The Ultimate Flush

-Gabrial House-

On the blog this week I wanted to take a closer look at flushing our indoor crops before harvest. I often get asked if I flush my plants, what I use to flush my plants and for how long do I flush my crop? Flushing your indoor crop at the end of its life cycle is a critical step that should not be overlooked.

To get the most out of our indoor crops, we tend to push our plants hard, using an array of fertilizers and supplements; however, when it comes time to harvest our crop, we want to “flush” these fertilizers out of the produce we will soon enjoy. When properly flushing our plants we are greatly enhancing the flavors and aromas of our end product. This not a step you want to miss out on!

There are lots of great products you can use to flush your plants, as almost all nutrient lines out there sell a flushing product. From General Hydroponics’s Flora Kleen to Botanicare’s Clearex there will always be a grab and go bottle of a flushing agent ready to be used. These products do a decent job of flushing your media free of built up mineral salts, and of pulling them out of the tissues of your plants.

I like to take a little bit more of an organic route when I flush my plants. Here is a recipe I have been perfecting over the years, and it has given me great results. The base of my flush recipe is Fifth Season Fulvic Acid. This product will drive any remaining nutrients from the media into the plant, acting as a final push for any essential oils or swelling of fruits. Next, I add Cannazym. This enzyme product breaks down salts and removes them from your media, a critical step for eradicating any fertilizer build up. I then add Canna Boost, which is a sweetener and metabolism booster. This product has two key steps within my flush. First, it will add to the flavor and aroma of my crop. Second, as a metabolism booster, it will make my plants more quickly consume what nutrients are left within itself. This process is known as cannibalization. The last addition to my flush is Mammoth P. I added this into my flush recipe within the last year, and it has made a huge difference. I find my plants’ fruit to be larger and heavier since I started using this product. The end goal of this flush recipe is to have the plant cannibalize itself quickly, and efficiently consume any of the fertilizers that remain within the plants’ tissues.

You will want to start to giving your plants this flush formula two weeks before harvest if you are growing in soil or coco. If you are growing in hydroton or rockwool you will want to give it this formula a week before harvest. You will be looking for yellowing of your larger fan leaves; this will mean the plant is consuming all the nutrients within itself and getting ready to “die on the vine” and be harvested. By using this flushing technique, you will get the cleanest, most flavorful produce out of you indoor garden yet!