Idiots Guide To Coco Coir

does anyone have a coir grow journal up? trying to use some I just got but haven't grown with this before. I'm assuming that flushing the coir with all the pots is unnecessary?

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!

VictorVIcious said:

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.

https://www.rollitup.org/grow-journals/122840-multi-strain-grow-journal.html

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.

DR. VonDankenstine said:

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.

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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.

can i mix my soil with coco coir it seams to be a little strong,burning my plants

Coconut coir is not nutrient free. Rather, it has a high potassium content. It is by-product of the coconut processing industry, the largest producers being India and Sri Lanka. Environmentally, coconut coir is preferable to peat moss as a water-holding medium. Peat moss is a scarce non-renewable resource. However, because of its high potassium content, coconut coir should not make up more than 30% of a potting mix, and never be used together with grape marc, which is also very high in potassium.

is this true,

i dont know about that but i use 100% coco and dont have any problems

can i mix 50% soil 30%coco coir and 20%perlite,is that ok,couse its hard for me to find in my country appropriate soil so i need to mix something to make it lighter,what is the best ration to mix so i can use the coco coir like soil

don't know about mixing coco with soil, maybe it would mess with the ph as i think in coco needs lower ph than soil for all the right nutes to be used, which is why you have coco specific nutes. assuming you can get coco nutes why don't you just mix coco and perlite. I've grown with 100% coco and mixed with perlite and liked both. Don't take my word for it though, just doing some thinking.

thats what im asking for days now and nobodys answering,i read on a site that u can use coco coir mixed with soil and perlite but not to use more that 30% coco and here at the store they told me i could do 50-50,so wanted to make sure can it affect the ph,is it a good idae at all

yeah sounds a bit dodgy mxing 50 50. have you googled it, a quick search shows that most people seem to be mixing in like 50 soil
15 coco and then other stuff

yeah i wouldnt mix it with soil you will upset the balance of the ph as well as what sort of nutes would you use soil or coco nutes?

this is what dr.vondankenstain told me<. I would use alot of coco and perlite to lessen the effect of the time released nutes say-----50 coco----25 perlite-----25 soil

is this possible

This thread is just what I needed. I'm doing coco coir starting this week.

can i use this mix 50coco-25perlite-25soil are there any risks with this