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Darkb16a1's Coco+perlite soilless project !

Hi everyone,

last year I tried to grow some of my favourite chillies in a mix of coconut coir and perlite, tried to compare the results, learn from mistakes and do some experiments. Overall I'd call it quite successful and more clean than usual soil growing, and mostly with very early harvest that actually started in June and continued in ~2 week cycles until end of October.

This was the main reason for me to almost completely abandon the standard growing in soil, and fully focus on hydroponics, using coconut+perlite mix, drip irrigation and indoor growing for first 3 months continued in greenhouse (for the top plants) and/or open sky terrace once temperatures allow that for the rest.

I plan to share with you the progress of my garden, what worked and did not work so you can learn from my mistakes, and welcome any kind of question/comment !

Pictures will follow once I gather them up and publish to my web so I can link them here.

Edit:

Current setup:
- 250W Metal-Halide lamp
- rockwool or coconut Jiffy used for germination
- Coco/Perlite mix used as growing medium

Seedlings:
- pH 6,0-6,2
- EC up to 0,8 ( 400ppm)
- 1:1 ratio of coconut/perlite

2+months old plants:
- pH rather to 6,0 to avoid early flowering
- EC up to 1,2 ( 600ppm)
- 60% of coconut, 40% of perlite mix
 
Click to expand...
I've always been mildly interested in hydro growing, but
have never done anything about it, so will follow your
grow log with interest! Good luck this season.
Your english is great!
 
Same here... I'm likely going to be living in a dorm for a while, and will have space issues... Being able to grow a plant in a 5gal bucket, in a window will be fantastic...
 
Thanx for the kind words and interest in my project !

How it all started - December 24th 2011 - yes on an xmas day, my wife told me I have no style in decorating the xmas tree, so I went to do something more productive and planted seeds all are Chinense :)

24_prosinec_rockwool.jpg

Using a simple rockwool cubes from Grodan on a heat mat. I like that they have plastic cover on them which can be used for labelling. One cube has a thermometer inside, 30 degrees Celsius is 86F.

On 1st of January 2012, one week after planting, the first of Habaneros sprouted:
1_leden_habanero_klici.jpg


22nd of January, most of the plants already sprouted and roots made it to the bottom of the rockwool cube, so I transplanted them into a coconut/perlite mix. For the small seedlings, I use more Perlite than for the fully grown ones - in this case a 1:1 mix. The cups are 14,5 fl.oz "chinese soup cups" that I bought for about a dime each.
Solution has a pH of 6,2 and EC 0,8 ( 400ppm) .
22_leden_stul.jpg



9th of February, about one month and two weeks after planting the seeds, I built a table as my wife argued there's too much mess in our sports room on the floor. It's a simple table build using wooden desks painted with boat paint to be water resistant, some plastic on top and on one side the table is lifted, so excessive hydroponic solution flows to one particular corner (bottom right), drilled a hole in that corner and fitted a plastic pipe in it, to catch the solution that ran through the coco/perlite mix.
It is a typical example of a "run-to-waste" system, where the solution that goes through the plant's roots and media it grows in is considered as a waste - it may contain some unused nutrients, or even chemicals that are result of a nutrients exchange in the root system and are not usable by the plant anymore. Usually I stop to water the plant if the amount of solution coming out of the pot is about 20% of the overall amount used for that plant.
9_unor_stul_rostlinky.jpg
 
Progress update:

9th of Feb, side_by_side comparison of soil ( hlina in my language) and coconut mix ( kokos in my language) . Same plants - Trinidad Scorpion, looked similarly to each other in rockwool, transferred into growing medium at the same time.
9_unor_srovnani_kokos_hlina.jpg


18th of February, Tasmanian Habanero started to flower, so have to change nutrients, add more nitrogen, lower pH and start to look for bigger pots.
18_unor_tasman_kvete.jpg



27th Feb - plants are 2 months and 3 days since putting the seed into Rockwool.
I had to cut down on fertilizer ( from 750 to 500 ppm) as they grow too fast and I'm running out of available space under the 250W Metal-Halide bulb.
27_unor_srovnani_habanera_naga.jpg



10th March , table looks like a jungle, unfortunately plants do not have enough space to each other, as a result start to grow too much upwards and look spindly, so need to repot them and give more space before they grow to a shape I don't want or like. Some annuums at the front, 4 weeks old, still quite small.
10_brezen_stul.jpg
 
Progress:

14th March - first set of Tasmanian Habaneros is getting too big for the 14,5 cup, so goes first to the bigger pots - in fact plastic boxes bought for about $2 each.
They are 5,8 gallons, but filled only half way through with the coco/perlite mix, to make sure that the shock for roots is not too serious, having too much growing medium that does not dry out quickly enough and could promote moss/fungal diseases growth. Once plants grow bigger, I'll add the remaining growing medium to the box, and the stem should produce additional roots, as tested last year.
14_brezen_presazeni.jpg


17th March - the first set of Habaneros repotted seems to look healthy and all ok, so the other plants need to go too. This is how it looked during repotting:
17_brezen_bordel.jpg


And the result, after some room tidy-up.
The black boxes are 5,8 gal, the colored ones are 4 gallons. For the black ones I put 3-4 plants based on their natural size and growth potential, for the smaller ones 2-3 plants per box.
Also, after the repotting, to promote root growth, I plan to reduce the ferts for a while, lowering pH to about 6,0 and adding more phosphorus to the nutrient mix.
In this case, I also slightly changed the coco/perlite mix and added more coco - approx 60% of coco and 40% perlite.
17_brezen_uklizeno.jpg

17_brezen_habanero.jpg
 
Guys, what do you think ? Do the peppers look ok, do you see any irregularities, anything wrong I should pay attention to ?

Do you find this topic interesting, should I keep updating it ? So far it is up to date, plants still look the same.
 
Update 24th March - transplanting to bigger pots. No chance to keep the rest of the plants in 14 oz pots, so everything else from Chinense group had to go to 4 / 5.8 gal boxes. The small plants between the boxes are some Annuums and Baccatums that I planted in Feb.

24_Brezen_bedny.jpg


Tasmanian Habanero showing nice foliage
24_brezna_tasmanian_habanero.jpg


Trinidad Scorpion from my friend Kleema - bigger leaves but smaller plant so far, plant is not that profilic
24_brezna_ts_kleema.jpg
 
More updates would be awesome. Really enjoy how you go to details about your nutrient mixes, pH levels and so on! Didn't know you should change the pH depending on plant stage? What pH to use when vegging and flowering? What promotes growth?
 
Thanx for the feedback !

As for the different pH during each of the phase, it really isn't that neccessary, but so far from what I've read and experimented with last year, it seems that Pottasium update is increased when pH is help above 6,0. My plants did indeed flowered better when I kept the pH during flowering stage above 6,0 - to be more exact at 6,3.

Update - 8th of April - running into space issues again. Plants thrive but are getting too close to each other.
8_duben_bedny.jpg
 
Thanx seaman ! I'm actually counting days until I can take the plants outside to a greenhouse, but weather here in CZ still does not allow that. I took one smaller plant yesterday and put it outside, to find it wilted and damaged by cold in the morning today.
 
Thanks for answering the pH question :) You're not alone about waiting for the weather to be warm enough to move plants in greenhouse. Still mornings below freezing here :(
 
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