Growing in Coco with CropSalt: A Practical Guide

Here's our coco routine in one line: buffer the coco with full-strength feed, feed CropSalt at every watering, pH the feed to about 6.2, give about 25% runoff, and let pots dry back to about 50–60% before the next feed. Runoff should read about pH 6.0–6.1.

Coco holds water and still leaves room for air around the roots, and it responds fast when you change something. That's why a steady feed and watering rhythm matters.

Buffer the coco

We hydrate or first irrigate quality coco with full-strength CropSalt solution. That buffers it. Raw coco can hold onto calcium and magnesium, but you don't need a separate Cal-Mag step: Veg and Bloom both carry multiple calcium sources.

Mix the feed

Use Veg A and Veg B in veg, then Bloom A and Bloom B in flower. Chart rates per US gallon of water:

Dissolve A first, then B, separately. Never combine dry A and B. Seedlings start at the highlighted label ratio and work up. Switch to Bloom on flower day 22 for photoperiods, or when buds are about pinky-nail size on autos. At chart rate in RO water the feed reads about 2.2 EC or a bit higher; tap water reads higher. Full schedule on our feed charts.

Water and runoff

Feed at every watering. Give each feed enough to get about 25% runoff, then let the pot dry back to about 50–60%: light, but never bone dry. A plain-water irrigation about once a week is optional and helps keep buildup down.

After transplant we give three heavy feeds with a hard dryback after each (5–7 days), then go to daily feeds. Once pots hit about 50–60% dryback by lights off, add a second daily feed.

Don't push dryback to stack EC. With CropSalt we've seen that crash root-zone pH.

Read the runoff

Test the last 10% of runoff from a normal feed. With the feed at 6.2, runoff around 6.0–6.1 is our normal pattern, not a reason to flush a healthy crop.

If runoff pH keeps dropping below that from buildup, flush with plain tap water at pH 6.4; the full steps are in Why Is Runoff pH Lower Than Feed pH? Send us your feed and runoff EC and pH if you want a second set of eyes.