First Journal - organic coco LED

Hey all! I’ve been lurking here for years now, growing 1-2 plants at a time guerilla style and just following along everyone else’s experiences. I’m in Canada, so things just got a whole lot different!

We have a 4 plant limit at home, so I’ve got two spaces setup, a veg closet and a 2’ x 4’ bloom tent. Hopefully I can get a schedule organized that will have one plant per month ready to harvest.

A few days ago, I threw a bunch of seeds into some paper towels and set them on the bed of my 3D printer to keep them warm (temp set to hold at 34 deg celsius). I’ve got a few Grape bagseeds, a handful of some old Pineapple Express genetics and my own experimental cross waiting to pop open. 2/3 of the grapes cracked overnight and one has enough of a tap to move to the medium.

I’m popping way more seeds than is strictly legal, but they’re not all going to pop, then some won’t survive, so if I end up with more than 4 healthy and above ground I’ve got a couple buddies who want them to start their own gardens. NOT FOR SALE - but if you’re also in Canada I think we can gift/trade amongst adults without running afoul of anything serious.



For the grow medium, I’m working with coco for the first time and have it all mixed up with all the usual dry amendments, a little bokashi, and some microbe tea to kick things off. I mixed it about a month ago and it’s been chillin in the dark since then, it smelled sour and fermenty when I first blended it and added the teas, but now it’s super rich and earthy smelling. Very excited to see how this goes.

Here’s what’s inside my bloom tent at the moment - hopefully just another 2-3 weeks to go. She’s a sour diesel from rare earth. Growing in what is frankly not the best soil blend I’ve ever made. It’s too dense and I think the plant had a hard time driving roots through it all. Also crazy slow to water.... always opt for more drainage than less. A few weeks ago I got a pack of bennies that turned out to be full of fungus gnat seeds... still fighting those little bastards, some nematodes are in the mail as we speak to eat them all.

I totally forgot to mention the lights..... I have 4 viparspectra 300w (~130 actual) burple led’s. 2 I the veg cabinet, and 2 in the flower tent. They are pretty ok for veg, but they’re hot garbage in bloom on their own, so I’ve also got an even older fairly red COB led from China that seems to really help a lot over the flowering cycle. I’m saving up for the full conversion to quantum boards for all of the obvious reasons.

First grape seed above ground. One of them cracked but then died, the third has shown no action yet.



And here’s the one and only clone I took off the sour diesel before I flipped her to 12/12. She’s rooted well and started to show signs of healthy new growth over the past couple of days. Roots are just starting to poke out all the holes at the bottom of the cup, so in about a week or 10 days I’ll move her into a bigger pot.

Hey man! Looking good. A few suggestions with coco. I would not try doing a super soil type mix with coco. It just doesn't work out well as you have seen. Believe it or not, its even easier than what you have done.

For your coco mix all you really need is coco and perlite. Around a 70/30 blend. Coco is the happy place between soil and hydro. It has properties of soil but wants to be treated like hydro. I highly recommend using nutes made for hydro, liquids that can be mixed with water before feedings. Speaking of watering, again they like to be treated like hydro so the more feedings(watering) you can give coco, the better your end result will be.

As for setting up a rotation with 4 plants. If you can move your flower tent to a 4x4 you could harvest a plant a month. Start 1 in the flower tent, then at 30 days add the second. When you pull the first flower plant, replace it with another from your veg tent. Rince n repeat.

Good luck on your journey!

I haven’t really seen why a living soil won’t work in coco if setup properly. I’ve not tried it yet myself, and haven’t seen many examples of it so I decided to experiment a bit and document it here. I’ll probably mix some pearlite into the big pot before the transplant. I’ll definitely keep your suggestion in mind though - if things go sideways on me I’ll probably mount a rescue effort with the liquid nutes. Do you have any suggestions that are purely organic?

You nailed it with the perpetual plan. We’re doing minor renos and repairs around the house as well as flipping rooms around a bit right now, but eventually I’ll have carved out enough space for a 4x4 tent and I can keep the 2x4 for vegging. I’d also prefer to setup any new tent with quantum boards so saving up the scratch for that purchase too so I can do it all at once.

The sour diesel that’s flowering now I’ve grown once before - they’re definitely the most difficult strain I’ve grown to date. They’re stable, but any and every little stress or imperfection cost me time and weight in flower. But holy s#!% it’s tasty stuff! Right now the smell is unreal; very pungent fruity in the air, but if you disturb a bud it’s ALLLL diesel. I wish I could share the smell somehow!

Day 2:

Awesome man! Once it all gets rolling you'll have a steady stash. Sour D is one of the favs.

It will work with a living soil and I am sure there are dudes out there killing this way. We did grow like this when we started in coco but about 5000 plants later we run main syn nutes. The main difference between organics and nonorgs is nonorgs are more refined minerals. This is why hydro has a hard time doing organics. It is dependant on the water to break down the minerals into food and because they are not refined it takes much longer. The best benefit for coco vs soil is coco dries out much faster. The faster a medium dries the faster you can water. So if one is feeding nutes when watering, nonorgs will break down faster which is very important when one does multiple waterings a day. On average I will push about 1.5-2 gallons per 5 gallon pot over 3 to 4 watering per day during flower. The result was the plants went from averaging 1/2lb to 1lb+ as everything was dailed in.

Actually, this is a total side rant but something I thought of the other day. Think about guys that are really big and buff. The guy that spends hours a day in the gym. He eats health and typically very well portioned meals 4-8 times a day. The result is an Atlas type body. Now apply that thought process to what I said above about multiple feedings a day with your plants. It was like a revelation lol.

As for organic liquids, any of the big brands have line ups that are pretty close to each other. Any of them would work just fine. I have used Fox Farms and mill's organically and had great results.

Anyways I'm stoned and sidetracked now so I'll just say its all come down to personal preference. And sorry for the wall of words!

Whatever, do your thing - I'm not afraid of reading a bit, haha.

5000 plants later.... wow. You've been at this a while I take it. I'm planning on keeping up the watering to as often as they'll take it alternating tea/water. But maybe if the ph stays in line I'll be able to feed tea every time.

I'm curious when you saw yours go from 1/2 pounders to 1+ did the plants grow much bigger or was it all bud weight? 5 gal pots I gather, what was the footprint of a plant though?

HAHAHA, love the juice-bag reference. That absolutely makes sense though.

Thanks for your input, hope to stick around for the run - definitely won't learn anything if everyone just says nice plants, haha.

Been growing for around 6 years on a serious level. I have decent home grow consisting of 60 or so plants but also run 3 50k watts rooms at a dispensary, which is where most of the experience comes from. I am lucky to have smart people around me and someone elses money to test and trying new things with lol.

It was both. The plants were bigger. Not way bigger but a room that normally runs 120 plants, could be done with 90-100. So the plant footprint is slight larger but the grow space and time are the same.

The main difference was nug size. Top colas went from having the thickness of your typical pill bottle to that of a can of soda. And yes, 5 gallon pots(cloth).

To bring down numbers some because we are comparing a grow of multiple rooms to a tent, in a 4x4 space I would expect to yield no less than 2.5-3lb.

Glad that reference made sense! I love growing but I love learning and teaching about it even more so I am always throwing around anaolgies like this lol.

Since ya brought up testing pH, I havent tested pH (for coco grows) in years but that's something to dive into later lol.

You've got me jonesing for some Sour D. It has been far too long

Well, the diesel is coming along nicely. I’m hoping to be in the final week with that one.



The grape seedling rooted the little cup of coco I had it in, and has now been transplanted into a party cup with the final soil mixture and fed a couple servings of weak tea.






And now today, we have the grape looking healthy and starting to grow up top again after the transplant - which tells me the roots are happy in the new soil so far. Calling this day 7 since she broke ground.

Well, on a whim I just decided to check the trichs on the sour diesel while she was sleeping. I'm glad I did as it's looking like at least the top half of the plant is almost perfectly ripe! I found a handful of ambers, and like 2 clear ones. Everything else is cloudy white!! Checked a few buds to be sure, it's pretty uniform.

I unplugged the lights so they don't come back on and she gets an extra day of darkness before I start harvesting tomorrow.

I'll definitely post pics of the harvest.