soil to pure coco - noob questions

So have a few plants that been vegging in some cheap ass soil for over a month. The plants are about 1.5 feet tall and have been topped numerous times, the last time just yesterday and will be the last top (i think) before be transferred to coco.

so heres my plan. After doing more reading and LEARNING about various growing methods i feel pretty confident i will be happier with a pure coco medium in 7 gallon smart pots with canna coco a and b nutes (or similar). After transplanting i plan on vegging for another two weeks to let them settle in before switching to flower.

here are my questions.

So far i have not used anything other than some cheapass liquid ferts in my watering schedule and so far the plants seem to be doing OKAY...not great, but ok. Growth is slow, understandably because the plants are probably rootbound in 1 gallon pastic containers and under only 300 watts of CFLs, but also theres not been any really obvious deficiencies or any other problems that i can see.


BEFORE i transfer to the coco smart pots i want to know HOW i should do it. Should i trim the rootball a little bit to encourage new roots to grow? Should i put some mycorrhizae in the hole? Are there any other things i need to do to speed up the transition and encourage the plants to take off in their new containers?


I'm also going to be adding in a 300watt LED light as my main light and use my CFLs as supplementary lighting.

My growth space is roughtly 3X3 feet and 7 feet high (a closet)

Any input would be greatly appreciate on how i can max my health and yield on this grow. Still a noob here, but trying to learn as much as i can.

I would have done things a bit different but with that said just place in the coco without trimming roots. Coco will be a hard transition for you I feel. There is more that can go wrong and if you don't have the right equipment you might be fighting an uphill battle. If I were you I would plant in a pot of organic super soil very easy to get great results and not much fertilizer needed

motoracer110 said:

I would have done things a bit different but with that said just place in the coco without trimming roots. Coco will be a hard transition for you I feel. There is more that can go wrong and if you don't have the right equipment you might be fighting an uphill battle. If I were you I would plant in a pot of organic super soil very easy to get great results and not much fertilizer needed

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thanks for chiming in .

Im not disagreeing with you but could you elaborate a bit on what you think will be difficult for me? I've read quite a bit and watched some videos about how coco differs from soil and as far as i can tell you are able to treat it basically the same as hydro.....just have to soak and ph the coco first then after transplant feed ph'd water with nutes and keep track of the ppms......watch salt build up etc.......what am i missing?

thanks

So with coco if you want to treat like hydro you want to keep the plant in a small pot no more than 2 gallons that way you can do multiple feedings per day with runoff and get hydro results. You don't want to use fabric or air pots because you don't want the coco to dry out on the sides (thats where you will get the salt buildup). Also dry coco will make channels that the water will flow and very hard to re saturate. Seeing as you are already in soil in a small pot I think you are stuck. I guess you could get a bucket of water place the root mass in the water and try to break up the soil with your hands and try to get it off your plant then transfer to an all coco 2 gallon pot. Below is a pic of a guy who was in 2 gallon pots and yielding over 9 oz per plant very impressive. You don't need to worry about being root bound if you do multiple feedings a day

you don't want to mix soil and coco, they have very different needs and characteristics. i switched in mid stream and the plants didn't like having a core of soil in a pot of coco. i love coco, and would never go back to soil, but you have to treat it different.
coco starts out with a calcium/magnesium deficit, and will eat it till you meet the deficit, then all the sudden, your plants can get all the cal and mag they want easily, which makes it easy to over dose them if you aren't ready for it.
i've also discovered it does a lot better if you let your ph swing, but center it around 6.1, not 5.8 as is suggested often. i find that the lower ph makes it a lot harder for the plant to absorb mag.
i also treat it like hydro and run it sterile. you can run a culture in it, with mycorrhizae and w/e else you like, but i've found that when you make a good environment for the good bennies, it also a good environment for the bad ones as well, and i get root rot too much. i just add 10 ml of h2o2 to each gallon of water and no problems

Roger A. Shrubber said:

you don't want to mix soil and coco, they have very different needs and characteristics. i switched in mid stream and the plants didn't like having a core of soil in a pot of coco. i love coco, and would never go back to soil, but you have to treat it different.
coco starts out with a calcium/magnesium deficit, and will eat it till you meet the deficit, then all the sudden, your plants can get all the cal and mag they want easily, which makes it easy to over dose them if you aren't ready for it.
i've also discovered it does a lot better if you let your ph swing, but center it around 6.1, not 5.8 as is suggested often. i find that the lower ph makes it a lot harder for the plant to absorb mag.
i also treat it like hydro and run it sterile. you can run a culture in it, with mycorrhizae and w/e else you like, but i've found that when you make a good environment for the good bennies, it also a good environment for the bad ones as well, and i get root rot too much. i just add 10 ml of h2o2 to each gallon of water and no problems

Click to expand...

i guess i was thinking the soil wouldnt be that big a deal since the plants are in 1 gallon containers and i think most the soil will probably fall away during transplant anyway, no?

also, what nutes do you like for your coco grows? is canna coco a and b an ok way to get started? what else should i consider adding into the feeding schedule?

motoracer110 said:

So with coco if you want to treat like hydro you want to keep the plant in a small pot no more than 2 gallons that way you can do multiple feedings per day with runoff and get hydro results. You don't want to use fabric or air pots because you don't want the coco to dry out on the sides (thats where you will get the salt buildup). Also dry coco will make channels that the water will flow and very hard to re saturate. Seeing as you are already in soil in a small pot I think you are stuck. I guess you could get a bucket of water place the root mass in the water and try to break up the soil with your hands and try to get it off your plant then transfer to an all coco 2 gallon pot. Below is a pic of a guy who was in 2 gallon pots and yielding over 9 oz per plant very impressive. You don't need to worry about being root bound if you do multiple feedings a day

Click to expand...

thats crazy huge yields for such small pots...but it also looks like hes using some pretty advanced growing technques which i might not be all that good at yet. The most ive done like i said earlier is top most of them a few times....topped some side branches and what not....im hoping for at least 4 to 8 main colas on each plant.

So you said im stuck....does that mean you think i would be farther ahead to just repot into larger soil pots? If i stayed with soil would there be an advantages to going with fabric pots or do you think it even matters? Right now i can get my hands on some plastic 4 gallon pots pretty cheap each.....

i was just really turned on by what ive heard about the fast growth possible with coco and ive already been vegging for almsot 2 months and my plants MUST be pretty badly rootbound by now....i wanted to figure out a way to give them some extra fast growth for a couple weeks before i flower them....

i dunno...im more confused now than i was before lol

i haven't used the canna stuff, but i've heard good things about it.
i was given a full set of vegamatrix nutes when i was starting out, and stayed with them about 2 years, then after listening to what other people were talking about and doing research based on that, i've started using dry salts. i use Jack's citrus for veg, Jack's classic bloom booster for flower, add some calcium nitrate in varying amounts, a little epsom salts during veg, a little sul-po-mag during flower. i feed almost every watering, about 250 ppm for young plants, ramping up to about 400 ppm a couple of weeks before the flip, then about 600 ppm during flower. every 4th or 5th watering i'll give them just ph'ed water to a slight run off. they stay nice and green most of the way through flower, with just a little fade the last couple of weeks.

I say you get a bigger pot and Finnish out with soil. Stop topping and look into low stress training. Every time you top all growth will stop for like 3-4 days it's a long process. Next grow look into getting a setup like this photo. Hydroponics is the way to go very fast results this complete setup is $47 I just did a quick Google search.


It's a good starting point and you will constantly keep upgrading. Every grow I learn something new and great and keep upgrading myself.

As others have said as a new grower get a feel for things when it comes to playing with your plant. Try LST, mainlining, Fim'ing and super cropping. They all sound harder then they are but with a few youtube videos to guide you they are super simple with a little care.
I also advise to avoid going from soil to coco with the same plant, your going to have a mare keeping the plant happy.

I've done this with reasonable results .......i grew in soil and was offered a load of cannas coco pro ...I was already looking at switching to coco but had vegged my grow at the time in biobizz allmix soil witch is pre ferted .......the biggest prob I found was finding a fine ballance with my food.I continued to use the full bio Bizz nutrient range with the coco and did perfectly fine pretty much the same results as I was getting with the soil...so...as long as you keep a vigilant eye on how their doing and faze them gently into the New routine(more waterings)I say you will be fine.........