seeds Crash course on growing seedlings in coir

[Bicycle808]

Yeah, I've searched a little, but then i realized that the forum has been a lil sleepy lately, so what harm might a new version of a potentially redundant post do?

So, this year, I'm hoping to start seeds my usual way (wet coffee filters in baggies) but transfer them into Solo-type cups, filled with coir or coir/perlite mixture. I typically use the Jiffy brand "natural & organic" seed starting mix that i buy at Home Depot. That stuff has always worked well for me, so I'm a little hesitant to change, but the coir option seems like it might be a bit more economical, plus I've seen pics here and elsewhere online that show incredible root growth coming from coir...

My questions:
-should i mix the coir with perlite?
-if so, what's a good ratio?
-what will i need to add in terms of fertilizer, as i believe the coir itself doesn't have a lot of nutriment in it?
-what else do i need to know about coir? I just want to use it from seed to plant-out in raised beds....

Thanks in advance,
Rob

 

[Inoks]

- I've even used pure coco with succes, perlite helps. Maybe 30% perlite.

I think any fert that works with chilies work in Coco, cant link mine, Finnish products.

Smarter ppl Will probably tell more

 

[SuburbanFowl]

I'm in the same boat. The majority of the information you will find on the internet will not be cited/backed up by research.
 
I'm finding it difficult to find objective information about coco coir. There are detailed articles provided by most hydroponic nutrient manufacturers. These articles have some useful information but keep in mind these companies make money by selling products.
 
I hadve blindly followed advice on the internet with mixed (mainly negative) results. You have to use critical thinking skills and research as much as you can.
 
To answer your questions;
 

-should i mix the coir with perlite?

 
It's up to you. It is not at all necessary. Why do you think you need to add perlite? If you can reply with an answer, I can provide you with more information.
 

-if so, what's a good ratio?

 
As above.
 

-what will i need to add in terms of fertilizer, as i believe the coir itself doesn't have a lot of nutriment in it?

 
Coco coir is considered "inert" - meaning "chemically inactive" or in other words, it has no nutrients in it.
The only nutrients it gets are the nutrients you feed it.
 
Technically it is not inert but ignore this.
 
You can use what ever fertiliser you have easy access to but from what I've read on this forum an all in one hydroponic fertiliser seems to be the most effective form of nutrient. In theory you could use an organic fertiliser but at that point you might as well just go with soil.
 
Dyna-Gro Foliage Pro 9-3-6 npk is the most accessible (at least in my country). Solid7 from this forum recommends Botanicare CNS17 which has the same npk ratio (9-3-6 or simplified to 3-1-2).
 
Supposedly pepper plants in coco coir never need more nitrogen than phosphorous or potassium. Potassium makes sense to me but I still haven't figured out the phosphorous part.
 
If you're willing to spend more money you can also get a Coco A + B nutrient from different brands (Canna, Nutrifield, etc)
 
From what I've learned over the past few weeks, you don't need anything else (apart from a bottle of Cal-Mag supplement if you are pre-charging/buffering the coco yourself).
 
 

-what else do i need to know about coir? I just want to use it from seed to plant-out in raised beds....

 
You need to know a lot more but you'll have to find more information yourself and make judgments based on that. There is a big learning curve but the results will be worth it if you stick to it.
 
Here are some resources you might find helpful;
 
A guide to growing peppers in coco coir
Growing in Coco tutorial
Blisters 2015 Coco Grow! Difficult start...
Blisters 2016 LED Coco grow
Blisters 2017 LED Coco grow
 
If you look through the posts I've made you can see that I've made mainly "failures". I put the word in quotes because they're not failures. They're learning opportunities. Even if you make "mistakes" the only time a "mistake" can ever be considered true failure is don't learn something from it or if you give up. Otherwise, just keep observing, learning and researching.

 

[Takanotsume]

I've definitely noticed much better root growth in coco coir over peat.
 
I'm thinking I should just abandon peat entirely because my best producers are a pair of aji pancas in coir that while not doing spectacularly, are still holding out much better then any of my plants in peat-based mediums.

 

[alkhall]

I start my seeds in coir plugs, but pot up into FFOF.

Never tried potting up into coir, because it is so lacking nutrients.

 

[juanitos]

1.  Perlite is added if coco is very fine, if it is very fine coco it will hold a ton of water and not much air. choking the roots. so perlite adds some air to the mix and breaks it up so it doesn't clump up.
perlite can be cheaper and lighter. so that might be another consideration not directly related to the growing performance.
 
A very rough coco like this will not need perlite. but fine coco like this sees benefit from it.
 
2. there isn't a rule on this. typically 20-50%
 
3. you need to use a complete nutrient. Like a hydroponic nutrient. there are lots out there. general hydroponics flora or masterblend tomato is used on youtube a lot. i recommend dynagro foliage pro for noobs / lazy people since it's an easy 1 bottle. 
 
4. coco needs to be buffered. when you first get coco it will absorb the calcium and magnesium in your nutrients so your plant can't have any. this can cause some deficiency even though you are providing calcium the coco is stealing it all. So buffering is hydrating the coco with calcium and/or magnesium before you plant in it. 

 

[Inoks]

How necessary IS that buffering? Never done that and never had problems? 3 seasons on coir already

 

[skullbiker]

How necessary IS that buffering? Never done that and never had problems? 3 seasons on coir already

Maybe the plants would have been even better if you had buffered it.

 

[Inoks]

Maybe the plants would have been even better if you had buffered it.

Maybe so, didn't mean to sound rude. Now that I think of it, leaves havent been aa deep green as some have. Dont know if mag plays a part.

 

[PtMD989]

I have no experience with coco, but I kinda remember TrentL saying you have to rinse the salt out of it before you use it. I think that was in his glog from 2018. Good luck [emoji106][emoji16]


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[juanitos]

How necessary IS that buffering? Never done that and never had problems? 3 seasons on coir already

 
if you hit it with a lot of nutes up front you will have buffered it anyway.
 
it is not like a never ending hole, eventually it will soak up enough cal/mg to be neutral again.
 
 
i just ran nutes through my coco the day before planting. seems to be fine?

 

[SuburbanFowl]

I don't know much about this subject but hopefully we can learn something from sharing.
 
It seems like many posters in this thread have had great results and it would be beneficial if we could all share our experiences, results and knowledge to not only learn how to grow peppers better in coco coir but to continue advancing our collective knowledge about coco coir itself.
 

How necessary IS that buffering? Never done that and never had problems? 3 seasons on coir already

 
What brand/type of coco coir did you use? Some comes pre-buffered/pre-charged and some doesn't. Depending on how much you trust the manufacturer you can buffer it again but if it is truly pre-charged then you don't need to.
 
I have started expanding my bricks with normal strength Cal Mag. After mixing with perlite and filling a container with the coco + perlite mix, I the flush container with double strength Cal Mag and wait for 24 hours. After 24 hours I will feed the container some full strength hydroponic nutrients, transplant my plant and then feed the container more nutrients until runoff (sometimes even more after runoff).
 

I have no experience with coco, but I kinda remember TrentL saying you have to rinse the salt out of it before you use it. I think that was in his glog from 2018. Good luck [emoji106][emoji16]


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From what I can tell there are two types of salts people are referring to (I think).
 
The first type of salt IS technically the second type of salt which I'll talk about soon. These "salts" are salts that you can see and are the type of salt that we would put on our food. They're chunks of salt. Presumably they're sea salt (sodium chloride/NaCl) but they could be something else (who knows ).
 
You will find these in all types of coco coir (bagged, brick, pure coco, mixed coco/perlite, cheap and expensive).
 
Here are some that came from sieving 40 litres of expanded bricked canna coco (these are only the bigger chunks).
 
(My apologies the for photo quality).
 
This type of salt is present in all coco coir.
 

 
This is the visible form of salt you will find in coco coir. For what it's worth, flushing your coco with water will take a long time to remove this salt. Perhaps if you expand your coco brick with warm water it will dissolve them? Who knows.
 
 
 
Here are some things found while sieving other brands of coco (bagged, not bricked and not canna branded). I have no idea what half of this stuff is. The only components I can identify are perlite, salts, rocks and seashells (the seashells are neat, tbh.).
 

 
 
Forgive this following explanation, I did not study any form of science at school so I could be (and probably am) talking out of my butt here. I encourage anyone reading this to do their own research and come to their own conclusions.
 
The second type of salts (as mentioned above) are what I assume people are referring to when saying coco coir needs to be flushed of "salts".
 
In chemistry, a salt is an electrically neutral compound which consists of a positive ion (cation) and a negative ion (anion).
 
NaCl (sodium chloride, sea salt - for example) consists Na+ (sodium cation, positive charge) and Cl- (chloride anion, negative charge).
 
It make sense that coco coir would contain sea salts, correct? It is grown by the sea, after all.
That explains the sodium chloride (NaCl) found in the coco.
 
Coconuts being grown by the sea somewhat explains the presence of these sea salts, anyway. although you could reasonably (and perhaps erroneously) assume the sodium chloride would have been washed away before the product was buffered. All of the brands coco coir I have sieved claim to have been both rinshed/washed and buffered.
 
What happens when we put salt into water? It will dissolve, right? The speed it dissolves at will vary depending on the temperature of the water.
 
Once the NaCl gets dissolved it is no longer a salt. It has now split into its ions (Na+ and Cl-).
 
I cannot provide citations (mainly due to laziness) for any of the above information but if anyone would like, I will find some. To the best of my knowledge the above is correct but please double check this to verify.
 
Okay this is where we get into science where the majority of the research actually comes from cannabis nutrient companies and cannabis growing forums.
 
If these claims and the information provided are not cited or backed up with verifiable evidence (which it isn't) how can we believe anything we read on this subject?.
 
Please read the sentence directly before this sentence and then read the previous bolded sentence above. Appreciate the irony. Hopefully you can see the point I'm trying to make here.
 
The answer (in my opinion) is that we can't believe the information provided by cannabis nutrient companies or posters from cannabis forums. We have to use critical thinking skills and make educated (or in my case, uneducated) guesses.
 
The following information comes from hydroponic nutrient manufactuers and cannabis growing forums and as such may be false.
 
Hydroponic nutrients manufacturers claim that un-buffered/un-charged and un-rinshed/ un-washed coco can tend to be high in sodium (Na) and also potassium (K).
 
They also make the claim that coco coir in its un-buffered and un-rinshed state can be low in calcium (Ca) and magnesium (Ma).
 
Advanced nutrients also claim that coco needs extra iron (Fe) however their claim is in regard to  iron being required in nutrients rather than in the buffering process. (They also claim that this was discovered by "25 Ph.D.’s").
 
I need to stop typing and feed my plants so here is a page where you can read more about this.
 
In theory you can actually flush the coco with R/O or de-ionised water (ideally pH'd within the same range you would feed your coco with hydroponic nutrients) and then take some of the run off and test the EC, PPM, TDS or CF. The run off may show the salt content. If you continue to flush the coco you will most likely observe the EC going down.
 
My question is, if one was to flush their pre-buffered/pre-charged coco-coir with ph'd R/O or de-ionised water, are they actually washing the buffer out? Perhaps the EC/TDS will go down but part of that reduction in salts is the buffer being washed out.
 
This is where our critical thinking brains come in.
 
Can we trust the assertions of companies that produce and sell coco coir (whether bagged or bricked, pure coco or mixed with perlite)?
 
I have yet to find an answer to this question. Probably, it will come down to each individual grower making their own decision about this.
 
After re-reading all of the above information I'm uncertain of the point I was trying to make here but will keep this section because it took a long time to type out and hopefully someone can refute some of the points made and more learning will happen .
 
 

 
if you hit it with a lot of nutes up front you will have buffered it anyway.
 
it is not like a never ending hole, eventually it will soak up enough cal/mg to be neutral again.
 
 
i just ran nutes through my coco the day before planting. seems to be fine?

 
Yes, I believe this is to be true (with a caveat). The caveat is that it is dependent on the coco coir you are using. There is a lot of discussion on cannabis growing forums about this and there is not really a definitive answer.
 
It depends on many factors, really, so it's not a simple subject.
 
The original coco coir will play a huge part (quality, buffer, rinse, salt content, the way it was processed).
 
The fertiliser you're using will play a huge part, too. Hydroponic companies that sell coco coir specific nutrients tend to have higher amounts of Ca and Mg. If the coco is properly buffered then an all in one like Dyna-Gro Foliage Pro will more than likely be perfect.
 
What if the coco is not buffered well enough? I have to do more research about this subject to find more answers..
 

 

[SuburbanFowl]

How necessary IS that buffering? Never done that and never had problems? 3 seasons on coir already

Hi, would you mind posting a photo or multiple photos of any plants you have grown in coco coir? Do you know if the coco coir you grew in was "pre-buffered"?

 

[juanitos]

here's my pics. riococo is advertised as washed, not buffered tho. 
 

 

 

 

[juanitos]

also did a video series where i used more available stuff from amazon. 
 
i hydrated with nutrient solution from the get go. 
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2LZB2PTlHo&list=PLOKpKlc7vNtwYVqy-qwGZUK3Sc5TCxjNT&index=2
 
 

 

 

 

[Inoks]

Hi, would you mind posting a photo or multiple photos of any plants you have grown in coco coir? Do you know if the coco coir you grew in was "pre-buffered"?

The Coco I used https://www.growmart.eu/BioBizz-Coco-Mix-50-litres.html
Its offseason here in Finland, thinking about starting my first glog somewhere Jan/feb.
I always seeded on rockwool with very diluted ferts and then to Coco with maybe using 1/3 strenght ferts for The first month or so.

https://ibb.co/fG4z2Hx
https://ibb.co/PxmLGHw
https://ibb.co/6svS0Jf

 

[Takanotsume]

Is the buffering only necessary if you're opting for a coir-heavy mix, or would something like 50% coco/50% coarse compost not need it?

 

[SuburbanFowl]

here's my pics. riococo is advertised as washed, not buffered tho.

 
Beautiful plants man. You use Dyna-Gro Foliage Pro all the way through, right?
 
Did you wash it with full strength nutrients when planting?
 

The Coco I used https://www.growmart.eu/BioBizz-Coco-Mix-50-litres.html
Its offseason here in Finland, thinking about starting my first glog somewhere Jan/feb.
I always seeded on rockwool with very diluted ferts and then to Coco with maybe using 1/3 strenght ferts for The first month or so.

 
Also beautiful plants. What kind of nutrients did you use? Did you use the same nutrient product/s tor the whole grow and just increase the strength as the plants got bigger?
 

Is the buffering only necessary if you're opting for a coir-heavy mix, or would something like 50% coco/50% coarse compost not need it?

What is your goal here?
 
 
To use the 50/50 combo for containers? Kind of like a potting mix?
 
Used like that, I'm not 100% sure. Buffering may not be necessary but it certainly wouldn't hurt and you only have to do it once. That would probably also be too much compost (If you're actually planning on using those percentages).
 
If you're planning on using that as a semi-hydroponic media then you would benefit from buffering it and feed it at nearly every watering. That would also be too much compost, imo.
 
The result I'm finding most interesting is that neither Juanitos or Inoks buffered their coir. (In a sense, Juanitos did with the nutrients but not with a pure Cal Mag supplement).
 
There are many variables at here that make it hard to draw a conclusion. Perhaps both of you used products that were actually pre-buffered and maybe the manufacturer didn't state that? Maybe the coco coir used was clean enough that all it needed was an initial feeding to buffer it? Idk.

 

[Inoks]

Also beautiful plants. What kind of nutrients did you use? Did you use the same nutrient product/s tor the whole grow and just increase the strength as the plants got bigger?

IT was a 2 component nutritient, no longer in production, cant even find a link to it. Didn't mess with ratios that much, mainly just strenght.
The case could be that rockwool gets loaded with nutritients and is enough until Coco gets buffered?
 
edit. Nutritients basicly had one with all the needed nutritients and stuff and then another with only nitrogen and calcium, so those can be controlled as wished.

 

[Takanotsume]

To use the 50/50 combo for containers? Kind of like a potting mix?
 
Used like that, I'm not 100% sure. Buffering may not be necessary but it certainly wouldn't hurt and you only have to do it once. That would probably also be too much compost (If you're actually planning on using those percentages).
 
If you're planning on using that as a semi-hydroponic media then you would benefit from buffering it and feed it at nearly every watering. That would also be too much compost, imo.

 
I currently have two aji panca growing in coco coir with a touch of worm castings and some perlite (The ratios were around 7/1/3 parts each). They're in seven gallon fabric pots.
 
The plants are producing reasonably well and basically only getting a standard dose of CNS Grow 17 every other week or so (The directions state it's dilute enough to be applied at every watering and it's a complete nutrient with a good amount of calcium, though I chose to err on the side of caution by applying less then suggested), though as of late they've been shedding both young and new leaves rather heavily.
 
Wondering about the soil mix because I've seen "heavy" mixes of even parts peat/coco coir + compost/bagged garden soil + perlite recommended by people with lovely container plants and a shishito the grandad gave me in such a mix had far bigger pods then mine did.