mikeoldschool
Member
Welp sucks its come to this, but its time to call out to all my intraweb nerds that are mastered in the art of Coco growing.
Ive been a member and browsed these forums since way way back in the day. So much valuable epic knowledge on here.
Im a rare poster but def understand the true value for all growers this forum offers.
Now for the struggle.
I started growing seriously and for a living in 1993. I have probably missed 6 harvests since that year and i harvest every 4 weeks.
I have been growing strictly in coco coir i believe since 2007.
After serious ventures in just about every medium ive personally ever heard of with success in all of them i finally decided Coco gave me consistency the best quality product and the best consistency. Also gives a fair amount of forgiveness compared to most hydro mediums.
Im running into more than a few problems the last year or so and ive had enough of it. Im looking for the advice of not just anybody. Im kindly requesting the advice of fellow veterans not 2 year experienced coco growers. No offense.
Nutrients - ive seriously tested and used so many lines ive long forgotten half of them. Really i can't say that any of them worked much better than the next. If i was forced to make a choice id give my heavy 16 formula the go ahead for the best results i ever personally got in the last 12 years in coco. I think i ran the heavy 16 line for maybe half of that time, 6-7 years or so. Behind that, House and Garden, advanced, then several coco specific lines all worked just fine.
My biggest issues never really came from nutrients if and when i ran into problems. It was always either some ruthless pest, or some sort of plant virus or disease that are always difficult as hell to diagnose let alone to treat.
Right now every since the laws changed in my state of California and the industry flipped on its head. The value of quality packs getting cut by more than half. I finally bailed on the over priced nutrient lines. And i bailed on the several brands of coco that were far over priced as well.
Now im still going through too many new nutrient lines for me, and still figuring out a cheaper way to use coco coir itself with out buying a pallet of fucking Cana, or the several other brands i love that never gave me a single issue. I just can no longer afford it.
I even recycled my old coco for several runs by just doing major flushes, then conditioning it with products like enzyme komplete. Im done with that method though. I don't care what people say because ive put real effort into doing that right and still seen too many negative affects afterwards.
Right now i just bought several bricks of Cocotek, and several bricks of Nutrifield mega-bricks. I also purchased perlite to cut the coco 30/70.
Ive built a very affective coco rinsing system that ive used to literally make any coco virtually free of salts.
I test all my run offs bit by bit to see what these brands start at, and how long it takes them to hit the target range of "clean"
On the Cocotek i was seeing original run off as high as 350-400 ppms and im rinsing with 0 ppm RO water. after about 30-35 gallons of ringing i finally got the PPM runoff to 30 ppms.
On the Nutrifield bricks my initial runoff was fucking 650 ppms. Crazy man. But once again after about 40 gallons of RO rinse over a 6 hour period i got it down to 30 ppms.
Now im going to run a side by side with 100 plants. Honestly once its rinsed and conditioned, i don't really see much of a difference in the fiber. So who knows.
My problem in life is this. Im done spending top dollar on any nutrient line. It just isn't gonna happen anymore. Overhead is too high since electric price has tripled over the past decade, Price of packs is cut into a third of what it once was. So im just not running things like heavy 16 ever again for how ridiculously over priced it is. Even though it works amazing.
The advice im looking for is my veterans that are crushing crops with that insane quality with lower priced affordable nutrient lines. And yes im very aware that genetics is by far the first priority to success. And im rocking the best on earth.
I also live by environmental control is as high a priority or higher than any nutrient line. My environment is on lock.
My last run i was using the US version of the cyco base line with some advanced additives. It did alright, but not as quality as im used to producing.
I just started vegging my newest crop with the Nutrifield Coco base line with their Veg Ignitor. Im seeing a lot of strange deficiencies that im NOT used to seeing in my 26 years of growing. Somethings definitely off and its driving me nuts.
I clone in rockwool, transplant to 1/2 gallon bags til roots are a healthy packed white ball, then into 3 gallon smart pots for final 3 weeks of veg into flowering.
I water DTW and usually once a day in veg, then transitioning in flower i can water sometimes as much as 6 times a day in heavy flowering with minimal runoff and never signs of nutrient burn.
But right now its veg that is showing more than one deficiency. It has to be nutrient based. Im not supplamenting with calmag because im running a coco specific line. And even when i was in heavy 16 i wouldn't supplement with calmag. Just wasn't having problems with it.
So if anybody has been in my shoes and ran super high end nutrient lines for years with great success and then switched over to any nutrient line that was a quarter the price and still achieved the same top level results? Please chime in. Im humbly all ears.
And any questions im open to answer to get some better advice.
Thanks a ton guys.
Theres some shots of a few of my flowers over the years in my profile i believe if you want to see im not talking out of my ass.
Ive been a member and browsed these forums since way way back in the day. So much valuable epic knowledge on here.
Im a rare poster but def understand the true value for all growers this forum offers.
Now for the struggle.
I started growing seriously and for a living in 1993. I have probably missed 6 harvests since that year and i harvest every 4 weeks.
I have been growing strictly in coco coir i believe since 2007.
After serious ventures in just about every medium ive personally ever heard of with success in all of them i finally decided Coco gave me consistency the best quality product and the best consistency. Also gives a fair amount of forgiveness compared to most hydro mediums.
Im running into more than a few problems the last year or so and ive had enough of it. Im looking for the advice of not just anybody. Im kindly requesting the advice of fellow veterans not 2 year experienced coco growers. No offense.
Nutrients - ive seriously tested and used so many lines ive long forgotten half of them. Really i can't say that any of them worked much better than the next. If i was forced to make a choice id give my heavy 16 formula the go ahead for the best results i ever personally got in the last 12 years in coco. I think i ran the heavy 16 line for maybe half of that time, 6-7 years or so. Behind that, House and Garden, advanced, then several coco specific lines all worked just fine.
My biggest issues never really came from nutrients if and when i ran into problems. It was always either some ruthless pest, or some sort of plant virus or disease that are always difficult as hell to diagnose let alone to treat.
Right now every since the laws changed in my state of California and the industry flipped on its head. The value of quality packs getting cut by more than half. I finally bailed on the over priced nutrient lines. And i bailed on the several brands of coco that were far over priced as well.
Now im still going through too many new nutrient lines for me, and still figuring out a cheaper way to use coco coir itself with out buying a pallet of fucking Cana, or the several other brands i love that never gave me a single issue. I just can no longer afford it.
I even recycled my old coco for several runs by just doing major flushes, then conditioning it with products like enzyme komplete. Im done with that method though. I don't care what people say because ive put real effort into doing that right and still seen too many negative affects afterwards.
Right now i just bought several bricks of Cocotek, and several bricks of Nutrifield mega-bricks. I also purchased perlite to cut the coco 30/70.
Ive built a very affective coco rinsing system that ive used to literally make any coco virtually free of salts.
I test all my run offs bit by bit to see what these brands start at, and how long it takes them to hit the target range of "clean"
On the Cocotek i was seeing original run off as high as 350-400 ppms and im rinsing with 0 ppm RO water. after about 30-35 gallons of ringing i finally got the PPM runoff to 30 ppms.
On the Nutrifield bricks my initial runoff was fucking 650 ppms. Crazy man. But once again after about 40 gallons of RO rinse over a 6 hour period i got it down to 30 ppms.
Now im going to run a side by side with 100 plants. Honestly once its rinsed and conditioned, i don't really see much of a difference in the fiber. So who knows.
My problem in life is this. Im done spending top dollar on any nutrient line. It just isn't gonna happen anymore. Overhead is too high since electric price has tripled over the past decade, Price of packs is cut into a third of what it once was. So im just not running things like heavy 16 ever again for how ridiculously over priced it is. Even though it works amazing.
The advice im looking for is my veterans that are crushing crops with that insane quality with lower priced affordable nutrient lines. And yes im very aware that genetics is by far the first priority to success. And im rocking the best on earth.
I also live by environmental control is as high a priority or higher than any nutrient line. My environment is on lock.
My last run i was using the US version of the cyco base line with some advanced additives. It did alright, but not as quality as im used to producing.
I just started vegging my newest crop with the Nutrifield Coco base line with their Veg Ignitor. Im seeing a lot of strange deficiencies that im NOT used to seeing in my 26 years of growing. Somethings definitely off and its driving me nuts.
I clone in rockwool, transplant to 1/2 gallon bags til roots are a healthy packed white ball, then into 3 gallon smart pots for final 3 weeks of veg into flowering.
I water DTW and usually once a day in veg, then transitioning in flower i can water sometimes as much as 6 times a day in heavy flowering with minimal runoff and never signs of nutrient burn.
But right now its veg that is showing more than one deficiency. It has to be nutrient based. Im not supplamenting with calmag because im running a coco specific line. And even when i was in heavy 16 i wouldn't supplement with calmag. Just wasn't having problems with it.
So if anybody has been in my shoes and ran super high end nutrient lines for years with great success and then switched over to any nutrient line that was a quarter the price and still achieved the same top level results? Please chime in. Im humbly all ears.
And any questions im open to answer to get some better advice.
Thanks a ton guys.
Theres some shots of a few of my flowers over the years in my profile i believe if you want to see im not talking out of my ass.
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