Did you read the article? Or do a side by side trial of no flush vs flush? Its been proven that no matter how much flushing you do to the pots, nothing gets flushed from the plant material. The only thing shown that high nitrogen does is decrease THC.
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Thats quick! I leave the sugar leaves on too.
For the nitrogen and thc I mentioned above
“These experiments show that the THC content of leaves decreases with increasing N doses. This phenomenon is favorable for agricultural production, because nitrogen fertilization will increase stem yield and simultaneously decrease THC content of the plant significantly. Additional studies are necessary to determine optimal N dose/ha, time of application, fertilizer type and the lowest THC content achievable under field conditions.”
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Also remember that the plant is 3½ feet tall and approximately 2½feet in diameter so I am just planning on hanging the whole plant and not cutting it into branches because of how fast it dried before
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Anyone interested in reading and posting articles on cannabis growing, I created a topic earlier tonight to try and help people along their growing journey. Also for fellow OG’ers to show me new evidence to improve my grows!
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There’s a 100 ways of skin a cat,I use to hang the whole plant myself in the closet found some buds dried faster than others
My furnace is in my closet as well, that had a lot to do with it
Bags are just handy for me they seem to cut down the smell as well,my wife don’t mind me growing but it gets a bit much when the place stinks from plants hanging in the closet 
Use to have loads of photos of my grows and shit but I’ve taken them all off my phone far to many weed pics
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Sure have, and spent hours and hours of listening to grow talk podcasts saying the same thing. Doesn’t mean I agree or believe it for what I’ve seen in my personal experiences and having a vast understanding of plant responses most don’t even pay attention to on their grows like instead of doing a consistent 12/12 light cycle in flower, start at 13/11 and have your days get shorter by 2 min 15 seconds a day to signal winter is getting closer , were mimicking nature and in the wild in most regions the fall comes with lots of rain which is just nature flushing making less and less nutrients available, not just nitrogen, but all of em till end of the year frost over, spring the soil warms up and microbes become more active and seeds start germinating and nature goes to work.
But this debate is no different than the arguments of black ash vs white ash of what it burns down to.
Flushing isn’t always just blasting your soil with water washing nutrients away, it’s not adding in more soluble feed for the plant to uptake so the plant naturally flushes it’s mobile nutrients out. So to answer that question yes I have fed a Helen back plant 3 days before a harvest and had to chop before risking reveg that year and that smoke was harsh as fuck, ended up making Concentrate but the early finisher la confidential I picked a couple weeks prior was smooth as fuck both grown the same way and hardly think it was just cuz they were different cultivars
We can sit and argue about it or agree to disagree but person experiences is what I’m gonna believe over something posted to the internet based off of opinions from a focus group that ppl are filling out 1-5 worst/good to get paid after they got a free smoke session for “research”
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For a true test, I’d replicate it to the same cultivars. To many variables to compare. I’ve done trials side by side, at home, which is personal experience and also blind tests with friends to get an unbiased opinion on it. I’ve also done trials at work where the cultivars were tested for THC, terpenes, and plant tissue analysis and have yet to see proof for the old claims. To each their own but we all have to be open to new science coming out to change our old habits. I thought the same thing before doing the work myself because I didn’t believe articles. But then a real study came out which I posted that is not just an opinion article.
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Ok so let’s look at the facts posted in your own provided research and cut out the testers data since we have zero info on demographic, age group, gender,volunteered or paid, althetic or overweight, amount of people in the study, etc and I’m not even gonna try to factor in if that plant was a heavy or light feeder and what kind of feeding schedule it was on its whole life
You look at the statistics, shows a 6.7 % decrease in nitrogen, terpene profiles were more of earthy with the flush vs spicy without. Leaves showed more chlorophyll breakdown after 10 days which also indicates the plant using up it’s mobile nutes. zinc and iron levels rose up which coincidentally are involved in the breakdown of chlorophyll occurring during senescence.
So what do u see nature doing here as it’s ripening the buds without human interference…? Remember, were trying to mimick nature
These are just small examples much like the small samples they used to generate to data, not the entire plant for consistency
You can find just about any supporting argument on the internet for something u want to believe, first hand experience will usually make the believer though
That study is an opinion article majority of the data is from the testers voting bad ok good great, basically a 1-4 vote after getting blazed up. Most courteous ppl aren’t gonna be like bro ur shit sucked after they got baked as fuck off it for free, let alone getting paid for it
Someone pays me a couple hundred bucks to smoke some weed and fill out an opinion card, well it’s prob gonna leave a good taste in my mouth, also if they are testing 4 different plants I don’t care how smooth it is, after 4 bowls I’m prob gonna feel like it got harsher
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I have used 24-9-16 miracle grow from start to finish and it was fine. I then wrote an article and put it on the internet.
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It’s very nice. I’d like to see a bit more variety of testing before I stop feeding water-only for the last few weeks; that nice, professional-looking font and layout glosses over the fact that they only studied one strain - it’s not even clear whether they ran from clones or seed - with one growing style, and one fertilizer regimen… their own. It’s not exactly bulletproof, though it’s an interesting result. It would be more interesting if that result were replicated with hundreds or thousands of grows, in soil and other hydro media as well as coco, and with other fertilizers.
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I agree the research should be continued and ran over multiple strains. But it’s a start.
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Very well put! Exactly why I don’t buy into that study, there is just way to many undefined and variables to give solid proof saying “here’s the facts” and reading between the lines in the study I do see the plants consuming some of it’s mobile nutrients and the soil making a shift towards end of life for the plants in those last two weeks, so although the argument is if it affects quality of the smoke or not, I still see changes within the plants in those last couple weeks
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You’re right about the decrease in nitrogen, but that seems to be the only nutrient that decrease with flush. The weird thing too is that it’s not a gradual increase/decrease, you would think it would have a trend from 14 day flush to 0 day flush but it’s not as predictable as you’d think which is odd. The falvor went from earthy and sweet where earthy was 14 day and the rest were more sweet. My personal opinion is rather sweet over earthy but that doesn’t actually matter to the study. Of course there are gaps in that anyone can pick apart but for the first study of its kind I think it did a good job. Trying to mimic nature, outdoors in the ground my plants have never gone necrotic from lack of feed in my native soil so trying to mimic nature has different meanings too depending on where you live, how rich your soil is and so on
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An interesting variable to throw in would be doing the test with an extremely heavy feeder, that will give a better insight as to what the plant is consuming in the last two weeks flushed or not
Or a heavy feeder that wasn’t fed the full diet to fill it’s hunger that it has always been left reaching for more or wanting more, is it gonna continue to consume more nutes from it’s soil or start consuming itself?
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I agree. Let’s do a trial! Hahah. I’m very open to be proven wrong. At the end of the day I just wanna learn
I think it’ll end up doing a little bit of both, consuming itself for some nutrients while continuing to uptake nutrients from the soil.
In my experience, soil moisture levels also play a role. If the soil is on the dry side the salts usually are higher which can lead to nutrient lock out that cause issues above the soil which could impact the plant tissue analysis vs a heavily watered plant, vs a properly watered plant. There’s so many factors to focus on its hard to get them all in one study
Sorry I keep adding while I sit here and think haha, but it would be interested to see the plant tissue analysis and the smoke off of a plant that wasn’t given any nutrients for the last say 4 weeks. Or varying EC levels for all of flower and seeing those be flushed vs not flushed.
This is where it’s the overall big picture in a grow though, alot of the things that has made a quality bud for me has always been paying attention to the little things. 6.7% is such a small amount but it’s not just what it lost but what it didn’t gain that u have to factor, another feed may have kicked the nitrogen up 7 percent so in reality u actually have a 14 percent swing not feeding in those last couple weeks. I did find it interesting the effect on flavor though, kinda interesting u can dictate some of the final terps like that but wouldn’t want to sacrifice a cleaner bud over it. If your outdoors in the ground then ur not mimicking nature, ur a part of it with natural microbes and all. Question is was the study the same or nature replicated indoors? Yes location can play a big role but cannabis plants have adapted for a 4 season location, winter freeze preserving the seeds, spring warming up they germinate and get some rain, summer with lots of sun and fall with the rains. That’s the nature we’re trying to mimick and where they have thrived for millions of years. U try to grow in non native areas like mine here in az with little water, compact sand/dirt and extreme heat then that’s where the challenge comes in trying to replicate the IDEAL nature given the conditions at hand and make em as close to the conditions they thrive best in
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Ya I agree there, it’s tough cause each strain will have its ideal “nature” so I think that’s where science can come in and find the sweet spot with each strain to optimize the results.