How do you get "healthy green" in coco

[Carl Carlson]

that really cracked me up! As they say, first you have to feed the coco!

It's funny, but true. I pretty much copied the poster Delta9 on this one, but have also found that it makes a huge difference towards eliminating the possibility of deficiencies after transplanting with fresh coco.

 

[Carl Carlson]

I still start seeds in seedling starter soil. i find that coco stays to moist for the little buggers.

i most recently used a jiffy seed starting flat with their expandable coco disks for the first time for 20 seedlings. All 20 popped, I add a little nutrified water to the bottom of the tray each day and than remove what doesn't get wicked up by the coco. It's fucking badass...

those few burnt leaves were caused by my failure to raise the lights one day and the plants were like a millimeter away. That's my truly ghetto CFL array.

don't fear the coco.

 

[Carl Carlson]

this is for greenhouse operations that use coco growbags and mixing their own nutrient components

http://www.vgrove.com/support/growbags.html

Charging of Coconut Coir Growbags

Coconut Coir is very high in Potassium, but low in Calcium. It is therefore necessary to charge the bag with high levels of Calcium to bring these levels in proper balance. To do this, charge solution is changed so that the amount of Potassium used is replaced by the same amount of Calcium Nitrate.

Eg. – If your solution required 200kg of Potassium Nitrate and 250kg of Calcium Nitrate, you would replace the 200kg of Potassium Nitrate with Calcium Nitrate. This would give you a total of 450kg of Calcium Nitrate and no Potassium Nitrate.

The bags are then filled until they are full of water, and left for approx. 48 hours or longer, if possible. They are then cut at the bottom of the bag as per your drain holes.

Once planted the feed solution will return to normal, however, it is recommended that the calcium level of the solution is increased by 20% for the first three weeks.

 

[bipotato]

heres a 96 gal/hour pump..completely silent... set up in a trashcan bin on a digi timer.....wow a lifesaver....multiple hand waters daily is such a bitch and my automated drips r soo nice

I don't see a siphon break. I guess the bin is below the drip sites?

 

[Hash Man]

mix in earth worm castings in the beginning or feed stronger, also silica seems to help overall health. also, make sure you are watering correctly, incorrect watering can produce many reactions that look like deficiencies or overfert.

 

[gates3rd]

Hi,

i had a problem with BlueCheese (Breeder i am not sure was a clone) it was always light green no matter what i have tried it was still light green. i use canna coco a/b and it seems that the new clones are light green again, all other strains look healthy green.

BC also had serious problems after watering with nutes and pk 13/14, very sensitive plant, maybe some strains arent good for a coco grow ? i am not sure but i never had problems with skunk strains and the color on coco.

Cheers

 

[Dr. D]

Canna coco isnt the best with young plants sometimes but id drop your ph to 5.6 they like it on the lower side most of the time with Canna around the 6 mark is usually too high....Peace

 

[bipotato]

Canna coco isnt the best with young plants sometimes

Canna Coco A+B nutrients, or Canna Coco medium?

 

[Hazy Lady]

Try A foliar application Cal-Mag or something similar with a N source in it! Foliar apps are the fastest way to fix up a problem, it hit the root of the problem instantly! Try It and see! just keep the solution on the weaker side, say 300ppms! Good Luck! Btw What the PH of your Run-Off doing , does it drift up or down or is it pretty stable?

Good advice, try Alg-A-Mic from Bio-Bizz, the best foliar feed I ever saw/used.
I replaced ½ my Canna Coco with Alg' for my nutrients and never had thicker, greener healthier plants..

 

[Dr. D]

Canna Coco A+B nutrients, or Canna Coco medium?

Sorry, the nutes. I always start my plants in a coco seedling compost mix to get em going nicely because i find they just dont take up the feed properly at that young stage of growth...Peace

 

[delta9nxs]

hi, superhemp! flora nova bloom at 750 ppm on a .5 meter, calcium nitrate at 100 ppm, and magnesium sulfate at 50 ppm is a great coco specific formula for veg. go to full strength at around 8". 900 ppm. you will see rapid green up and lush growth.

d9

 

[petemoss]

Hi delta9nxs! Good to see you're still going strong! But why do you use those chemicals instead of some CalMag? Is it the cost? I have a small cab SOG and a little quart container lasts for months.

 

[delta9nxs]

Hi, pete, nice to hear from you!

Calcium nitrate and magnesium sulfate are precisely the chemicals in most cal-mag formulas. A bottle of cal-mag plus is 43-44 bucks at the grow store and is diluted in water. A 50 lb bag of calcinit cost me 28 bucks. Every farm supply has it. I bought a bag over a year ago and have used less than two quarts of volume. At this rate it will last years. The six lb bag of magnesium sulfate at rite-aid is 4.99. so we have greenhouse grade calcinit and pharmaceutical grade epsom. Both are used in huge quantities by commercial growers everywhere. They never buy premixed liquids for several reasons. Cost of product, cost of shipping and inability to change ratios.

But if all you need is a small amount over time a few bucks for a bottle once in a while is not a bad deal.

When I first started in coco I experienced the initial cec problem some folks report. I was using flora nova bloom at the time. I found that the fnb, calcinit, epsom formula totally stopped the display.

I have now switched to jack's hydroponic special 5-12-26 at 650 ppm and calcinit at 250 ppm. This also stops the initial symptoms. The jacks is already a whopping 6+ % magnesium so it doesn't need any more mag.

With either the fnb or jacks used this way you will have no problems in coco and will get fast growth.

Nice talking to you, come by my place sometime and we'll burn one.

 

[petemoss]

Hey d9, your hydro shop must be overcharging you because the Botanicare Cal-Mag Plus is only $13 online. You were probably looking at the gallon size. I'm using FNB and find that I only need to initially rinse the coco with a weak nute solution and cal-mag. After that just FNB and the plants look great. Just recently heard that at least two coco companies are recommending to continue with cal-mag for the first couple of weeks.

 

[2Lazy]

Not that I expect any of you to listen...

Cal-Mag Plus contains IRON!

Its not so much the calcium, or the magnesium, or even the boost of nitrogen (2-0-0), it is the effing IRON!!!!

Canna Coco A&B is completely lacking a micro-nutrient profile. You must supplement if you use reverse osmosis water. I chose organicare Calplex, Huvega, and Humega to condition my water for use with Canna. Another good tip for you kiddees is to use Nitric Acid to drop your pH with coco nutrients. phosphoric acid will precipitate with calcium and create salts in your media. Especially if you add too much, or you need to adjust back up and have to add carbonates. At that point the nutrients are JACKED! Toss'em.

You want to minimize pH adjusting as much as possible. Canna has a pH balanced system if you get all the stuff (rhizotonic, cannazym, and boost) so you don't have to worry about balancing anything with the right nutrients anyway. Just use that micro-nutrient profile with some iron and you'll have lush plants.

 

[delta9nxs]

hey, pete! yeah, i was talking about the gal. the calcium nitrate is good to apply throughout the life of the plant. in veg it gives a bloom formula more of a "grow" profile. you will see much faster growth with it.

i'm editing to say that my hydro shop always overcharges me. for everything.

 

[Scrogerman]

My Hydro shop dont like me walking through the door, i always pester for 20% discount before i buy lol! Seems to work & ive taken others there & continue to do so, so i always get my discount 15% Minimum!

 

[mrred]

i upped my calicum and they turned very green, i use epsom salts and ca-libur 20 is pretty cheap source of calicum

 

[Hazy Lady]

Edit:

Don't want to step on your toes scrogerman...but foliar feeding is not that simple. It's something that you'll have to learn yourself before applying it to unhealthy plants. Feeding them the regular way is a bulletproof way to make em happy - but nevertheless one should learn foliar feeding too just not like this

Dude, I think your completely wrong, whats up with a foliar anyway, its not rocket science & besides im talking weak solutions, say 300ppms to be on the safe side! Like others have pointed out Coco has this sucking up of certain cations ability, especially Mg & Ca, now the way i see it a foliar app would hit the root of the problem without causing problems with lock-out in your mediums, foliar application is very underrated imo & overlooked by many growers, its a certain quick fix without messing with your medium. Nicean easy bro! Please explain what you mean man?

Not for the first time, I am with Scrogg, as long as you don't go crazy and use sensible amounts of nutrients, foliar feeding is the quickest way to fix or indeed determine what a problem is. I see someone on here over fert almost daily, (will that guy ever learn ) I am still awaiting the 1st foliar feed disaster.
With respect, It makes no sense that you would be against this?

 

[SuperHemp]

Well it appears my picture host has vanished but nonetheless the suggestions in this thread did help, I am in the USA right now so I don't quite know how the plants are doing and they've been repotted to soil and put out in the woods due to my holiday and some serious security concerns going on right now but the problems on the younger seedlings was the encyclopedia definition of calcium def (necrotic leaf-tip tissue on fresh leaves, etc). I am going to e-mail the producers of my coco slabs to see if they're preloaded with calcium (it says it's "throughly washed and preloaded with essential coco nutrients"). I suspect that as the plant i had going in unflushed coco did great all the way and grew like a mofo. I am picking up a bag of calcium nitrate when i get home, if this proves to be a problem in the future i have the solution. I already have magnesium sulfate.