Idiots Guide To Coco Coir

I use coco, my grow journal link is at the bottom of this message.

I have read posts elsewhere about needing to add Epsom Salts to the coir to help with the uptake of nutrients... what I haven't been able to find is a specific formula to doing so. You guys seem to do a lot of coir growing in this forums so heres my question:

Is adding epsom salts really necessary? and HOW MUCH epsom salt do i need to add? do i add it to the coir when i make my mix? or do i dissolve it in the water when i add my nutes? Some clarity for me would be greatly appreciated THANKS!

Originally Posted by VictorVIcious

Thats interesting. Guess you need to do some research then. Most of the coco doesn't need to be rinsed anymore, Seems a couple of years ago the producers figured out the salt thing, none of that except adding water and fluffing has been necessary for some time now. May want to update your information if you are going to post it.
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This is not true, and I lost a ton of seedlings to this information. Some new/modern brands of coco does indeed need to be rinsed. To test I took some (recently purchased) coco coir and soaked it in plain RO water...and the ppm of the water soaked coco was around 600ppm.

Oddly the seedlings did not have a nute burn type of look, but looked as if they were dehydrating. They basically never progressed beyond the seedling stage...and died.

I think it is a good idea to rinse, and for what it's worth, I am going to do that next time regardless.

If you have plenty of plants and want to take a chance...by all means proceed.

hello people i have grown in coco for the past 5 years and always rinse the coir always doesnt matter what is on the labels flush it.i only grow 2 plants in 50 liter pots and straight coco nothing else under 4 x 600 hps with a 300 liter nute tank and 1 water pump for each plant and they run on a timer every 6 hours for 15 mins have no problems with over watering or root rot,fungis nats are a problem but can be controlled with a layer of sand 25 mm on top of coco or saw dust just be sure you dont use treated timber.i use candaian express nutes with super thrieve and organic bud additive head master and start my clones off once they rooted with rootblast.i try and keep my ph 5.5-60 but my tester has been broken so i was getting false reading got a new one and my ph was 4 and was amazed my plants werent dead but have showed amazing growth i have raised the ph to about 5.6 and will wait and see what happens i have noticed some of the leaves are falling off way to early and are still green not dry and crispy.i have a journal check it out and let me know what you think.

multi strain grow journal

Depends only like two companies sell pre rinsed ready to go coco.

The rest dont do much to help it.

But how much do you trust a companies touch at rinsing there coco.

I have personally rinsded and fluffed up over 8 cu ft. of coco that was slightly cheaper but still decent grade and I have some of the lovliest coco around.

Long story short you could spend $30+ for 1.5 cu ft of primo that should be rinsed lightly.

or $40 for 8 cu ft of lesser grade that needs work... still capable of primo after good rinse.

This last round I ran out of ocean Forrest so the only thing available was the Black Gold coco blend-lol-lol-lol. It has some dolomite lime/worm castings/perlite/ and peat with a little bit of yucca cacti juice in it to help hold water-------------------------the funny thing is that the shit worked absolutely fantastic---I didn't have to rinse it or anything- about a month in I gave it a flush with 6.3 and checked the run-off---it come out spot on 6.5. Don't know if I will ever make it back to the FFOF. The coco blend was less than half the cost

I also didn't have any fungus gnats this time around---I keep a couple containers of cedar magic in the flowering room and the gnats hate cedar. You can pick the containers up at wal mart for about 5.00 bucks, They will last a cycle. I hope my posts are not to far off topic-I know most of the previous posts were regarding pure coco-coir. I just had such great results that I wanted to post an alternative that I found with the black-gold coco blend. -all my feeds were at 6.3 and I watered about every 4 days.

Originally Posted by DR. VonDankenstine

I also didn't have any fungus gnats this time around---I keep a couple containers of cedar magic in the flowering room and the gnats hate cedar. You can pick the containers up at wal mart for about 5.00 bucks, They will last a cycle. I hope my posts are not to far off topic-I know most of the previous posts were regarding pure coco-coir. I just had such great results that I wanted to post an alternative that I found with the black-gold coco blend. -all my feeds were at 6.3 and I watered about every 4 days.

Cool, good to hear you like coco. Yours was a coco-peat hybrid medium.

It retains moisture better than pure coco will because of the peat, hence why you only watered every 4 days.

Pure cocow/ perlite, needs watering every two days, but can withstand once a day when the plants are larger.

The roots can live in such a intensely wet atmosphere in coco, because it holds air so well.