Trying out my first coco / perlite hempy bucket today

if you haven't tried it, Spinosad is a great product for mites. made from a naturally occuring fungus, it has very low toxicity to mammals. 3 applications, 3 days apart, will kill all the living ones, and those that hatch out before they get a chance to breed and lay more eggs
captain jack's dead bug brew is easily obtainable at most large hardware stores like home depot and lowe's, and off of amazon

Roger A. Shrubber said:

if you haven't tried it, Spinosad is a great product for mites. made from a naturally occuring fungus, it has very low toxicity to mammals. 3 applications, 3 days apart, will kill all the living ones, and those that hatch out before they get a chance to breed and lay more eggs
captain jack's dead bug brew is easily obtainable at most large hardware stores like home depot and lowe's, and off of amazon

Click to expand...

I've been rockin the captain jack's dead bug for a few months now. I really like it. No residue, organic, and doesn't affect flavor. Cheap too. I think you're spot on with the 3 day rotation schedule to disrupt the lifecycle. I was spraying every week and it just wasn't enough. I think I finally got the nasty little boogers under control.

I've got some really great news to report on the first coco hempy experiment. All 3 plants are producing lush green beautiful new growth. Leaves pointing to the light. I really can't emphasize enough how badly fucked up 2 of the 3 plants I transplanted into the coco hempies were. I think there may have been 4 leaves left on each plant. The leaves that were there were chlorotic. I expected their demise was imminent. Check 'em out:

I’m in week 6 of my first hempy. Mine is only one gallon with hydroton in the res and a 2:1 coco perlite mix. It’s a criticalxGG4 auto and seems to be growing quite well despite almost constant nute tip burn the last few weeks.

Newbiegrow6411 said:

I’m in week 6 of my first hempy. Mine is only one gallon with hydroton in the res and a 2:1 coco perlite mix. It’s a criticalxGG4 auto and seems to be growing quite well despite almost constant nute tip burn the last few weeks.

Click to expand...

Welcome to the hempy club! What ppm / ec are you running? I have good results with 700-750ppm start to finish. Usually if you've got tip burn the fertilizer strength is too high. Easy fix. Reduce it. Criticalxgg4 should yield some frosty delicious nugs. Gg4 is one of my top 2 strains I've grown in 13 years. Breeding it with a critical mass is a sweet hybrid. The only caveat to growing straight gg4 is it's not a commercial producer. More of a connoisseur's delight. Adding the critical mass genetics should bulk those flowers up nicely while amping up the thc content. Hydroton in the res is a great idea for smooth drainage.

Newbiegrow6411 said:

I’m in week 6 of my first hempy. Mine is only one gallon with hydroton in the res and a 2:1 coco perlite mix. It’s a criticalxGG4 auto and seems to be growing quite well despite almost constant nute tip burn the last few weeks.

Click to expand...

autos are notoriously pissy about overfeeding, they don't like it at all. just slowly cut back the nutes till they seem to be happy, maybe too late this round, but good info to have for the next run

Roger A. Shrubber said:

autos are notoriously pissy about overfeeding, they don't like it at all. just slowly cut back the nutes till they seem to be happy, maybe too late this round, but good info to have for the next run

Click to expand...

Yeah I’ll try cutting back. I’m doing Lucas with cal mag at half strength(4-4- and was hoping it would “grow” out of the burn but it doesn’t seem to be. Thanks for the advice

Newbiegrow6411 said:

Yeah I’ll try cutting back. I’m doing Lucas with cal mag at half strength(4-4- and was hoping it would “grow” out of the burn but it doesn’t seem to be. Thanks for the advice

Click to expand...

4-4-8…not sure why it put the emoji in haha

jonnynobody said:

Welcome to the hempy club! What ppm / ec are you running? I have good results with 700-750ppm start to finish. Usually if you've got tip burn the fertilizer strength is too high. Easy fix. Reduce it. Criticalxgg4 should yield some frosty delicious nugs. Gg4 is one of my top 2 strains I've grown in 13 years. Breeding it with a critical mass is a sweet hybrid. The only caveat to growing straight gg4 is it's not a commercial producer. More of a connoisseur's delight. Adding the critical mass genetics should bulk those flowers up nicely while amping up the thc content. Hydroton in the res is a great idea for smooth drainage.

Click to expand...

I don’t have a ppm meter so not sure. I’ve been using cal mag + Lucas at half strength but apparently that’s a bit much. I grew the strain in a half gallon pot of soil previously for my first ever grow and after some growing pains i ended up with about half oz of good potent bud. I went hempy to hopefully increase yield and so far it is growing faster.

Roger A. Shrubber said:

autos are notoriously pissy about overfeeding, they don't like it at all. just slowly cut back the nutes till they seem to be happy, maybe too late this round, but good info to have for the next run

Click to expand...

Can coco be treated just as you would soil? My newbie understanding is coco requires fertilizer every watering. Is that right or am I off the reservation here? I did a water, water, feed cycle on my soil plants in the past. I was wondering if I could do the same with coco? And would you recommend any organic additions like kelp or fulvic? When I use to grow in soil I used the flora trio with floralicous plus. The results were amazing. What I grow now does not taste as good. Potency and structure is outsanding. It's just flavor that needs improvement. It's not bad by any means, but if you've had a porterhouse you'll be disappointed every time someone serves you a sirloin. It's not that the sirloin is junk, but it ain't no porterhouse. I'm growing sirloin now. I gotta get back to porterhouse

The plants I transplanted into coco are looking great. Lush growth that reminds me of my old soil grows. There was a really cool video of this fella growing peppers in 3 separate grow tents as an experiment testing soil, coco, and hydro productivity using the same lights and fertilizer. Coco beat soil in fruit production by nearly 4x and it beat DWC by 2x after harvest. I'm on a crusade to improve the flavor of my bud. If coco gets me where I use to be with soil the hunt is over. I really hope it works because ordering bricks of canna coco is super convenient. Much better than hauling monstrous bags of perlite from the grow store. Cheaper too.

you should feed every watering with coco, but cut back... it only has to have feed until tomorrow when you're going to do it all again. i run about 400 ppm in veg, and anywhere from 8-1200 in flower, depending on where they are in the cycle

Roger A. Shrubber said:

you should feed every watering with coco, but cut back... it only has to have feed until tomorrow when you're going to do it all again. i run about 400 ppm in veg, and anywhere from 8-1200 in flower, depending on where they are in the cycle

Click to expand...

I let 'em go something like 4 days before I watered them because the plants were so small it took awhile for the coco to dry up. I learned they don't like that in coco. The plants were just not looking as vibrant as they were. The medium wasn't bone dry, but the top layer was definitely getting that dry look. The pot was still fairly heavy though with moisture. I don't think the tap root has made it to the res yet. I remember hearing people say coco requires a watering every day so I tossed a gallon in all 4 and they perked up lush again within an hour or so. I'll start an every other day watering and see how that works out. I'm impressed with canna coco so far. Running jack's 321 at the same 1.6 ec I always run. I might be crazy but I'm pretty sure there's mycorrhizae growing on top of the medium. Not a lot but a few spots like I use to see in soil. Is that unusual being that coco is inert? I haven't added any organic fertilizer.

Roger A. Shrubber said:

i've been growing in coco/perlite hempies for about 7 or 8 years now, and i always have big solid root masses from top to bottom. i use 70% coco to 30% perlite, and make sure its mixed up good when i pot anything up.
i let the rootballs dry out for a few days after i cut them and shake them pretty good into a big round 20 gallon tote, then i pick out the worst of the root mass that falls off with the coco and reuse it, mixed half and half with fresh coco and perlite. when it seems like its getting a little too "dirty" i throw it out in my raised beds and turn it into the soil.

Click to expand...

Is the flavor from a healthy and properly grown coco plant comparable to soil? I've been growing in 100% perlite for years now and some strains are phenomenal and you'd never know it was grown in hydro. Other strains just don't taste as magical and don't burn as well as my old soil grows. I guess I'm really hoping coco gets me where I want to be in terms of flavor matching soil without using soil and all the hitchhiking bugs it brings into the garden. Plus those canna coco bricks are dirt cheap versus using #4 perlite or even good soil. Easy to ship right to your front door too. Thanks for all your help man. I'm pretty excited about this coco experiment.

I’m glad I found this thread. I appreciate the help everyone provides. I decided to flush completely(great thing about coco perlite) and use the full GH trio for flowering stage at half strength and it’s responded well. Also I cut back feeding to every other day. Maybe that’s helped too or maybe just nute change. Thanks again for sharing knowledge everyone

Checkout this short video a fella posted of his blue dream just before harvest in a coco hempy:


That looks exactly how my old soil grows use to look. My god that's just gorgeous. If mine turn out like that I'll never use another medium.

Newbiegrow6411 said:

I’m glad I found this thread. I appreciate the help everyone provides. I decided to flush completely(great thing about coco perlite) and use the full GH trio for flowering stage at half strength and it’s responded well. Also I cut back feeding to every other day. Maybe that’s helped too or maybe just nute change. Thanks again for sharing knowledge everyone

Click to expand...

If I wasn't using jack's 321 my second best would be the GH 3 part. Can't go wrong. Cheap too if you buy the volume containers. I had a little trouble with the maxi grow / bloom line, but a lot of other people use it with great success. It's basically a dry version of the GH 3 part.

Any updates?

Newbiegrow6411 said:

I’m glad I found this thread. I appreciate the help everyone provides. I decided to flush completely(great thing about coco perlite) and use the full GH trio for flowering stage at half strength and it’s responded well. Also I cut back feeding to every other day. Maybe that’s helped too or maybe just nute change. Thanks again for sharing knowledge everyone

Click to expand...

Also use Jacks.
I started with the h3ad formula back in 2017.

Soul Dwella said:

Any updates?

Click to expand...

The soil plant is growing so slowly it's not much ready for an up pot yet. All it would do is slow my growth down that much more at this point. Coco on the right. Soil on the left. Both strawberry cough planted at the same time. Sure different phenotypes of the same strain can affect flavor and aroma but I have never seen different phenos of the same strain cause the plants to grow at different rates. That's just an asinine suggestion. Someone earlier in this thread suggested that as the reason for the difference in growth. Asinine. I'm going to give the plant on the left a dose of fertilizer tomorrow. I tried about 10 days ago and there was enough fertilizer in the soil that it slightly twisted new growth. Soil is great, but my god is it slow.