Quote Originally Posted by DreadedHermie
Hey, I picked up a couple bricks of Botanicare CocoGro. Ready to start asking questions. Got some (sort of) expendible chillun's in the veg room.

Gnat's no fun!

Ever wash off the roots and do a mid-veg conversion to coco?

Have done with edible Hibiscus. No need with coco.

Expand some coco. Just chip it off the block and pour warm, nuted, PH'd, water on it. Not soaking wet, just "clumpy"
Then pack some moist coco in da bottom of the 3g pot and set the 1g pot in it to check for proper depth.
Then pack more coco around the 1g pot so the two pots are nested.
If the moisture is right, the coco holds it's shape when you carefully remove the 1g pot.
Slip the 1g pot off the rootball and carefully lower da rootball into da coco-hole.
Perfect fit!
The girls will show no xplant shock. Quite the contrary. The growth spurt is almost immediate.
I use General Hydro Grow or Bloom at 1 tsp. per gallon and keep the PH 'tween 5.3 and 6.3.
My tap water averages 7.1 PH and 1 tsp of GH nutes usually lowers the PH about to the proper range.
My tap water is only 120ppm. so I add a tsp of CalMag instead of nutes every other watering.

Only gotchas? Never let the coco go dry like we do with soil and do not allow standing water under da pots. (Coco wicks better dan soil and will draw up "stale" water).

(8" rooted clone in a 1 gal plastic nursery pot--any chance to live?) Otherwise, time to ^ to a 3 gal soil pot, shoes gettin' tight!

She'll live, but not well. The soil chemistry gets unmanageable in tight shoes.

Actually, got a 3gal plant I could attempt this with, too. If it's possible to do it, is converting from rootbound in soil to the same pot, but with coco considered an upsize? Seems like it would be....

Yes, it would be, but prolly not worth the hassle of washing the roots if they are rife with corns n bunions.

Where should I start a "going coco" thread? Call it what? If we put yer name on it many will check it out. Me no care. You wanna edjumacate John Q. as we go, that's okay, too.
ICMag.
That PM feature is very handy and I really don't miss the tension when I hit the submit button.
They already have an excellent coco thread we could play in.

Ainokea 'bout JQP, they'll catch-up eventually.

If ya gots da tiny flies and itty larvea, be aware that they will live in coco too but will have nothing to eat except for root hairs!

They are very hard to eliminate. The adults will try to lay eggs in the new coco as you mix it.
The li'l buggahs will even live in hydro!

Long way back I planted some seeds and ran out of pots.
Put one in a 1g. milk jug.
Used Supersoil/perlite. from Homie de pot.
The soil was infested with Fungus Gnats!
The seedling growth slowed to a crawl as the roots got munched.
Juggie was the only normal sized healthy kid in the batch.
Why? Because I filled the jug to the top and had the seedling grow up through the 1/2" dia. mouth of the jug.

Aha!
Much less surface area for hatching, breathing, and egg laying.
After wasting a lot of effort on frontal attacks that they parried with a ferocious breeding rate, I found an easy, almost elegant fix.
Tulip growers put an inch of white sand on the soil surface.
Tried it, it worked, but it was a royal pita come transplant time
So, I now cut a circle or square of reflectix to fit the container.
Then, cut a slot to the center, then cut 8 radial lines about 1.5"
long from the center point. Kind of an asterisk.
That hugs the stem gently and expands as she grows. I place these on top of the pots to block the breeding cycle, with the advantage of 97% light reflection to the bottom leaves.
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No pest strips knocked out the adult gnats and the spidermites and now the room is clean.

Oh, yeah, Your move, brah.

Aloha,
Off-topic zard