There are a number of benefits for coir, namely the air to water ratio, but they seem to be offset by the need to use special fertilizers and nutes to get the most out of it. It's not something that you can simply plop plants into and expect them to do well. My main problem is the availability of coir specific nutes. They are hard to find in my neck of the woods.
In terms of the coir itself, there appears to be a consensus that they will vary from region to region. The article I mentioned was published in 2005. Although they didn't specifically attempt to determine if there were any differences in the coir, their findings demonstrated that some plants do better than others in coir meaning that not all coir products are created equal. In doing a quick search at my university turned up a few articles on the variability of coir between regions and manufacturers.
One study titled
Physico-chemical and chemical properties of some coconut coir dusts for use as a peat substitute for containerised ornamental plants conducted in 2002, tested 13 different samples of coir taken from Asia, America and Africa. In terms of the chemical composition, their findings show that all properties studied differed significantly between and within sources, and from the control Sphagnum peat.
The differences in coir appear to be attributed to a number of factors. In the article titled
Phytotoxicity and Detoxification of Fresh Coir Dust and Coconut Shell (2004), the authors found that age of the coconut and the extraction method used in preparing unripened coconuts contributes to the overall final product. For example, unripe nuts are usually soaked in brine to make the fiber easier to extract, but this contributes to the problem of excess salinity with some coir dust products. According to this article the increasing needs in production of coir-based media and as a soil amendment, has led to the use of coir dust that is currently shifting from the aged coir dusts, e.g., 100 year old Sri Lankan coir, to young, even fresh, coir dusts. The use of fresh coir dusts can involve serious problems of high salinity, and phytotoxicity.
There is also a study called
Influence of Particle Size on Physical and Chemical Properties of Coconut Coir Dust as Container Medium (2003) that demonstrates how the physical properties of coconut coir dust affect aeration and water supply and availability. Similarly, physicochemical and chemical properties of this material are also affected by particle size, but to a lesser extent.
I guess the jist of the differences between coir appears to be with the age of the coconut, the extraction method and particle size of the dust. There may be more, but this is what I've been able to come up with over a quick search of electronic journals.
Although coir is a natural renewable waste product, it has it's own problems. This was studied in 1997 and reported in
Retting of coconut husk - a unique case of water pollution on the South West coast of India
Abstract:
The extensive backwaters of Kerala are the sites for a flourishing cottage industry - the coir industry. This enterprise almost exclusively located along the 590 km coastal belt of Kerala, provides direct employment to over half a million people in the state and produces nearly 90% of the total coir goods in the world. The shallow bays and lagoons of the 30 backwater systems of the state are traditional areas for the retting of coconut husk for the production of the coir fibre. The paper examines the environmental status of the retting grounds in Kerala, in relation to the biotic communities. The study revealed that retting activity has caused large scale organic pollution along with the mass destruction of the flora and fauna, converting sizeable sections of the backwaters into virtual cesspools of foul smelling stagnant waters. High values of hydrogen sulphide, ammonia, BOD5 associated with anoxic conditions and low community diversity of plankton, benthic fauna, fish, shell fish, wood boring and fouling organisms were the outstanding feature of the retting zones.
Coir doesn't seem all that eco-friendly to me.
do you fert every watering and ph test your water/fert mix? and when do you start fertilising if growing them from seed in coco? With peat mix i waited about a month before ferting but i'm not sure if it should happen sooner with coco?
