this should answer why coco need so be flushed so much
Let’s have a look at coco coir. It starts out with a better pH of 5.5. But the problem with this medium is that
magnesium and calcium binds to coco and doesn’t want to easily release. And that’s not good. Your plants need to be
able to get to those nutrients.
Now if you add dolomite lime, as a lot of companies out there will do because dolomite is cheap to use and made
up of magnesium and calcium carbonate and a source of alkalinity, that will eventually raise your growing mediums pH
and this is not what you want to do. So what do you do? You would solve the problem by adding chelated calcium and
magnesium either to the coir or in the base nutrients.
Unfortunately, other nutrient companies won’t do this because of the very high added expense, but that is exactly
what we put in all the base nutrients at
Advanced Nutrients. However
Advanced Nutrients doesn’t make a specific coco
nutrient yet.
Coco coir also has a lot of potassium so you’ll
need to use a fertilizer with reduced potassium so you
don’t end up with potassium toxicity.
There is one other thing to be aware of: low quality
coconut husks are often soaked in salt water as part of
the manufacturing process to break down the husks and
quite often not properly flushed by the coir manufacturer
overseas.
You’ll need to make sure that the extra salt is
flushed out of your medium with water by either yourself
or the manufacturer you’re buying it from before using
it.
Coco coir
