Bedgrower looking for perspective about coco as amendment

Hello!

Have been growing in bed then beds for almost five years now. Same medium for all the time, just lesser when I went from bed to beds. One bed is 1,2 X 1,2 m and 40cm deep. I really love bed beds for its ability to be flexi in the way of nutrients and water usage. I have tried in some cases to see how long before I notice a thirtsy plant. It can be a long time. Myself, family and friends enjoi some of the good tastes and aroma too. Many say I have som taste and smell they never get anywere else. I enjoi it too. I started growing in just old manure with sawdust and some compost of hay, this ha been aged for a long time, years. I started to mix this with some peat, other compost, native soil, pasture containing mushrooms, michorizza, used a lot of straw as mulch, chicken manure, bonemeal, vinasse, molasse and so on... Result has good tasting herb..

Now.. I have a need to make it more effecient and then some people have been putting ideas in my head. Coco, some of them mentioned is something I should look into. I want a automatic watersystem anyway, so I could feed multiple times a day.

Then I thought of coco and run off. Im a real cheap ass, LOL, so what if I put pots on top of the beds and let the roots and run off water go into a sort of worm/compost bin underneath? Or is this me smoking Biker Kush and thinking I have great ideas?

Or, to just make the beds lighter make a mix of coco and compost?

Beds with just coco (perlite, leca(?)) feeding with no run off.

Yes.. I have a logical problem with run off, no where to go in a non problematic way...

Thinking about starting with 64 plants per bed, maybe more. Traditional SOG.

:yay: great idea mate, WOHOO :yay:

I will also do a side by side with a medium made out of Picea abies instead of coco. Liked the way this stuff felt.

Talking about it a little here:
https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=374512

coco is great esp for beds as doesnt break down like peat and better structure. marked improvement in grows

When you make coco part of your soil/soilless mix, you don't need runoff.
It will then need to be treated like organic soil, especially when it comes to watering

Multiple watering per day as in a hydro approach only if the coco is just the medium (maybe with some perlite for even better aeration).
The coco is just another way to create a mix to grow in, like peat, but more sustainable and it has it's pros and cons.
And clearheaded is right, it does not break down as quickly as peat (which is decompsoing plant matter in the first place) but it will break down eventually, which you can counter my adding a bit of fresh coco in every round you grow new plants.
There are great recipes for the mix here on IC mag.
I prefer Lavender Cowboy's recipe for a soilless mix using coco, lime, perlite, ewcs, bone meal, blood meal, kelp meal...
Best of luck with your beds
CC

I suggest taking a listen to what KIS organics has to say about this. I know he prefers peat over coco.

Think I have soon landed on what option. Coco in pots and pots on hydroton over the compost bed. The theory is that I can concentrate the feeder roots in the coco and let the rest travel further.

Had some trouble with a supplier on watering a system. So ordering tomorrow from a another place. Weeks wasted.