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.
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.