Bake your coco. Rinse it for a long time watching runoff ppms, get them under 1 ec, put it in turkey bags, and bake it. You need to kill off pathogens and insects and their eggs and their nasty stds from sri lankan hooker root aphids.
Coco is great. It makes roots behave differently because of some enzyme or something. It contributes a ton of K and S as it slowly decays, so the S gives more flavor and K leads to more frost and bud size. Coco needs to be fed a certain amount of Ca and Mg before it is "full" and can stop locking up Ca and Mg.
Coco run by itself should never be flushed w/water, that will strip away the salt balance we try to maintain with it. It must always be fed some strength of food so as to not screw up the Ca and Mg thing.
But I do not know how that would work out in soil. I don't know a lot about soil. I do know that Subcool uses it now in his supersoil recipe that some peeps are fond of.
Everybody who plays with coco ends up moving towards it more and more.
I do believe that amending your soil with coco will aerate it more, and enhance your growth rate.
I have only used Canna, B'cuzz and some random new block of compressed stuff from the grow store, so I cannot say about HD's coco.
Didn't know HD carried coco. What size bags or bales do they sell?
It's not bad at all its not the finest coir I've seen it has a little coir fibers in it and chunks here and there some about the size of croutons. EC was lower than some bags of coco I've bought before. It's a great price for 2.5cft.
I've gotta be honest I never bake my coco this just dosnt make sense. I've been in coco for over 5ish years now never had an issue. Just make sure ya rinse it well, or get a large tub throw your bricks in fill with water once they've expanded tilt it and dump the water out fill it up with fresh water let it sit a minute then tilt and dump the water out again and repeat till the EC is low. I rarely have to do it more than 3 or4 times. Gnats are inevitable with coco and if this is going into a soil mix your still just running the same risk as ya would with any organic median.
Sterilization of the median might kill off some buggies or maybe some pathogens if there is even any in it.....but it also opens the door anaerobic pathogens and local bugs to fill the median. Detrimental bacteria is always stronger than beneficial bacteria.
Adding a preventive soil drench like gnatrol or even just a neem oil drench will be just as effective as PASTEURIZING the media. You actually don't even want sterilized media for plants. You want pasteurized media, aka composted median. Young plants are very sucseptible to root rot and anaerobic bacteria which forms from not having active strong micro-life in the soil. Adding in something like oregonism xl or even coffee grounds to your mix while composting can erradicate the problem.
Since your adding it too soil already just rinse and toss it in. There is no need to add 100 extra steps for lil to no added benfits.
That's my 2 cents.......
I have used the Beats Peat coir available here at home depot in Canada an I can tell you that it is shit. It isnt ph buffered so expect your ph to buffer out to 6.5 for 3 or 4 weeks and then it will drop like a sack of shit to the low 4's. On top of that, even though I thoroughly rinsed it seemed to release more salt at the 2 week mark and plants started to burn up and required some serious heavy flushing to save them.
(Used for preparing non-buffered coco substrates such as compressed coco blocks)
Calcium Nitrate 290 g/l
Magnesium Nitrate 280 g/l
Magnesium Sulphate 10 g/l
Ferric EDTA 2 g/l
Make 1L by beginning with 500ml of RO (demineralised) water. Add ingredients one at a time, dissolving each ingredient before adding the next. When all ingredients have been added, top up to 1000ml (1L) with RO water.
What I recommend you do is hydrate the coir blocks in mains (tap) water. That is, fill a bucket or tub with mains water. Measure the EC of the mains water before adding the compressed coir block/s. Let’s say it’s EC 1.0 for arguments sake. Add the compressed coir block and allow it to expand. Stir the water and coco substrate around and then measure the EC again. You’ll no doubt find the EC is now much higher. OK, now run mains water through the coir (you may find a bucket with holes and mesh at the base helps here). Run the mains water through (flush) the coir until the water that has passed through the coir (runoff) is no more than EC 1.0 - 1.2. I.e. Original mains water EC ideally matches that of the runoff.
Now fill up a bucket with demineralised (RO) water and dilute the buffer concentrate to 1.4 EC (700ppm). Place the hydrated/expanded and water flushed coir into the diluted buffer solution and leave to soak for at least one hour.
After one hour or more, take out the now buffered coir and squeeze out the excess fluids so the coco substrate is not saturated/water logged. You may find drying it in the sun for a while helps. .
Ready to go – you now have a high quality buffered coir product at a fraction of the cost that you would pay for similar products through stores. I’d also recommend that you mix the coir with perlite. 60% coir to 40% perlite when using it as a run –to-waste medium.
Tip: Many of the compressed coco blocks that are purchased through gardening centres are (when uncompressed) coco powder. If this is the case, look for varying grades of coco substrate, working from fine to larger fibres and mix them into a single product to increase air porosity within the media. The ideal coir particle size is 0.5 – 4mm.
Note: Integral Hydro does not accept advertising revenue from industry interests. Information provided re recommended products is done so in the interests of the consumer and based on lab work and other qualitative analysis conducted by ourselves.
I have seen it, it is called beats peat by planters pride.Is this coco available at California Home Depots? I don't remember ever seeing coco at the HD and I know their stuff well.
I'm really doubting you go the root aphids from compresses coir........I suppose anything is possible.....that's why I suggest a root drench preventitive....if your worried....
No one should charge their coir, period......there is no reason to charge coir ever......
there is a good chance that you didn't flush the coir enough ahead of time..... I suggest soaking the coir and flushing it a few times next time....soaking the coir will help leach more of the salt out.........
Again do not charge or whatever your coir completely uneeded.
I swear to freaking god I'm only trying to help.......I'm not trying to prove a point or be right....I'm just trying to make sure some of yall have a better chance at success without busting your ass to get there........
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