Any coco gods out there?

I'm not the dude you quoted...but you're definitely using coco in a sort of unorthodox way that I haven't seen before. I'm interested to see where this goes, this is how we learn new things.

That being said, your other plants look pretty healthy.

 

Like I said, Good luck!


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I believe mrcanucksgrow on yt uses coco with gaia green dry amendments just need to top dress occasionally.

 

For sure dude. The real reason is theres very few people that use coco instead of peat in a mix. The reason is the coco holds two things very well, water and oxygen, nothing else. So when you water it the water displaces the old water in the mix and the roots get fresh oxygen so its like a dwc without pumps and bubbles or all the craziness of dwc cause it works in pots. So your supposed to feed it daily to runoff to keep the oxygen flowing through the root zone and it prevents salt build up in the coco cause it NEVER dries out. The dry stuff is probably fine to feed the plant but everytime you either let it dry out and then feed your probably gonna get a ph swing in the water from the nutes in the coco and your gonna flush salts into the water cause the dry salt is getting wet and drying and wet and drying so like I was getting to originally check your ppm of your runoff and pH and see if its out. Not a good method since the nutes are in the coco but might give you idea if maybe there's more feed in that pot or if salts are built up and a good flush can solve it. Secondly of either scenario is you feed daily or "water" cause the nutes are mixed into the coco, your gonna possibly burn em if its slow release nutes or its gonna rock titties. Like I said not alot of people do it like this so the best method is still liquid nutes feed daily to runoff at a ph of 6ish. You said you PH your water to 5.8 and the nutes in the coco are definitely lowering ph so figure out what keeps the shit from drying out and the ph right. I had a few wrinkly brown leaves and twisted funky plants. Didn't have a ph meter and I was feeding em 1/2 strength juice so I knew my ph was high but they grew and the ph is spot on now. Coco is the shit.

 

No, its that we’ve seen others come onto the forum here who have nothing but issues when using dry amendments in coco.

You want to use dry amendments, giver!

You want to unlock the potential of coco, ditch the dry shit, get the 3 part GH Flora series and follow the cocoforcannabis suggestions.





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Get you a tree in a 3 gal pot.

 

How they doing?

 

I think you are taking it wrong man!! We have watched many people through the years try to follow different types of dry amendments In coco with most failing after putting alot of time and effort into a grow. I hope it works out for you and we all have a proper thread to reference when people would like to try a dry amendment in coco run.

 

Is that the dark devil from sweet seeds? I am definitely getting that if it is.

 

Beautiful buds, damn!

 

Absolutely my friend, anyone thinking out of the box with coco is someone I want to pull up a chair with and burn one with! Well I say out of the box, but when I journeyed into the coco with amendments & organic coco mixes over 10 years ago, I thought I was innovating but I found some guys in the organic forums here that were making soil by using coco as a base and adding all kinds of organics, they had been doing that for years and had lots of recipes and journals for this. I also found some other growers trying to ammend coco and go bottleless and we shared ideas and info, so I was not the pioneer that I thought LOL

I have a few journals of these trials and tribulations, but I see that the images are all fucked up. Apparently GC fubar'd a lot of images and links when they migrated platforms :-(

In any case, I did look through your thread and can't really say much to your grow without a bunch of questions & pics (you know the routine), but I'm happy to share some of the things I learned in my trials into amended coco and organics and hopefully there's some stuff in there you might find helpful.

So I feel you on the no runoff, that is one of the principals of organic growing along with no flushing and compost teas. A lot of guys will freak out and tell you that you must have runoff, but I don't think they fully understand organic gardening - they probably are only familiar with the bottled nutrient method of feeding which I totally agree with the runoff requirement. BUT, what you are talking about is organic method so in order for that to work with coco you have to go all in with the organic approach and keep a few things in mind.

1 - The coco really needs to cook first. What I mean by this is organic amendments are not immediately available, you know that organics need weeks to break down so they need time in the coco for that to happen. I had to let mine cook for a minimum of 30 days before I could get plants to feed naturally, but the longer the better - I think around 3 months is better but I could never get that step in easily. I had huge containers with coco mixes I was turning twice weekly, lot of work, lot of space.

2 - You have to constantly activate the microbes. Soil and compost are natural factories that break down the enzymes and cell walls to create that living environment that prepares the organics for root absorption. Coco is inert, so you have to activate those microbes somehow, and that's usually with compost tea that you aerate overnight. This is the kind of feedings that you definitely don't want any runoff!

3 - The containers need to be big. Soil is a factory, coco is a sponge. Coco does not store a lot of food for the roots, it has to be replenished constantly unlike soil that creates food on the fly. If you have a small pot, all your organic goodness will get used up quickly but a bigger container has more coco thus more storage and more microbe activity. I was using 5 gallon buckets for my more successful attempts, anything less were fails pretty much.

4 - Magnesium is a bitch to dial in. I had so much trouble with mag lockouts, along with a lot of other growers that were trying this at the time. I tried epsom salts, green sand, dried molases, all kinds of things to fix the mag issues but that was by far the thing that seemed to trip everyone up. I gave up on all that after a few years but later I found some info that the trick to getting coco to release the calcium & magnesium is to add a good amount of iron. I haven't tried it but Advanced Nutrients adds a chelated form of iron to fix the issue in their bottled lines.

I did not have consistent results, it drove me nuts and I never really could dial in a method that would fit my grow. I had several very successful runs at it though, but I'd say at least half of my attempts had issues small and major. I think many growers have had the same type experience over the years, which is why I believe some of these guys were telling you what a challenge it would be, or something to that effect.

I don't really know much about those dry nutes you are using, I used a possibly similar product called Marine Cuisine by Fox Farms. It was dry organics that you mixed in and used for top dressings. It was really great, I had incredible results in my outside vegetable garden (in coco) with that stuff.

But I do see a few items worth commenting on. It said to let the mix 'warm up' and then 'cool down', maybe mixing every few days. I believe this is the cooking that I described above, but they really don't say for how long (other than several days apparently). I also see they say to water until runoff, so that is odd for true organics and more indicative of a liquid feed program where dissolved solids/salts are involved. That is strange to me, but like I say I don't know much about this product. Maybe they have something different figured out?

One last thought and nugget I have learned along the way... coco really likes to be heavily saturated, like 75% or higher all the time. When you get lower than that funky things start to happen and the plants will have a hard time feeding correctly, they mimic ph imbalances and cause really strange effects in the plants. I believe the main reason for this is the fibrous makeup of coco, it has so much air present that the coco must compensate with moisture to keep the roots happy. When coco is allowed to cook, the microbe activity starts to break down the fibers in the coco and it meshes a little more like soil/compost, and with active microbes the roots have an easier time feeding on drier coco. So in short, if you are not using pure organics, you should keep the coco wet as you can. I water mine 4 times daily in that effort, but of course I'm on a bottled nutrient plan.

With your dried nutes perhaps there is a lower saturation level that the coco is happy at, but I tend to think that's not the case and the coco may benefit from a higher level.

I hope that all makes a little sense, and if this is the way you want to grow then I say give it a couple of go's! It looks like they make this stuff for coco so maybe you'll find the secret sauce to make this work to your liking. I believe you have some advanced issues to work out, which should be more rewarding than easy issues when you get it figured out LOL

You got some beautiful bud so obviously you got a whole lot right!