Back long ago I remembered hearing something about flushing with cal-mag from a old time grower that I knew at the time had a lot of knowledge for growing our beautiful flowers we love to medicate with.. so I know flushing has been kinda debunked now a days because as we have learned more about growing but flushing actually means many different things to a lot of people most it means running straight water for the last few weeks before harvest but as my growing continues I try to learn as much as I possibly can because i really enjoy smoking the best flowers i can but I was lucky enough to have a job for 12 years that I could drive around and watch YouTube or listen to podcasts all day long for 10 to 11 hrs a day so I’ve spent the last 5 years since I started growing studying literally anything I can about growing I will listen to lectures about things that I know for a fact I won’t ever deal with just to try to just as much information from all aspects I can but I’ve recently started studying more on calcium in cannabis and from what I’ve gathered and took from listening to others and checking as much info as I can about it but so its been said many times that calcium is king which ive pretty much always been told from day one that’s why the term just add calmag to it to fix it is so widely said by everyone joking or not it in reality it is almost always a good thing to add to your watering so for the longest time I did just that no rhyme or reason I just added cal-mag to every water pretty much for awhile just tell I started to get down to the last few weeks when I would switch to water only well after running a few different nutrient lines I come to realize alot of these guys want us to push nutrients pretty much tell harvest some even all the way tell harvest so awhile back I decided to do my own study on why we would flush or run plain water the last few weeks tell harvest and best I could come up with is flushing is something someone started doing when we they recommended to much nutrients to plants in the first place because only with cannabis for some reason did someone somewhere decide to baby a plant more then we would baby any other plant we grow but out of all plants let’s cut the food off to this particular one for absolutely no reason? And other ways of growing anything would have u feed them tell the day of harvest but why this plant out of all the plants why would this plant just not want food like all others do? It didn’t make since to me so I dug further I also understood before I looked into it more that I know the plants do not eat what we put into them they are not just eating nitrogen phosphorus and potassium and all other essential nutrients and they are all stored up inside the plant and when we smoke it we can taste the nutrients it just doesn’t work that way but what I’ve seen they are doing this whole time is use calcium to build cell walls the whole time so instead of push P.. pushing potassium as hard in flower which from what I’ve gathered potassium actually just makes the plants take up more water so u get more water weight which is a good reason why if when u grow some big nice fat buds and hang them to dry they come out and 1/4 of the size they went into dry but since I started using nectar for the gods calcium additives now to flush with adding a few different forms of calcium my flowers have been night and day difference now when they dry they are almost the same size as when I put them in to dry what’s everyone else’s thoughts on pushing calcium tell harvest? I’ve also noticed I no longer have to support branches on my plants and they branches are much stronger as well
Who else uses Cal-Mag for flushing?
by LoverOfTheStickyNugz | Feb 2, 2023 | Grower Questions | 6 comments
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Calcium and magnesium are not flushing out salts. You’d have better results with fulvic acid.
I run fulvics as well along with enzymes and all that I don’t flush with calmag tho I do feed with it still up tell right before harvest now i dont use calmag anymore I started using liquid bone meal now from Nectar for the gods
My municipal water comes from deep wells, so, I’m basically flushing with cal-mag every time I water. I usually dilute it with RO water nowadays.
Yes that is correct I use tap water as well so either way we get the calcium and magnesium and other minerals as well from it but I’ve started running calcium further into harvest now cutting it out only the last 2 waterings now
There’s some great thoughts and info in your post and I love to see others who are so passionate about growing quality cannabis. It does seem like you’re coming around to being aware of some of the marketing tactics and out of context suggestions that can lead to issues.
Flushing makes sense in certain contexts but is not necessary in all situations. And like mystro said, flushing with fulvic acids will typically give you the best results and is what I primarily use in the flush phase. I also reuse my coco, so flushing it by the end of the grow is ideal so I don’t have a salty mix for the next round. When it comes to using cal-mag in the flush, some may be justifiably if you are using RO water.
Its also important be somewhat aware of the nutritional status of the plant before the adding of calcium. If you were running on the low end of cal in the past then getting adequate levels of calcium will have tremendous benefit in structure stability like you saw but you can overdo it if your plants are not deficient. I will agree that many growers may be not adequately feeding calcium and it’s easily a yield limiting factor.
I would just be cautious with too much calcium late in flower. If you are giving some in a balanced flower feed then there’s no problem. But if you’re only giving calcium then you can limit how much potassium the plant will receive down the stretch and potassium is more important. You need 3-4x more potassium than calcium in a balanced feed, so you can easily cut into potassium needs by overuse of calcium. Potassium is important for water flow through the plant and having more water is a good thing for plant function but potassium does way more than just water regulation. Potassium is important for the function of many enzymes and is responsible for balancing the charge across cells. This need increases as more organic acid compounds are made in the plant. There’s a lot down the rabbit hole of potassium if you’re willing to get into the weeds of scientific papers.
Generally if you don’t overfeed or use high frequency fertigation than just reducing your EC towards the end is a good way to go, but I would worry more about not cutting out the potassium at the end if I had to choose. I usually incorporate a water soluble potassium sulphate into my last few weeks of flowers along with some fulvics and I feel it the potassium helps with the shape and final weight of the flowers and the sulphur helps bring out the aromatic compounds. These are just my experiences, they definitely may not apply to everyone, but I do make a effort to make sure there is always potassium and sulphur around down the stretch.
I’m sure there’s something I forgot to touch on in your post, but I appreciate you sharing what you’ve noticed in your experience and it is definitely important to make sure you are not slacking on the calcium especially if you are in coco it can sneak up on you. Happy growing and keep growing dat high quality! #growerslove
The flshing topic will live forever. Whatever you choose to do, prevent shocking the roots from jumping off a cliff with your feed.
It’s gotta be important to understand how water and nutrients are taken up and how the plant uses sugars and starch to make that happen. You can use that info to manipulate the plant to be in a more generative or more vegetative stage, but you can’t expect the plant to adapt as fast as you can flip the EC.
“Flushing” in soil is more about economics than anything. Not much gonna leech out. You either fed your plant right or not, flushing wont save you either way.
As far as using calcium in your flush, whatever floats your boat. You don’t need to get to zero minerals anyway. I think if your plant neds calcium, that’s not all it needs. IMO feed increase or reduction should be done in relation to where you’re at in flower- [transition, stretch, budset, bulking, ripening] – I’d rather adjust my EC down than drop everything but the calmag. Maybe it keeps your pH good though 🙂