by Andrew Dodd
Vegetable “Flushing”
9:42 pm in Getting Started, Materials and Resources, Nutrients, Plants, Projects in Process, questions, Seeking Advice, Starting Seeds, Uncategorized by Andrew Dodd
Hey everyone. I just built my first airlift windowfarm using the V2 instructions on the our.windowfarms.org home page. There is a local hydroponics store in my town so I was able to get all of the stuff I needed from there. They pointed me towards some nutrient solution called Envy Part A and Envy Part B. I had initially planned to get all organic nutrients since I will be growing vegetables to eat, but it was just too expensive. Anyway, I’ve read some about “flushing” before harvesting the vegetables, and the guys at the hydroponics store offered some flushing solution, but I was wondering if just flushing with water for 7 days would work as well. I don’t know that much about flushing and hydroponics so any information would be nice. Thanks!
Are you planning on growing the same thing in all 3 bottles?
Yes I was going to start with some lettuce since I had some seeds already and I have read it is a good beginner plant.
How cheap are you looking? Because I use FoxFarm Hydro, and Big Bloom which is essentially organic, and supplement with Botanicare Cal/Mag Plus, I think it is <30 for both FoxFarm, and maybe 15 for the cal/mag, and they last months for me, and I run multiple systems.
But I do think that it is a seven day standard for flushing the systems, personally I would just flush with water, the flushing solution is just adding more chemicals to your plants I would think.
Well the local shop where I live is pretty expensive, the Envy I bought was $15 per bottle and I got the part A and part B so it was $30. However, the organic solution they had was $35 a bottle and I needed two bottles of that as well. I started off looking online at homeharvest.com, but I didn’t know anything about nutrients so I went to the local store for advice. I agree that the flushing solution just sounds like more chemicals for the plants, so I will just use water for this go-around. Do you know of any other good online hydroponics shops for future reference?
Yea I can see why you didn’t go with those organics, $35 a bottle is insane! For the purely organic and advanced stuff its like $17-20 and you need more than two bottles from what I have been looking to upgrade to/ try out. Personally I lucked out and there is this down-to-earth hydro/ gardening store in my hometown with decent prices. But if you can find a vendor of foxfarm online/ around you (http://www.foxfarmfertilizer.com/buyfox_consumer_map.html) I can vouch that it is pretty good/ consistent and I believe everything but Tiger Bloom by them is organic, prices for me have been about the same as what you payed.
I haven’t done flushing before, but if you plan on harvesting the entire farm then it couldn’t hurt. If your farm has a variety of items and your only going to harvest one of them, it might be counter productive for the other plants you leave behind.
If you want to ‘flush’ your vegetables before harvest, why not set aside a column in your WF and move the plants to that when they’re ready for picking?
Thanks for all the comments guys. For now I think I will grow three lettuce plants, and “flush” with clean water for the last 7 days before harvesting. Can’t hurt.
Oh, and I’ll definitely be looking into Fox Farm. They have it listed on my local hydroponics store’s website, I just think they were out when I was there.
Post what happens. I try to continuously harvest vegetative plants like lettuce rather than harvesting the whole thing, making flushing a little difficult. It’s possible to flush the plant for a week, harvest as much as you can, then put it back into a nutrient cycle, but the shock may kill the thing. Worth a try, though.
I like Trygve’s idea, especially. Like a wash-column. Could only be 1 or 2 bottles tall!