De-Salting Coco Coir bricks

[Ace]

Heya folks,

From what I've read, those cheapo coco coir bricks that you can get at almost any nursery (about $2-3 for a brick that expands to make about 9L of potting mix) are quite high in salt content, which poses many a problem for cactus cultivation. Still, I am looking for something that I can grow pereskiopsis cuttings in - I'm thinking a good mix of the coir, CSS and maybe a little regular potting mix.

Does anyone have a way to leach the salt out of the coir? Would I just soak the mass in a bucket(s) for a day or two, then squeaze thru an old pillow case or something and repeat this a couple times? Is there going to be much difference if I dont bother with the de-salting, or is it a necessary process when incorporating into a quality potting mix?

Like I said, its mostly for peres cuttings, which seem pretty invincible anyway. Think it'll be worth de-salting the coir, or just go to town with it as is?

Thanks

Ace

[reshroomED]

Never used it for cactii myself, but used to bulk-case shrooms with it au naturale a few years ago and never had a problem, so I'd think it has little salt-content (what I was using, anyway). This was just off-the-shelf at Safeway, but seem to remember seeing some with added fertilizer since, so maybe this is what you're referring to.

I'd guess someone here has used it in a cactii mix, so maybe they'll have more info.

ed

Edited May 30, 2007 by reshroomED

[foolsbreath]

pot up the coir mix and then flush by putting hose in pot or dipping pot in buckets of water till water runs clean (or measure with ec or hydrometer), can use one big pot or seperate into small pots ready for planting once flushed

Then plant cacti ;) ( you might want to wait for soil to dry at this time of the year?)

[Ace]

Yep, it was the one with the added ferts (tho I've seen the same brand without the extras). I have read a few times now that they need to be flushed to get rid of some of the buildup (seems that the coconuts were grown in a salty area and draw up a lot of the rubbish with the good stuff).

Thanks Foolie - that's the sort of thing I was after. I will be sure to dry the mix out again before potting up - just wanted to check if it was worth the hassle.

Thanks guys

[tonic]

I would'nt let it dry out too much as peat & coir peat are near impossible to re-wet again once dry.

[AndyAmine.]

It really depends on the quality of the coco fibre, the cheap stuff is unflsuhed and still has lots of salt in it from processing and storage in sea water but the better quality brands like Dutch Master are already salt free, either way its a good idea to flsuh it out to get rid of the fine particles and the brown color that will flow from your pots otherwise.. ;)

[BlackDragon]

Canna coco is great stuff, no dust and the best "feel" ive yet used, expensive tho. Andy hit the nail on the head, cheaper stuff is degraded in brackish water, stripped then processed. Canna(and other brands) are degraded and washed in fresh water ponds, then treated with magnesium salts(damn cant remember) to prevent nutrient lockup and skewing nutrient levels/micro/macro availablity.

I think there is a little movie on the Canna website about the process i think...

If your mixing with soil, i would think a good flush with water will do fine

Bd.

[Vertmorpheus]

coco rocks. Love it. its great. fantastic. (I like it quite a bit).

You mean the brunnings n hortico stuff Ace? go the brunnings... checkwhat grade suits u best, can get it at different sized if u peek. take home only the blocks with the pink phoska particles all settled to the bottom. Line your laundry tub , barrow or whatever with shade cloth, large enough bit so u have enough to make a big kava bundle if u get what i mean. big teabag?

Hydrate the stuff with warm water, with the fert particle side of the block lowermost.Sometimes that blocks share of fertiliser is in one distinct clump u can just chip off with a screwdriver. Don't use hot water, JUST barely warm (too hot seems to make it shit its pants and fall to tiny bits... not bad for prop mixes though). Cover it in just enough water to make the hole block puff up, but not more than halfway up the side of the "pile" and try not to break it up...then drain the water (reuse!), and lean on the block from above... do this a couple times (save the water, uses a bit!) again but with normal temp water, on the last (3rd for me) flush, mix the pile around thoroughly, sprinkle the surface of the peat with a reasonable amount of dolomite or calmag powder (I use "a bit"... maybe a largeish palmful for 60l coco? but go by the bag if u prefer things more scientific) and water it in real well with a watering can, anything witha wide rose head.

fill the tub again, let it sit for a while, poke it around..then give it a final drain n squeeze out. I store my made up stuff in those white nylon paint buckets to keep bugs out, theyll move right in if u let em. Sometimmes i dont get all that thorough, and just rely on watering a lil more than usual whilst applying liquid/slow release ferts at the levels i DO want, hoping plants will dig the good salts rather than the salt salts. Both seem to work. coco and my succs/cacs seems to work well, but u have to sand it up a fair bit otherwise trying to keep it dry enough to avoid rots and the sad floppies etc can often see the coco go dry, blow away as dust. The standard capping layer of small stones or CSS/deco sand helps a lot, with coco or cocobased blends. But it can be a bit of a juggling act til you work out how much weight u can place on top without collapsing the mix..coco works best just "settled" in, shaken in, rather than being "firmed down" though the micropores in the fibres means even if u squash fuck out of it, it will still perform better than a lot of those nasty bags of acidic pine bark and MiniExact passing as growing media.Just not anywhere near its peak.. you can get most plants to twice the size or more in a nice coco based blend than you could in the same pot of average mix, using less water more efficiently. Stuff rocks for growing up a nice tribe of good soil bugs too, the odd sip of molasses n kelp seems to help there.

So yeah, all that stuffing about in the laundry for half your sunday all helps get a lot of that shitty phoska out (which isnt real good for much you'll want to be growing anyway, unless lead cadmium and mercury float ya boat) and buffers it up some against the magnesium and potassium problems that tend to happen (some people skip this, and just rely on using the liquid potash n epsom products from hydro shops, or just use flower n fruit ferts from the start.Complicated as u want to make it really). Most cheap stuff is not only rotted in salt water, but transported downriver or down the coastline in "rafts" on the salt water, hence the salts in addition that which is taken up in growing the palm.

canna is nice , but overpriced I reckon.And a few people I know have had EC/TDS worries with it even with the custom buffers and being hand made by viking maids in sacred pools of angel tears. I'm not paying 50 bucks for that amount of anything I can't eat or get smashed off haha. But it's a nice "grow by numbers" system if u dont want to stuff around, and not everyone has either access to enough water to "brew" their own, or not enough useful places to use a hundred litres of run off on. Whatever works. With canna, you can go to the shop you bought it and say "this is happening" and they can say "take this home, should fix it". The brunnings gear is a lil more random, some slabs are overweight, some plenty under. All are helped by going thru them clump by clump breaking up the "knots" of it that form, evenly distribute the grades, and being given a really good flush with room temp water

Fernlands Agencies do great prices on nice coco, pick a grade etc, once u get a reasonable amount. maybe go in with some mates for a bale?

mesh cloth in the bottom of pots helps keep mix in and worms out too, and helps repotting.

love me coco :D

GD

[SaBReT00tH]

hahaha. I've used brunnings a few times (with the added seasol fertiliser), mixed in equal 3 parts with coarse propagation sand and potting mix to pot my cacti and don't believe I've had any problems. What signs occur on the cacti when there is too much salt?

[Vertmorpheus]

Too much sodium usually causes a general deficiency of just about everything, and fucks with cell pressures etc... so if something goes from looking great to looking sunburnt, starved and floppy (when it really shouldnt be , I mean)could be salt. I think first to be knocked out isCac's might be a bit different.Sodium in general is something hort people of just about any variety aren't real big on... it rarely appears on those Gurdijeff's Enneagram looking Stimulation and Antagonism chart (get one... handy stuff!)

I've used the brunnings coco as is quite a few times and never had any massive dramas, but too much useless salt in a mix can stuff with a plant on transplanting more than anything, messes with its first few feeds at least (you have a lunchtray with different sections.. if theyre all full of mashed potato, you can't fit any peas on there, til you've done something with the spuds at least). Depends on the plant, but some things really don't like sudden shifts in nutes, it upsets them and they flower or fruit just to spite you (something about trying to further their own species but I don't listen to them whine ) . Most people using that coco straight up don't think about the salt, assume its just the transplant stress and so water and feed a lil more for a while out of instinct...which flushes out the salts and replaces htem with useful ones. gardeners are a sensitive mob!

I've never had anything die in new coco, but quite a few things either do the unexpected (least at an unexpected time) and most things looking back have a slump of a week or so (varies with type of course) til I've put as much water, good salts and dolomite etc thru the pot as I would have done in the laundry tub. It's easier around here (level 5 haha) to keep as much water use as possible indoors ;) Can't bum around the front porch every other day with a watering can or the water police will come n take me away.

My succs and scant cac's on the other hand, don't seem as fazed by all this carrying on... I reckon thats for a few reasons... firstly, the sand/perlite/whatever component, your crunchy stuff... usually has just about no real tendency to take up nutes in anything other than a passive sense..more so when in company with coco, which will suck just about everything out of just about anything (massive surface area, like activated carbon)... BUT... a cac, unlike a "normal" plant isn't as greedy when it comes to pulling nutes out of its mix (in comparison to say, tomatos or whatever). So might be that by the time theyve been watered in, calm down from the transplant enough to think about having themselves some lunch.. most of the salt is either flushed, or bound up in the coco pretty stubbornly in comparison to the cac's ability to take it up. Also plenty of cacs n succs are from more alkaline, salty areas to start with, in comparison to say most food crops, soft herbs etc, who dig damp humic-acid rich situations. Some things are between the two. Pedro's n the like seem to have popped up in the better pockets of the shittier areas, if that makes any sense to anyone but me. Advantageous rather than truly resilient, traded off their hostility for all that love haha.

Maybe. Cactus noob, beyond the basic plant approach. But even a quick extra flush after hydration seems to help me a lot with many plants.

off to get some fish n chips

GD

ps..yes, I know you could've just put the peas on the mashed potato and they'd stick on just fine... but only so many of em before they started falling off... thats why sodium based nutes (sodium nitrate for example) aren't real popular anymore. You only get so much good stuff for a whole lot of bad stuff...That and they clump up really badly.