Seedlings and coco questions???

I have done one coco plant by starting a solo cup of happy frog/perlite, and then transplanting into coco after the seedling was substancial to sucess. My question is how to start the seed in coco and mature it. The coco I have is pre washed and buffered with perlite. So do I just moisten it with PH’d 5.8 to 6.0 water with a light dose of calmag? Then add seeds and water in. My concern is that there is no calmag or nutrition. When do I start adding my coco A/B nutrients in micro amounts? Shouldnt I always have calmag in plain waterings u til then?

I just water full strength from day one and they're always fine

I pre-moisten the coco with a light nute solution (just calmag is ok also). Plant seeds and they should sprout in 3-4 days. I start feeding daily to run off starting around day 3 from sprout, and transplant after 2 weeks.

The need for calmag at all depends on the water source.

As for nutrients the seed has it's own store of energy, so there's no need to stress too much.

But as these chaps have said, you can start feeding if you want, but it won't die of malnutrition if you don't.

Unlikely that you need to add CalMag...Depends on your water/fertilizer...Plant should be in a Solo cup until you see roots at the drain holes. Strong roots are an indication that the plant is healthy. Feed every watering. Transplant into final container after Solo cup is well-rooted. Give it more/better light.

I use the Jack's 3-2-1 fertilizer and I use it at their recommended dose. I've never diluted any of it.

Rapid rooters are popular, never saw a complaint.

Ok but when you say I can feed seedlings, at what strength? I have a coco A&B so just start at 1/4 of max dosage or a little less. my water is usually distilled or reverse osmosis, so I need to add calmag. Do you always use coco specific nutrients for coco or can you also use synthettic like general hydro flora as well. Thanks.

Start in solo cups with perlite and add drainage holes in the bottom of the solo cups. 70/30 coco perlite mix is preferred but you can use 100% coco like I do. Use Canna A&B or Dutch Pro A&B. But if you are using distilled water then use Dutch pro A&B for hydro cocos. The soft water version. You want to add only a little bit of feed to start with. 1/4 strength would be too strong to start seedlings off in my opinion. From about day 4 of sprout start feeding until run off daily. You want your humidity to be around 70 - 75% to start with. I use a humidifier to start them off. Don't give them too much light to start off with either. With my Lumatek LED I always start them off at 25% light. Or If I'm using a HPS bulb then I start them off at 250w. You can use the Photone app to get your light dialed in. It works on iPhone and Andriod. You're going to want to build an irrigation system and a run off system to make it easier to feed them too. Also, you want a PH of 5.8 in veg and PH 6.0 in flower. And always Add your nutrients before you PH your water. The best way to check if you are underfeeding or overfeeding in coco is by getting a EC pen or a PPM pen and testing your run off EC. You want the run off EC to be the same as it's going in.

Smokenpassout said:

Ok but when you say I can feed seedlings, at what strength? I have a coco A&B so just start at 1/4 of max dosage or a little less. my water is usually distilled or reverse osmosis, so I need to add calmag. Do you always use coco specific nutrients for coco or can you also use synthettic like general hydro flora as well. Thanks.

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You can use whatever nutes you want. I always brought my ppm to 150-200 calmag before adding nutes before I ran jacks which doesn't need calmag

Smokenpassout said:

Ok but when you say I can feed seedlings, at what strength? I have a coco A&B so just start at 1/4 of max dosage or a little less. my water is usually distilled or reverse osmosis, so I need to add calmag. Do you always use coco specific nutrients for coco or can you also use synthettic like general hydro flora as well. Thanks.

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I would start off weaker than 1/4 strength. Maybe like 1/8 strength or a tad less. I always use coco specific but you can use whatever you like. I prefer using A&B because it's designed specifically for coco and hydro grows

Gemtree said:

I just water full strength from day one and they're always fine

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+1

Smokenpassout said:

Ok but when you say I can feed seedlings, at what strength? I have a coco A&B so just start at 1/4 of max dosage or a little less. my water is usually distilled or reverse osmosis, so I need to add calmag. Do you always use coco specific nutrients for coco or can you also use synthettic like general hydro flora as well. Thanks.

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Never used coco specific nutes. I've run Megacrop 1 part, Jacks 321 and GH Maxibloom starting around .6 EC or 300ppm on the 500 scale. I then increase to around 1.0-1.2 EC over the next 2-3 weeks. Opinions vary and I'm curious about @Gemtree and @tstick starting at full strength so I'm going to try it.
cocoforcannabis.com

I'm also interested in feeding at full strength from day 1. Are we talking about crop steering here and flushing at certain points of the plants life to stop it from getting lockouts and nutrient burn? Or is it a different method that's used?

1212ham said:

Never used coco specific nutes. I've run Megacrop 1 part, Jacks 321 and GH Maxibloom starting around .6 EC or 300ppm on the 500 scale. I then increase to around 1.0-1.2 EC over the next 2-3 weeks. Opinions vary and I'm curious about @Gemtree and @tstick starting at full strength so I'm going to try it.
cocoforcannabis.com

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I have a lot of plants in veg, flower, moms, seedlings/clones and just water everything around 1.6-1.8. Don't even water my mom's to runoff just low light and they're happy

i too herd about flushing coco every so offten, but most growers of plants in coco say not to flush them, it's confuseing.
also, never herd of feeding seedings at full strength, i was told it would kill them, so again im confused.
how many of you feed at full strength from seedling?

I feed full strength from start clones and paper towel seedlings planted. Straight to 1.2ec or 1.7ec depends but wont know its sweet spot until a few weeks in. It will be fine with whatever till then.

I feed excessive runoff each feed, whatever keeps the rootball moist, it depends on root density. Lower root density can get away with 8x a day fed while high root density needs as much as 12x for me. I use box fans and low rh to combat mold and it works.

Ec it has its sweet spot and I stay within 14ppm or .01ec within range. The frequency and excessive runoff just make sure the ec in the pot is nice and almost equal to input. in both ph and ec.

Dont even have to check it but did have a plant fade no one knew why but runoff readings sure were in check. Healthy rootball. I dont tend toneed to actually flush it by then the rootball probably accumilated bad bacteria and salts minerals.

They say florekleen is meant for that but it wont even peel the dry salts on my drippers etc when spraying it with water. I just tried regular water afterwards and it was no different.

It could be as low as 1.2ec or high as 1.7ec, its a guess until it grows enough to tell you. Ive had a few strains do fine with same treatment 1.7ec but this new pheno hated it. This pheno I decreased to 1.4ec, not solved. Decreased to 1.2ec and boom its good to go all the way to harvest and know what it needs from start to finish.

All in a matter of a couple weeks figured out. I got sort of lucky but yea, idk until it grows. My 1.7ec pheno was pale at 1.1ec so I upped ec a few times by a couple points or so and was good to go when it grew healthy. Never changed it since.

Heres whats funny tho, when I did 3 gallon pot from seed it did fine with 1.1ec. Then suddenly, cloned to half gallon it needed to go up to 1.7ec. Pot size may play a role? Idk.