If you're interested in reading some comments about coir (from another forum), I'll post you the 'search' from the Container Forum. It has been brought up several times over there.

Good luck, and keep us posted.

Here is a link that might be useful: Click here

hi hooray, I love it and use it for propogating. I wouldnt use it on its own as a growing medium, unless I was growing something that really likes a moist soil (but since I live in such a dry climate these arent the sort of plants I usually grow anyway). I love the way it holds water and never had any problems with rewetting it but I do bottom water when using coir and let it soak up as much water as it wants. Its such a light airy medium and doesnt repel water which is great for what I use it for.

Hi, Hoorah. Never visited this forum before, but am looking for optional products to add to my soil medium for potted plants. I've heard CC is a good additive, similar to peat in that it is substantially "acts" the same. However, apparently the peat bogs are diminishing at a rapid rate, and this is an option to the use of peat. I'm all for protecting our natural resources.

Susan

Hi there! My experience is that CC is fantastic in seed starting mix. I have eliminated the damping off problem since I started to mix it in.

Thanks for the response, OB. Last year, everyone on the WS'ing forum recommended using Pro-Mix, so I bought a bag at HD and it was terrible! Substantially all peat, I might as well have saved my money and bought a bag of peat moss w/o the deceiving name. Didn't like it at all, no nutrients, and very difficult to saturate. Ah, well, we live and learn, right?

Anyway, I want to use the alfalfa fertilizer that I've seen a lot of people suggest as well. I reviewed the list of NPK Stuff someone attached to a recent post here, and was very surprised to see that silk moth cocoons are an organic source of fertilizer! Wow! Now, it makes me wonder if butterfly chrysalids work also. I have tons of them at the end of the summer because I raise butterflies. However, since their chrysalids (versus the cocoons) are very papery thin, I doubt there is much nutrition in them.

Finding organic fertilizer sources in Oklahoma is going to be a challenge. Most people here, farmers and individual gardeners often take an "if you see it, spray it dead" position on insects.

I don't use pesticides or chemicals due to my butterfly/moth habitat, and try to let nature do its thing, except for providing assistance to the butterflies by raising them in containers and releasing them when they eclose.

I encourage all interested to grow milkweed for the Monarchs. Habitat is fast being lost to commercial development as we expand our resouces into these undisturbed areas.

Susan

Organic Burro and others
What else do you use in your prop mix and at what ratio.
I have been reading lots about coconut coir also and plan on carrying it it my garden center soon. Living in Texas the heat and dry of summer tells me this is something that has a broad range of uses but I still want to know more about the trade offs. There is no free lunch:) I have read some use the coco coir straight for propagating others mixing it with peat moss 50/50. What is your take?
I think it should make a good amendment along with regular additions of compost to raised beds for veggies or flowers because of the water and air holding capacity. This plus its ability due to the lignin content to not structurally break down for several years unlike peat moss which so many people use for these purposes. I already encourage the use of compost for these purposes but want to add a more stable structure to these beds as well.
Happy Growing David

I have less fungus knat problems with core than peat.

I really like it, and use it both for seedstarting and in beds. I buy it from the pet store where they sell it for lizard bedding, I think? at $9-$10 for 3 bricks. Not dirt cheap, but I have a small garden so it works out okay. For starting seeds, it's great because it holds moisture so well and I have to worry a lot less about my seeds drying out. For the beds, it has lightened my heavy clumps of clay into something very much workable (with the help of compost as well).

If I were to add something to it, it wouldn't be peat, seems like they both serve the same general purpose. For seedstarting I've tried mixing it 50/50 with vermicompost but often get too lazy and just use straight coir. :-)

no regrets:?
In your seed starting with coir how long are you holding seed starts before you transplant and how are you feeding them? I have read the concerns about quality control and possible salt issues. I will need to test the brand I plan to bring in to know whether to advocate further rinsing or not before I offer it for sale (saleman claims no problems) but these are my customers not his and I have always learned to be skepical first and prove it first kind a guy before I suggest uses to someone else.
2. Have you had any issues with the magnesium, calcium, potash cation giving you any problems? If so what did you use to solve it?
Thanks and Happy Growing David

I've read about coir "tying up" cations (until the coir is saturated with them, that is) so I've just been giving diluted fish emulsion, and hopefully by the time the seedlings actually need any serious amounts of nutrients, the coir will be saturated by them.

i really get the feeling my 100% coir dries out before my 50/50 soil. i think it's because coir has such a bigger porosity than the 50/50 mix.

i love this stuff, it's like a sponge when you hold a compressed piece under water. and it makes all sorts of cool noises when it sucks it up. and it smells freakin great

hitexplanter,

Your questions might be a little too advanced for me :-) Not sure about cations and whether they're causing me any problems... if I mix the coir with castings, I don't feed at all because I transplant fairly early (I live in SD and our season is long enough that I don't have to grow anything too long from a weather perspective).

To be totally honest, I'm not a commercial grower, anything I grow I grow for my own small garden so if it holds water and my seedlings seem happy or it fluffs up my clay soil, I'm happy. I am sure that others who are growing on a much larger scale will need to be much more worried than I about exact properties. :-)

hi david (hitex), I cant answer your questions about the salt or cation exchange either, and I dont have a very technical approach to gardening. but, Ive been using coir for raising seeds for about 4 years and never had any problems with it. I feed my seedlings with a bit of fish emulsion and seaweed extract as Ive always done. I think the only problem your customers are likely to have are damping off problems if they overwater (which is a problem with any medium anyway) but this is most likely to happen in cooler temps. I honestly cant say anything bad about coir, and in the texas climate it should work really well (My climate is similar to coastal southern california) and I think it is especially useful in hot climates. When I finish using it for raising seeds I recycle it into my worm bin (vermicomposting) and it is also the ideal bedding for the worms in my climate, so thats another use you can recommend it for. I think you should get hold of some and try it for yourself and once you become converted :), youll see why we all like it so much and youll be happy to recommend it to customers.

trance

not sure what made it rot for you but i just water it and let it get dry, then water it again. doesn't rot on me

I don't use coco coir for plants as the stuff is too pricey in my area, but I do use it as bedding in a worm bin and it doesn't smell or rot for me even though worm bins are very moist by nature.

No odor either.

Not sure what happened in your case, Heathen1 (nice name BTW). Maybe you just got a bad shipment or something.

It's possible! Though a friend told me it happened to her too. But ya never know.
Thanks, Justaguy. :)

Thanks for all the replies to my part of the questions on coir. I have some and will be playing with it on some tomatoes this coming week. I will see first hand between a couple of mixes what they act like. I also use seaweed at transplanting along with several other organic material including alfalfa, greensand, soft phosphate, and another locally made organic mix called rocket fuel, which has bat guano and other great goodies for starting plants. Will keep follow thsi link and add as I can anything noteworthy. Happy Growing David

Nice to see another zone 8 coco grower. What part of zone 8 you in? I'm in Waco, TX

From what I've read, the number 1 reason people have problems growing in coco coir is they treat it like soil. Coir is a hydroponic medium, and should be treated as such.

I have 5 pepper plants and 1 cherry tomato plant on the patio growing in coco coir / perlite mixed about 7:3. I'm currently hand watering every day or every other day, using Hesi coco nutrients (a 1 part fertilizer designed specifically for growing hydroponically in coco). I feed 12 ml of nutrient mixed with 4 L of water, pH'd to about 5.8

The trick is to feed until you have run-off (approx 10-20% of what you watered should run out the bottom). Never let it dry out.
Watering til that much runs out does two thing:
1)flushes the medium with every watering, preventing build up in the medium.
2)ensures you maintain a fairly consistent level of nutrient in the medium. Fluctuations in ec/ppm & pH = no good.

I was a little leery at first to water that much. I was always told too much water is the most common mistake people make. Well, with coco, forget all that. The more often you water, the better off you'll be. Since the coir is so coarse, it will always have plenty of oxygen trapped inside, unlike most mediums that become water-logged and drown roots.

I am down I-35 a bit in the Canyon Lake area about 15 miles N or New Braunfels. I have yet to get to use any of the coir. I have a wheelbarrel ready to go and no time to pot up anything. It has been too busy at the garden center and I will now try again this week to pot up some in a few different mixes. I have been reading lots on the container forum and will be doing a few types of mixes to see what seems the best for Spring through summer using Laura Bush and some tomatoes as my test plants for these experiments.
Happy Growing David

I planted about 1/4 acre of cranberries in a 20 acre field in coir a year ago, my customer ran out of peat and had once used coir which he had gotten for free from a large greenhouse operation. It was rained on for quite a while so most of anything that was added to it in the greenhouse was washed away.
The cranberries grew as well or better in coir than in the peat. It held water well, distributed resources as good as peat and weed pressure was less which should be expected.
It will be interesting to see how this little plot turns out. I concur with the theory that watering it a little more is not harmful and may actually help.

Right on david, I know where that is. Been to new braunsfels a few times to schlitterbahn when I was younger. If i ever make it down that way, I'll have to check out your garden center.

So far it has been 8-10 days since I transplanted everything to the coir, watering every day or every other day, and everything is going great. Peppers are steadily growing, looking at pics I took at transplant compared with now shows that even though I don't notice since I look at them every day. The tomato is growing fast though, enough to notice differences daily.

I'll keep you posted on how my coco experiment turns out, good luck with yours :)