Grow Mediums How often do you usually need to water in coco?
- Thread starter Bantersaurus
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My outdoor garden is 100% Organic so no synthetic salts out there.
I have quite a few buddies including guys that work for the company that manufacture the line of products that I use that all use a drain to waste/recycle system to great effect.
Recycled nutrients are added back to reservoir and adjusted with ph'ed water and the aid of a TDS or EC meter. Its a very popular method in the cut flower market, NFT systems etc
I understand your concern about using certain components of the nutrient soloution and not knowing what's needing to be replaced, that's something to look further into.
.. And yes, all nutrients are 'salt based', organic or otherwise.
Isn't the whole point of Mega Crop that they're organic/vegan and don't have salts? This seems incorrect...
The label says "Derived from: Calcium Nitrate, Monopotassium Phosphate, Potassium Nitrate, ...", lots of other salts, and then kelp and amino acids.
Plants take up nutrients in the soil in the form of soluble ions made up of two opposite charged ions. We call these soluble ions 'Salts'.
You will have to Google it (or get a member with a chemistry background to explain) to get a more indepth understanding of the chemistry beind ion exchange, etc.
Basically, bottled synthetic (or chemically processed) fertilisers are minerals in their soluble ionic form, able to be uptaken by plants immediately whilst 'Organic fertilisers' are mostly insoluble, needing to be broken down by various processes such as microbial weathering.
Its arguably incorrect terminology when we talk about salt Grows vs non-salt grows as you can see from the above description but it's one of those intricacies we have in our community that I also use and will continue to do so.
When in solution with water many compounds including inorganic salts as well as acids and bases dissociate into their eletrically charged constituent elements, known as ions. Water has a strong polar charge, more so than the ionic bonds holding together many compounds. The classic example is sodium chloride (table salt), in water it dissociates to Na+ and Cl- ions. Water itself is a balanced equilibrium of OH-(hydroxyl) and H+ ions. The concentration of OH- and H+ ions in solution is actually what determines pH. Hence why dumping a bunch of soluble compounds into our feeding solutions changes our pH. So technically salts is okay nomenclature. Whether you buy the poop and mix it in your soil or you buy bottles of processed urea to mix with your water, your nitrogen still probably came from animal waste.
I took look into it and it sounds like you guys are right. Organic vs inorganic seems like a better distinction for me to use since the elements seem to be coming from metal salts either way. Having said that, I'm not even sure that I believe that it matters whether your nutrients are organic since I'm not sure the plant can differentiate the two. Wouldn't available nutrients be available nutrients either way?
Anyway, getting back to the original topic, I'll be starting my next grow soon and I'm still deliberating whether I need to add perlite. Couldn't I just water once every 1 - 2 days instead and just make sure that I'm always watering early while the coco is still saturated? "Early" meaning early for soil. As long as the medium gets a constant stream of water and nutrients without drying out in between, it should be no less optimal, right?
I guess my real question is - how compact is coco? I'm thinking that's the main role of perlite in coco.
Hand-watering once a day is fine, or every two days for really large containers. Did you look into hempy buckets? Those can help to keep water and nutrients available in between hand-waterings, and are much simpler than setting up automated irrigation.
I think a lot of the compactness of coco seems to relate to the type of coco particles in the medium. In the research I did before choosing a specific coco product, it seemed to me that a mixture of chunks of pith, long fibers, and short fibers was the best option to reduce compaction. As far as the addition of perlite, it seems there is no consensus on how much if any is the "right" amount.
Also some people seem to prefer hydroton/expanded clay or rice hulls over perlite as well. If you're not gonna want to water everyday don't go coco, just my opinion. There are days I really wish I wasn't a slave to thirsty roots but there are plenty of benefits to offset the tasks.
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