Part 2 - How I Feed & Water
People don't think about how their setup will affect feeding until it's too late most of the time. I'm not referring to the actual feeding itself either, I'm talking equipment. Pot size and type, lights, air circulation and humidity all effect how much your plants will consume. In post #1 I think I emphasized enough that good lights are essential, but if you use small lights then your plants wont consume as much requiring less feeding. Humidity can affect how much the plants consume in the roots vs the moisture in the air. Even something like mixing in perlite will give better aeration but require more waterings.
The first thing really to think about though is what kind of pots you want to use and how big. I really enjoy smartpots as I think they work perfectly with Coco. Both promote oxygen and root growth which speeds everything up and makes plants larger. Coco is hydro so it gives it more of a hydro aspect as well. I also have gone with 3 gallon pots for that reason as well. Coco is hydro. You could grow really large plants in a 1 gallon pot if you wanted to water it 10 times a day. For me and most Coco growers, 3 gallon pots are what you need. It's a good size for efficient watering while still getting massive plants.
The next thing to think about is do I add perlite? Maybe something else? Just Coco? So many opinions on the matter but some of the best Coco growers on here have all come to the same basic conclusion. Perlite is not necessary in Coco. Too me it allows the Coco to dry out way to fast. Straight Coco in a 3 gallon smart pot is what I go with. The only thing I add is about an inch layer of hydroton on the bottom of the pot. I can reuse it and it's easy to get out. You could do perlite but it gets messy, especially if you want to re-use the coco. I'm all about efficiency so hydroton it is. In grows without the hydroton on the bottom I've noticed in the corners of the smartpots can build up with water and the roots on the bottom were brown and kind of sad looking. When I cut a plant down the other day I had masses of white roots that were at the bottom. It'd be so easy to bottom feed them if I ever needed to with how nice it looked, kinda like pure hydro. That's another topic but it helps with drainage at the bottom and the roots have looked whiter and healthier in grows I've used it.
Lastly, we need to work our way backwards now that we know how we are growing and in what. Because a 3 gallon pot is the final pot, we really only need to perform one transplant during the plants life. I use a plastic pot about 3/4 the size of a solo cup that is meant for herbs and stuff. A solo cup with drainage holes works just fine. It's big enough to get a decent root mass going and small enough that it will allow a root mass to form and hold onto all the coco for easy transplant and less stress. If you transplant and the Coco falls all over the place and the roots are loose and small, then you've just caused stress. So I go from germination bag, to small plastic planting cup to 3 gallon smart pot. Hydroton on the bottom and straight Coco for the rest.
All of this talk and still nothing on mixing nutrients! Well here we go! I just wanted to reiterate how important all of this stuff is before you even get to think about feeding. Without further ado, the schedule and nutrients.
The Lineup
You cannot grow in Coco without a PH meter and a PPM meter. You might get lucky for a while but they are essential to know what's going in and what's coming out of your feeds. The right range I have found for Coco is a PH of 5.8-6.2 going in. Plants absorb minerals at different PH ranges and for Coco this is the sweet spot. I use the PPM meter to measure how potent the feed is and also to measure drainage. I get a cup and collect runoff from a plant and if my PPMs coming out are really high, the plant is likely showing nute burn. It means there is a lot of excess salts from the nutrients that the plant isn't taking because it's already stuffed of it and beginning to lock everything out.
If you were tight on a budget you could get rid of Dry Koolbloom, FloraKleen and maybe the Great White. I don't recommend it but you still will get nice results without them. You could also not use the Grow bottle in the GH Flora Series but I find it easier to manipulate the N-P-K ratios with it. The rest is all pretty key.
Micro, Grow and Bloom are your base nutes. This could be an A & B from another company but they will have different N-P-K ratios most likely. That's okay, you can still follow my schedule. You just would have to adjust for the ratios on the bottles. Cal/Mag is essential for Coco and PH Up and Down as well. You also need a bloom boost of some sort in flower and I go with liquid Koolbloom. You will not get great results if you do not boost the plants during this time. the bud just doesn't get quite as dense.
Rapidstart is amazing for root growth. Floralicious+ gives the plants essential acids and microbes for breaking things down making it easier and faster to consume. The unsulphured Blackstrap Molasses is a sweetener and really is an extremely inexpensive one if you look at what other bottled premade stuff costs.
The Schedule
When I germinate seeds I make the same mixture ratio that I make for the seedling phase feedings and dunk a paper towel in it. I squeeze the paper towel out so it is damp, put the seeds in it and seal it in a plastic bag. I then wrap the bag in a dishtowel and put on my DVR or top of my fridge. It is warm there and helps them germinate. When the root has popped about 1/2" I plant in the small plastic pot.
I also pre-treat (Soak and then drain) any coco that I use with a soaking of 1-1-1 N-P-K, Rapidstart and a PPM of around 350 with cal-mag being about 150 (this is the mixture I use for dunking the towel for gemination). Always pretreat your coco and soak it. Coco is a medium with nothing in it. If you give your plant nothing it will not like it! This is one of the most common problems when transplanting or even from growing the seed from the beginning. The plant needs calcium and it can't get any unless the coco has some sort of nutes loaded into it. If using new Coco I would wash it with water and rinse it a couple times and then charge it with nutes. I also sprinkle a little Great White on the roots when I transplant to help the roots not miss a beat when transplanting and hopefully causing little stress when transplanting.
I water with nutes everyday and I usually mix up 5 gallons each time and then use that to water for a couple days. My water is a ppm of 34, which is great. I fill my 5 gallon bucket with water and then add cal-mag until my PPM is 200. After that I add nutes to hit the PPM for the week using the N-P-K ratios listed in the table. These ratios are based on what the plant needs at given points in the 9 week flower lifecycle. Be careful because in the later stages with higher feedings the PH will drop when sitting in the buckets overnight. If my plants start showing signs of nutrient burn then I usually immediately drop the feed a couple hundred PPMs and use a 1-1-1 N-P-K ratio. I do put in about the twice the feed when I do this to give it a mini flush and the equal N-P-K allows it to choose what it needs to get back on track.
The best way to determine how much to water is to pick your whole plant up right after you give it a full watering (with some drainage coming out the bottom). Use that as your gauge for how much the plant needs. If your plants are light when you pick them up and you are seeing salt buildup then you likely need to be feeding them more times a day then you are. In veg I usually am giving them just enough water until it is dripping out the bottom but not running out the bottom. In flower I pretty much am just giving them 1/2 gallon at a time, twice a day. I do get about 10% runoff with these ones each time.
The N-P-K ratios I used are reflective of my explanations of N-P-K in the prior post. Balanced growth really early on and you want to build to aggressive growth at the end of the veg cycle. Then you want to balance everything out to give the plant whatever it wants in transition and then you want boost it for bigger yields. Nitrogen early on for growth but cut late so the plant stops trying to get bigger. Phosphorous building in flower until the end to promote bigger flower. Potassium boosted right after stretch to get the plant to harden and get ready for large colas. Dry Koolbloom at the end really helps the buds burst to their full potential.
Lastly you have to know how to calculate N-P-K. Here is an example I did with a rough estimate at the end. You have to take what is on the bottle and multiply it by how many ML you are putting in. Since I use 5 gallon buckets you learn that about 20ML of Cal-Mag gets me to around 200 ppm. As I need more and more PPMs I just increase the base nutes in the ratios they need (or add Koolbloom if in the right time frame). I do a lot of rough math for this and am rarely ever exact but you don't need to be exact. Just try to get in the ballpark. Just keep in mind Cal-Mag and some additives have some nitrogen so look at every bottle for ratios. At the end divide by 100 or a number that is divisible by all 3 and you get your ratio.
Any follow up questions feel free to ask. There is a lot of information I wanted to put together and I'm still not sure if I covered everything but I think I did! Please don't reply quote these long threads as they will make super long posts!
.
3 (it works out to 1:3.3:3.2). The nutrient mixture I made is in a 14L bucket at 1125 PPM. You recommend 750 PPM, so I basically just need to dilute my mixture with 2 parts nute solution, 1 part plain water to hit 750 PPM. So that's exactly what I'll be doing. I'm still going to go 3 days nutes / 1 day plain water since I haven't yet figured out watering twice daily!
