It's a double edge sword, water too frequently and the roots will rot, infrequently and the salts in the coco become solid causing lockouts/toxicities.
I agree, which is why I was confused. I was replying to Renfro who said "Coco is totally a different animal than peat based mixes. You want to allow a peat based mix to dry out between waterings, with coco you must NOT allow that to happen. "
Look at it this way. With coco the watering schedule can be more frequent than a peat based mix because sifted coco cannot be over watered. I use sifted, buffered coco with 10% amendments in a wicking pot with reservoir. A poor man's blumat.
I contacted PT Horticulture about pH levels when growing in ProMix HP. They have designed the medium to stabilize pH between 5.9 and 6.2 right out of the bale and the source water pH should be the same as the pH of the medium. Based on their reply, my current ProMix bale pH reads 6.1 - so the source water should also be 6.1.
Exactly it's pretty easy even, just water always when the medium is still wet.i love when ppl try to tell you that you can't overwater coco
you most certainly can get root rot that way
I agree with you with the exception of a freshly transplanted small plant into a big container of coco. A 4 - 6 inch plant in 3+ gallons of coco doesn't need daily watering unless the coco is drying out due to heat, low humidity, etc... In those instances I've found that the root growth is faster when the coco stays good and damp but not soaking. Growing in fabric pots I've always judged the time to start daily watering by when the roots started to poke through the sides and bottom. That's using 3 gallon pots of straight coco which is somewhat different than a coco/perlite blend which dries out faster.
What coco are you using? I use Botanicare and it has a very low percentage of fine coco. I don't use perlite just straight coco. In the past I've had coco that was more fine than I like so I stopped using those brands.
Canna Coco Brick sifted with 1/4" screen. I could certainly wreck the buffers in my coco medium with just one water only feed and send my plants shock but there is no good reason to do that.
i love when ppl try to tell you that you can't overwater coco
you most certainly can get root rot that way
If you have even the smallest amount of common sense you will not overwater coco. Once the roots have filled the pot you can multi-feed daily without fear of overwatering. I would literally have to leave my irrigation running constantly before root rot is a possibility on my flowering plants.
I did a test on a some plants I didn't give a fuck about and no the root system was not underdeveloped, they was always rootbound in those 5 gal dumb plastic pot's
Can yo give us some ideas what we can do with our time then? Get a 2nd job maybe? IDK.
