timmah1979
Active Member
RO we got chloramine water I can’t bubble out. Have to add calmag.
Coco Coir Ph Level to use with Fox Farms (Trio-Pack) Nutes?
- Thread starter VoidProphecy
- Start date
VoidProphecy
Member
Of course
MickFoster
Well-Known Member
My tap water has chloramine..............it's not harmful to plants...........and I don't have to add calmag.
Why do you assume you need it without even trying it without?
Ok @MickFoster beat me to it. (thanks Mick)
I'll add that this is the OP's thread so my discussion was specific to him. If you'd like to discuss your situation please start a new thread. Someone will usually weeble over.
twentyeight.threefive
Well-Known Member
My tap water is 35 ppm. I don't add CalMag.
Roger A. Shrubber
Well-Known Member
i've grown in coco a long time. i ph at 5.75 during veg, and 5.82 for flower. i don't use a res, i grow in hempy buckets and make up fresh water daily. whether or not you'll need cal-mag depends on a few things, how hard your water is, and what it is that's making it hard, and whether or not the coco you use comes pre charged. if it does, you probably won't need cal mag, if it isnt, you may need it up until the third or fourth week of flower
VoidProphecy
Member
CoCo isnt precharged as it was already mixed with perlite but the brand im using is Hydro Crunch so i could be wrong
Nizza
Well-Known Member
Yall dont think chloramine needs to be filtered out? My tap water is pretty clean (~110ppm) but has chloramine and I've been using an RO unit to get rid of it...
that would be great if I didnt have to filter that shit!!
I want to add that I use some beneficials so I have been RO'ing to prevent the chloramine from killing my bennies
that would be great if I didnt have to filter that shit!!
I want to add that I use some beneficials so I have been RO'ing to prevent the chloramine from killing my bennies
MickFoster
Well-Known Member
Chloramine will not harm plants........your tap water is perfect.
If you can drink it..........so can your plants.
VoidProphecy
Member
Plants also use Chlorine as well....
Hello….I came across this thread while trying to find out an answer to something. I’ve seen your comments quite often and would absolutely trust your advice….if you have time to give it.
I just switched over to the Fox Farms 70/30 (coco/perlite) and am confused over the proper ph. The guys at the grow shop said I should ph from 6.0-6.8…..and to vary the levels from watering to watering. Is this correct??
Also, they indicated that it can be watered just like soil, meaning soak it then let it dry out good before soaking again. This doesn’t sound right either.
Could the Fox Farms 70/30 be different from regular coco mixed w/perlite ??
It says that it’s buffered but I’m not sure what that even means.
I just moved 2 very healthy happy 3 week old photos into 1 gal pots of this medium and I don’t wanna lose them to poor watering or incorrect ph levels.
I sure would appreciate getting your take on the subject.
One more thing….I amended with some organics (kelp meal, Bat guano, myco) and plan to top dress along the way. Is this a viable plan for this medium??
Thank you a ton for any and all advice.
Cheers.
Roger A. Shrubber
Well-Known Member
i've been experimenting since i posted some of that stuff. i've found that just staying relatively close to 6.0 all the way through works just fine. i got sick of buying ph pens that didn't last worth a shit, so i've gone back to using ph test solution, i get it close, and they don't seem to mind it at all. you do want small variations, it allows for absorption of nutrients at either end of the scale, but not large ones.
you do NOT want to treat coco like soil, you never want to let it dry out, roots get damaged quickly in dry coco. i water daily, and twice a week i water enough to get at least a couple of cups of run off from each plant, that keeps the salt from the fertilizer from building up.
coco has a tendency to lock up calcium and magnesium, and to release sodium and potassium, which it has usually absorbed from the ocean water that frequently washes over the piles of husks they make it out of. to avoid this, they "buffer" the coco with cal-mag, which in theory anyway, gets rid of a lot of the sodium and potassium and makes the calcium and magnesium available to your plants. fox farms is a fairly reputable company, i think you can trust them, but if you see anything strange happening, unexplained leaf damage, maybe flush it and dose it with cal-mag....
while there are those that go organic, coco coir is a hydroponic medium, and making it a good place for micro-organisms to live is asking for trouble...root rot and other pathogens thrive in exactly the same environment beneficial micros do...i run sterile. you can buy packages of pool shock at walmart, home depot, lowes...just make sure you're getting plain pool shock. i add 2 grams to a gallon of water, and use 250 ml per 5 gallon bucket of water, it keeps the roots nice and healthy, i use it all the way through their life cycle.
also, benes don't do well if you're using synthetic fertilizers, the salts in them are bad for the benes.
i'd use what you have made up, but add the pool shock as well, it will wash out with the run off after a few weeks.
you can run with benes, but it seems like walking a razor's edge to me, you HAVE to keep adding benes regularly, and i still hear people saying they have problems.
Thank you for the info….there’s always a learning curve with any sort of variation to a grow.
Pardon my ignorance but when you refer to “benes” you’re talking about beneficial bacteria?
If I understand correctly they’re needed for the organic ferts??
So, unless I start running synthetic nutes (which I’m not opposed to), I’ll need to give regular top dressings of the powdered myco…??
I’ll def try the pool shock…..is there any particular frequency for applying it??
You’ve helped me more in 10 min than the hours I’ve spend googling. Thank u.
Roger A. Shrubber
Well-Known Member
pool shock and benes (yes, beneficial microbes, bacteria, fungi) are NOT compatible. pool shock will kill the benes.
no, don't top dress myco, you apply it directly to the roots when you transplant. myco is mycorrhizae, a fungus that grows directly in the roots "zone". the fungus eats this stuff called exudate, that the roots ...exude...and in turn, they break down the nutrients in the soil that the plant wants, so the roots can absorbs them easier. that might be slightly simplified, but that's the basics of it. if you're using organic stuff, stick with organic stuff, it doesn't mix well with synthetic stuff. the synthetics are bonded to salts to stabilize them, and the benes don't like the salt almost as much as they don't like pool shock.
just be very careful about trying organic hydroponics, like i said, the perfect environment for benes is also the perfect environment for nasty shit
Gotcha….I’m glad I had you clarify things for me.
I’ll def punt the idea of using pool shock and won’t top dress the myco. I added a fair amount of myco when I mixed the coco and other amendments, I wonder if that’s enough or would I need to add more through a tea or use something like fish sh!t or Recharge??
Roger A. Shrubber
Well-Known Member
i don't have a lot of experience with organic growing, even when i grew outdoors i used synthetic nutrients. i'm not sure if you can use myco in a tea or not, it lives symbiotically on plant roots. the form of it i use in my garden outside is a dry powder you sprinkle directly on the roots and it grows on it's own. it might not have anything to eat while you're brewing the tea...but that's just me supposing...
https://www.pthorticulture.com/en/training-center/compost-tea-use-with-soilless-media/
from the above
"Mycorrhizae cannot be added to compost tea because they do not survive with the high populations of microorganism for more than a couple of hours. In growing media, it is different because the concentration of microorganisms is much lower than in the highly concentrated compost tea.:
but there are apparently water soluble products that you can add at any time, just mix them up right before use.
Boy it didn’t take long for the problems to start with my organic coco run…..the pics are from this morning.
After chatting with you last night, I watered both plants w/ plain water ph’ed to 6.0. There was a good bit of runoff, which was dark and apparently nuclear (ppm was 3650). I expected a high ppm w/ all the amendments.
Anyway, this morning I checked in and see some pronounced yellowing on the bottom 2 leaves of the Amnesia strain. The Gelato OG is still looking good.
This brings about a couple of questions: first, since I’ve amended the soil and there’s a fair amount of time’s worth of nutes stored, should I be watering to runoff and leeching out my nutrition?
Secondly, if push comes to shove, could I switch to synthetic and take a more traditional route?? I guess if I did, would I need to flush out as much of the amendments as possible and/or administer the pool shock treatment ?
I decided to grow these plants in coco b/c I had heard of the notable increase in growth rates (over soil) and to be more in control of what the plant was getting for nutrition.
I had another grower state that coco could be treated more like soil but the results would show it…
Whatta ya think??
Roger A. Shrubber
Well-Known Member
like i said, i'm not an expert on organics, but i do garden and have grown weed outdoors before i moved inside.
just amending the soil is the first stage, you have to give it time to cook, organic amendments don't break down and become available immediately, some things can take months to become available to your plants. those guys you see on gardening shows are using compost they've had cooking for months before they use it. so any deficiencies you see right now are probably from things that haven't broken down sufficiently yet, you may have to add a little fertilizer for a while to give it time to catch up.
here are a couple of guides to organic hydroponics, look them over and see if you think it's for you, some people stand by organic growing, say they wouldn't go any other way, but i personally think the potential for disaster is too great, and prefer the sterile approach.
https://gardeningtips.in/organic-hydroponics-gardening-advantages-problems
https://www.trees.com/gardening-and-landscaping/organic-hydroponics
https://www.gardeningchores.com/is-organic-hydroponics-possible-yes-and-heres-how-to-use-organic-nutrients-in-hydroponics/
if you decide to go sterile, it's easy enough, i would water to heavy run off a couple of times, then drop back down to normal, any organic amendments left in your pots will get used up quickly enough. you just might want to go light on the nutes the first 2 or 3 times you feed, to avoid burning them till the amendments get used up.
just amending the soil is the first stage, you have to give it time to cook, organic amendments don't break down and become available immediately, some things can take months to become available to your plants. those guys you see on gardening shows are using compost they've had cooking for months before they use it. so any deficiencies you see right now are probably from things that haven't broken down sufficiently yet, you may have to add a little fertilizer for a while to give it time to catch up.
here are a couple of guides to organic hydroponics, look them over and see if you think it's for you, some people stand by organic growing, say they wouldn't go any other way, but i personally think the potential for disaster is too great, and prefer the sterile approach.
https://gardeningtips.in/organic-hydroponics-gardening-advantages-problems
https://www.trees.com/gardening-and-landscaping/organic-hydroponics
https://www.gardeningchores.com/is-organic-hydroponics-possible-yes-and-heres-how-to-use-organic-nutrients-in-hydroponics/
if you decide to go sterile, it's easy enough, i would water to heavy run off a couple of times, then drop back down to normal, any organic amendments left in your pots will get used up quickly enough. you just might want to go light on the nutes the first 2 or 3 times you feed, to avoid burning them till the amendments get used up.