How to Prepare and Buffer Coco Coir
How to Prepare and Buffer Coco Coir
Transform a cheap brick of coco into the best medium for growing cannabis!
Learn how to:
1. Rehydrate a brick of coco
2. Rinse coco to remove the peat
3. Buffer coco to prevent calcium and magnesium issues
4. and Mix the coco with perlite
Includes Instructions and Recipes!
There are many reasons that coco is a superior growing medium: it has excellent water retention and drainage properties, is pest resistant, offers abundant root space, and, if buffered, it will not interfere with plant nutrition.
However, if you purchase a brick of coco and you do not rinse and buffer it, you are not growing in a superior medium. Un-rinsed coco is laden with “coco peat”, which are small dust sized particles. The coco peat does not retain air like the larger coco fibers do and as a result, you can run into problems with drowning your roots if you grow in coco with a lot of coco peat.
Buffering is an even larger issue! Coco must be buffered with calcium (Ca) and Magnesium (Mg) before it becomes a superior growing media.
Finally you need to mix your coco with perlite to improve drainage and aeration!
This video walks you through the complete process and explains every step!
Produced by Dr. MJ Coco, author of “Coco for Cannabis: A Grower’s Guide”.
VISIT: CocoforCannabis.com
Can you buffer the coco and store it for later use
I rinsed my Mother Earth coco brick twice in ro water; the first rinse, I got back 350 ppm’s the second rinse came back 540 ppm’s. How is this possible? I will continue to rinse and update you.
What about the soil ph? Is this a factor? Or just simply ph the water I’m feeding
only thing is you did not rinse the perlite. 👊✌
Be sure to follow it up with draino
You probably know, it is pronounced CAT ION. Great video.
Coco coir, here I come. Lol
But what about the coco perlite mix? do i have to wash and buffer it? The mother earth coco coir plus perlite mix. Do i have to wash and buffer that one?
What if you are growing on a big scale….this technique is not sustainable….and the water used is ridiculous…far better off buying ready buffered bales…
Just cal mag, perlite and coco?
geil
The next step would be to inoculate it with trichoderma
soak the coco in the bucket for an hour or two. it’ll save your a bunch of water that way. the coco floats to the top and the peat and impurities sink to the bottom. after that you simply just scoop out your coco and rinse off the salt. i’ve gotten coco before that contained rocks and it’s far easier to use this method rather than to try picking through every little bit of coco looking for stuff that you definitely don’t want going down your drain!
Could you just double the cal mag when feeding for the 1st couple feedings instead of buffering , kinda wanna plant immediately. Lol
Do you feed it cal mag throughout the grow?
do you need ph your buffer solution too?
great info but its pronounced cat-ion
Will my plants still get through transplanting my plants without cal/mag ?
I buy canna coco original, and they say it is already pre buffered. Should I still at least do this step once just to guarantee that the coco is at least clean and buffered? Also, my tap water is 7.0….should I pH that tap water down to at least 6.0 before buffering?
during the washing of coco in the bathtub stage did u have a woman walk in and start yelling at you,
Seems like the syringe is going to be useless once the liquid level is a bit lower in the bottle?
Do you mix worm castings in your Coco coir? Also do you recommend it?
You lost me with the bottled calmag, it’s principal for me not to use plastic bottles at all. Can I buffer with lime and epsom salt solution? If yes, what’s the ratio?
He didn’t say anything about checking PH of buffering solution!???
I never add calmag ,, just the trio nutes ,,, and no issues whatsoever….. it depends I guess…..
Comment
I’m using this same medium for my hot pepper plants and its doing great!
Do you need to rinse the perlite rocks?
Love the website growmie.. My first grow was in soil (ew) some shit I mixed up with some dried out dirt from an old flower bed and mixed some peatmoss with it.. I was able to harvest no problem.. But my second grow was in coco coir after finding your website and I haven’t looked back or looked elsewhere since! Coco coir is the way I will grow till the day I die! I have also made the mistake of not buffering the coco before reusing.. And I had issues till harvest.. It was hard, but I was able to get her to survive till harvest.. Not gonna make that mistake again.. Rinse, buffer and add perlite.. That’s it.. Couldn’t be more simple! Thanks for everything you do Dr MJ Coco!
So my question is, my tap water sucks and I have to use a RO system. Should I use ro to buffer the coco? Also when I use ro water Should I be add minerals to water or mixing a little tap water Into the ro water?
Hey just a quick question, after I do 2 8 hour buffers your left with 4 gallons of ?
Does the coco shed its potassium and nitrogen in exchange for the calcium and magnesium solution it was buffered in.
If I’m right can I just cap my 5 gallon pal with said potassium and nitrogen solution and use during flowering?
I’m going off that coco gives those two chemicals of in exchange fo the calmag.
And then I could reuse the solution instead of dumping..
Thank you for the videos and time reading!
Great info, but I really hope your plumber 👨🏾🔧 doesn’t see this video.
That was very helpful thankyou
These are great videos.
Way too complicated to grow in coco. You have to use nutrients and be aware of the right dosage when using them. You need a ph meter for soil and water. I have fifty fifty mix with soil and coco and my seedlings are not happy and I don`t know what went wrong? Never have had any issues with plain soil. I can buy from the supermarket soil with ph 6.5 including standard nutrients. It`s kind a "plug and play".
Whats the ppm of the calmag solution supposed to be
Other wise amazing video 🤟👍👍
Great video, very informative! I just rehydrated and buffered some coco-coir, but what should I do with the water that’s left over? Would it hurt if I poured it on the ground, or would that just kill anything living there? Is there something I could do to treat the water to make it safe for plants? Or do I need to just dump it down the sink?
Doc, I’m assuming ya don’t buffer pre mixes like FF 70/30 or Tupur Royal Gold?
Can I use tps nutrients calmag plus to buffer?
I broke my bathroom sink trying to break up the coco brick.
After you buffer do you rinse it free of the cal mag solution or do you leave it to plant in?
I add my perlite while fabric pot is still submerged in five gallon bucket. Makes mixing perlite mucho easier
Shouldn’t tap water be pH 6.0 first before remoistening?
Figure I should tell you Dr. MJ it’s pronounced (CAT) as Like the cat in your house IONs. Don’t want your Medical buddies to make fun of you when talking about cat ions.
Get a tub shroom bud… You don’t want that crap in your plumbing. Ask me how I know.. Lol.
CAT-ION lol
Awesome thanks for this knowledge ☝️❤️
You don’t pH the rehydration water or the CalMag solution?
repeat after me, "cat – ion "