jumpincactus
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I like botanicare.Lookin at jumping in to coco and have a few ??? Hopefully you all can help me.
1. What is the best overall brand?
2. Do I use loose bagged stuff or bricks?
3. Can I use a mix of coco and my living soil or should I go 100% coco?
thanks man. Whats the cost of botainicare? and does it come pre charged with calcium. What if any issues have you had with it?
yea I was thinking loose as well.
Thats what she sedyea I was thinking loose as well.
Yea,i get it with hydroton thru it,works great for me,shops own mix.think @G gnome does something similar with growstones.76yea I was thinking loose as well.
thanks man. Whats the cost of botainicare? and does it come pre charged with calcium. What if any issues have you had with it?
Most of the brands out there are pretty good. A brand I would not recommend is Roots Organics Coco Palms. It fried my seedlings a while back and I wondered why. Did a slurry test and it's salt content was above 2.0EC!Lookin at jumping in to coco and have a few ??? Hopefully you all can help me.
1. What is the best overall brand?
2. Do I use loose bagged stuff or bricks?
3. Can I use a mix of coco and my living soil or should I go 100% coco?
Damn, very nice input. TY for taking the time man.Most of the brands out there are pretty good. A brand I would not recommend is Roots Organics Coco Palms. It fried my seedlings a while back and I wondered why. Did a slurry test and it's salt content was above 2.0EC!
1.My hydro store changes juggles a few different brands so I never have the same one but generally use one of these 3:
- Canna
I prefer 100% coco with no perlite or any other additives at all. If i had to buy a mix because I absolutely could not get 100% coco then I would settle for nothing less than a coco/perlite blend. Any other amendments are unnecessary IMO but perlite is about the only thing I'd still feel okay with in the mix if I really really had to.
- Atamai
If you find a different brand or really want to be sure the coco is good a slurry test(just a small glass 1:1 ratio of distilled water and coco) with an EC meter isn't a bad idea. Also when the coco is saturated I squeeze it in my hand and it should want to bounce back kind of like a sponge. That's a good sign it's not too broken down and still holds a lot of air within.
2. Loose is much easier to handle but it costs a lot more and is typically already buffered with cal and mag. I've hydrated botanicare bricks in the past and that's probably one of my favorite bricks. It's nice and spongy. I heard canna started or has been doing bricks. I'd imagine those are of excellent quality. Bricks work just fine and definitely save money if you are willing to do a bit of extra work hydrating them.
3. You can use a mix of coco in soil, but that will change your whole nutrient approach. It will be more of a medium amendment for texture and consistency like peat moss and you won't get the full benefits it has to offer since you will be trading some of it for soil. An example would be a loss of the ability to:
- Water daily therefore introducing oxygen to the roots more often
- Accurately Judge and change how much nutrition the plant is getting
It's not a bad thing at all to add coco to soil grows in place of peat moss but if you want to utilize coco coir to it's full potential then I'd recommend using a quality hydroponic nutrient and coco just by itself.
- Accurately monitor pH
No prob! :smoking:Damn, very nice input. TY for taking the time man.
I don't have any links aside from my Coco Root Health Tutorial I wrote up, but you seem to already have a good idea of how it works so I'm not sure if it will be useful since you already know one of the most important things. Not to let it dry out haha. Tons of issues can be avoided with that alone. Yup pure coco is certainly hydroponics. Ph 5.8-6.0 tends to be the sweet spot.So rather than make any of you regurgitate easily findable materials, what is a good link to learn the does and dont's of coco as a media. I do realize that letting it completely dry out is a no no unlike soil. And also am aware that it is feed, feed, feed with coco with every watering. Anything I am missing or any good links where I can do my own homework??
Isnt coco a hybrid form of hydro? I am a old ebb n flo guy from way back. So I'm hip to Ph appropriate levels.
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