reusing coco: my method. what's yours?

[Tone3000]

What is YOUR process for treating your coco coir for reuse?

Here is mine, and it's a PITA. Is there a way to make it easier?

After harvest, I should probably take the old stem and any roots out right away but after being in trim jail, it's pretty dry by the time I get to it. I flush it with a bunch of water first (outside with the garden hose) and pull out what I can from the fabric pot.

I put it all the coco mix into a bin (a plastic storage tote) and the fabric pots go into the laundry. I sift through it with my fingers and pick out roots and break up any clumps.

Fresh coco and perlite gets mixed in (splitting into two totes) and once the laundry is done, it's loaded back into the pots then they get flushed with lots more water.

Then the totes are filled with ph'd water with cal-mag added and the pots soak in this for a while. They get weighed down with the other pots to stay submerged, so they get rotated. Then drained and they are ready to use.

I tried using a screen to rinse but the coco is too fine, just the perlite was left. It would take forever with a fine enough sieve doing one batch at a time.

If anyone knows of a way to make this faster/better/easier, please share!

What is your method? How is it working for you?

[homegrown]

Wow that's a lot of work Tone3000. Is there a reason you soak them in ph'd, cal/mag'd water? is that because your adding more fresh coco? Here's my method and some of this stuff is 4 yrs old. I cut the stalk level with the coco and let the pot dry out completely. couple of weeks maybe. Then take a pruning saw or serrated bread knife and cut out the root stump. Next, get some 1/2 inch fencing wire,enough to cover a large tote(i use two pieces,one on top of the other, screens it out quicker). Just take the coco out in hand fulls and break it up over the fencing. The coco and perlite fall thru and the roots get left behind. I don't rinse mine at all simply because it was fine when i chopped the plant down, ph might have went up a bit but thats always easy to correct. I don't think the first flush or the second soaking is really needed.

[Tone3000]

Yes one time I didn't do the last soak and I had issues with that grow. The cal mag soak is like an extra flush that gets rid of any stubborn, chemically sticky accumulated salts and I add the cal/mag so I'm not leaching it all out and leaving the coco depleted. It's a pretty easy step, it's the rest that is all the work. It also readjusts the ph in the pots, because the water here is very hard and alkaline.

Sometimes I do skip that first flush and dump it out dry. It gets kind of dusty though and then I have to add some water as I am mixing in the fresh coco to get it to the right texture and to be able to pack it into the containers.

One early grow, I just flushed the coco in the pot and reused it and in another pot, used all fresh coco mix for a two-plant grow. The reused coco plant was all weird and stunted the first few weeks while the other was textbook perfect. It seemed to sort itself out by the end of veg. Then the one in the reused coco ended up herming. Probably the plant, but even the early results made me think that just flushing in the pot was not sufficient.

[Bluey]

I don't go overboard here.

I leave the harvested plants in the coco and let them deteriorate. They go manky pretty quickly and the fine roots tend to deteriorate also which makes it easy to pull it out leaving the coco behind.

I give it a flush whilst turning it. I give it a good wash so I get EC 0 run off.

This grow I added perlite as last grow was just 100% coco. Most of the perlite is in the top just hand mixed in to help with aeration for early growth.

The fine to medium size roots have broken down in the coco, not really much to remove.

I didn't buffer the coco for this grow but am giving it a cal/mag/potassium suppliment with humic & fulvic acids.

[Tone3000]

Flushing, turning, mixing in perlite- sounds not much different, just with fewer details described.

What do you flush it in? Your growing containers? Do you have enough extra space in them to turn it and get a good mix or do you transfer to another container?

[SoOrbudgal]

I just toss it into my indoor reuse soil tub mix some new potting soil with it and add a few other organic type soil additives. I get jiggy wit it LOL

[Tone3000]

Do you grow in a coco/soil blend or is your "potting soil" actually coco?

Are you adding fish meal and guano (how much?) or something else? Any other flush before reuse?

[golfnrl]

I want to reuse the coco from my grows but haven't. Seems like it's too much work for just a little reward. IDK. Maybe someone has a simple way to do it. Part of my hesitation is how to store the stuff while it's drying. I don't have a good place to do that and the perlite gets everywhere.

[Tone3000]

It's about $50/bag of coco per grow, at least a whole bag per grow. I'm already in for so much for all the gear to set up an indoor grow, I don't want to keep buying coco.

[golfnrl]

That's kinda the same place I am in with the coco. I am interested in how to wash it and reuse, but so far I either haven't seen a method that would work for me or I'm too lazy to figure it out. IDK.

[roadhog]

I’m going to start a new grow two plants same seed I always use coco but I’m going to experiment with one new and one I’ve rinsed over and over we will see .

[Tone3000]

Keep us informed of the results. This should be an interesting experiment!

[Bluey]

Are you going to give them both a cal/mag suppliment and if so from when?

[roadhog]

Well my experiment didn’t go as planned as I had trouble with getting seeds started after germinating but my seeds are growing I have 4 different varieties so comparing two of the same seed is not possible
I did put all the old coco in a tote flushed with water couple of times than used a homemade screen to get as much of the root stock out. It worked great the seeds I’m growing are gorilla glue, Blue dream, Afghan skunk,and bubblegum. They all are growing slowly maybe it’s the strain but are healthy the only thing I noticed was the old Coco seems to stay wet longer doesn’t drain as well

[Bluey]

I'm getting faster growth on 5 clones same plant with a coco/perlite mix than straight coco. This plant gets least developed status and most difficult to manage.

[roadhog]

I’m growing in a 4x4 tent with a HLG 300L R spec I wish I had another one but for some reason they don’t sell them anymore. ones on the left are reused coco the bubblegum front right is manifold mainline

[Bluey]

They look good