I grew in soil my first couple years and I switched to soilless mix about 2 years ago at first it was strictly peat amended at various ratios with Perlite vermiculite and dolomite lime and resently I started using coco at first just plain coco all by itself and I personally feel that all by itself it holds to much water so I added perlite and verm because th le amount of k and now I'm using peat coco perlite all mixed and some lime it all works but add any portion of perlite to coco or peat and you cant go rong it helps with drainage and also helps the soil hold more air
soilesss mix thread
- Thread starter St1kybudz
- Start date
DesertGrow89
Well-Known Member
Right now I'm doing a mix of coco, peat, and perlite at the rate of 1:1:1. I've heard of people liking 50% coco and 50% peat, probably going to try 100% coco next round. Surprised that coco held too much water as coco tends to need to be watered multiple times daily. Warrior pots definitely help with the medium drying out quickly and they are relatively cheap, the only thing I don't like is that they have a protruding cone at the base of the pot, which doesn't allow the rootball to get buried. I'd like to see a side by side with clones from the same mother, half of the plants planted with root balls just under the top and half with buried root balls to see the difference in vigor.
Figgy
Well-Known Member
Been using Sunshine #4 for almost 2 years, reusing it for the 5th or 6th time now. Added about 1.5 cups perlite/G. Just water roots with boiling water after harvest to sanitize, pick out as much root mass as possible, and when fully dry add some dolomite lime before next grow.
I've got three mediums in the tent all soilless mix and undoubtedly some of you have read of it or presumably done it your self is use perlite up to 50 % in a SM or using peat and coco together in a SM 50/50 and I'm not saying it can't be done just that it must be done right for optimal results because I don't wanna be that guy ya know I have personally used a coco mix 50/50 with perlite the brand of coco was botanicare cocogro with coarse perlite and I can undoubtedly say that had the perlite been finer that I would not have had the problem I did it created dry spots and during transplant I discovered dead spots in the root mass after I dropped the perlite down to 40 % I no longer had this problem. And when I used 100% botanicare cocogro I got fungus gnats really bad after a week of watering every day fungus gnats are a surefire sign of root rot and this is a symptom of a water logged medium some people say us nematodes but that's just a bandaid and does not treat the cause of the problem so that's why I'm experimenting with different ratios of media to create the ideal medium for my grow technique that's what we should all be doing. The greatest artists could use every media to its maximum potential