My perpetual grow - discussion

Wastei said:

You should not treat coir like soil. You're not watering properly. Coco coir is practically hydro and should be treated different than soil grown plants. Improve water frequency, how much and when to water. You have lot to improve in that regard. Good luck with your grow!

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KlompenOG said:

Looks good. Hopefully they won't delete your post. I posted this exact same thing and they called it cross-linking or something. I have no idea why they don't want links to your grow journal in this subforum, but I got in trouble for it.

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Ben123456733 said:

I know, I've been told the same thing by many people. I've even helped someone with their coco grow when they were out of town and thought I was getting the hang of it.
I was initially doing daily waterings but the coco just stayed so wet. I know you don't want the coco to dry out, but I'm talking so wet that a 24 hours after watering I could hold the pot up and at an angle and it would still drip out.
My coco started growing a lot of algae.
So I definitely have much room for improvement, I agree. Just working out the learning curve kinks.
I'm hoping that by switching to fabric pots it will help dry them out a bit faster. I also think once I nail down my nutes and ph that the plants will probably be able to suck up and use more water too.



Thank you.
That is pretty strange, and rather stupid honestly, if they did delete the post. Having a grow journal section with the #1 post saying "Don't post in other journals unless asked" and then having a section specifically for discussing, it almost seems like this is what you're supposed to do.

If that's not the case, I'm honestly a bit confused about what the point of the grow journal discussion even is lol

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KlompenOG said:

Perlite is an excellent amendment for drainage, but I recommend considering layers. Roots aren't all the same. The upper roots do more of the feeding and the lower roots do more of the drinking. I have liked doing a layer of vermiculite on the bottom of my grow bags, and then do my regular soil mix above that, and then I do the mulch/feeding layer on top. My mix is soil, but it has a significant amount of coir in it. The coir keeps them from drowning as easily and I've always been a fan of it in my mix. I just love being able to use coir but also not having to worry about pH and feeding issues. Straight coir or some sort of mix; either way the fabric planter will help it breathe better and roots grow so beautifully in it.

Oh and if you do pure coir or coir/perlite you're basically doing hydro, but you can still put a cover layer over it to act like a mulch in a way. It will keep the light off that coir and stop algae from forming in it. Creating a sort of tree skirting out of silicone rubber or some other non-reactive material will help you keep it nice and dark in the root zones while improving the efficiency of water use. So basically you can do the three layers I mentioned above, but entirely coirponic style.

Of course none of that matters if you get plant pests as bad as I did this winter/spring. Pure coir can definitely be a challenge to keep gnats off of(another plus of the mulch layer). I also put expanded SiO2(dessicant crystals sold as kitty litter mostly) into my mix for a huge silica boost and pest deterrence. Unfortunately in this last round I forgot to put it in the new soil getting mixed into the bin and I'm sure that contributed to my problem. Just have a plan ahead for gnats because they really love coir.

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