Now, I know what your going to say
"Blah blah this is a lst walkthrough, blah blah stop getting side tracked with other crap, blah blah"
How could you say that to me? after all i've done for you? you sit down and listen to me for a sec, and you will see the error in your ways
haha, ok, cant always be serious
anyhow, this is where the useful info starts. we are going to talk about flushing now. and whether you know it or not, flushing ties in nicely with lst.
First of all, what’s flushing? Well, i'm glad you asked!
We use ferts that are salt based. a strong and healthy plant requires a lot of food; a lot of salts.
After a while, these salts start to build up in our medium and we need to flush them out, We need to do this because these salts don’t let our girls take in the nutrients they so badly need. The salt buildup hinders the uptake. so people usually think its underfed and usually over compensate with more ferts. and by this time the plant is super locked up. things only go downhill from here.
What needs to happen to break this cycle is a flush. This is the point where everything comes together. Another big point with tying is that the tying goes in phases.
You shape your girls, bind them down, feed well, and there comes a point where you need to let loose the restraints and let her breathe. usually a few days, maybe a week at the most; giving her time to get some vertical growth in. *stretch her legs out* so to speak.
The point where you need to flush for the first time is also the same time to give your trained plant its *breather* after.
Flushing
Thanks to D for the advice on the flushing
To flush, fill up your bathtub with luke-warm water. You should have Holes drilled in the plastic pot about 2 inches apart from each other around the pot. you can have one, or two rows of these. This allows the water to get in the medium deep during the flush.
You take the pot and dunk it in the water in the tub. Hold it under the water until you see the water seep all the way to the top soil. Once you see that, Do nothing and wait about 5-10 mins. come back to it after the wait, and lift her out of the water and let the water seep out of the pot. The more yellow the water is, thats coming out, the more salt buildup you had. Depending on the size of the plant, that pot can be big and very heavy! especially with the water weight. so you have to hold it up and drain allll the water out. Then you Dunk it back under and let it soak for another 5-10 mins. Repeat the leak down and dunk again. Three times is good. The third leak down should have clear water coming out. No more salt build up in other words. If you need to continue, by all means do so.
So after that flush give your plant that breather time I was talking about. Sometimes If your having pest problems, this would have also been the time for the safers soap spray down. If your not having any pest problems this can be skipped.
Safers Soap Spray Down
Ok, for those of you that are having pest problems (spider mites, whatever else) you should have a safers soap spray down. This is only during the vegetative stage, because the soap is no good for the flowers. So skip this step if you are flowering.
You can get safers soap from Lowes or Home Depot for sure, and I’m sure other places also, but I got mine at Lowes. You should also buy a hand held pumpable spray gun.
You follow the directions on the Safers insecticide soap and mix what it says with water and shake it up real well. When its soapy water pump up your sprayer and spray down your plant real well. Don’t miss a spot. She will be shiny because of the soap and the lights in the bathroom gleaming off of her.
After you got her good. take the sprayer and put plain water in it. pump it up and soak her down REAL good. Do it 5 times if you have to. be positive you got every spot you got with the soap. You don’t want to leave any soap residue.
Some is going to be left over, its going to happen. you can take a damp paper towel and wipe her down the next day when you see the whitish residue left over. Avoid this with and over kill spray down. Do it literally 5 or 6 times.
I look at it as a way to sort of start with a clean slate. you get rid of all the evidence and are left with a nice pot of fresh soil. And a plant that has just been shocked and also has been let free of her binds and she’s going to explode.
During the *breather* after all this its important to not feed/water her at all for a few days. This ties in perfectly for the time that she is free of the binds and is growing madly.
The feeding schedule if done correctly would have called for an extra strong good feeding before the coming flush the next night.
Remember what I said earlier about bringing the outside in? Well this flush, in nature equates to a flood, or a lot, a lot, a lot of rain. A thunderstorm even (if you went with the safers soap and massive stray down after).
Don’t worry about the soap getting into the soil, its good for the plant. potassium if I remember correctly. its all good in the hood for your girl.
If your wondering about the order, it would go like this:
Unbind Trained plant. Drill Holes in pot if not done already.
Flush like I already described
Safers soap plus spray down
3-7 day *breather* with NO feed/waterings.
Its time for nature to throw her a drought.
Making Sense?
So that’s how EVERYTHING comes together. After you do all these things you are ready to ROCK with your girl. She will look pathetic that night when you put her back in her home. but when those lights kick on, its like the storm clouds have cleared and she explodes. She’s in shock, she got kicked around in the storm, and is responding to that also. She has a lot of food stored up from her last feeding and isn’t getting anymore for a while.
Midday the next day she should already be looking good. A shaky image of her old trained shape. By the third day of the drought, she should be looking fantastic and grown a lot already.
When it comes time to end the drought you feed her DEEP. kinda like a woman, ::wink wink:: Slow and deep. You have a strong mix to kind of *make it up to her* for what you put her through. You pour her food slow and in a circular pattern all around the pot. Before you do this with the food mix, do this once with just plain water and H202. Then do the same with the food and go look for those binds again.
Note: the coloration that comes out of her after this deep feed might be yellow. don’t be alarmed, this is normal since you flushed her, deep fed her the night before, and then she went through a drought.
This is where your going to REALLY surprise yourself. Your going to take her new growth and pull it down to train her and be amazed at how wide she will be when she’s laid out. You can try to shape her the way you did before, but it wont be exactly the same, trust me. Once you have her re-tied down and fed, its time to do the WHOLE cycle over again
That last part of the cycle came to an end and now the EASY part comes back. All you need to do is maintain the training and feed her real well.
Let her grow in her new bounded shape for a couple weeks, one week at the very least depending on how rushed you are to move the grow along.
After a while she will have outgrown her tied position once again and its your choice where you want to go from there. you can either do all of which I just described, or you can also switch over to 12/12 and flower her for her first week while she’s also going through her drought. Either way, With the deep feed (her first early flower nute feeding if flowering) after that drought she will explode.
The Wheels On The Bus Go Round and Round...
You can keep up this training for as long as you want. I’ve grown MASSIVE moms and gone through a few of these huge cycles of flushing and droughts and training HARD and then letting go. The longer you stay in veg, the more MASSIVE your plants going to be in flower. Also the more ready to flower the plant will be.
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So this concludes the pause. Now you will be able to understand what my mom was going through as I narrate the rest of her life; and you will see how the tying progresses.