Thanks for reading.This will be my first grow ever and have been doing research for about 4 months on all the related things associated with growing.I've read a lot of different things about amendments for coco and would like to get some more useful info into some of your guys techniques for additives to coco.So if you would please list the added ingredients and amounts added.Such as lime,blood/bone..ect.And maybe a line-up of nutrients from start to finish. Much love, Me
You can mix anything in to coco you would mix in to soil. I think there are a few amendments everyone can agree on: Perlite Dolomite Guano top dressings and amendments, changing from <N to <P Other things you can add include: GH Rare Earth silica/humic/micro supplement Worm Castings Composted organic material Bone Meal Blood Meal Oyster shells Kelp Gypsum Chicken dookie Mychorrhizal fungal products Epsom salts And the list goes on and on. AskEd seems to have a pretty effective formula of his own and an experiment going with Marine Cuisine. With amended coco sticking to organics is FAR preferable. Perlite can hold on to salts, so I recommend using 2x the coco you do to the perlite for good aeration with minimal salt retention as the coco has a pretty good level of aeration alone. Silica supplements and dolomite lime can be extremely beneficial in conjunction with the coco to buffer your pH, but you'll need to watch the composted material and fertilizers because they are usually on the acidic side. Building a good organic mix takes time because it needs rest. The longer the better. If you can start your plants in pure coco and allow them to root up (because they don't need nutrients early on anyway) this could buy you some time. A week minimum with a couple of waterings on your mix, a month would be better. 6 months would be best. Mixing up your coco is going to be an interesting process for you as an inexperience grower. You are going to have to find a method that works for you. Just research the products I've suggested and figure out what will work for you as far as what is available to you. Don't over do your mix using maybe 15% amendments to 60% coco and 25% perlite. Using a good organic tea, or nutrients from an OMRI certified company would benefit your grow. As well as things like Blackstrap molasses for carbohydrates to boost your biologicals and fulvic acids to help break down large molecules to the size they can be drawn in through the cellular membrane of the roots. I haven't amended coco myself before so I can't tell you how much of each to use. I have been on another site for a while and some of this amendment ideas come from over there. Following 1/2 the amount suggested goes a long way. Keep it simple and just get what you need, learn, then expand.
^^ I couldn't agree more with everything said here, good stuff! My amendments experimenting is not really at a refined stage yet LOL but I have had lots of success with just about anything I throw in there. The only one I didn't care for was the worm castings, it really seems to mud up coco and unimproves the texture. The plants seems to like it enough but I can't help but feel they were being deprived of air and it made a mess. Everything else seems to work great though. The Marine Cuisine is a beautiful mix of many of the ingredients listed above and is producing one of the healthiest plants I've ever seen. FF has a steamed bone meal fertilizer that I believe would carry a plant through flowering. I choose to try bat guano because I love the taste it brings out, but basically anything seems to work as long as the proportions are OK
EWC, kelp meal, blood meal, bone meal, green sand... ...and Mychorrhizae kick ass... it really helps in organic grows.
dont know if anyone mentioned cal/mag suppliment...a lot of coco needs this...might be cocos one weakness
I've been wondering the same thing I've wanted to move to True living organics but I will not budge on leaving coco. What would be the ideal amount of each ingredient/gal
i would just mix perlite and coco and use a full coco nute line with some beneficial funghi i personally think the soil will fuck up the properties of the coco if you add it too much if you want organic then use biobizz with your coco
My buddy growing doesn't like perlite in his coco at all. He uses a combination of different hulls i.e buckwheat, parboiled rice and i think soybean, all of which add to the nutrient profile when they break down. As mentioned earlier, you can amend it like an organic living soil and build you microbial life. Be sure to add neem to any mix to help with pest control Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum mobile app