too much nutes i think...

so i have 4 indoor grows under my belt. I have used roots orgaincs green lite for 3 of them and some crap from miracle grow that was supposed to be organic. i have used general hydroponics gobox nutes on all 4 grows. my issue is the taste of my smoke. it isn't bad but it isn't awesome either. so i have 4 clones from my last grow and they are in 2 liter containers of roots organics green lite and i have given them almost no nutes and they actually still look healthy. they have been growing in the pots for a couple of months under just 2 24 watt cfls and i have been trimming the crud out of them to keep them small as i did not want to start another real grow just yet. my question is should i let these go nuteless until i see signs of deficiency when i do start tent growing again? i wonder how that will affect the taste. i am thinking maybe the green lite has enough to keep the plants happy and i am just overloading them. thanks in advance...

How much of all of those were you using?
Nutrients... PH..... drying and cure(aged at right temp and humidity) all effect taste........

i was using the recommended dosage of the nutes. maybe it is just the nutes are not that good. i didn't really keep an eye on the ph that closely. i was just using the ph paper and tried to keep the solution around 6.5-ish. i cure very slowly using the 'perfect cure every time' method of burping and slowly bringing the rh in the jars down to 55-60. i have been curing my present harvest since 2nd week of sept. just getting to 60% now. the jars smell awesome. if it tasted like that i would have a hard time not being stoned constantly...

There are 3 things that affect flavor. Nutes, dry & cure, and plant genetics. IF you aren't drying your buds properly before beginning curing, that will have a significant effect on the flavor.

The kind and type of nutes you use will make a difference. Kind being the brand and type being synthetic or organic. It sounds like you have tried to mix both. It has been my experience that regimens that try to use both seldom work as well as wanted. The reason is that the 2 generally oppose each other on the molecular level. Organics rely on the use of microbe activity within the medium, while synthetics often make the soil unfriendly to the microbes.
I don't know if the nutes you are using is "organic" or synthetic. If you like a good "clean" flavor, then you should go fully synthetic, but if you like more of an "organic" flavor, then go with all organic nutrients. Your soil can be organic or soilless medium and still use organics in either one, but If you like organics then beginning with an organic soil that is good quality, some added amendments, then some good organic nutrient tea for boosting.

If you like very flavorful bud, the OG Kush done organic is very tasty(a little earthy, spicy, incense, and berry) The lemon strains have good flavor if you like lemon. I know the Pineapple Chunk is a very tasty flavor when done organic. The Blue strains tend to taste a little fuelly to me when done synthetic but very dark berry flavors when done organic.

However, everyone's sense of taste is different and what might taste really good to me may not taste all that good to you. I have a friend who likes the more "piney" flavors than the earthy, fruity, or sweet incense flavors which are my favorites.

If you want to go strictly organic but don't want to do all the super soil or making stuff, and you want to keep it simple, then you can get away with Using a good organic soil, than add some "Iguana juice" during veg along with some beneficial microbes like Mychorrizae. You can buy the "IJ" and some "Tarantula" from Advanced Nutrients, then during flower, you can use AN's Mother Earth super nutrient tea. add in a little lime at the beginning of veg then again at the beginning of flower and you're set.

firstly; the GO nutes don't need to be PH'd

i'm curious; do you flush or feed right till harvest?
i know flushing is not looked fondly upon here.. but i always do it, even organic. *by flushing i just mean no food the last week before crop.

a few of my OD that i used GO on and didn't flush; i wish i had.

so i am looking for the flavors i had from smoke as a kid in the 70's. i bought some 'thai' to start out with because of the fond memory of the thai sticks i had as a kid.

i have been 'flushing', kaotik. the last grow was this buckeye purple/super buckeye and i didn't feed at all the last few weeks. i may not dry them properly before starting the cure as hushpuppy points out. i think i go into jars a bit early. never see any mold but i worry that i will get past the cure zone so i jar them up...

funny story about ph'ing the go nutes. the first buckeye purple plant i had was an odd bird. it seemed like it suffered nute lock so i started messing with the ph. i tried higher. i tried lower. nothing worked. i though the strain was just really finicky. then i popped another BP and she turned out fine without much messing with the ph. i used some wood ash to bring the ph up if it was a bit low during flower. i think that first buckeye was just a problem child.

Its going to be pretty hard to get the same flavors that you remember from back in the 70s because the strains have evolved so much.

probably hushpuppy. my memory is probably embellishing as well...

what all are you growing fogey?
it might just be time for a tasty strain hunt *strain/pheno hunting is always my favorite type of hunting

There are 3 things that affect flavor. Nutes, dry & cure, and plant genetics.

Click to expand...

I do not agree with this statement. If this statement was true my bud should taste like fish guts and bat guano, and synthetics would taste of heavy metals. They don't.

kaotik-i have grown a bunch of different strains - la confidential, sour kush, master kush, greenhouse seeds thai, and 2 malvenetics strains, buckeye purple and super buckeye. the best tasting so far has been the thai. wondering if it has something to do with the potentcy these days. now that i think of it, i smoked a couple of different strains while i was in the netherlands last year and they had a similar flavor to my grows. maybe my taste buds are the problem too.

Old Fogey8,

Hushpuppy is right about mixing nutes.
Don't mix them but use 'one kind' throughout the plants lives.

I had a similar experience a few years ago.
I went from miracle grow to Canna nutes and the plants nearly died their reaction was so bad.
It was not the synthetic then the organic but the mixing of the two fertilizers in the pot.
The residual miracle grow mixed with the new canna stuff was a bad mix.

That said...
I use Canna Bio-flores now for flowering but Espoma garden tone for vegging!~

They have been out but yesterday...
I was at Home Depot checking the fertilizer shelf and there they were!
An entire shelf, filled with a new stocking of my Espoma garden tone so I bought two bags.
One lasts for nearly a year but I'm going to stock up because my plants are greener this morning after top dressing them with a little Garden tone. They are much happier, they really are.

Now I can't explain why the two fertilizers mix well but they do!
They are both organic and I do slack off on one before starting a 'reduced amount' of the other, then increasing it gradually when I flip.
I guess it is experience, they just 'work' {the plants really like it!}
and the Espoma garden tone costs $10. and lasts a year...
rather than $40 for Bio-veg which will do one crop!
It's not about saving money either the plants will tell you if they are happy.


Listen to your plants...


The Poet...♫

thanks poet. i am out of the gobox nutes for veg at this time so it might be a good time to change up. i am planning on starting my tent back up after thanksgiving here.

I am not understanding something. You are using soil right? if you are using soil why are you not feeding the soil? why would you use chemical nutes in an organic style grow? I would recommend using a coco its similar to dirt except it has no nutes so you would use chemical nutes.
Its my understanding that you feed the microbes in the soil and they feed the plant this is soil, hydro you feed the plant and the microbes

watching the harley smith presentation now. thanks gooch.

gobox is supposed to be organic. i prolly messed the whole organic part up a bit though. i was using a couple of additives that are not organic during flowering(open seasame and the other two nutes that go along with open seasame). oddly enough, i was thinking last night while i smoked a bit of a joint from some buds off a couple plants i had outside. i gave them no nutes. just water. they were clones mind you so they vegged the same(kinda) as the smoke from my indoor grow. the flavor was very similar to my indoor flowers. so now i am suspecting my taste buds. i also read somewhere that by age 60, you lose half your taste buds. so maybe i am just dying off...

not many microbes with synthetics (hydro).

With organics you can grow two ways. Feeding the plant, which is a lot like synthetics or feed the soil which is quite different. Whatever way you decide stick with it. Don't mix the 3

Half of my taste buds gone at age 60!
My God! I am 64, maybe I should change my user name to 'prehistoric old codger.'
Hmm I still have all my hair and most of my teeth however.
How old are you?


Jack the Knife...

i am 50, have all my teeth but probably less than half my hair...

I suspect the problem with your tastes will be solved by watching the videos, listen when he talks about potassium and when to use it. Its also critical to understand drying and curing because that can change everything also. I dont think your taste buds are dead lol

yes gooch. i think i can solve some of my issues with the info in those 2 videos. in addition to the potassium part, i found the brix stuff interesting. i noticed my tomatoes and peppers had a short shelf life. i didn't really fertilize the veg garden and i am wondering if my brix was too low. another thing about brix i think he mentioned is that bugs don't like a brix of 12% or higher. oddly enough i had to plants growing in my tent. the spider mites liked my super buckeye plant but did not bother at all with the purple buckeye. i was told by the breeder that the purple was a light feeder but i fed them both the same. i wonder if the 'extra' nutes the purple was getting contributed to a higher brix thus making the plant unpalatable to the mites.