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the Hand Watering coco thread

mrbarry

New member
Yah, I'm doing a Canna RHP certified organic
next after I finish up my current media.

It helps that I can walk to a CANNA dealer in 15 minutes
or drive in 2 minutes.

Canna also puts "sell by dates" on their fertilizer.

OH SOO JEALOUS!
I GET TO TALK TO THEM ONCE A YEAR WHEN THEY COME TO MY TOWN AND ITS GREAT GETTING ALL THE INFO FIRST HAND!!

DO THEY EVER HOOK YOU UP WITH SAMPLES? THEY HOOKED ME UP PROPER :)
 
B

bonecarver_OG

princess jasmine - i see the study was made in a university not far away really from where i live.

coco is really used a lot in comercial cultivation of vegetables and other crops and this is why coco is getting studied and explored at spanish universities.

it is no news really most of it but its nice to have an academic source of info instead of the info of the comercials of the salesdepartments :D

so the point is - the fact is the P and K is preset pretty much in all coco, not depending on the brand. majorly the biggest problem with cheaper coco is if it has been re-soaked and repacked since then its most likelly with european tapwater - no good really. i think canna and most coco manufactureres wash out all the salt they can - using the monsoon - the rain season and river water. i doubt in any stage is RO water or distilled water used.

canna does for example NOT steam-sterilize their coco - so it has microbial life - some of it is the same as in soil. coco IS SOAKING for a long time and ROTTED to get the fibers loose to be able to process them. this means obviously there is a state of decomposing and compostation if i explain my self. so there is bacteria, funghi etc present in coco, specially if its humid and aireated.

so coco is ALIVE :D

this means coco gives the aditional benefits from funghi etc and bacteria as in soil but at the same it gets the benefit from hydroponic oriented nutricion feeding.

coco i think is specially suited for areas with high calcium levels in water.

the high amount of K in coco means giving too much too soon of PK can cause trouble - i.e burning the plants.

Wait...What? - what im talking about is SATIVAS - they have not started to flower at the stage you are talking about. in fact my opinion is (i grow baseballbat sized sativa colas) is the purer the sativas are the LESS importance has any tradiocional indoor (american or dutch) techniques - since they are aimed at 8-11 week plants.

any late sativa will use most of nutricion really FAR into flowering, and really the first months mostly N is used in big amounts. a sativa dominant plant wont be flowering in 2 weeks. it might not even show preflowers untill later than that! :D so giving PK early will burn and give lesser results.

also some tropical sativas have manner of growing in waves, where it goes thru several stages of calyx production and all of those stages benefit from extra PK, be it 12 or 16 weeks in or not.

but it has to be kept in mind the amount of PK needed by a quick flowering plant is much higher than a slow floewring plant. sativas are used from nature to grow long and take their time to look for nutes, whilst the short life span of indicas is completelly different, the explosive flowering of indicas and hybrids there off really do need it early on, but still i dont recomend it untill the buds are of a size like fingers - this is because untill that stage the AB has pretty much all it needs.

one alternative method is to give a very LOW dose of PK early on in flowering (little clusters of white hairs size of a little finger tip, and later on when bud production is 100% in action, more can be given.

personally i give PK pretty much every other week during the flowering cycle, starting from about one month in.

i make sure i dont give too much ever and i allways flush a lot.

my most help full TOOL in the grow area is a mop and bucket! :D i water lots and i dont worry about build up :D nor spilling :D

peace all!
 

Herbalistic

Herbal relaxation...
Veteran
Very interesting info brother!!!

I always flush my bionova coco slacks with 10´s of litres of oxinized tap water which has been ph stabilized..

Im doing it wrong bro? Let me know, since I just did switch back to coco from longtime as you know..

The BN coco slabs are just so phuckin salty they have to be rinsed properly before use!
 
B

bonecarver_OG

if your tap water has less salt than the bionova coco then its an improvement :D no doubt :D

northern europe and some other regions of europe have very low salinity and calcium in tapwater.

here in south spain the tap water ec can be over 1.0 - for example my mate has almost 2.0 because of desalinified tapwater. he is using RAIN water and distilled water and i dont think he uses almost any tap water at all :D

i mix down my tapwater with 50% or more distilled water. im satisfied with a start EC of 0.5 lower than that is hard to achieve :D gets VERY costy when growing many plants.

so - no i dont think you are doing wrong :D

peace!
 

chemsteady

Member
good question.

good question.

bone you germ in rockwool, no? straight coco is definitely the way to go, no need for anything else, 100 % germ rates (genetics aside) tap root is never disturbed, germ occurs in 24-72 hours. :D
~c
 

onegreenday

Active member
Veteran
yah I just made a seed mix of some different stuff & I wish I just stuck
with straight coco.
Next batch straight coco.
 
B

bonecarver_OG

i germ in rockwool/perlite cylinders, or if not available, in rockwool mini cubes. i have obvisously used coco but here the space is an issue - the rockwool cubes are the most efficient when in question of space.

germing rate is allways 100% or close to it when ambient temperatures alove it. i cant really say if one medium is better for root development than others - but i defiently think rockwool cubes are better suited for high humidity conditions, since it does not hold as much humidity and lets more oxygen into the medium.

germ rate is all about temps and humidity in 99% of the case - specially if rooting hormones are used. medium is not too important as long as the other conditions are fulfilled.

also one note worth mentioning is the fact rockwool cubes alove very easy handling, transplanting etc of the clones, while coco must be used in small cups etc to hold the medium - this later might become slightly anoying when time to transplant :D since its necesary to wait for enough roots for the coco to hold together when transplanting.

obviously this can be avoided in setups with less plants by using bigger pots directly.

hehe :D peace all!

peace
 

mrbarry

New member
I WAS TAUGHT NOT TO MIX MEDIUMS...
I GO FROM THE EZ CLONE 120 RIGHT TO CANNA COCO NATURAL.

ROCKWOOL IS MY SECOND CHOICE THO, I THINK THEY WORK BETTER THAN RAPID ROOTERS.
 
Hey fellas, currently running GHS White Widow in straight coco hand watered and have noticed that of my plants the only two showing male preflowers are also developing a mag deficiency whereas the girls show no signs of it.

Anyone else noticed male plants developing mag deficiency and not females? Or is it statistically irrelevant?
 

~fvk~

the Lion is going Guerrilla...
Hey fellas, currently running GHS White Widow in straight coco hand watered and have noticed that of my plants the only two showing male preflowers are also developing a mag deficiency whereas the girls show no signs of it.

Anyone else noticed male plants developing mag deficiency and not females? Or is it statistically irrelevant?

I've seen it, the males used up more nutes, hence the Mg deficiency. Are you wanting to fix it?
 
Ive started feeding epsom salts and they are showing signs of improvement, don't know why i bother im 90% sure theyre males and i've isolated them and put them in 12/12 now to make sure before i cull them, i just don't like seeing any plant in poor health haha.

Interesting that males use up more nutes, i would have guessed females would have. I've also started putting in epsom in normal feed for the girls, do you guys dissolve it in hot water first or just put it straight in the reservoir?
 

Sweet Inc.

Member
I always flush my bionova coco slacks with 10´s of litres of oxinized tap water which has been ph stabilized..

Im doing it wrong bro? Let me know, since I just did switch back to coco from longtime as you know..

The BN coco slabs are just so phuckin salty they have to be rinsed properly before use!

I do so as well with Bionova! Some friends of mine use it straight after expansion, but I drowned the shit out of the coir. Got my runoff at a perfect 5.8Ph the whole time, and the EC dropped from 1.5 to 0.3. After that much flushing I do reccomend a 0.5EC solution to replenish the coco. My clones are building rootmass nicely with nothing else but 2nd hand coco, flushed like hell.
 
R

r13f

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back with pics of coco inspired by this thread
nutes are a modified version of gr3atfulh3ads modified lucas based formula
 
Thank you for this thread! been a great help so far in my first attempt at coco-coir... I'm using my own modified soil:
Coco-coir
Greensand
Vermiculite
Perlite
Bone meal
blood meal
Kelp meal

plants are just over a month old and doing great, I love rhizotonic btw!
 
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