I’ve been growing in coco for about two years usually hand watering once a day. I occasionally use drippers feeding multiple times a day. Anyone care to share their methods if you use coco? Dryback? Constantly wet? I feel like I err on the side of overwatering most of the time and waste nutes and my goals are to reduce effort and costs. Any tips appreciated!
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Use less expensive nutes. Mega Crop kicks ass!
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General Hydroponics Flora trio are awesome nutrients and $35 makes hundreds of gallons. They store well. Plants grow fast and produce excellent bud quality.
No need for drippers unless you’re having trouble reaching all your plants. I use a “Battery Operated Liquid Transfer Pump” (they’re on Amazon or at Home Depot) which lets you water many plants quickly, even in the back. I give enough water so they’re ready to be watered every 1-2 days. Watering more often with nutrient water (“high-frequency fertigation”) makes plants in coco grow faster, but only to a point, and only if they’re not getting overwatered. Their roots need a lot of oxygen to thrive too.
You can use Flora trio by itself without any supplements besides PH Down. I often add Calimagic but it’s probably not necessary. Calimagic is helpful to buffer and raise the pH if you’re dealing with low pH, and if you have soft or filtered water you need to add it, but otherwise the three bottles of the Flora trio work awesome by itself. They already contain a lot of Cal-Mag. I give the pH at 6.0-6.5 and never have deficiencies. I have been getting excellent buds from Ethos strains. This is a Mandarin Cookies V2 bud I grew with GH Flora that tested just under 27% THC at the lab.
If you want really cheap easy nutrients for the vegetative stage, you can use Dyna-Gro “Foliage Pro”. It’s 1 tsp/gallon and vegetative plants love the stuff. However, Dyna-Gro “Bloom” isn’t as good as General Hydroponics Flora trio for bud formation, so I’d switch to something better than Dyna-Gro for the flowering stage.
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I’d first switch nutes. Either Athena or jacks. Second I’d run a flora flex system. Biggest thing is to have a system that you can control your feeding with more accuracy.
Example is flora flex and Athena nutes. Everything I do is based off a 2% shot of nutes. All pot sizes have a specific amount of water to be at field capacity. During veg I maybe feed 4 or 5 times a day at a given amount of time which I have done all the math for. So I can adjust my feeding down to milliliters by running specific times which I have calculated down to 15 seconds of time in which the pump
Runs.
You can use a lot of things to track dry backs. Sometimes I just wait till the plants droop for the first two feeding to dial in the feeding times and then watch the run off from there and add or subtract feedings as needed.
When I go to flower I’ll up my feedings from 5 times a day let’s say to 9 times a day to keep the coco at feild capcity.
In the years I’ve been growing I have found very few things other then picking up a pot or watching run off that helps monitor dry backs. You can use hygrometers or a hydro x but the probes on most of these type of things only show the moisture that the probe touches so the bottom
Of the pot could potentially be wetter then you think.
Over all easiest way to watch dry backs is to just feed and let it dry out completely till you get a feel of how much the veg plants are drinking and up your feedings as you go. Start with 3 feedings a day at say 2 min each and if your getting to much dry back up the feedings . As with anything growing it’s going to be experience and ability to read what your plants are doing.
Other thing you have to keep an eye on growing
In coco is stacking of nutes. You can be feeding a 2.5 ec let’s say and your pot can be like. 5.0 ec if your not getting enough run off or not flushing the coco if needed. Smaller pots are better. Biggest pot I would run with coco is 3 gallons. I have actually switched to 1 gallon pots. This is actually the best way to get dry backs during veg. And as said before going into flower just up the feedings . You can still grow very large plants in 1 gal to 1/3 gallon plants. Bigger roots are good but they don’t matter if you can feed enough. Hopefully
This helped some.
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Great information thanx .Just have one question you use the flora-flex system. Why dont you use the flora-flex full tilt nutrients?
I know this question is month old, but Cocoforcannabis.com is a great site for reliable information. It sounds like an automated system that just waters a little at a time is the most productive, but relies entirely on pumps/emitters working correctly/
Thanks to all. I apppreciate all the advice. I’m looking into Athena and house and garden powders to save cash. Want to run new mill, but can’t afford it at this point. Medicine is expensive these days lol