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Zero runoff coco grows.

covert

Member
When I moved to 100% coco last year I read widely and all the sticky mega threads on best practices. The thing was that I was growing pretty successfully before but in the hope of getting things even better I started trying the tips of keeping wet, 20-30% runoff etc.

Things went completely wrong and I had the problem of having to deal with runoff and it was wasteful.

So I went back to how I was doing it before with no runoff handwatering and things are great. My bottle of nutrient hardly moves by the end of the grow and I feel good having grown with minimal waste of nutrients and water.

Here are my tips on doing this...

I use the lowest recommended feed concentration as a baseline feed strength. Seedlings get first a quarter then a half of this strength.

For Canna this means 2 mL per L for baseline of A+B.

I use vinegar for pH down as I'm using RO water that has a mineraliser that makes the water slightly alkaline. I use around 1.5-3 mL of 5% vinegar per L and this is deliberate to make sure the pH moves around a bit.

For handwatering I typically use around 500mL per feed for 4 fully grown plants per feed and this will be twice a day. I use a combination of 1 L and 4 L pots. Never any bigger. They have saucers and occasionally I will see a small runoff. I skip the next feed in any pot that has shown a runoff and water a little less afterwards.

My plants occasionally wilt when in a rapid growth phase and I give more next time to compensate. This never harms the plants.

I have a constant 12:12 light cycle and this feeding regime gets me plants that get to a metre easily in absolute length in 4L pots. I high stress train these by crushing the stem and bending over fully the growing stem right down as far as it goes without tearing the plant tissues. The main stalk might get this 3 or 4 times and other branches get it as needed to even out canopy.

Not having to deal with runoff has been great. One less thing to worry about. The plants never show signs of deficiencies of any sort but occasionally tip burns and curls can happen. I just back off on the feed for a week or so to 1.5mL or even 1.0mL per L and gradually go back up again.

Works for me but the moral of the story is you absolutely don't need runoff in coco if you don't want to waste water and nutrients.

I do admit that you have to already have growing experience to do this. It's not something I would recommend to beginners as an idiot proof technique. You have to know the plants needs through one or two grows minimum preferably with a history of gardening before. Reading the plants is important and after a while it becomes easy.
 

superx

Active member
Veteran
I might try this next round or at least on one of my plants.
There is one or two threads on the same subject advocating what you have said.

I guess i just need to man up, and grab the bull by the horns so to speak.
Do you flush in between? it can be quite cumbersome having to deal with the run off, it can send a person demented.

On my last run i was using the IWS system this helped a lot with the run off and before that i was using a pondavac to suck it up, though it sounded like a hovercraft when turned on.
Its good your having success using this method, as many others seem to as well.
 

covert

Member
I might try this next round or at least on one of my plants.
There is one or two threads on the same subject advocating what you have said.

I guess i just need to man up, and grab the bull by the horns so to speak.
Do you flush in between? it can be quite cumbersome having to deal with the run off, it can send a person demented.

On my last run i was using the IWS system this helped a lot with the run off and before that i was using a pondavac to suck it up, though it sounded like a hovercraft when turned on.
Its good your having success using this method, as many others seem to as well.

I never flush the medium with plain water ever. I will decrease the feed strength if I see tip curl and burn but never need to flush.

Because I vape and don't combust the material I grow I don't flush before harvest either. I have tried flushing previously but found no difference to my taste for vaping and in fact I think a slight freshness or greeness was lost compared to non flushed. I think if you combust the situation could be different.

The take home being that flushing is optional imo. In nature plants can't be flushed of nutrients completely and they get by just fine and I don't think anyone smoking those complains. I personally believe the “flushing” mentality probably started as a smoker's paranoia thing about all the chemicals that were left in the plant etc.

The plant does a great job of building up its structure, tissues, terpenes and medicine using the available substrate and nutrients. As long as you haven't deliberately pushed the plant hard with maximal nutrient strengths then you won't have issues but that's just my opinion and experience.

Like I mentioned the minimal concentration Canna recommends of 2.0mL per L is my usual and even with my current grow of Hindu and Afghan Kush it's on the high side and I've had to pull back a little during early growth and I think I could probably have used 1.5mL /L just fine.

It conserves water and nutrients ultimately.
 

maimunji

Active member
Hi covert. I run coco blumats no run off. Things looking good at all. I try to deal feeding with canna nutes and currently run canna coco a&b at 3 ml/per litter. Clones showed pale look and little stunted growth. Give em cal mag hand watering and plants looking better. This make me think i have some kind of cal mag issues. Running canna 2per/litter when plants was in veg but they looks underfeed and I dump to 3 ml/litter this looks like cure them but now in strech they showed same hungry look. What is your starting water. Canna a&b at 2ml/litter is around 0.8 ec. 400 ppm.
 
I feel like you need to add something to this that’s very important or you’re gonna fuck some people’s shit up. People do actually take advice from this site. You can feed with no runoff and have amazing results it’s been documented...but you have to keep the coco wet at all times. Even the slightest bit of drying will cause your ec to spike and you’ll have ph and lockout issues like crazy. Try feeding once a day in flower in a 2 gal pot with no runoff...shit goes south real quick like.
 

covert

Member
I feel like you need to add something to this that’s very important or you’re gonna fuck some people’s shit up. People do actually take advice from this site. You can feed with no runoff and have amazing results it’s been documented...but you have to keep the coco wet at all times. Even the slightest bit of drying will cause your ec to spike and you’ll have ph and lockout issues like crazy. Try feeding once a day in flower in a 2 gal pot with no runoff...shit goes south real quick like.

I did quote the pot size as quite small that is being used and I have to say there are definitely times when I won't saturate the whole pot. I'll water alternate sides of the pot. Centre and then outer etc.

I've even seen times (rare) when whiter salt can appear but a quick mix of the top with lower moist coco and a feed will sort that out. On this grow with Hindu Kush a very vigorous grower in a 1L (1/4 gallon I think roughly for the Americans) pot has kept pace with the biggest in a 4L pot. Being in the smaller pot it has wilted at least twice overnight when I couldn't water in the afternoon but picked right up following watering. The plant has some signs of curling to one side that has a lighter smaller hemiblade. The one in the 4L shows some minor leaf burn but the 1L pot has no signs of burn at all. The plant is so vigorous that leaves curl down and they are thin as the thinnest sativas where the flowers are now exploding at the 2.5 week mark.

So my experience doesn't confirm that drying out coco briefly (even more than once) kills the plant. So I can't agree that the slightest drying is utterly bad. No doubt it's better to keep the feeding better aligned and you instinctively adjust the regime of feeding. This curly twirly Hindu Kushnjust caught me off guard with its phenomenal growth rate. But you adjust and bang it's all good again.
 

covert

Member
I should say that the curly twirly growth has been from first true seed stage and occasional appearance of new leaves on branches again sometimes appears with the curling leaves and they can go both clock and anti-clockwise (counter-clockwise for the Americans).

I think this is probably a genetic trait. I first thought it might not be a good candidate for breeding but later reading confirms that this behaviour is known amongst true Kush plants.

It has helped me understand this Hindu Kush and its at first bizarrely sativa like phenotype. All 3 are the same sativa lanky type but only one has the curly feature. Another grower on the internet seems surprised by the sativa phenotype enough to complain about it on the Sensi forums. In other threads elsewhere a grower talks about the tall lanky and the squat wide leaf phenotype and comments the smoke of the tall is better.

Anyway that's another matter entirely but exciting enough to make at least a small comment about.
 

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