Do you flush your SWC's midseason?

[sprtsguy76]

I once recieved this advise from someone on the container forum over at GW. Never did it in years past. Got me thinking that maybe its a good idea considering all that sh*t we put in them. Salt build up, smelly stinky water etc. A freind of mine who is the 'california indoor hydro business' if ya know what I mean was visiting the other day and strongly suggested that I flush them at least once mid season aswell. So yesterday I took my garden hose and flooded/flushed out each individual swc of mine. I did it both ways, started with over filling the reservoir and at the same time pluging one of the drain holes for about two minutes. I then flushed them from the top by running the shower setting on my hose end sprayer for about another 4 minutes. I'm letting them sit for a day or two and then plan to give them a dose of liquid fertilizer via the filler tube.

Damon

[rnewste]

Damon,

You could also use a wet/dry Shop-Vac to just suck all of the old water out of the container - - then refill it with fresh. A whole lot less work, and you are not flushing the fertilizer and Lime out of the grow media in the process.

I bought a bottle of Clearex from Botanicare last year, but didn't see any "clear" results one way or the other. As I try to run my water reservoirs pretty low anyway on the AWS, the FIFO method of constantly churning the residual water in the reservoir seems to work fine.

My challenge this Season is Psyllids, more than any other problem. I've just pulled 4 more plants today, and have rooted a dozen cuttings that I want to replant as quickly as possible.

Raybo

[Chucker]

I guess my tomatoes drink so much water everyday that I never thought about it - I always figured the churn from adding new was enough. Plus, I figure there is some amount of my fertilizer that has run off into the water, so I sort of don't want to rinse that away. And I have a much shorter growing season here than you do, so maybe it's not as important here. Not sure. This is only my second season with SWCs, but season number one went great without a flush.

[rnewste]

Hey Chucker, how are you doing? Any photos of your SWCs that you could post?

A person named "calistoga" on another site posted that he has been measuring water uptake in his EarthTainers, and reports now in the warm Season, each 'Tainer is consuming 1.5 gallons per day. As most SWCs hold from 3 to 6 gallons of water, that then equates to a 2 to 4 day "turn".

So unless there are some salts floating on the surface that are not being wicked up, my conclusion is that it should not be such a problem with tomatoes. Now, as to the water consumption in Damon's friend's "Indoor" system where his plants (whatever they may be) most likely don't consume anywhere near 1.5 gallons per day, so periodic flushing in his personal application probably makes sense.

Raybo

p.s. I am working on a design for a leak-proof indoor SWC container to over-winter my Pepper plants, and it has a rotating hose port so that you can "drain your main vein", to periodically flush the system. Stay tuned....

[mdvpc]

The hydro indoor growers often do what Ray suggest: using an wet/dry vac to take the water out. I am growing Jericho lettuce indoors because it's too hot here now to grow outdoors and that's what they told me to do

[Chucker]

Originally Posted by rnewste

Hey Chucker, how are you doing? Any photos of your SWCs that you could post?

Hey Raybo. Things are going good so far this season. I'm using your 3:2:1 mix with last year's potting mix, bark fines, and perlite. It's storming out right now, so the only pic I've got right now is from the day the deer ate one of my plants down to a stick on June 26. I wasn't all that happy, but the plant has recovered quite well - tomatoes are tough! Still don't have any red ones yet - hopefully within the next week.

Also, looking forward to your indoor plans as I'm thinking of experimenting with a dwarf or two inside this winter.

[sprtsguy76]

Ray- I dont believe the 'flushing the lime out theory' here. I'll explain why. I have several tomatoes planted in traditional pots that got a one time liming at a tbsp per gallon of mix. Every time I water and or feed those pots I make sure water runs out the bottom and the reason for that is personal preference as I want to flush out the old nutrients to avoid nutrient/salt accumilation which I believe is not good for any plant. No signs of BER nor did I see any CA deficiencies so I think the loss of lime/CA is very very minimal. I took a light approach on fertilizing my swc's this year weather it was a time release or liquid and I love my results very much. And I'm not trying to say that this will work and that wont, its just that this is what I have observed this year. My biggest mistake this year was not filling my swc's that my cukes n peppers are in to the top with mix, I only filled them maybe 2/3 full, sigh. Oh and then there's the double layer of landscape fabric, I wish I did that in all my swc's this year but I didn't, another sigh. And I may not see any difference from the flushing, who knows, but it was piece of mind for me and no trouble at all.

Damon

[dice]

Calcium is mobile in the soil, but not nearly as mobile as
nitrogen or potassium. Almost all of the calcium sources
that we use are slow-release, too, basically forms of finely
ground rock, so you can flush the container all that you want
and there is still going to be calcium there. As long as the soil
is moist, there will be soluble calcium that can be taken up
by the roots if the container mix has had lime, dolomite lime,
or gypsum added.

Rock phosphate, bone meal, eggshells, oyster shell, and shrimp
shell and crab shell meals are all slow release calcium sources,
too.