CoCo root question and nutrients

  • Thread starter mcompton1973
  • Start date
  • Tagged users None
M

mcompton1973

3
3
OK.
small commercial grower.....sort of. I own the grow, but once I got my license, my illness hit me hard (weird something from my time in the Marines) So I had a grower working for me and as I got better, I let him handle the grow and I did sales and compliance. Now he is gone and I am back doing it all, and there is so much stuff I dont like that he did. We have never gotten the kind of yields that we should and overall decent product to smoke....but not great.

We grow in 3 gallon pots. Mother Earth coco perlite.
Athena Pro nutes (core, grow, bloom, balance, and cleanse) plus budbooster and floralicious plus
We added the two supplements because we were not getting the terps or flavor that we felt we should on the Athena alone.
Nutrients and RO water (well water is not usable straight) in 275 gallon totes
right now I went back to multiple waterings. he was doing 1 or 2 waterings a day only. I am now on a 5 a day fertigation (basically every 2 hours during lights on)

We really dont have great roots at all. When I harvested the last round....there were roots circling the pot....but break it open and there was almost none in the middle.
I am thinking of maybe getting rid of the cleanse (bleach) in order to maybe add some sort of microbes...Mycos? Recharge? Hydroguard? Something to help the roots.

ok, the questions.
1. Athena Pro is way more cost effective than bottle nutes were...but we are not getting the yields (probably my fault as I know I have a lot to learn still) and also not the terps and flavor. it all kinda tastes the same. the additives are helping....but I feel I am still missing something. Is this a problem with Athena? With all salts (Jacks, Mega Crop, Floraflex etc?)

2. should I ditch the clense and add microbes? Is there something else I should do for roots? Or am I over thinking this?
 
Dr.Green55

Dr.Green55

577
143
There is a lot to unpack here nutrients are only one variable , lighting and environment are going to play a big part in your final product.

Athena can and will produce very good results, but you have to understand how to run it, it runs at a higher EC, so how you stack it in your medium, and water properly is very important, as well as dry backs, coco perlite is not ideal for Athena in my opinion, Athena is more suited for a 0 CEC medium like rookwool, as cec is increased Ca should also to stay in balance with other macros. All the 10k+ sqft commercial growers I know that use athena use rookwool, some tried coco but went back , I'm sure there are some using coco, just the places I know of, after doing all their testing they prefered rookwool

Ideally if your a commercial grower and this is your lively hood, you work on moving away from all package nutes and mixing your own, the best advise I think I can give you, is , is if this is your commercial grow operation and your lively hood hire a consultant to come in and see what you have going on,. I take it your in the USA? depending on where your at there is some good ones down there.

I wouldn't drop clense, I'd drop your other stuff, its throwing the Athena out off its balance, I'd foliar silica, fulvic and maybe some kelp. but silica and fulvic will go a long ways to help you

Are your running an IPM, do you have bugs at all, if so that is the first thing to clean up. the next thing I'd do is make sure your documenting everything, all environment stats temps, RH (VPD ) lighting out put, also when you feed, how much, EC PH, runoff, Do you have sensors to monitor dry backs etc Make sure you have SOP's your following, I wouldn't make big changes, clean up the worst, fine tune the rest and adjust as you go.
 
Last edited:
Observationist

Observationist

5,320
313
I went back to multiple waterings. he was doing 1 or 2 waterings a day only. I am now on a 5 a day fertigation (basically every 2 hours during lights on)
Is this automated?....Id assume so.

A drip/CLF may benefit.
 
ArtfulCodger

ArtfulCodger

682
143
You might consider running smaller pots. This is more something to investigate as opposed to a recommendation. I've been running 100% coco with Blumats and Jack's in 2 gallons and have had good results.
 

Latest posts

Top Bottom