Making the Switch to Coco Beds 1st timer

Lowman · Feb 7, 2012

DrCALIGREENTHUM said:
why so can you elaborate?

I have found..and others have said as well...flushing with straight water starts lock outs during the final week(s). I usually get a P lockout when I feed straight water. Coco requires a balance. Straight water may throw off that balance. I know some folks are able to use straight water...and if it works for ya...all the power to ya.

But I think there is enough info out there from many experienced growers that state what I already said. I have found that feeding coco at low EC (1/4 strength) tends to nullify the need for a flush at all.

nebulius · Feb 22, 2012

I remember seeing in Jorge Cervantes Ultimate Grow (either 1 or 2) he stated the same thing. He said always flush with a 1/4 strength nute solution. I believe he said use your flowering nutes to make the flush. I always add some hygrozyme in my flush.

deep buddy · Feb 22, 2012

Lowman said:
I have found..and others have said as well...flushing with straight water starts lock outs during the final week(s). I usually get a P lockout when I feed straight water. Coco requires a balance. Straight water may throw off that balance. I know some folks are able to use straight water...and if it works for ya...all the power to ya.

But I think there is enough info out there from many experienced growers that state what I already said. I have found that feeding coco at low EC (1/4 strength) tends to nullify the need for a flush at all.

so do you think it needs to be nutes for the ec or maybe something like mineral magic. whichs i use to raise my ec before i add my nutes to save a lil on nutes works great. i wonder if this would work instead of the nutes? any thoughts?

edit. mineral magic = mineral matrix

DrCALIGREENTHUM · Feb 22, 2012

Lowman said:
I have found..and others have said as well...flushing with straight water starts lock outs during the final week(s). I usually get a P lockout when I feed straight water. Coco requires a balance. Straight water may throw off that balance. I know some folks are able to use straight water...and if it works for ya...all the power to ya.

But I think there is enough info out there from many experienced growers that state what I already said. I have found that feeding coco at low EC (1/4 strength) tends to nullify the need for a flush at all.

+1 I found out the hard way

I could not agree anymore with your post and wish I saw it sooner...:sign0055:

Lowman · Feb 22, 2012

deep buddy said:
so do you think it needs to be nutes for the ec or maybe something like mineral magic. whichs i use to raise my ec before i add my nutes to save a lil on nutes works great. i wonder if this would work instead of the nutes? any thoughts?

Not sure. I am not familiar with mineral magic. If it has a little npk...I'm sure it will work fine.

jakew215 · Feb 25, 2012

i had four 4x8 beds setup very similar to these beds here, drains setup the same way, i used about a inch of lava rock on the bottom and grew with soil, obviously much different, but im anxious to see how this turns out.

all i know though is that it took a LOT of water to get the whole bed wet. it would take 200+ gallons at feed/water times. hours of hand watering.

St3ve · Mar 21, 2012

any updates?

SweetTooth · Apr 5, 2012

Yes, any updates man? Hope they diddnt burn up from lack of drainage. Thats that happend to my flat beds built from plywood lined with poly. IMO with coco beds it is key to use a hydro tray lined with a smart liner to allow for propper drainage

bigdrty · Apr 10, 2012

What going on guys, sorry for the delayed updates for the room just been busy chopping the other room and trying to get this coco room dialed in. well the ladies are looking good so far, going into week 4 of flowering. had some problems with high PPM runoff, was around 1500+
I made the mistake of not getting enough runoff on each feeding so I assume I had major salt and Nute build up. flushed the ladies until I had about a 700ppm runoff. then trying to keep my overall ppms around 800-900.
gotta say, Starting to love the CoCo, These are the most healthiest plants I've ever had.
But I did notice a little slower growth of the buds compared to Rockwool.
also I dropped the Hydrozyme and replaced it with H&G Algen Extract.
also I did notice some burn on some plants assuming I am not getting enough runoff, I am currently feeding every other day about 45 gallons on each side, I am thinking of feeding everyday to prevent build up... but I am worried about overwatering (which I heard is very hard to do with coco) or Root Rot.
any experiences or tips are welcomed..
here are some pics that was taken before flip

el boyo · Apr 10, 2012

lookin good bro

bigdrty · Apr 10, 2012

heres a quick snap after feeding.. 2nd day into week 4.
feeding 5ml A&B, 2ml CalMag, 2Ml VitaMax, 2Ml Carbo Load, 5Ml Sweet Raw,
Monster Bloom W/Bigbud, 5Ml FulPower, 3.8Ml Elgen Extract.
I do notice some Leaves yellowing up and some others showing early signs of burn and leaf curl.
runoff is 770ppms and Ph 6.3

MakinGoo · Apr 10, 2012

Nice big grow doggie

m4n · Apr 11, 2012

Ran a coco bed in a 3x3 tray with no holes on the bottom...maxibloom,koolbloom,watered with ph'd 6.1 for the last 8 days and clipped off all the fan leaves... Bud came out tasteting good...

bluejay092 · May 4, 2012

Hey Bigdrty

Love the grow so far. Was thinking of doing the same with coco but i want to avoid raising the beds and just have no drainage (currently using sunshine mix that way). Do you think that could work?

Also how do you plan on reusing the coco do you sift it and just flush it? With raised beds must you shovel out all the coco rather than throwing a sifter on top and standing the beds?

And final question is what the cost of filling a bed full of coco compared to sunshine mix.

Thanks,

nuttso · May 22, 2012

Very interesting. I'm trying around with beds too at the moment. Obsoul33t got some coco beds running wich he watered once a week. If you do a quick search you'll find what i mean. I'm currently watering my coco bed with metrop fertilizer and some aptus boosters & enzymes. I water once a week and everything looks fantastic. I think the key really is to know what the plant will take up and have a good oppurtunity to flush. You really don't want too burn these plants the whole grow. I know that it is possible to do a whole run in coco beds without flushing. But you need to know your plants. I made it easy for me and chose c99 by mosca. This bitch can take ALOT of nutrients and is really hard to burn. Other might have died or yielded half of this pheno with this nutes she got.It's true never ever water coco strickly with water. You will get the salts much quicker out there when you water with some nutes in there. i need 150 gallon water mixed with a small amount of nutes to flush 50 gallons of coco in beds. Here is what i found best watering and flushing beds. If setted up propely it will cover all the area.

http://www.irrigationdirect.com/dd-sm360b#

The best thing about using coco in beds is that you can reuse it up too 2 years without loosing quality or weight, if you do it right. I even know some people that reuse it 3 years and some dutch rose growers up to 10 years.

I found that feeding once a week done right will give killer results without much work involved. The best part about feeding one time a week and not storing nutrient solution is that you can water with 75-77 F wich is way better than 65-67 F. Freshly mixed salts staying for 1 day to stabilize, other day ph. Than 5 min before watering all the additves and last the enzyme.

Only thing you need to do is hangin the lights higher in the first 3 weeks when they grow in the bloom phase and clean the rez once a week before you put in fresh nutes.

Last week 1/4 nute strengh.

Later when finished just cutting the rockwool away and flushing with veg nutes and alot of enzymes. If you give them everytime you water enzymes you don't need to care about the roots.

It's essential to use Trichoderma & Mycorhizza when starting again. You can't overdoo it with that. The more the better. Always have some nematodes in there too. Get them from capulator --> cap's bennies.

Resinable · May 22, 2012

Nice beds bigdirty.

I find it interesting that so many are switching to beds. Back in the early days of indoor beds were very common in Humboldt and Mendocino indoor grows. Redwood beds filled with peat based soilless mixes and high plant counts, sog style. Results were often less than impressive by our standards today but that has more to do with how far indoor has come not any inherent problem with beds.

bigdrty · May 28, 2012

bluejay092 said:
Hey Bigdrty

Love the grow so far. Was thinking of doing the same with coco but i want to avoid raising the beds and just have no drainage (currently using sunshine mix that way). Do you think that could work?

Also how do you plan on reusing the coco do you sift it and just flush it? With raised beds must you shovel out all the coco rather than throwing a sifter on top and standing the beds?

And final question is what the cost of filling a bed full of coco compared to sunshine mix.

Thanks,

I really think you need a good Drainage system if you plan on running your PPMs kinda high. Then I would bring them back down with a weekly flush.
I definitely want to reuse the coco. I just finished my run and I can say I am going to need to add about 3 bags of coco per side to make up the difference..
I have never ran Sunshine mix so I couldn't tell ya.

nuttso said:
Very interesting. I'm trying around with beds too at the moment. Obsoul33t got some coco beds running wich he watered once a week. If you do a quick search you'll find what i mean. I'm currently watering my coco bed with metrop fertilizer and some aptus boosters & enzymes. I water once a week and everything looks fantastic. I think the key really is to know what the plant will take up and have a good oppurtunity to flush. You really don't want too burn these plants the whole grow. I know that it is possible to do a whole run in coco beds without flushing. But you need to know your plants. I made it easy for me and chose c99 by mosca. This bitch can take ALOT of nutrients and is really hard to burn. Other might have died or yielded half of this pheno with this nutes she got.It's true never ever water coco strickly with water. You will get the salts much quicker out there when you water with some nutes in there. i need 150 gallon water mixed with a small amount of nutes to flush 50 gallons of coco in beds. Here is what i found best watering and flushing beds. If setted up propely it will cover all the area.

http://www.irrigationdirect.com/dd-sm360b#

The best thing about using coco in beds is that you can reuse it up too 2 years without loosing quality or weight, if you do it right. I even know some people that reuse it 3 years and some dutch rose growers up to 10 years.

I found that feeding once a week done right will give killer results without much work involved. The best part about feeding one time a week and not storing nutrient solution is that you can water with 75-77 F wich is way better than 65-67 F. Freshly mixed salts staying for 1 day to stabilize, other day ph. Than 5 min before watering all the additves and last the enzyme.

Only thing you need to do is hangin the lights higher in the first 3 weeks when they grow in the bloom phase and clean the rez once a week before you put in fresh nutes.

Last week 1/4 nute strengh.

Later when finished just cutting the rockwool away and flushing with veg nutes and alot of enzymes. If you give them everytime you water enzymes you don't need to care about the roots.

It's essential to use Trichoderma & Mycorhizza when starting again. You can't overdoo it with that. The more the better. Always have some nematodes in there too. Get them from capulator --> cap's bennies.

Thanks for the info I am going to see if I can water my beds once a week.. hard to tell the moisture level down there. I was sticking my fingers all the way to see how moist the coco was. but I kept ripping up roots so I ended up watering every other day with runoff.
the Trichoderma I just picked some up in powder form. and going to give this a shot. Foiler I heard is the way in late flower. can you explain how you are using the Trichoderma.

Thanks again for the info....

hogan400 · May 28, 2012

Yeah, good work in there. "So fresh and so clean".

I like the beds and the fact you have it organized well. Proper shit bigdirty

bigdrty · Jan 21, 2013

Hey guys Its been awhile since I last updated this thread. but I've come across some problems in my grow.
I have some mushrooms popping up in my coco, using 30% of recycled coco on top of new coco with 20% perlite. I am still running
H&G A&B Aquaflakes
drip clean
Multizen
root excel
Great White
Carbo Load
Sweet
Protek

After last cycle, I rinsed out the coco and transplanted the new Babies. after a day or so they all went sad face on me. just running T-5s
ppms around 200
Should I just Start over and use H202 to Clean out the COCo?

Thanks..

Before Transplant

After Transplant.

And the Mushrooms..

Confuten1 · Jan 21, 2013

Bigdirty, although i cant see the pix of ur plants after transplant(wont load for me?), id bet its because u didnt flush the coco enough b4 transplant. Its very common for coco to hold alot of n-P-k (the P) and baby plants dont like that. I believe house and garden doesnot reccomend reusing coco when running their shooting powder because of this reason.
I also run coco beds, check my logs, ive avoided reusing coco for this potential reason.
Hope that helps,
Confu.

Making the Switch to Coco Beds 1st timer

Making the Switch to Coco Beds 1st timer

Lowman

nebulius

deep buddy

DrCALIGREENTHUM

Lowman

jakew215

St3ve

SweetTooth

bigdrty

el boyo

bigdrty

MakinGoo

m4n

bluejay092

nuttso

Resinable

bigdrty

hogan400

bigdrty

Confuten1

exploitin strengths - perfectin weaknessess

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