Hey guys. I just bought a ton of stuff from the hydroponic store. Over 200L of coco (with 20% petelite mixed) soil, petelite on its own, leca, and some nutrients. Anyway, I didn't know what leca did, so I just bought it and never asked the clerk who worked there anything. So from my little 2 minute Google session, I have established that it is used as a growing medium on its own. So I literally just bought 25L of leca for nothing. From when I saw it, I thought you put it ontop of the soil and it benefits it somehow. So now my question to you guys is will it do anything if I just put it ontop of the soil? Have a layer of leca? Like, will it help keep moisture in the soil and help prevent direct sunlight from evaporating everything?
If you're shooting for a soil grow, I would return all the Coco and "Leca" (which I've never heard of or seen before...which means absolutely NOTHING (LOL)), and buy yourself some Roots Organics Original or Fox Farms Ocean Forest instead. Roots is the better of the two, but the FFOF isn't too bad. Coco is not the easiest media to work with when attempting a "soil" grow....even though a lot of this stuff is soilless. You would have a much easier go at it by using one of the two I recommended. The Coco is best used by hydro growers (mostly DWC people) and I've seen post after post after post by newby growers who grab it not knowing anything about it. We've been growing with the Roots for years now. It's expensive, but the best thing on the market that I've found. It's specifically designed just for growing these plants and you get weeks of good feeding for them out of the soil alone with no extra feeds. I start my clones in it after they pop roots and generally don't have to start feeding my plants at all during veg until weeks on into the process. If you understand how & when to repot your plants, you can get through the entire veg cycle (assuming you have the light in place to force necessary plant growth) on the soil alone. Know this: Nutes are nothing more than plant food. If your plant isn't hungry yet, giving nutes is just going to burn it. The KEY to getting good plant growth and a nice harvest weight is LIGHT (primarily flower lighting but it's important all the way through the plant's life). Each plant you flower needs the highest wattage/best quality (proper spectrum) flower lighting you can hang over it and keep plant and light as close as possible (without light burn) to get your best yields per plant. You should never be forced to raise your lighting just to cover more plants as that robs all plants of valuable light strength and all suffer. You decide how many plants you can flower at a time according to the available light coverage/wattage you have. You'll always harvest more off a single plant that is tended properly and gets all the high wattage/good quality light it can get during flower, than you'll get by attempting to flower 3 in the same space. Space for each plant to spread open so light can penetrate below the canopy of the plant is how you get good bud development all over the plant and not just in the tops. Light is only going to penetrate 18-24" at most in any situation, so it's important to keep light/plant close as possible during flower. Don't put your faith in nutes. Though important to the process, they're trumped heavily by light as the element of the indoor grow that will produce success. Find a reliable source and take the time to do some serious reading and research about the plant, how it grows and what it needs for best production during the different cycles of it's life. Read up on nutes so you have a basic understanding of what you're giving and why. If you want to use them to your advantage, you have to understand why you're doing what you're doing. They need different levels of different things during each phase of life to get the most out of them. But giving them when it's not necessary can do damage. So do the work to get a good understanding of taking care of your plant and feeding your plant. Also, spend time reading up on lighting. Without it, you're not going to grow very much.....just a fact. Better light gets you a better plant and a better harvest. The learning curve is pretty steep for the new grower....lots to take in and digest and make sense of. It took me a good year to get comfortable with the whole process. But you improve with every plant you grow. Have fun and happy growing! TWW