I struggled with coco for almost a yr. and now have it cracked imho...
1st coco is salty and dirty and needs to be washed /unless you buy the premade
canna coco..
The store bought
canna coco is expensive though, but they wash it and buffer it with a coco buffer that basically has calcium nitrate, magnesium nitrate, and iron... (FYI SAME INGREDIENTS THAT ARE IN
CALMAG+)
I make my own with a lrg bale for 10$ each fills a 20 gal
smart pot canna cost about 60 to do the same...
1.By washing it you remove salt debri sand etc...
2.by buffering it you have coco thats not calcium defficent and stealing all your calcium untill its satisfied... This is why many growers boast of better result with used coco
2nd 3rd time around....
3.AND MOST IMPORTANTLY PH BUFFER... Many dont relize this, cause they dont have the proper tools ,but the runoff is not the accurate way to determin ph... Hanna has a 400 $ ph meter that goes directly in the soil and you can jab it in there several times/ares and get multiple readings.... HOWEVER THIS ISNT NEEEDED IF YOU ph buffer your coco prior to using it...(basically soaking your coco in water that you adjusted to 5.6-5.8) let sit for hr. minimum 24hrs. I prefere and then its like rockwool as long as you feed with 5.6-5.8 water it will always stay there.....
With that all said I also use
canna coco a+b (homemade version)..
Been running with no problems for 6+months ,so other day checked out bitches and they were looking bad...
Starting going thru diagnostic mode and checked ph...
Wouldnt you know it it had creeped up to 6.2-6.5 range...
If you don't know coco doesn't like anything over 6.2 imho...6.5 and above they will not eat cause there in LOCKOUT...
So I flushed and flushed untill runoff was ppm of what I was using to flush in my case it was hose water 145ppm I flushed downt to 180ppms
But here's weird thing I check ph and it spiked 6.7-6.9...
Now Ive battled this be4 and would just keep flushing with 5.2 water until it broke and came down,but this time I just added food and I believe this balanced out the ph and its holding @ 5.8
I think what threw off the ph in 1st place is i tried 2ml/gal of m.o.a.b instaed of the 1ml/gal recomended by the nice people here on the farm...
This I believe caused lockout causing ph flux. Which explains the flush/feed to re calibrate my ph SINCE I HAD PH BUFFERED IN BEGING
o