Coco, planter size, and watering frequency

[Skoosh]

Rice hulls increase aeration, significantly.

 

[shoestring]

Rice hulls really does increase aeration properties of.coco coir. As does perlite. Ive done.side.by sides and perlite mixed in really does make.for a slightly better plant than straight coco. Also ive grown 6 foot trees in 2 gallon aurora pots. Had to feed/water em like every fee hours but its how i like to keep me mums. Coco coir forever!!

 

[Hank]

cctt I have the same problem. I'm using 23L pots with straight coco and it was taking 7 days until I could water again. Now that my plants are bigger I'm down to about 4 days. My question is would air pots be a solution?

 

[chaosinc]

Maybe I'm confused here! I've been running coco for approx 5yrs now and have never fed nearly what you guys are talking about, and my yields are just fine. I vary between 7, and 10 gallon pots, water once every couple days in veg, and once every other day in bloom, am I missing something here?

 

[shoestring]

You can treat a plant grown in coco coir medium just like a soil or peat based soilless substrate. By this i mean growing in the same sized pots and frequency of water/ feed times. They will grow just fine. In fact thats how i grow my vigorous mother plants in my veg room to kinda slow em down a bit. Its just that you can also treat coco coir more as a hydroponic medium by using smaller pots (2 gallon pots will grow TREES with no signs of being rootbound) and feeding more frequently but at lower ppms. The plants seem to love this kind of setup. Just make sure if you do it this way that u get lots of runoff wastewater. And ive also found that building a drip manifold and using a resevoir with a pump hooked to a timer gave me much more precise control over when i wanted/needed to feed the ladies. At full rocking bloom most of my varieties are getting 2 to 3 45 second feed times broken up equally over a 12 hour phtoperiod day. Ive grown just about every way out there from dwc, ebb and flo, nft, aeroponic, passive wick. You name it and for me a automated non recovery drip system in coco coir is it hands down. Good luck

 

[Nybadboy]

I should definitely rephrase that to say a funky CEC...coir colloids hold cations (especially Ca and K+) very tight and doesn't start exchanging them until they are all filled, or the coco is "charged". In fact, the reason coco has to be washed repeatedly is because of all the bonds to K+ and other cations. Pre-bagged coco is usually chemically treated to allow for maximum cation exchange and then amended with some sort of mineral ore (IE azomite, glacial rock dust, etc) and a calcium source (crab shell, oyster shell, CaCO3, etc) to further stabilize CEC and PH. Without those amendments, the CEC is quite high...but also what's been described to me as "sticky". Not washing or buffering coco right is what will lead to significant problems...if I understand correctly coco is mostly cellulose and is freshly harvested (meaning it hasn't aged for centuries like most high CEC organics), so it is still very fresh and electromagnetically active, which means it's CEC fluctuates with the PH and shouldn't be regarded as "stable" unlike peat, biochar, compost, etc.

But ya...your most common cations in treated coco are gonna be Ca and Mg if you're using coco specific (or anything in a bottle, really) nutes, and they will definitely act as antagonists, especially in low EC or high P/K environments. PH alters the availability of Ca and Mg as cations so if you're Ca deficient lower your PH and if your Mg deficient raise it a little. Well-balanced coco shouldn't need much Ph adjustment as it's cation exchange isn't extremely active. Cations only really start getting released and exchanged when some are made more available or less available due to inconsistencies in PH or feed ratios. Being a fresh and very active medium, coir is still decomposing, which means it will still be exchanging nitrogen and carbon molecules, which can affect N availability for your plant.

I'm just ranting at this point...I don't even remember why I said no CEC, probably because I didn't want to start typing out all this lol

Sorry to but in guys
I'm running in coco and having all kinds of issues it seems every time I feed and hit with sensi cal (cal mag ) product with higher N in it my plants yellow up and some even looked burned this is drivi g me crazy .
Any suggestions would be great

 

[axcxe]

I'm running in coco and having all kinds of issues it seems every time I feed and hit with sensi cal (cal mag ) product with higher N in it my plants yellow up and some even looked burned this is driving me crazy .
Any suggestions would be great

Have you checked the EC and PH of your runoff? Sounds like their might be a bunch of salts built up in the medium.

 

[Nybadboy]

I was ph at 5.5 and now I bumped it to 6 at most 6.2 and I think things are turning around but I don't want to speak to soon

 

[gonnagro]

Sorry to but in guys
I'm running in coco and having all kinds of issues it seems every time I feed and hit with sensi cal (cal mag ) product with higher N in it my plants yellow up and some even looked burned this is drivi g me crazy .
Any suggestions would be great

I think your probably building up nutes in the coco because the plants aren't eating them because of root rot. This is a problem i've never experienced in tupur but have often experienced in pure coco. Once it starts it takes a while to fix and you will never reuse the coco it started in. Not worth the headaches.

Here is the fastest way to test this theory, however it will also destroy the "life" in your coco. Mix up 1 drop of bleach, (yes bleach), for every 1/2 gallon of ph'd water and do a root drench. Wait a couple of days and do another. If you start to see new growth and green returning, you've found the problem. Now you have to figure out what method you'll use to finish the grow.

You can continue to feed the synthetic nutes with a little bleach to make it to the end of flower and at least have a harvest or you can try to rebuild the "life" in the soil with something like Voodoo Juice or Hydroguard or Caps bennies. If its an 8 week plant, most likely you won't have sufficient time to rebuild the the coco so concern yourself more with the next plant and just nurse this one until the end. No matter what prepare for a low yield and sterilize anything you plan to reuse in another grow before planting in it.

I no longer experiment with coco substrates like I used too. I think Tupur is the best priced and most practical, completely reusable, and the most reasonably priced, (I would like to try a coco/growstone grow, but that's kind of an expensive substrate).

Good luck!

 

[Tnelz]

Haven't seen a ton of this thread just the last 2 posts. I see some people are having issues with coco. My 2 cents. Slf100 will stop salts from building up. And it will also help make food more available. Salt build up and nutrient lock out due to salt build up will demolish u. And it can look like a number of things. So when u post a pic and ask what is this u will get 10 answers all of which may be correct but all will lead to a bad end because it's really lock out. In coco I feel it's imperative to feed and feed often to get maximum results. But it is beyond imperative to make sure u don't get salt build up so use slf or sea green or big time enzyme or something like that. I say slf because A it is made to remediate salts so it will 100 percent keep salt levels in chck but it also has certain bacteria that make calcium more available and cal is imperative in coco. If ur having all types of issues in coco and u just can't figure them out I would almost guarantee is some sort of lock out caused by excess salt. So use a product that assures that won't happen. Respect.

 

[Tnelz]

Just just purchased cana cannazym will this help salt build up I want to water every 2 days

It will. If u haven't been having problems it will ensure u don't.

 

[Tnelz]

I did at start can I mix it in with my feed a+b and boost I add tiny bit of calmag I into feed just make sure but will cannazym will help salt build up ?

Yes it will.

 

[Tnelz]

Great so when I mix cannazym into feed it will help salt build up I can get away with watering 2 days instead of everyday still look healthy atm im learning in progress

U def don't have to water every day in veg. Or bloom for that matter. However I always did in bloom. But in veg u can go 2 3 days and be fine assuming ur plant isn't telling u otherwise.

 

[Donzilla]

How many crops are advisable before completely replacing the coco for new coco