Why organic nutrients do not work in coco

[BedroomFarmer]

I've tried what you are trying to do 3 separate times and it didn't work and that was with a few grows under my belt already. Could you make it work? Probably but it would act the same as normal soil with wet and dry cycles not like hydroponics that coco is famous for. You are just better off going with a promix recipe or something similar but..

I live in a small apartment too and coco makes it possible to keep things down to a minimum. think of all the amendments you want to keep on hand. I have a 2x4 tent a 10 gallon reservoir next to it and the reservoir runs on a timer. I have to remind myself to look in the tent and you want to take a peak to make sure there is no issues. I would say growing synthetically will save you more space in your apartment then organic.

You can cut veg time with more plants in smaller pots but either way its gonna be faster treated as hydro then soil. With enough plants you can do like a 2 week veg and flip. Either way we if you want to get buds without a headache for your first grow then dont try to reinvent the wheel. You wont get faster organic growth that way.

With that said they do sell "organic" bottled nutrients you can try for coco but I dont know how well the work.

Dont check your runoff, your gonna get yourself into trouble that way and you dont want your pots sitting in the runoff for very long or at all.

 

[The123321]

I've tried what you are trying to do 3 separate times and it didn't work and that was with a few grows under my belt already. Could you make it work? Probably but it would act the same as normal soil with wet and dry cycles not like hydroponics that coco is famous for. You are just better off going with a promix recipe or something similar but..

I live in a small apartment too and coco makes it possible to keep things down to a minimum. think of all the amendments you want to keep on hand. I have a 2x4 tent a 10 gallon reservoir next to it and the reservoir runs on a timer. I have to remind myself to look in the tent and you want to take a peak to make sure there is no issues. I would say growing synthetically will save you more space in your apartment then organic.

You can cut veg time with more plants in smaller pots but either way its gonna be faster treated as hydro then soil. With enough plants you can do like a 2 week veg and flip. Either way we if you want to get buds without a headache for your first grow then dont try to reinvent the wheel. You wont get faster organic growth that way.

With that said they do sell "organic" bottled nutrients you can try for coco but I dont know how well the work.

Dont check your runoff, your gonna get yourself into trouble that way and you dont want your pots sitting in the runoff for very long or at all.

Thanks. The nutrients that you have to apply when watering would not work with the 1 reservoir from what I have read. I looked into the lucas formula with h3ads for coco though it uses a different ppm for different parts of the grow like megacrop does from what I have read. Then if coco would need more of a dry wet run then what if you use very little perlite in the pot then water only every 2-3 days instead of 1 time per day like I am watering now? I water pretty much what the plant needs as there is little runoff and the little bit that there is wicks back up into the pot fast on there.

 

[BedroomFarmer]

I have 1 reservoir not sure what the issue is?

With megacrop its simple, you go off the weight. 4gram, 5 grams and 6 grams. Easy peasy and you may not even need to ph but look into the drops. Mine settles around perfect hydro ph but after a day will raise

Lucas formula is an older way of running but there is better options now. No need for multiple reservoirs or EC/PPM

I'm running florflex currently, in my res I run silica, calmag, floraflex bloom A & B plus an enzyme all in 1 res.

Coco is hydro you water daily chief, and in flower multiple times a day. 4 5 6 times in peak flower. You always water with nutrients. I water once daily as a seedling as the plant gets bigger and roots set I will water twice in flower I'm 4 or more times a day.

 

[The123321]

I have 1 reservoir not sure what the issue is?

With megacrop its simple, you go off the weight. 4gram, 5 grams and 6 grams. Easy peasy and you may not even need to ph but look into the drops. Mine settles around perfect hydro ph but after a day will raise

Lucas formula is an older way of running but there is better options now. No need for multiple reservoirs or EC/PPM

I'm running florflex currently, in my res I run silica, calmag, floraflex bloom A & B plus an enzyme all in 1 res.

Coco is hydro you you water daily chief, and in flower multiple times a day. 4 5 6 times in peak flower. You always water with nutrients. I water once daily as a seedling as the plant gets bigger and roots set I will water twice in flower I'm 4 or more times a day.

Thanks. I mean I am trying to water plants that were planted at different times from 1 reservoir. That is what I mean by it would not work with 1 reservoir. I want to have plants that were planted 6 weeks apart on the same 1 reservoir. That is 1 main reason I was looking into dry amendments then you only put water in the reservoir. Thanks for the time but I think the method you are talking about is not ideal for what I want to do on there.

 

[Emilya Green]

Thanks. I mean I am trying to water plants that were planted at different times from 1 reservoir. That is what I mean by it would not work with 1 reservoir. I want to have plants that were planted 6 weeks apart on the same 1 reservoir. That is 1 main reason I was looking into dry amendments then you only put water in the reservoir. Thanks for the time but I think the method you are talking about is not ideal for what I want to do on there.

lol, your plan keeps getting more and more complicated. Pretty darned ambitious for a first grow, I got to say.

 

[The123321]

Thanks. Why is it complicated? If you do not think about the reservoir or the perpetual grow part it is simply trying to figure out how to give water only or water with calmag to plants in coco and have the fertilizer in the pot with the coco on there.

 

[Emilya Green]

yeah, if you dont think about the rez or the staggered harvests and changing needs of the plants, or the fact that dry supplements take months to activate and that coco was never meant to be run this way.... sure, its simple.

 

[Mark Gordan Smith]

Mcele ikhambi leCovid-19, Em.

 

[The123321]

Thanks. The Dr. Earth Organic Tomato Vegetable 4-6-3 and Dr. Earth Bud & Bloom Flower Girl 3-9-4 are listed to work right away not need months on there.

 

[BedroomFarmer]

Mcele ikhambi leCovid-19, Em.

Was that some kinda curse?

 

[Emilya Green]

lol, zulu! now now...

 

[SmokingWings]

The123321, in at least 2 of the previous threads I mentioned why it would not work the way you proposed. I went to hydro and grow shops and discussed what you would like to do with employees there whose thoughts on growing anything I respected. Some of them had done a grow or two the way were were considering. I did web searches on the Dr Earth products you want to use. I did web searches on biochar to be sure that I was correctly remembering some of the points I would bring up about using it.

More than once, in this very thread, you mention that you tried it. You say it did not work. Why not tell us what you did? Tell us what happened, what went wrong, what was the result. Did the plants die? Did the plants not flower? Did you end up with root rot?

In the last thread that I remember you starting I did tell you how I would do it if I was to try the method. But, at my age I am not in the mood to start any long term hobby like proving how to make it work. Figuring that start to finish would be approx 2 years before I felt confident enough to say that I was on the right track. Another two years, maybe longer, before any successful process could be duplicated grow after grow.

If I want a long term project I am going to select something like planting a tree or three so that one day the grandkids can tell their kids something like "Remember when grandpa planted this tree. It was so small and now it shades the whole house."

I smoked some chicken wings the other day. Time to roll one up and get the munchies.

 

[SmokingWings]

People seem to forget that organic nutrients that are normally put into soil, are not yet available to the plant. It REQUIRES the microbes in the soil to process these raw nutrients, and it is the output from the microbes that is fed to the plant. Without microbes, feeding does not occur.
Coco can not support this feeding circle. Microbes can only temporarily exist in coco, and the multiple varieties of microbes that work in our soil, can not thrive in coco. You can keep pouring active microbes in and get some benefit to a coco grow from dry amendments, but nothing like what happens in soil.

The nutrient or fertilizer product he wants to use is Dr Earth. Judging by the back of the packages (as shown on the companies web site) the nutrients are water soluble and ready to go. There is a listing of the micro life that is available in any of them that contain the microbes and bacterias. Only difference I can see between those products and some of the recommended hydro nutrients is that Dr Earth says their stuff is 100% organic.

 

[The123321]

Thanks. The details of the grow I am doing now that I tried this with are on this thread with images of the plants from today.

What do you think of these 2 plants on day 26?

I had problems with what looked like calmag deficiency early on that I think was from me not doing the right ph in the water for the first few times I watered the plants and I also did not put calmag in the water for the first few times I watered the plants. I then started doing that and the newer leaves look like they have less and less of the calmag deficiency. I now think I may have more nitrogen than is needed that I think is from the coco is watered more often than soil so I think if I did it again I would do less of the dry amendments in the mix and top dress more often. I plan to top dress with less than the bag recommends a few days at 30 days and then 1 more time at 60 days on there.

 

[gr865]

Thanks. The bags of soil I have found online to buy have reviews talking about bugs in the bags even the popular brands I have read about on the forums. I know that coco has problems with bugs though I would rather not buy bagged soil with the higher probability of it having bugs or bug eggs like fungus gnat eggs in the soil when you buy it on there.

Hey buddy, research building your own organic soils, lots of info on that.

 

[Emilya Green]

The nutrient or fertilizer product he wants to use is Dr Earth. Judging by the back of the packages (as shown on the companies web site) the nutrients are water soluble and ready to go. There is a listing of the micro life that is available in any of them that contain the microbes and bacterias. Only difference I can see between those products and some of the recommended hydro nutrients is that Dr Earth says their stuff is 100% organic.

The question here is how long the microbes that come along, thrive in coco. It is hard enough to keep microbes alive in soil, but in coco the little bugs are at risk as soon as they hit the medium, and they can not last very long. As I recall, Earth Dust is suggested to be applied 3 times during the grow, and if applied to a good soil such as FFOF, it looks like an effective way to approximate an organic grow, but in coco... sorry, the necessary cation exchange rate is not there and the critters have painfully little organics and sugars to munch on. I am convinced that the reason this doesn't work is the microbes die out fairly quickly.... but as I said earlier, if URB, Voodoo Juice or something similar were applied regularly, it might just work.

 

[TurboBucket]

This guy.

Look, spend enough money and you can make any idea a possibility. That's where the saying more money than brains came from.

Why hasn't Mr. Canuk helped you out yet?

 

[The123321]

Thanks. You need to stop referencing mr canuk. That is only 1 example of many people I have read journals and posts and talked to people that have made this work. My plants are on day 27 now and are doing ok though the problems I have been having were from me not doing the ph right in the beginning and then I think I put a little more fertilizer than is needed in the coco. I am not following what mr canuk does in his videos. That is just 1 way I got the idea to try organics in coco. I thank those of you that were trying to help and give reasons why things do not work instead of mocking me and just saying no it would not work. This thread was not about trying to figure out why my grow did not go as easy as I had wanted. I made this thread to have an open talk with people to try to figure out a way to make it work for those people that wanted to try it. I have already decided to not try the dr earth fertilizer in my next grow and have ordered biotabs and plan to follow the biotabs recommended guide for that. I thought that there may be people that would like talking it out and trying to figure out the reason it would not work instead of just saying no it would not work on there.

 

[The123321]

The question here is how long the microbes that come along, thrive in coco. It is hard enough to keep microbes alive in soil, but in coco the little bugs are at risk as soon as they hit the medium, and they can not last very long. As I recall, Earth Dust is suggested to be applied 3 times during the grow, and if applied to a good soil such as FFOF, it looks like an effective way to approximate an organic grow, but in coco... sorry, the necessary cation exchange rate is not there and the critters have painfully little organics and sugars to munch on. I am convinced that the reason this doesn't work is the microbes die out fairly quickly.... but as I said earlier, if URB, Voodoo Juice or something similar were applied regularly, it might just work.

Thanks. Do you think that adding in an extra dose of microbes 1 time per week would help it on there?

 

[Emilya Green]

yes, I think it might make all the difference.