insight as to how plants use and absorb fertilizer I'd like to ask you another question, because I really want to get to the bottom of this and I genuinely appreciate your assistance.
What if it's not the addition of P that's causing a nasty flavor or poor burn qualities, but rather heavy metal contamination that's piggy backing on the phosphorous in the bloom mix?
Jack's advertises no heavy metals in their fertilizer. Could this be the culprit?
Just to add a little more salt to this statement my first hydroponic flower cycle was with the GH flora series. I added kool bloom throughout flower which is loaded with phosphate. The flowers were amazingly beautiful. When I smoked the flowers it literally hurt the fillings in my teeth as if I chewed on a piece of aluminum foil. It was nearly unusable, and it burned to a hard charcoal. It literally had to be picked out of the bowl. I suspect heavy metal contamination as the culprit.
My theory is the fertilizer we use on the plants we are going to ultimately dry and smoke is more important than any of us may have realized simply due to the presence of heavy metal contamination in some fertilizers. It costs more money to test for heavy metals like jack's does. I suspect some companies take the short cut to increase profits, and as a result heavy metals are present in their fertilizers.
That jive with you?
