Grow Mediums How often do you usually need to water in coco?

[Builder0101]

I add extra cal mag to maintain the buffer. Coco continually breaks down as you grow and you need to add cal mag to maintain the buffer

Calcium and magnesium are 2 completely different nutrients as you know OFC. Never really understood cal/mag. I feed my plants in coco calcium (that I get from vinegarand eggshells) and Magnesium.
I use epsom salts for magnesium. You may say there is Sulphur in epdom...
I get it. You will never IMO cause an issue between mag and sul using epsom. Magnesium and calcium however have a balance. Just thoughts.
And yes you should be able to water every 24 hours in coco. When they are in explosive veg I water every 12 hours if I can. Never run into overwatering issues yet

 

[Sqwirlman]

Calcium and magnesium are 2 completely different nutrients as you know OFC. Never really understood cal/mag. I feed my plants in coco calcium (that I get from vinegarand eggshells) and Magnesium.
I use epsom salts for magnesium. You may say there is Sulphur in epdom...
I get it. You will never IMO cause an issue between mag and sul using epsom. Magnesium and calcium however have a balance. Just thoughts.
And yes you should be able to water every 24 hours in coco. When they are in explosive veg I water every 12 hours if I can. Never run into overwatering issues yet

I have never run in to over watering issues either. Coco is meant to be wet to provide maximum air to the roots. If it’s dry it will air prune the roots.

 

[Skellycrew]

Newbie here. Curious about at what point I should be watering to the point of runoff? I have clone transplants in 3gal fabric pots, have been home for 9 days all thriving (1 is BEASTMODE, 1 is "good" the third I had to finnagle into playing catch-up, all growing well, average un-LST height about 8", 6+ nodes). To this day, I haven't had any runoff, in fact the bottoms of my pots aren't even wet, but the coco seems to be properly saturated and they're decently heavy. ..in fact I noticed my biggest plant had the lightest pot so I stepped up her water. But yeah, about what size/age before I water to runoff?

 

[Mañ'O'Green]

Newbie here. Curious about at what point I should be watering to the point of runoff? I have clone transplants in 3gal fabric pots, have been home for 9 days all thriving (1 is BEASTMODE, 1 is "good" the third I had to finnagle into playing catch-up, all growing well, average un-LST height about 8", 6+ nodes). To this day, I haven't had any runoff, in fact the bottoms of my pots aren't even wet, but the coco seems to be properly saturated and they're decently heavy. ..in fact I noticed my biggest plant had the lightest pot so I stepped up her water. But yeah, about what size/age before I water to runoff?

If you do not fertigate (water plus nutrients) coco to 20% run-off every time you fertigate you will soon be living in lock-out city.

What you need to learn about watering will come with practice. Here are the basic rules: Never let the soil dry out. Soil and or coco can become hydrophobic if allowed to dry. This means it repels water. This in turn will create dry pockets in the soil and roots there will die. If your soil - coco have accidentally dried out use a surfactant to help re-wet it. I like yucca powder. Don't let soil remain soggy by watering too much too often. Root rot, damping off, molds, fungus gnats and other problems start in soggy soil. When you do water water the entire pot. How to learn when to water starts before you plant the seed. Fill your container with fresh soil/coco and weigh it (heft it) this is the lightest weight and consider it a dry pot. Now slowly water until the soil/coco will no longer absorb the water and run-off begins; weigh the pot (heft it) this is the maximum water, the wettest the pot can get. The difference between wettest and driest is the maximum water weight, for ease of explanation lets just say the water weighs 20 pounds. When the pot loses 10 pounds (half of the water weight) it is time to water again. There is an art to watering.

One of the main ideas behind using coco for cannabis is so you can drive the plant hard by fertigating several times a day. This keeps fresh balanced nutrients in the root zone all of the time. You do not want 20% run-off each time just a total of 20% by the end of the fertigating time zone for that day. Don't water untill the lights have been on for two hours and don't water after two hours prior to lights out.

 

[parsing_trees]

If you do not fertigate (water plus nutrients) coco to 20% run-off every time you fertigate you will soon be living in lock-out city.

Or maybe you won't be. Measure the EC of your runoff. If it's not significantly higher (>300 us/cm) than what you're putting in, congratulations, you don't have salt buildup issues. I found that I only needed to water to runoff about once a week to keep salt buildup in check, which was fantastic, because constantly dealing with runoff is a pain in the ass. Constantly flushing out excess nutrients with runoff isn't the only way to manage it, you could also feed lighter or adjust many other variables so the salts build up more slowly instead.

Now I bottom-feed coco, which the Coco for Cannabis guy claims shouldn't even be possible. Not only do I get good results, but it's like 5% as much work. There are a lot of viable ways to grow in coco.

 

[Skellycrew]

First grow so I'm not really to the level of checking EC or even PPM yet (I fully intend to control ALL parameters in the future, but baby steps. Need to know i can control pH and nutrient levels first). What I did do though, was check the pH of the runoff and it was pretttttty low, like around 5.5 maybe lower (I used drops, so I had to do the color-code matching on the chart. I never use my pen meter to check pH of anything but plain water.) which I assume is a decent indicator of some buildup. Will continue to monitor that as I fertigate with a higher pH of 6.1 to 6.5 The plants are still growing quite well, and my one lagger is catching up very very nicely.

 

[Skellycrew]

Now I bottom-feed coco, which the Coco for Cannabis guy claims shouldn't even be possible. Not only do I get good results, but it's like 5% as much work. There are a lot of viable ways to grow in coco.

But Autopots work for coco? Those are bottom-feeders. Well, not THAT type of bottom-feeder

 

[parsing_trees]

What I did do though, was check the pH of the runoff and it was pretttttty low [...]

It's more meaningful to check the EC, because it's the higher salt concentration affecting the pH -- if the EC is high the pH will be low, but if the EC isn't high you probably don't need to care. Also, EC meters are cheap (mine was $15), precise, and don't need to be recalibrated.

 

[parsing_trees]

But Autopots work for coco? Those are bottom-feeders. Well, not THAT type of bottom-feeder

I'm hand-watering to bottom-feed, but doing so based on my understanding of what the autopot's pump does -- only water as much as they can wick up by next time, so there isn't any water sticking around too long and going stagnant. It works great.

 

[Skellycrew]

I'm hand-watering to bottom-feed, but doing so based on my understanding of what the autopot's pump does -- only water as much as they can wick up by next time, so there isn't any water sticking around too long and going stagnant. It works great.

And cover that standing water.