Warped1 said:
My friend, go get the coco, you will absolutely love it! Coco has proven to be the easiest medium i've ever worked with and, so far at least, it is producing the most consistent results, shit, I still have about 90 gallons of my own organic soil mix left over (when I say 'my own mix' I mean I followed a recipe posted in the 'Organics for beginners' thread, lol), most i'll give away to my young friend InPotITrust.
Anyway, I like using the coco bricks rather than the bags of loose coco partly because I can carry a brick in a bag into my house and if any of my neighbors happen to see me, they don't see anything that looks grow related, just what looks like a large cereal box in a bag.
So, once I get the brick into the house I just toss it into a 30 gallon bin and pour about 3 - 3.5 gallons of tap water on top of it and stir, lol. It's kind of a pain breaking the bricks up so I usually put the lid on the bin and let the coco soak for a half hour or so, then it's just a mattet of stirring it up to make sure there aren't any dry chunks left and thats it, it's now ready to use.
Now, that's just how I do it, i'm a lazy fuck by nature so I do things the lazy fuck way, lol, but it was recommended in all that reading I did that you thoroughly rinse your coco bricks, especially if you use the cheaper generic brands as they MAY be loaded with salts, personally i've only used 1 brick of Northfield coco and 1 brick of the Botanicare and I see no difference, consistency wise or in the resultant health of my plants, they seem to just LOVE the coco! It's also recommended you 'charge' your coco before using which simply means you pour 1/4 strength nutes into the coco after rinsing.
And to answer your question more directly Warped1 the coco is very similar to soil, just more even, it's actually so easy to use it's a joy potting up, ...and cloning is way easier now with no loss in success rates with still better than 90% rooted, plus, it makes potting up into my hempys WAY easier, I just pop the rooted coco plug out if it's 9oz cup, place the cup in a hempy and back-fill with moist coco, easy peasey lemon squeazy, lol.
It's easy to hide bringing it into your grow, it's mad easy to use AND your plants will LOVE it, plus, it's a renewable resource made from ground up coconut shells unlike vermiculite which can be a pain to find and is dug from mines so NOT renewable, ...asbestos is almost always found with vermiculite as well so conditions can be very unhealthy for the miners.
So don't wait bro, use that FFOF for your house plants and switch to coco for your special garden, ...don't be like me and think about it for almost 3 years, just break down and spend the $11.00 and buy a brick, I promise you'll be glad you did.
High man, heres a coupe pics of my mother-box, the first cab I ever built and powered by a 2ft 4bulb T5HO totaling 96watts, 24watts per bulb.
...this is what it looks like closed.
...and heres a shot of it open.
Now heres a couple of my bud-box, this was my second cab and I used 2x 150watt HPS Econolites that I had to DIY, what I did was dis-assemble the light and discard the original fixtures and then I mounted both bulbs in a DIY cooltube and remoted the ballasts, which were built into the original fixtures, outside the grow area.
Heres a shot from outside and it stands 62inchs if memory serves me right, lol.
...and here is a shot of the inside after painting but before any other modifications.
...and heres a shot with the twin 150s without thier ghetto reflector. ...i used the 150s for about a year and a half before upgrading to a 400CMH in a proper hood, an air-cooled SupetSun II to be exact.
...and just for shits and giggles, lol, heres a shot of the exhaust where you can see I designed it so the exhaust blows across the DIY ballasts.
So after these were built I decided to build myself a home for my cloning op which is fully documented in my 'cloning factory' thread linked below, ...to answer your question though i'm using 165watts of PL-Ls in that box but suspended over newly rooted clones foe short-term vegging which is all I do, lol. ...anyway, the cuts sit in bins on a shelf above the lights and get only reflected light which has proven to be more than sufficient to promote rooting. BTW, I designed it that way to passively recapture the heat to keep my cloners warm, I used the Walmart cloners for a couple years with great success and only changed because cloning in straight coco just simplifies things for me.
ANYWAY, lol, i'm now in the final stages of upgrading my flowering op into a 4 x 4 Secret Jardin grow tent with a bare-bulb, vertically mounted 600 and i'm really lovin' the new changes i've been makin'.
So heres a shot lookin' into the new tent.
...and now you know about my lights, lol.
Peace, SOG
