@scrofulous I’m curious why the fifth week of flower? For waste reasons?
I’d say It depends on what your end goal for the soil is.
Some people build an entire biological ecosystem in the rhizospere, keeping a healthy microbe population All the way through. In the end, the idea is to pull out the harvested plant, but to treat the soil itself as a living organism and continue to feed it with organic matter prepping for future runs.
In my expierence, reinoculating about once a week is beneficial. I feel that The Microbe workforce can be utilized by the plant through every stage in its life. In fact, I’ve found that brewing and watering a light tea right before you plan on flushing can really excite the “beasties”sending them into overdrive. In turn, breaking down left over nutrients to allow for uptake, and also to be more easily flushed out the next time you need to water.
I like your thoughts TheCut…
I usually continue adding microbes to my water until I begin flushing with plain water.
I’m using the same 3gal container from one of my last harvests, which I kept inoculating throughout for my “no till” tent tomatoes.
Using the same NFTG growth cocktail for cannabis and tomatoes… Nice and compatible.
You kind of allude to the wisdom of letting the plant determine it’s own nutrient uptake. Sort of setting the stage by amending your soil, but the plant is ultimately be the dictating it’s own story.
It does seem intuitive that the microbes metabolising the nutrients and solubilizing them should make flushing somewhat easier.
I dunno… I’m still working out how to properly flush organically. Seems to take a fair amount of time. As I deepen my understanding of cation exchange capacity, and how to tinker with it, I think I’ll get better at reading my plants and then some truly white ash will follow.
@scrofulous word, hey well the man knows what he is talking about. I’d be curious to hear the moderators of the DGC page drop some knowledge on this subject for us.
Appreciate the response brotha, happy gardening!
Cut
I run notill and although it would be beneficial the keep adding recharge to keep inoculating the soil I have to be careful with too much available nitrogen uptake late in flower leading to foxtailing and I suppose nitrogen toxicity.(although never happened) But I tried running it straight through. So Now I cut it out at week 5-6 when the flower starts to plump up and are done stretching.
Disclosure: I guess the question was directly addressing recharge, as when typing this, I was referencing beneficials as a whole.
Recharge is indeed loaded with nitrogen fixing bacteria so being contious of this is necessary. That being said, we do know there are phosphorus fixing bacterias like what MammothP uses as well and might be utilized here.
Just spitballing but In theory, if your soil is healthy throughout the plants life, it should culture itself and the microbe population should still be living in it despite re inoculation in later weeks.
After thought. Might be preaching to the quire here, but Have you tinkered with the potentially nitrogen rich organic inputs your recharge is pulling from and causing foxtailing late on? Maybe looking into some phosphorus grabbing cover crops like buck wheat or lupine . Phosphorus often gets stuck in organic pools (not in mineral form) unavailable to the plant. Plants like buckwheat have been reported to pull it into their rhizosphere making it Available to nearby crops. http://notillveggies.org/phosphorus/
In a living soil the plant is in control and stops feeding the microbes causing most of them to die or leave the rhizosphere at the right time. They won’t hang out in the rhizosphere in a permaculture system and they can leave to help whatever else is growing nearby. It’s more important to stop using Recharge mid way through flower when feeding hydroponically. The roots in hydro don’t rely on the cec of the mediums like roots in living soil and those nitrogen fixing bacteria can make too much nitrogen available with no buffer between the medium and roots. The bacteria can eat un/available salts, not present in organics, then store and/or poop minerals like nitrogen that could mix into the solution and move close enough to a root to become available without the bacteria needing to be near the rhizosphere.
After about the fifth week of flower, maybe six weeks if you’re running something that will go longer than average.
@scrofulous I’m curious why the fifth week of flower? For waste reasons?
I’d say It depends on what your end goal for the soil is.
Some people build an entire biological ecosystem in the rhizospere, keeping a healthy microbe population All the way through. In the end, the idea is to pull out the harvested plant, but to treat the soil itself as a living organism and continue to feed it with organic matter prepping for future runs.
In my expierence, reinoculating about once a week is beneficial. I feel that The Microbe workforce can be utilized by the plant through every stage in its life. In fact, I’ve found that brewing and watering a light tea right before you plan on flushing can really excite the “beasties”sending them into overdrive. In turn, breaking down left over nutrients to allow for uptake, and also to be more easily flushed out the next time you need to water.
Would love to hear others thoughts about this.
I like your thoughts TheCut…
I usually continue adding microbes to my water until I begin flushing with plain water.
I’m using the same 3gal container from one of my last harvests, which I kept inoculating throughout for my “no till” tent tomatoes.
Using the same NFTG growth cocktail for cannabis and tomatoes… Nice and compatible.
You kind of allude to the wisdom of letting the plant determine it’s own nutrient uptake. Sort of setting the stage by amending your soil, but the plant is ultimately be the dictating it’s own story.
It does seem intuitive that the microbes metabolising the nutrients and solubilizing them should make flushing somewhat easier.
I dunno… I’m still working out how to properly flush organically. Seems to take a fair amount of time. As I deepen my understanding of cation exchange capacity, and how to tinker with it, I think I’ll get better at reading my plants and then some truly white ash will follow.
@TheCut I say five weeks because I’ve heard Scotty say five weeks.
@scrofulous word, hey well the man knows what he is talking about. I’d be curious to hear the moderators of the DGC page drop some knowledge on this subject for us.
Appreciate the response brotha, happy gardening!
Cut
I run notill and although it would be beneficial the keep adding recharge to keep inoculating the soil I have to be careful with too much available nitrogen uptake late in flower leading to foxtailing and I suppose nitrogen toxicity.(although never happened) But I tried running it straight through. So Now I cut it out at week 5-6 when the flower starts to plump up and are done stretching.
@longbottomleaf point indubitably noted.
Disclosure: I guess the question was directly addressing recharge, as when typing this, I was referencing beneficials as a whole.
Recharge is indeed loaded with nitrogen fixing bacteria so being contious of this is necessary. That being said, we do know there are phosphorus fixing bacterias like what MammothP uses as well and might be utilized here.
Just spitballing but In theory, if your soil is healthy throughout the plants life, it should culture itself and the microbe population should still be living in it despite re inoculation in later weeks.
After thought. Might be preaching to the quire here, but Have you tinkered with the potentially nitrogen rich organic inputs your recharge is pulling from and causing foxtailing late on? Maybe looking into some phosphorus grabbing cover crops like buck wheat or lupine . Phosphorus often gets stuck in organic pools (not in mineral form) unavailable to the plant. Plants like buckwheat have been reported to pull it into their rhizosphere making it Available to nearby crops.
http://notillveggies.org/phosphorus/
In a living soil the plant is in control and stops feeding the microbes causing most of them to die or leave the rhizosphere at the right time. They won’t hang out in the rhizosphere in a permaculture system and they can leave to help whatever else is growing nearby. It’s more important to stop using Recharge mid way through flower when feeding hydroponically. The roots in hydro don’t rely on the cec of the mediums like roots in living soil and those nitrogen fixing bacteria can make too much nitrogen available with no buffer between the medium and roots. The bacteria can eat un/available salts, not present in organics, then store and/or poop minerals like nitrogen that could mix into the solution and move close enough to a root to become available without the bacteria needing to be near the rhizosphere.