Wonderful! That's great to hear! The yields are definitely one of the benefits of coco that I'm in love with. Can you elaborate on what "actively feeding the plant and whatever microbes will live in the media" entails? I have a rudimentary understanding of what microbes like/need, but are organically derived elements supplemented differently than inorganic elements? Let me clarify, do plants see a different response to organic npk ratios than chemically derived ratios? Do you ph or use r.o. in your organic coco? If so, do you use calmag?
Hoo boy, a huge subject with those few questions!
So, first the main thing to understand is that soil and coir are different specifically because of what comprises soil. It's not just organic matter, but also minerals. Minerals are almost completely lacking in coir, relatively speaking. With organic soil the paradigm is not to feed the plant, it is to feed the soil, which then feeds the plant. If you care to spend some time doing some reading, I cannot recommend Teaming With Microbes highly enough as a fantastic primer on the soil food web.
With coir, there are no minerals or much in the way of other nutrients that are stored in the media, so it must be actively fed for the plant to gain nutrition. This is directly feeding the plant and bypassing the microbial part of the equation. Chemical salts tend to desiccate or otherwise harm microbial populations (this is what leads to 'dead land' in farming, along with tillage and constant passes over the soil of large equipment, which compacts it irretrievably).
SO! When you're doing an organic method in a coir base, you must respect that the coir is not mineralized, but it can be to some extent, and that it can also serve as a home for some microbes that can help with the feeding. That said, the course folks usually end up on is using organic feeds to directly feed the plant, because of this mineral and microbial deficiency.
Teas, stuff like liquid bone meal, Fox Farms Big Bloom,
Earth Juice (I'm pretty sure that's an organic feed) can all be used to good result in coir.
I use RO/DI water for my coir and indoor cultivation, my well water is too hard and has caused me too many problems growing inside. I NEVER use "
cal-mag" because I've grown to fucking detest the combination products. The ratios are WAAAYYY off, which I only learned
after I separated out Ca feeds from Mg feeds. I was using BioLink 6% Ca and that's what I recommend for Ca if you can find it (I cannot), and MgSO4 (Epsom) for the Mg (plus, consequently, a lot more S than Mg). Alternating the Ca with the Mg allowed a larger amount of other feeds, as well as allowed me to tease apart what was really happening when I was using "
cal-mag" and, along with that, learned that the bigger problem is always Ca, not Mg.
Oh! I also like to use a source of humic acid, which allows a lower feeding rate as well. I do pH, but using organics I haven't messed with measuring EC.
