I hear coco passes water very quickly, especially with a perlite mix, and tend to need watering multiple times per week. In my soil grow I feed once a week, and water every 3 days between, but with coco would watering with plain water wash away my nutes? I'll be sprouting in 1 gallon pots of a 80/20 mix, and transplanting into a more airy mix of 60/40 into 2 gallon pots. Think this is a good idea? And about my watering situation, how often do you think I'll need to water, and when I do should I be feeding every time? I'll be using H&G 2 part, along with some excelurator. And most likely will be using tap water, if that is okay, however my water is coming out at around 175 ppm which seems high to me.
hey im growing in coco now, i feed everyday because my soil drys that quick. If ur going to grow in coco and perilite u are growing hydro so u need to feed pretty much everytime at least i do because coco has no nutrients in it. Its much diff than organic even though it looks like its a soil, its rly not. Read up on askEds guide its really help full, im working on my first grow in coco and perilite if u wanna check my thread out
Smoky gets it. Good advice! Always use some nutrition, even if it is watered down and low strength you want to maintain your NPK ratios in the solution and in the media. While your plant is developing its root system you will water infrequently, only as required, similar to soil. Soon though the root system will fill the container and be mature enough to handle regular feedings, even when the media is still moist from the last one. My goal is to get to the point where I basically HAVE to feed every day because the plant is just that thirsty. There are a lot of ways to use coco though. A mature plant can be watered 3x per day or once every 3 days depending on the amount of media and the size of the plant. As the gardener and designer it is up to you to decide how large you want your plants and how much media to use, there is no one best way. Do what makes sense to you. One thing I can say though... Managing the runoff from several plants every day can be very time consuming. Moving to a no-waste organic coco mix and watering 2x per week cost me about 20 minutes per week. Maybe less. Doing a 20% drain to waste 2x per day cost me about an hour per day. Maybe more. One style cost me 60-80 hours of my time while another cost me just 2 hours... How you manage runoff in coco can save you a lot of time, and time is money.
Thanks for your advice, I always look forward to seeing your advice in threads SCMC, and thanks to you smoky also. I'm doing a microgrow in coco, just 2 plants, they're gonna be my little babies so I don't mind spending time on them, I just want everything to go okay, because I hope to yield 2 oz. ea the way I plan on setting up my lights. Will do a grow journal if I can get my camera fixed. But how much water should I be using? Currently in 3 gal buckets I only need a gallon of water per plant. But that's soil, and larger buckets. Should I be watering less with coco seeing as it's much more nutes?
haha see thats the advice that no one can really give is what i have found out since my grow adventure has started. When you are growing hydro, with coco and perilite you sort of have to figure it out by trial and error. I have not ever had an issue with over watering in coco. Im pretty sure the only time u can really even over water is before it has a root base, and that time is when its a small seedling. once it fills up a small solo cup size container with roots it should be good to go. Coco drains so well that any excess water will run out the bottom. As for amount of water, i think it really depends on the size of the container your plant is in. I water until like about 10-20% runs out the bottom of the container, this way i know the medium is saturated. As for watering less because of more nutes is not correct. Remember coco has zero nutrient value to your plant, this means any and all nutrients your plants receive is from what you add to your water before watering. Your plants will tell you if your giving them too much nutrients or not enough. Always start small and work your way up, thats what i have done and i have yet to over fertilizer "knock on wood". At first i was going too small, my plants were starving and were growing at a snails pace, as i gave more nutrients it sped up. Atleast i didnt kill them, it is easy to fix under nuting and hard to fix over nuting problem. Again like i said before i water with nutrients everytime i water because they need it. It is only receiving nutrients when u water. If it eats all of the nutes up and u give it plain water it has nothing to work with. How frequently to water is another thing that u must figure out. I water everyday but i know some people dont do that, no one method is necessarily the "right" or best way to do it. Even strain to strain will require different watering methods, thats your job to learn what the plants want. I hope this helps, im not an expert grower by any means, but i have been reading alot of stuff and have some hands on experience now from what iv done. btw im not sure what u know about pH, but it is probably one of the most important factors when growing hydro. If your not sure about how to regulate it i would highly recommend reading some of the threads on here about pH. I beleive one of them is called pH and what it means for your plants it has a sticky i think in coco. Good luck with ur grow dude, post some picture if u get a chance!
Where can I read more about this? I may want to try this next time as 1hr every other day through flowering was a bit much for me.
I recommend you skip the perlite. It's not at all necessary with coco, and the cops look for perlite, which is like a giant "I'm growing pot here!" beacon if they see it in your flower beds or compost pile. A good buddy of mine is still incarcerated after perlite in the compost pile led to his demise. I use 100% coco, and it's impossible in my experience to overwater. I use 7" white square pots that hold 1.65 gallons. Since it's hydro, you don't need large containers. I water with full-strength nutrients every single day, never letting the coco get dry. That's about 4.5 cups per pot per day ... I use a 1.5 cup plastic gravy separator as my watering can. It takes me maybe 30 minutes a day on average, which is nothing since I spend twice that much time every day just looking at them. I actually recommend tapwater. In every case that I've used distilled, R/O, or rainwater I ended up with mineral deficiencies that I had to deal with. Unless having multiple additives and magical sundries is a large part of the enjoyment for you, I'd recommend keeping it simple with tapwater. I don't know about ppm, but my tapwater has an ec of about 550 out of the tap, and when I mix in a half-teaspoon of Jack's Classic it settles out around 750. That's pretty hard, but hasn't caused me the slightest bit of trouble, whereas purified water is always a lot of trouble. What I'd suggest is total simplification. 100% coco, a simple balanced fertilizer with micros (Jack's Classic), tapwater, and white vinegar to pH to 5.8. Then you feed every single day, never let the coco be dry, and allow a good runoff of a cup or more.
I had a diary in the indoor journal section. You can just dig through the threads I have made from my profile. It's called The Crash (and Burn) Pad. It served as more of a place for the haters than anything. While I may do an awful lot to help out around here no one gives two shits about my journals so I tend to not keep them up very well.
Are you coming from ICMag or Rollitup? Not everyone's tap water is the same. Many people report the opposite, getting better results with clean water. Micro elements are easily added back to clean water for known levels of hardness rather than guesstimating. Additionally, tap water hardness levels can fluctuate through the year as the aquifer is drained during the dry months. This can cause the same sort of head scratching when the grower is unaware that their tap water is harder or softer than it was during the previous grow. Filtered water provides consistency to some people. There just isn't one way to do things. The whole "pure coco can't be overwatered full strength jack's classic everyday" thing sounds like the Rollitup way to me, but I could be wrong. Different strokes...
If you had an opinion to share with me, or desired a conversation with me, you wouldn't have opened with an insult therefore eliminating any possibility that I'll ever pay attention to you again. My point had nothing to do with uniformity of tapwater, and everything to do with the presence of minerals in it, which purified water lacks. Fourth grade English. Welcome to oblivion, troll.
I didn't know you would take my assumption that you had been on another forum as an insult... You should smoke some weed. Also, you might not want to start with the name calling just yet... Especially when my post remained on topic and I am very, obviously, not a troll. Hang around a little bit, act cool, and maybe you'd see that
I've been nothing but cool, and this doesn't quite sound like an apology for your smug insinuations. Try again.
I've been assisted by him and thought he was a really nice person, which is why it stung so badly when he made those insinuations. All I can do is tell people what I know, and all I know is what I do, which is all I've described. I'm proud of my methods and my successes, and I like to share them. No matter how much assistance he's given, he wasn't very polite when he spoke to me like that, and that's pretty clearly obvious. I'm not an agent of some other board, I'm not saying there's only one way, I'm just another schmo growing pot and trying to help. Now my feelings are hurt, and ya'll are piling on. If I'd come off all smug like that, I'd apologize. It's only human. Then we could talk about tap water like two equal human beings, and maybe learn things.
I have accounts at ICMag, RollitUp, THCfarmer, cannabisculture420, hydrocanna... Just to name a few. It was not an insult. It was not an insinuation. It was a question, a hypothesis. You have definitely taken the most aggressive and hostile position that you could. Calling me a smug troll because I asked if you were coming from another site??? Really? You have done nothing but insult me with your recent posts. And try to make it seem like somehow I am the villain? Good luck with that... Maybe you need to put the keyboard down and think hard about what you do next around here. Continue to throw insults around, calling people smug, trolls, and incapable of comprehending your 4th grade English, and I have a feeling you'll go the way of the dodo soon. Act cool, apologize for your insults, and move on. You were not wronged by me at any point. To accuse me so indicates to me that you cannot be thinking clearly, and I am trying to offer you the chance to reevaluate your position and attitude here. Take it or leave it. It makes no difference to me. I just want the community to avoid name-calling as it hasn't been an issue since a certain someone decided to "take me on" and lost.
You're beyond reach. I back away and make it possible for us to resolve this, and you double down. Whoever it was that "took you on", I'm not him. If you wish to contend that your post was other than a smug shootdown, that's your business. I don't plan on deconstructing the plainly obvious English. Whatever helps you sleep nights. I haven't the time nor the inclination to continue with you further. Why don't you just ignore me, and I'll certainly be ignoring you. Just another internet troll, with a chronic case of willful obtuseness.
I know your talking to SCMC, but I'll also be ignoring you, like it'll matter, I give you 7 days to be banned or stop posting, that's how it usually goes with trolls like you.