Buffering coco using organic dry amendments

Hello I am having a hard time figuring out how to go about buffering a brick of coco using organic dry amendments such as gypsum and epsom salt. I do not want to use cal mag bottles supplement as my whole grow will be organic dry amendments. Can someone point me in the right direction of a good buffer mix that is organic ? The fertilizer i use has 6% Ca in it and 1.2% Mg, i noticed that the cal mag bottled supplements only contain 3.2% Ca and 1.2% Mg. I was looking into using gypsum as a Ca supplement but not sure on how much to add per gallon since the cal mag bottled supplement ratios are so low.

Are there other folks growing that style?

I use Coco but not with dry amendments.

I've grown this way before and I don't think it provides any worthwhile benefits over soil and its more difficult. Soil can hold onto nutrients while coco is basically inert. Making the schedule for top dressing more stringent and easier to mess up. It also took me a learning curve to get it right. I would expect problems growing this way until about your 3rd try...this was just my experience as a beginner YMMV.
Matt on the youtube makes it look easier than it is. Switch to soil or use coco with nutrients in the water IMO. Your also going to have a hard time finding advice if your experience was anything like mine.

And to actually answer a part of your question. It seems like you want to use buffered coco without using a cal mag bottle. You can buy buffered coco that comes in a bag but its going to be the same as if you used a cal mag bottle.

edit: that didn't answer your question at all. You want to supplement with dolomite lime. How much I don't know. I used 2 tablespoons per gallon of coco. I still ran into cal/mag issues though and I have no idea how much is too much.

Dont get discouraged. Im actually planning on doing an experimental grow with this style of growing. Canuck obviously knows what he is doing and has good reasoning to grow this way over soil. Ive watched his videos religiously. I have noticed in his last couple of grow guides hes been adding 25% ewc as well, so ill be doing that to. I can only see that the beneficial microbes helping break down the amendments to be more quickly absorbed by the plants. I guess if its a fail, ill just switch back to soil. Good thing i finally learnt to clone. LoL

Thank you! I based my grow off of Mr canucks, he seems to be fine with the cal mag in his dry amendments. I see he occasionally takes uses dolomite

FRICKITYFRICKTYFRESH said:

Dont get discouraged. Im actually planning on doing an experimental grow with this style of growing. Canuck obviously knows what he is doing and has good reasoning to grow this way over soil. Ive watched his videos religiously. I have noticed in his last couple of grow guides hes been adding 25% ewc as well, so ill be doing that to. I can only see that the beneficial microbes helping break down the amendments to be more quickly absorbed by the plants. I guess if its a fail, ill just switch back to soil. Good thing i finally learnt to clone. LoL

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What are his good reasons? I've watched all or most of his videos and I don't think he ever addresses it. Maybe I missed it though.

Teag said:

What are his good reasons? I've watched all or most of his videos and I don't think he ever addresses it. Maybe I missed it though.

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IMO, the only way coco beats peat in this scenario is environmentally. Peat based soil's have a higher CEC.............if all other variables are equal, peat wins every time.

I've been wanting to try this method but I would consider this an advanced growing technique and to expect issues at first. Mr Canuck there had some pretty rough grows early on before he dailed his system in and started getting good results. I might experiment with one plant in my next grow but won't have high hopes for it right away.

The way i understand it is, the advantage is you have the benefits of growing in coco while treating it more like soil. You just water and don't have to worry about mixing nutes like you normally.would with coco. The difficulty, as someone mentioned above is, you have to get the mix correct right off the bat and know exactly when to amend/top dress the medium throughout the grow to not burn or starve the plant. Its just not as forgiving as an organic soil grow or using liquid nutes with every watering, you either get it right or something very wrong could happen. But I see the appeal of it.

Agree with WintersBones. You are asking for trouble, there is a reason not many growers are using this technique.

Use soil + amendments or coco + nutes. There is more to the story than Mr Canuk is telling.

Not trying to start arguments with everyone, there's obviously 100's of different ways and techniques to grow. Techniques are growing and changing all the time. You cannot tell me this dude spent 1,000's of hours editing and creating content just to purposely misguide people. If you look at the feeding schedule on the back of gaia green or earth dust dry amendments, Matt follows that feeding schedule exactly as it's stated. The best thing anyone can do is experiment and find out for yourself. If your successful, thats awesome, if not, move on with your life.

I don't think Matt is trying to mislead anyone. He is showing people how he grows, which is fine. But, it doesn't mean his method is better because he has spent 1,000's of hours editing or that we should buy into that growing method just because he has the best content on youtube.

DonBrennon said:

IMO, the only way coco beats peat in this scenario is environmentally. Peat based soil's have a higher CEC.............if all other variables are equal, peat wins every time.

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Compost is the most green method. I was taught that grass clippings and leaves are superior to peat anyways. You can also throw in Bat Guano and Kelp into the list of environmentally damaging inputs. Damn, you could put my Mustang in that category too though.

MustangStudFarm said:

Compost is the most green method. I was taught that grass clippings and leaves are superior to peat anyways. You can also throw in Bat Guano and Kelp into the list of environmentally damaging inputs. Damn, you could put my Mustang in that category too though.

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Aye, good old leaf mold is the best...........if you've got the patience to make it.

DonBrennon said:

Aye, good old leaf mold is the best...........if you've got the patience to make it.

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Hey man, been a while since I have seen you around!!!

I’ve vegged in coco using dry organic 5-6-6 tomato granules and crushed dolomite lime. Just top dress a bit of granules every week or two and top water fully once a day. I did not pH adjust the water, it comes out of my fish tank at 7.3. The plants did fine and grew healthy. They filled out seven gallon pots. I did not try budding one, they were just being started for the ground.

Where I got into trouble with coco was using liquid fertilizers with alot of bioactivity. Apparently coco releases alot of K ion if it breaks down rapidly, more than a plant can handle at times.

I used the cheap compressed blocks but rinsed it before mixing the dolomite in.

MustangStudFarm said:

Hey man, been a while since I have seen you around!!!

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Hey Mustang, hope you're all good. Still lurk on here occasionally, but the rules on seed sharing have driven me to another forum. Been mainly running hydro and chucking a bit of pollen recently, but just set up 3 big organic SIP's in the main flowering tent. Running Stardawg x Goofy grape, Space monkey x Goofy grape and Black banana cookies x Space monkey, big ass plants, been flipped a week.

shzbt said:

Agree with WintersBones. You are asking for trouble, there is a reason not many growers are using this technique.

Use soil + amendments or coco + nutes. There is more to the story than Mr Canuk is telling.

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I took a peak at one of his videos because people kept talking about the guy. I saw this and was not impressed. I can't believe people take this guys advice. His plants look like crap. Fried to a crisp.