So my question becomes how does CaO change or effect your garden if at all? To me all 3 products I attached are slightly different correct me if I’m wrong.
I have been using yara calcium nitrate since 2017 however after lurking on the forums for many months I have been wondering if the Purecal would be a better option. I notice there is no ammoniacal nitrogen in Purecal and CaO isnt on the labels of yara or purecal.
I run our rooms at 1100 ppfd in flower and VPD lives at 1.-1.15. We currently run Jacks A&B no additional MgS, Agtonik and Wollastonite in coco 70/30.
@crowngruv Note that there is no CaO in these calcium nitrates. This is just a way to report the calcium composition. The same way that in the NPK the P and K are reported as P as P2O5 and K as K2O (eventhough these oxides do not exist in the products). So 26.5% Ca as CaO can just be converted to 18.9% Ca as elemental Ca.
YaraLiva and Haifa Cal GG are fundamentally equivalent. The PureCal is different, in that it contains no ammonium, which might be a desirable trait if you are seeking a very low ammonium formulation.
We reuse whatever Coco’s left over. I noticed that once we transitioned from 3 gallon pots to 2 gallon pots there really wasn’t as much coco left over afterwards. In the 2 gallon pots the plants really used up the entire substrate.
Our plants end up around 4ft sometimes a little larger and I didn’t notice any changes except more watering and less work on our part.
We would cut down our plants, pull the root ball out the fabric pot and shake off any loose coco into a tub. Once the tub filled so much we spray Biocozyme, set it aside to dry and fill another tub with used coco and spray. A new bag of coco would be mixed with the old and we are off to the races.
Now what’s interesting is there was a point where we ran heavy bacteria and fungi product called biorush, it has some of the highest cfu of strains I could find on the market at the time. I stopped dressing plants with the product and stopped applying it to spent coco as I saw no improvement after dialing in the environment better. To bring it full circle I read a journal somewhere that plants take up to 60-70% of CO2 for the substrate. So obviously whatever population is more prevalent in my coco, it’s benefiting from the co2 and is proliferating. So my thinking was it must have some validity as I haven’t used a bacteria or fungi product in a couple years.
I have no science and this is anecdotal but my belief is high co2 and a consistent environment (air,light,water, fertilizer) will keep you with healthy coco from healthy plants exudates feeding soil bacteria. A little help with some enzyme product post harvest and your set. I won’t get into coco science as I understand, ph, temp, nitrates, etc will determine a more fungi or bacteria population in your coco. From a very simplistic point of view a healthy environment will give the ability to reuse coco.
If there thrips, nats, algae, root disease etc just toss it. There’s no fixing that. Spend the budget on environment.
@crowngruv Thanks for sharing your experience with reusing coco! The clients I worked with to reuse media were generally growing in 5-15gal containers, they were both greenhouse and outdoor growers. I still haven’t tried recovering coco with 1-3gal container growers, as you mentioned, the root ball probably takes that much space in any case.
You also make a great point about pests, if the media is contaminated with pests, then that definitely makes reusing problematic.
Hey I have been looking at getting back into growing so I’m looking closely at the current trends and techniques.
Something that is foreign to me is this thing I keep seeing where people are vegging in rockwool and flowering in coco.
I would have thought this would cause issues with the feed formula given the different CEC of each medium, but it’s apparently working out for people.
I have seen dankemshunter say that it’s because he thinks plants take off in veg better in wool and he gets better flavor by flowering in coco. It sounds weird to me but the last time I grew a plant was around 10 years ago.
It works fine, I do it all the time. Grab the biggest veg plant I have in a 6x6 and put it in one of the God forsaken walkways the city requires me to have in a 20 gallon pot of tupur on brute trashcan wheels.
Having seen athena tissue analysis in many mediums, higher cec mediums are going to work better.
Plant does not care, as long as the necessary inputs are present. It will adapt. People go from aero cloners to many different mediums, Rockwool to coco or soil. Hell we use to go from cloner to clay pebbles. Fastest growth in my experience besides dwc however labor intensive. Great for small scale but commercial will not work
I’m doing an amended soil run this time to see if It increases brix and flavor on this Purple Poison Cookies clone I’ve been running about 6 months now. Plants are just getting established so haven’t fed them anything yet but, will probably brew up a tea or two for them eventually. My true goal though is high brix, knockout potency, and out standing flavor in coco, all while using raw salt nutrients. There’s got to be a way to unlock all this through proper, and balanced nutrition so if anybody has any magic ratios, points, or suggestions on how to achieve this, I’m all ears lol!
Explain why it is more efficient than soil on water drippers
Explain how it is more profitable than soil that can be reused?
I’ve never smoke premium hydro weed in my entire life despite children and chads telling me “you just haven’t smoked the right hydro weed” I thought even jungle boys lacked in flavor and nose. so when you have a lesser quality rockwool/salt weed that doesn’t sell as well as a premium organic louse af weed how is it more profitable.
I understand that in new markets that a lb of weed is a lb of weed and chads build their entire business plan off of getting X per light and swelling each unit at Y because that’s what it’s worth in day 1 in a new market with no competition or scale.
When the market becomes flooded and metrc has a half million lbs of chad weed is it still worth X like day 1? What is the value of something that sits in inventory?
Soil is added labor, labor is the most expensive aspect of any large grow. Coco and wool is cheap and requires very little labor. Soil also significantly under performs regarding yields compared to hydro indoors. It’s really very simple. I’ll also add that every single indoor soil grow I have been in is an absolute dumpster fire for cleanliness… something I value very much.
I personally don’t agree that there is no premium hydro weed. Genetics matter and if you are pheno hunting for your system and environment, real dank can be found. Buying hype cuts and trying to force them into your system is not a recipe for growing fire IMHO. Do you really think you can take my best cut and grow it in your soil organic better than I can after finding it, and dialing it in run after run? Do you really think you can also beat me at my yields?
But, for the sake of argument I’ll give you that soil organic is “better”. What it will never be is 2-3 times the cost better which is what it would have to be for the economics to work out. Soil organic growers can cry from the soap box all they want but there is the cold hard truth.
You can get amended soil by the super sac now so how is filling a pot with soil more expensive that filling a pot with coco.
And yes dirt is dirty. The make Brooms and mops and shop vacs for that. Still need to use them though. But plants create messes with leaves etc so it’s not like you aren’t having to clean with inert media or coco.
Dirt is 3x as expensive as hydro? The capex for irrigation and moisture sensors and enviro to control vpd to crop steer to get those midsy yields is way greater than some soil you can hand water every 2-3 days. Or auto water without having to worry about line maintenance form injecting nutes. Amd even if you are using jacks hydro every gallon you feed has a cost associated compared to amended soil.
I’m glad we are on the same page with quality. It’s not even a comparison.
In my state which is a matured market rec state the biggest selling brands with the best brand followings are soil brands and the Budweiser weed sits in the chads inventory in metrc.
Coco and rockwool are very reproducible and high yielding substrates. They are also much higher yielding than soil due to their much better aeration and don’t contribute much nutrition to the plant, which allows for better control over the feeding process (control exactly what plants receive). Coco and rockwool are also much cleaner substrates.
Regarding quality, I worked with a cannabis client that did extensive blind consumer panel testing comparing their product with soil, other hydro, etc. Interestingly, hydroponic product was selected over organic soil a large percentage of the time. This is comparable to what we know about organics/hydro/soil in edible crops. I wrote a blog post a while ago summing up all the literature I found on the subject (https://scienceinhydroponics.com/2021/04/hydroponics-vs-soil-all-you-wanted-to-know.html).
As in every crop, a good soil grower will always be better than a bad hydroponic grower. But the best hydroponic growers have excellent quality with yields that are much larger than those of soil growers (organic or using synthetic fertilizers).
If you prefer soil, that is absolutely fine. But bear in mind that the facts I have gathered from both literature and client trials - both in cannabis and other crops - show some very large advantages to soilless/hydroponics growing.
The organic premium for cannabis is still not large enough to justify the lower yields and added expenses of soil organic growing over normal soilless growing at the large scale. In the case of normal soil growing, there isn’t an economic case - because of the lower yields - besides for outdoor grows. If the economics shift, people will move to soil.
