dante.
Active Member
do people add lime to coco? just wondering never used it
from research, i've only read about foliar feeding with lime while in a hydro (or manual hydro [like me]) setup
do people add lime to coco? just wondering never used it
That is exaclty what I'm finding. I'm following the schedule that came with the nutes and it seems to be causing issues with the medium.
Yeah I wouldn't go to much by what the bottle says, they have to put some kind of directions on there. Theres kinda just a standard, you have to fine tune your setup now which we are gonna try to help ya with![]()
You got me on that one, but I haven't seen anything on foliar with lime, but it doesn't sound good.........from research, i've only read about foliar feeding with lime while in a hydro (or manual hydro [like me]) setup
Coco Coir (And How To Overcome Its Limitations)
Let’s have a look at coco coir. It starts out with a better pH of 5.5. But the problem with this medium is that magnesium and calcium binds to coco and doesn’t want to easily release. And that’s not good. Your plants need to be able to get to those nutrients.
Now if you add dolomite lime, as a lot of companies out there will do because dolomite is cheap to use and made up of magnesium and calcium carbonate and a source of alkalinity, that will eventually raise your growing mediums pH and this is not what you want to do. So what do you do? You would solve the problem by adding chelated calcium and magnesium either to the coir or in the base nutrients. Unfortunately, other nutrient companies won’t do this because of the very high added expense, but that is exactly
what we put in all the base nutrients at Advanced Nutrients. However Advanced Nutrients doesn’t make a specific coco
nutrient yet. Coco coir also has a lot of potassium so you’ll
need to use a fertilizer with reduced potassium so you don’t end up with potassium toxicity. There is one other thing to be aware of: low quality coconut husks are often soaked in salt water as part of the manufacturing process to break down the husks and quite often not properly flushed by the coir manufacturer overseas. You’ll need to make sure that the extra salt is flushed out of your medium with water by either yourself or the manufacturer you’re buying it from before usingit.
This Step Is Very Important
Because if you don’t, you will have high sodium content in your growing medium and that will severely reduce your yield when using cheaply produced coir, and this problem is more common than you might think.
If you’re thinking about using coco coir as your growing medium, you’re going to find coir still has some inherent problems with it that have not been resolved completely, that’s why you’ll probably have to use a Cal Mag product when growing with coir. At one point Advanced Nutrients pulled Sensi Cal calcium and magnesium product off the market because we figured if a nutrient was built right you didn’t need it. Man, stores started calling and demanded we keep it on the market,
so we did.
Here’s what the hydro store owners told us was happening: Growers growing with coco coir were using Sensi Cal to fix the calcium and magnesium deficiencies caused by the coir they were using. Which of course told us that there hasn’t been a correct coco nutrient formula made yet that addresses the needs of the growers using coir growing
mediums. So, at some point we will bring out a coco coir nutrient and then later on down the road, a coir growing medium that will be perfectly aligned with each other. We’ll be doing the same thing for a sphagnum moss growing medium too. Enough of the commercial.
You got me on that one, but I haven't seen anything on foliar with lime, but it doesn't sound good.........
I don't see why you would want to, since you can so easily change your PH.
You got me on that one, but I haven't seen anything on foliar with lime, but it doesn't sound good.........
I don't see why you would want to, since you can so easily change your PH.
Another thing about coco I forgot to mention, that even though some packages might say "sterilized" and other things. Theres usually a good amount of salt in there that needs to get heavily washed out before using. What brand of coco did you use?
Is your avatar the plant you're talking about? That looks like soil.i keep my ph at a 6.5 all the way through
Here's a link to an interesting article I found, but it is regarding mixing coco with perlite.
This guy is also recommending to flush it well, but suggesting a 6.0 PH, IDK--- because of the perlite mix?
http://www.growersguidetocannabis.c...uide-to-growing-cannabis-in-coco-and-perlite/
Holy shit, long thread!
Holy shit, long thread!
Whatever floats your boat, but if I was going to pull her and replant, I think I'd go for soil and perlite, since it's more forgiving.This guy makes me want to dig her up and add some perlite in...
Just a little edit with punctuation, it was kinda confusing the first time I read it.yeah for sure go soil.
Less headache till you get the hang of things
Just a little edit with punctuation, it was kinda confusing the first time I read it.![]()
Whatever floats your boat, but if I was going to pull her and replant, I think I'd go for soil and perlite, since it's more forgiving.![]()
yeah for sure go soil less headache till you get the hang of things
Very understandable.haha thanks its just sometimes hard to put in all the punctuations when doing it from my phone its a bitch