Commercial glasshouse growers will be no strangers to the benefits of coco coir. Not only is the product sustainable and renewable, but it also offers excellent water retention and provides a robust growing medium that can be used multiple times.
Coco coir has a multitude of potential applications, ranging from compost to growing blocks, but it is crucial that growers properly understand how to prepare and maintain coco coir to get full use of the benefits and to avoid potential nutrient imbalances.
Botanicoir provides a range of fully prepared coir solutions for commercial growers and can create bespoke preparations that are ideally suited to specific crops.
In this article, we explore the importance of properly preparing coco coir, focusing on the key steps of buffering and hydration, and looking at how to get the most out of this versatile and popular growing medium.
The importance of preparing coco coir substrate properly
The correct preparation of coco coir for commercial growing operations is absolutely critical to the success of crops and plants.
Coco coir is derived from the husks of coconuts, and these natural fibres create a strong structural integrity that is long-lasting as well as being a controlled environment for precision growing.
The even distribution of different particle sizes within the coco coir ensures growers can develop healthy plants and crop yields due to the even and fast root development within the substrate.
However, because the coconut husks are an inert medium, it means coco coir doesn’t contain the nutrients your plants can instantly use and it could even contain levels of some nutrients that could negatively impact crop growth.
In order to capitalise on the above benefits, it is necessary to remove chemical elements that may be harmful to the crop or plant, ensure the nutrients needed are being made available and not “locked out”, and that the coco coir is sufficiently hydrated before use.
Removing harmful salts from coco coir
Perhaps the greatest challenge for a grower with unprepared coco coir is its high salt content – via sodium or potassium, for example – which can damage roots, inhibit plant growth and crucially, affect yields.
You can remove salts by washing coir, while buffering will reduce the content even further. Botanicoir has a range of products that do this process for you and are tailored to meet the needs of your own land, crop and growing environment.
Botanicoir’s washed coir can remove 30 to 35 per cent of salt in the coir’s substrate, and a further buffering process can get salt levels down to almost zero, which generally lowers and stabilises the electrical conductivity (EC), and the buffering of the calcium.
When Botanicoir washes coir, the material’s EC goes down more than 60% (from an EC of more than 4 to 1.2), and with super-washed materials, it’s down to 0.5.
This provides a growing base that is consistent in its nutrient levels and one that you can get to work with straight away.
Coir that has particularly high levels of salts can be processed twice to remove 40 to 45 per cent of salts and this is Botanicoir’s ‘Super Washed’ coir option.
Preventing nutrient lock-out in coco coir
The cation exchange capacity (CEC) of coco coir is another key consideration when preparing this growing medium.
Because coco coir has a high CEC, this means it is excellent at holding on to positively charged ions like potassium. The result is that the unprepared coco coir will hold more potassium at the expense of other key nutrients for your plant, such as calcium and magnesium.
Without buffering your coco coir, the result can be that it will release potassium to the plant in high amounts, creating a nutrient “lock-out” for other minerals that are key to healthy plant growth.
This imbalance in nutrients will negatively impact plant growth and, ultimately, your crop yields.
Water and nutrient availability in coco coir
The proper hydration level of your coco coir is the final challenge in the preparation process. While coco coir is renowned for its water retention properties, too much or too little water in the hydration process will lead to inconsistencies that will impact plant growth.
If your hydration preparations lead to patchy moisture levels, plant roots can become stressed and nutrients will not be available to fuel plant growth.
How to prepare coco coir
Despite these challenges, coco coir remains one of the best and most popular growing mediums for commercial growers. And, for those looking to prepare their own coir, this process involves two critical steps – buffering and hydration.
The buffering process allows you to balance the nutrient profile within the coco coir, ensuring you can tailor the growing medium to exactly match the needs of your individual crop.
The hydration process comes next and this is about making sure the substrate has the correct water content to support the plant and that the moisture levels are even and consistent.
How to hydrate coco coir
Proper hydration of your coco coir is just as important as the washing and buffering. Too much water and the roots will be waterlogged and starved of oxygen. Too little and you’ll get dry patches in the growing medium that will prevent plants from accessing nutrients.
Coco coir can hold up to eight times its own weight in water, but, even moisture distribution is the objective. For commercial growers looking to maintain uniform growth across their crops, this even moisture distribution is critical.
The first step in hydrating your coir is selecting the right amount of coir for the container or growing area. For example, a five-kilogramme block of compressed coco coir will expand to around 65 litres of hydrated coir.
To hydrate the coir, place it into a container and then slowly add the water you need to properly hydrate the block evenly. This is typically around 25 litres of water for every 5kg of coir block. To make the hydration process faster, you can use warm water or add a quality wetting agent.
It does take around an hour for the coir to soak up the water and expand properly, but this allows time for you to make sure the water is evenly distributed or there aren’t any dry patches that will need additional water added to them.
When the water has been added, check the moisture content by gently squeezing the coco coir. It should feel like a damp sponge with a small amount of water squeezing out, but not waterlogged.
At this stage, the coco coir is hydrated and ready for use, but it is also a good idea to check the pH level at this point too (LINK TO pH BLOG) and make any changes to the acid or alkaline content if necessary.
In summary
Coco coir is the perfect growing medium for commercial growers, but proper preparation is essential for maximising the yields, and ultimately profits, of your plants.
By investing the time in proper buffering and hydration, growers are laying the foundations for a successful growing season. By carefully buffering and hydrating coir so it delivers exactly what your crop needs, this will make the difference between healthy, high-performing plants and a weak crop that is ravaged by deficiencies and uneven growth.
Botanicoir can provide unprepared coco coir for you to buffer and hydrate yoursel,f or we can create prepared solutions that are tailored to your growing operation with a range of washed, buffered or super-washed coir.
If you’d like to know more or have questions about how you prepare your own coir, get in touch with our expert team who will be happy to help.
