Looking for reading recommendations related to Commercial Warehouse Coco Grows

Hi, I moved to Los Angeles from Humboldt 10 days ago or so to run a 70 light indoor coco scene in north Hollywood. During the ten years i Lived in Humboldt I grew marijuana 9 of the years. the first 3 years I spent doing residential soil grow, 6-10 thousand watt HPS for the most part (with the requisite experimentation adding MH and LED, but HPS mostly). During this time I built or helped build north of 20 grow spaces, probably quite a few more than 20. From a double decker grow inside a Barn run off a diesel generator, to a 36 light setup in South Central for 'The Royal Temple of Mt Zion' jersey weed guy (never got paid because the dipshit would not listen when I would tell him he needs RO. he didn't even know what EC stood for. but he had done a four lighter in his house, so fuck me right, he's got this right? survey says... should have locked him in an arm bar until he agreed to buy the filter.. anyway), to dozens of 4-6-10 light setups. I made my own Co2 burners out of instant hot water heaters and shallow well pumps to recirculate through chillers. point is, i have experience indoor.
For six years after that I took over running a piece of land my sister had.. manifested (moving weed, she was infinitely better at that part than I). A beautiful spot on the Mad river in trinity county. Which was successful, despite the fact I chose Not to say "next years the last year, im doubling my footprint, balls to the walls" like literally every single other person growing... for 5 years. no shit. for 5 years everyone doubled their harvest (at least tried)... it was bananas. pics of outdoor plants i grew.

All that preamble is just to illustrate that I know what im doing... in soil. In Coco... I'm a newb. somehow it escaped me that the mediums are so ridiculously different. Nobody really does Hydro in Humboldt.(of course that's not true, but you get the point)

I need to educate myself on growing with Coco, Production Scale Warehouse Coco. and it wouldn't hurt to give myself a crash course in all the newest tech in the industry. Currently running 70 Dimlux pro DE 100 drain to waste on sliding (or rolling sideways i suppose) 50 foot ebb tables.

I read forums a bit... but I also like to read physical books, i seem to get more out of it than parsing out the real deal info from the egomaniacs giving terrible info on forums.

Any suggestions? anything at all...
thanks,
daDijondon

It gets a lot of hate and the actual Shawasing of the plant is up for debate, but the 3 A Light Book has a lot of very good information concerning strategy and technique for achieving heavy indoor yields. Especially if your moving to a small container coca grow from outdoor.

Small pots, 2 gal, lots use cloth pots. 9-16 plants per light depending on if you have any plant number restrictions. Set up on drip system feeding multiple times a day. Scrog

A site any cocoholic like myself can appreciate.

Zero commercial experience.

hey man
i would read about
-close environnement agriculture (CEA) or sealed room
-vpd
-crop steering of rockwool (grodan..), valid for coco with a bit larger drybacks
-moisture content management
-drip irrigation, precision irrigation

707 Loki said:

I read forums a bit... but I also like to read physical books, i seem to get more out of it than parsing out the real deal info from the egomaniacs giving terrible info on forums.

Click to expand...

Amen brutha.

I run a 24 light operation, two rooms, one turn per month.
Been growing for 30 years; commercially for 10.

We use 5 gal smartpots, half filled with coco.
Did a recent test to see if 12 plants per light would produce more than 9.
No difference in weight.
I will do it again and do a better job of trimming under the netting to see if it makes a difference.

I'll be watching this thread ... its the kind of info I came here for originally.

Biggest thing to learn moving from soil is coco should always be wet. No wet/dry cycle.

HashBucket said:

Amen brutha.

I run a 24 light operation, two rooms, one turn per month.
Been growing for 30 years; commercially for 10.

We use 5 gal smartpots, half filled with coco.
Did a recent test to see if 12 plants per light would produce more than 9.
No difference in weight.
I will do it again and do a better job of trimming under the netting to see if it makes a difference.

I'll be watching this thread ... its the kind of info I came here for originally.

Click to expand...

You mix with perlite?

Jaybodankly said:

Biggest thing to learn moving from soil is coco should always be wet. No wet/dry cycle.

Click to expand...

I personally do wet/dry cycles when I first plant my cuts in new pots to get the root systems established. If you just soak them constantly when trying to establish a new root system you will stunt their growth, especially if in large pots.

westcoast420 said:

You mix with perlite?

Click to expand...

no, str8 outta the bag canna coco

Thanks for the replys! I bought coco for cannabis last night, will be here tomorrow (well gee wiz I feel like a regular city fella, next day shipping what'll they think of next)... I know it's all online, but like I said, it's a physical book.
I have always been partial to these particular 4 gallon pots Vivosun makes. I call them pancake pots. They are about the diameter of a 10 gallon pot but only 4-5 inches tall. Sounds like they'll be perfect.. on that note... anyone care to share their amendment recipes for coco?
Off the top of my head I'd want to try; plenty of greensand, phosphate rock, and 50-50 rainbow mix pro Grow/Bloom. (Feel free to call me an idiot if that is idiotic)
Crop steering is interesting. Moisture content management/precision irrigation as well. It honestly caught me totally off guard how much run through you get watering coco.

Oh... how could I forget... anyone familiar with the Dimlux climate brain thing... I got so frustrated with one last night it took everything I had to stop from slowly dismembering it into little pieces, all soldered together and to a 9volt battery so it could see as I transformed it into a niqab for a purple hungry hungry hippo. All those fancy confusing settings and impossible options reduced to counting how many marbles miss purple piggy can swoon down her gullet.

I mean... am I the only one? Can't be.

Another quick question about coco... I understand the potassium/calcium exchange coco does, and therefore the need to buffer by either wetting with calMg or soaking in calMg, depending on who you ask....
.. I may have just remembered the answer to this question... but I'll ask anyway, if I were to suffer a Ca deficiency due to coco, wouldn't a rather elegant solution be to foliar with a Dark Energy/liquid karma/floralicious and a micronized calcium phosphate (maybe some silica and fulvic acid in there for good measure) to heavy runoff... so the coco gets what it wants as well as the plant.

Oh... hydrozyme as well... enzyme, L-amino, Ca, silica, fulvic.

707 Loki said:

Another quick question about coco... I understand the potassium/calcium exchange coco does, and therefore the need to buffer by either wetting with calMg or soaking in calMg, depending on who you ask....
.. I may have just remembered the answer to this question... but I'll ask anyway, if I were to suffer a Ca deficiency due to coco, wouldn't a rather elegant solution be to foliar with a Dark Energy/liquid karma/floralicious and a micronized calcium phosphate (maybe some silica and fulvic acid in there for good measure) to heavy runoff... so the coco gets what it wants as well as the plant.

Oh... hydrozyme as well... enzyme, L-amino, Ca, silica, fulvic.

Click to expand...

dont overthink the CEC of coco .. most of coco are precharged .. meaning only a good flush or 2 with the right solution will be enough to buffer this coco..
i always treated it like rockwool .. just be sure to give good runoff for the first waterings after transplantation, because of salt drying and accumulating in the coco at this stage ..
when te plant start to drink everyday runoff can be reduced

Yea, and don't make this harder than it needs to be.

Put your clones in medium.
Water with very weak feed solution.
At one week increase the feed to directions.
Watch em grow.

Keep it simple, especially for first run.
Just get through that with some smoke, dial it in later.