Reusing, and reconditioning coir suggestions

Ive always been a bit weary of re-using my media. I figure its about time to give it a shot and hopefully save a little money, and be a bit greener. I cant find any listed ways the manufacturers do it, but i think i know enough to get pretty close. I would like to preserve what i can of the microlife, so i will stay away from h202.

I figure i will go about it like this...

Break up the media, remove the root ball, and a majority of the loose root material with a gardeners fork.

Flush the coco with tap water (no chlorine) down to <0.6 ec or whatever the tap water ec value is.

Flush down to 0.2 ec with r/o water @6.5ph (keep bennies happy)

Place remaining media into pots that will be used.

Add full strength Hygrozyme, Great white or EM1, and possibly a little bit of molasses. Seaweed, humic, ewc have been in mind too. PH @ 6.5

Let sit for one week, and then bring the EC up from 0.2, to about 0.5 with cal-mag plus, and also add about 0.5ec main ferts. Adjust the ph to 5.8-6.0 for veg, or 6.0-6.5 for flower. This should put me around 1.0 ec total.

It is ready to plant in. I may have to add back 10% fresh coco, to compensate for the rootballs and other losses.

0.2 ec of calmag will be used in conjunction with the feeding program throughout the grow, as well as full strength enzyme for at least the first month. Beneficials reintroduced every 30 days.

Breaking it up before flushing should help release more salts with less water when washed because your exposing more surface area. It will also make it easier to rinse away more of those tough to rid precipitates.

Judging by the high conductivity of the buffered bcuzz coir i get (1.8-2.2ec), I feel like the cec of the coir might not be filled up right away with this method, but by adding some calmag+ every feeding it will eventually get there if its not already. Small plants dont need a ton of nutes anyways. The pre buffered stuff burns my plants every time. Even starting in 1.0ec mix is a bit high for me. I may even try to keep it at 0.8 for the initial transplant from the trays.

The only thing im really worried about is the amount of potassium as a byproduct of the breakdown of coir.. I know coco specific nutes compensate for this by adding a bit less, but heres the problem. I dont know what levels the potassium will be at in the breakdown process during my second run with the media. If they are mostly depleted, then i wouldnt think the lack of potash in a coco specific nute would not be a good idea.
I could be overhtinking this though. I assume it would take a very long time (many reuses) to deplete the media of its ability to shed the normal levels potash. By that time you probably wouldnt even want to use it anyways. Something tells me in right on this.

I encourage anyone with experience in this area to chime in and make and suggestions or comments.

I have no suggestions but I can tell you how I do it. I only flush my plants for 5 days before chop. ec is dropped a few weeks before that and I never went over 1.2ec during bloom. I chop up the used coco and let it dry somewhat for a few weeks. Then I run it through screened box with 1/2" screen. I get a lot of the roots out but there are still plenty of broken roots in it. I mix this 50/50 with new coco that was washed and precharged and is still moist. I plant clones, seeds or use it for going up in container size just like that. No problems doing it like that for a year. Goodluck!

Do you run in containers?
I have small mortar tubs I use for beds, I've literally cut out the old rootball depending on the size of the container of the new plant going in and replant. I fill in the sides with fresh coco and go from there.
Tubs are like 2'x4' and hold about 9 gallons of coco.

I'm under the impression you can reuse coco at least 3x's, so I haven't had any problems yet this way.
I also don't feed heavy in the beds, mostly 1.2 ish EC the entire grow.
Blumats with practically zero runoff.
You could always tinker with a light to see how t turns out for you before doing the whole grow.

I just flush before chop, remove the root-ball and as many of the root clumps as I can, then place it in a Rubbermaid outside until ready for the next run. I reuse about 3X. I spray a little neem oil on the coco in-case of bugs , because its outside.This has been working for me for years.

I reuse my coco 4x usually.. I just cut out the rootball and plug in the new one.. No breaking up or removing old roots.
I do flush for 7-10 days prior to chop and use cannazym and drip clean throughtout the cycle..
Simple, easy and the plants seem happy

Usually after the 4 th round the coco starts staying soggy, it gets broken down like mushee coffee grounds.. When I start to see that I toss it in the veggie garden

I sometimes cannot fathom "removing my rootball". In some of the root structures I've got in 2 Gal smart pots w/ blumats I literally can't break it up and remove the stump without a chop saw. The root ball is literally the whole pot.

Bigger pots with less impressive root balls I've cut out main mass and soaked the rest in pond zymes until it was able to be broken up easily. Takes a lot of floor space though..a few bigger farm tanks would make it easier, but landscaping with it and spreading it about is what I've been doing lately. In the city.. not as easy.

mowood3479 said:

I reuse my coco 4x usually.. I just cut out the rootball and plug in the new one.. No breaking up or removing old roots.
I do flush for 7-10 days prior to chop and use cannazym and drip clean throughtout the cycle..
Simple, easy and the plants seem happy

Click to expand...

This is interesting! You cut out your stump only and replant? I've heard of someone doing this on here removing only a solo cup size plug..maybe it was you. How dense is your rootball when you do something like this. Do you just continually break them down with the zymes?

Ive have replanted into coco just like you guys are talking about. Remember my "plant directly into bag" run Farmer? From waaaaay back. I had a bad experience with the roots decaying and promoting root disease to my plants. Still theres no doubt in my mind that this can be done with success.
I just think that the more roots you remove, the less prone you are to disease. It also depends on how much root mass you have. If your in 5 gallon containers maxed out with roots like farmer and I, you would just be asking for problems. Its simply too much biomatter for the enzymes and microbes to break down in such a short time. On the other hand, i think you can actually benefit from what root particles do make it into the mix you are reusing. I mean, its pretty much how nature builds soil and the life thats in it. Plant roots in nature cover a much larger horizontal and vertical area vs. when they are potted. It is not natural for a plants roots to grow in such a small area, therefore the microlife are not evolved enough to tackle that much density at once. This is my opinion, so take it with a grain of salt.

Smurf,

I think you hit on a good point, its probably easier to reuse the coco in beds cause there is so much more media, as opposed to (particularly) small containers.

smurfin'herb said:

Ive always been a bit weary of re-using my media. I figure its about time to give it a shot and hopefully save a little money, and be a bit greener.

I figure i will go about it like this...

Break up the media,
Flush the coco
Place remaining media into pots

Add full strength Hygrozyme, Great white or EM1, and possibly a little bit of molasses. Seaweed, humic, ewc have been in mind too. PH @ 6.5

It is ready to plant in. I may have to add back 10% fresh coco, to compensate for the rootballs and other losses.

0.2 ec of calmag will be used in conjunction with the feeding program throughout the grow, as well as full strength enzyme for at least the first month. Beneficials reintroduced every 30 days.

I encourage anyone with experience in this area to chime in and make and suggestions or comments.

Click to expand...

Hi Smurphin,
If you use the enzymes like you are describing, it would be much cheaper to just buy new coco. Just sayin, Hygrozyme is expensive.
Thats not even counting all the work, other products, "10% loss."

I know you understand that when you begin, the decaying dead root material IS the root ball.

I found it best to throw all the root balls into a big trash can and dose them with a diluted (maybe 50%) hygrozyme solution. Not even covered in it, just drenched the pile (everything got soaked) and covered in cool location for a month or 2. After that, you can pull the stump out with your hand, and the root ball is easy to break down.

All that work and you are still dealing with a non-inert medium at that point, something that looks a lot more like soil than coco as the root material will change as it breaks down unlike coco which is very stable.
You seem to have a handle on that part of it.
Assuming you also spent time flushing it for accumulated salts, and that you had zero pests or other rootzone issues that might survive your "no H2O2" requirement.

If you add up all your costs, it doesn't work economically.

My advice for your project with "saving money" as a requirement . . .
I would let time work for you and let the enzymes eat on the rootballs for a couple of months before anything else. This will have you starting with a more stable medium when you do re-use it, will make your manual work breaking it down much easier, and will require less of those expensive amendments to stay healthy.

Cant think of anything else.
(ETA: consider adding some perlite instead of more coco for your add-back to help keep that rotting old root mat from getting soggy.)
Cheers,

double post sorry

Reusing Coco... I've been doing it for a while now, in the same smrtpots, same coco.
I add hesi powerzyme throughout the grow to help break down the old, dead roots, but other than that, I just flush properly before chop ( until the PPMs are the same as the tap water I flush with), rip out the stump and then use the same pot for the next round leaving everything in there as it is. The old roots never caused a problem... easiest way i can imagine and it works great...

c

N yes I start cannazym 2 weeks into the first cycle and run it the whole time after that.. (Even right after transplant on the next (reused) rounds.

Thanks for coming by guys.

Ok thats it. Its time for a side for side. Till and remove vs. no till haha. Ill post here when im done.

@Raho- Whats up man thanks for stopping in. If i can make a machine to screen it, it will cut out a lot of labor, and pay for itself over time from the $ im saving on media.

Lets say i use a gallon of hygrozyme @ about $130
And 8oz of great white @ about $60

It will cost me about $200 in treatments, plus a bit of labor to feed a machine for a day. So lets say i paid someone $10/hr for an 8 hour day of doing this. Thats an extra $80 so lets round up again, and call the total $300 at this point.

The 10% replacement cost of 140 bags of coco is 14 bags.
14 bags x $18/bag @6% tax= ~$265

Lets do some more sloppy math and say $265+$300= round up to $600 grand total

Two 70 bag pallets at a bulk discount of $18/bag is $1260/pallet. So the initial cost of two pallets would be $2,520, and sales tax of roughly 6% would equal about $150. The total cost of buying new is about $2700.

So the choice would be to spend $2700 on new coir every time, or spend around $600 to recondition it. I would be saving $2,100 in this case.

For fun, lets say I had to double the amount of ingredients i listed, and the work load. That would put me around $1,100 for cost of reconditioning. I would still be saving $1,600 every run.

At five runs per year, i would be saving anywhere from $8,000 to $10,500 US dollars. Thats a brand new Kia!

Not to mention the greener footprint, and added security of not being seen picking up, or disposing of pallets of coir every couple months. Escpecially when theres 3 feet of snow on the ground!

I really need to give this a shot...

I spend so much damn money on coco...

Damn, I've never actually thrown away coco that wasn't
caught up in roots.

After three or four years I guess I've wasted maybe 10% of
total coco used?

I mix new with previously run coco, so I suppose there is
coco that is four years old in my mix.

I do sift it occasionally, keeps the texture I like. The sift is
used for seedlings and cuttings.