Mac’s Guide to Coco Hempy.
So you want to grow in Coco hempy buckets but have questions…. Lets see if we can’t answer a few of them.
First off some basics you will need for coco hempy growing -
Coco ...duh
A bucket.
Seeds.
A solid reliable PH meter and equipment to keep it in top condition and calibrated. Buy the best you can afford, it’s an investment.
A reliable EC meter to show the nutrient strength. Again, don’t scrimp here if you don’t have to.
PH up and/or down as required. Keeping your feed at the right PH is essential in coco.
Ok, let’s get down to some Q+A.... Yes you at the front in the anorak..
What is a hempy bucket?
Quite simply it’s a bucket with a hole in it. Yep, that’s it. Any bucket ya want of any size, preferably a solid colour to stop light penetrating it.
Some common sizes used are 1 gallon, 3 gallon and 5 gallon. These are perfect for autoflowering strains, you can go larger for photoperiod strains if you wish.
My personal preference is 5 gallon
Can’t be that simple can it? Explain how it works in a nutshell…
Yes. It works by having a reservoir of nutrients at the bottom of the bucket below the hole, and growing medium above the hole. Just like a water table in nature, the roots go looking for the water. In this case our glorious nutrient rich water.
Sounds good, how did you come up with this method and why call it “hempy”?
I didn’t and make no claim on that whatsoever in any way. I was just bored and thought I’d write a guide for the Talk
The method has been around for a long while (way longer than I have been growing) under many names (dutch bucket etc). “Hempy” comes from one of the guys who laid out his method of using it and the name just stuck.
Right, now that's out of the way let’s crack on.
Ok I have my bucket, you mentioned a hole?
Observant I see, good. The hole allows run off of old nutrients and keeps the reservoir at the same maximum level so you don’t drown the roots.
Measure 50mm (2”) up from the bottom of the bucket and take a 13mm drill bit (½”) and make a hole in the bucket wall. No drill? No problem… use whatever you have handy, craft knife, scissors, hot screwdriver, lighter, solder iron etc be careful tho ask a grown up if you need to
Don’t make it too big or stuff falls out and light can get in, but it needs to let water out so 13mm or 1/2” is about perfect. Trim off any sharp edges to create a clean hole that won't snag roots or your fingers. You know you are going to do it, it's too tempting not to. Hole meet finger. We’ve all done it
Bucket, check. Hole, check. All fingers present, check. What's next?
Your high tech uber growing vessel is complete, now let’s fill it up.
Perlite is my bottom layer of choice, coarse 8mm perlite. It’s cheap and readily available and provides great aeration.
If you don’t have perlite available or prefer an alternative, vermiculite or lava stones work well too.
Rinse your chosen rocks (perlite is really dusty so recommend doing this outside) to ensure they are clean and pour them into your bucket.
Level it off with the top of the hole, next add your coco on top.
Place the coco that contacts the perlite gently, and ensure there are no lumps in the coco before you add it. Once the pot is full give it a tap around the sides to settle the coco and top it off as required.
Ok, slow down a sec, which coco do I use and can I use it straight from the bag?
Look for a coco coir with no fertilizers added. There are many brands available.
The information should be on the bag for your chosen brand as to whether it needs buffering or not.
My bag of choice is the Canna Coco Professional Plus.
It is ready to use from the bag however I still treat mine to a prebuffer before planting in it, just so I know exactly where I am starting from.
Buffering?
Buffering coco is washing it so it clears out all the dust and debris leaving fluffy coco fibres and saturating them with calcium and magnesium at a PH within the desired range (5.5 to 6.2) for several hours to prepare the medium.
It is important to do this as when you feed in coco, it likes to suck up calcium and magnesium and hold onto it, releasing potassium instead. This means the plant can’t access those elements leading to lock out of other elements too that require calcium for their uptake.
It’s generally bad news, so we try to pre empt this by dosing the coco with calmag before we start so the calcium and magnesium in our feed is then available to the plant at all times.
As the coco ages it breaks down and its ability to withhold calcium and magnesium increases again, so periodic calmag feeds are advised.
But Mac, I don’t believe in calmag, I’ve never needed/used it before.
I’m not going to tell you that you are wrong. If that is what works for you, brilliant, This is a guide not a rule book. The aim is to help you formulate your own method that works for you
Fair enough. What about coco bricks? Are they ok to use? I can get them cheaper than bags of coco.
Yep they are absolutely fine, same applies as above. Look for one with no fertilizers added.
These tend to be unbuffered hence the cheaper price.
Got it, thanks. So my buckets are ready and full of buffered fluffy coco. What’s next?
Grab a couple gallons of water and something to catch it in when it pours out the hole in the bucket
PH the water to 5.8. It’s important to PH any water/feed you pour into coco because it doesn’t have a microbe ecosystem like soil does so coco wont change the PH automatically for you. This means whatever you pour in sets the PH of the coco.
Fully saturate the coco and keep pouring water until it “pisses out of our lovingly crafted hole”
Your coco is now a premium environment for slipping some beans in so grab your germinated seeds of choice and a pencil or similar. Make a hole in the centre of the coco with the pencil about 20mm or ¾” deep and drop your seed in, cover the hole with a pinch of coco.
Stick the bucket in your tent/grow room with your
lights on. Seeds use gravity underground to orientate themselves, but as soon as they break ground they start using light. Good quality seeds contain enough energy in them to pop the tap root and push up sprouting a single set of leaves and open them. From there they need light and food to continue. Poor quality seeds may barely have enough energy to break the surface so you want light from the second they do to help them along.
Boom got my beans in! How do I care for them now?
Good question. Until they break the surface I spray once a day with water PH’d to 5.8 to keep the area around the seed moist.
Once they break the surface I feed with a low strength nutrient solution until runoff.
Pour the feed slowly in a ring 3-4” around the plant stem and saturate the medium out to the edge of the pot from there. Then I pour 20-50ml directly at the base to moisten the tap root.
This forces the roots to travel out and down in search of the water, creating a healthier stronger root network.
But the plant is tiny, why water to runoff? isn't that just wasteful?
Coco is at its most aerated (oxygen rich) when it's fully saturated, so we want to keep it wet at all times to provide maximum oxygen to the roots. They love that stuff!
Coco is inert meaning it contains no nutrients so we have to provide everything to the plant manually. Feeding at low strength from day 1 and increasing based on the plants needs is a great way to do this.
As the water works its way down through the medium it creates a syphon behind it sucking in more fresh air directly to the roots. O2 junkies!!
We also want to flush that reservoir regularly so we don’t get any algae or salt build up in there.
The runoff should be collected and disposed of. It will be fine to use on houseplants or outdoor garden plants so it won’t be wasted if you use it right
If you prefer to use smaller amounts at the start that’s cool too, same rules apply, pour slowly in a ring around the stem, just be aware you may have salt build up from the old nutrients drying up in the coco.
It’s been a couple of weeks and my plant is really small. What gives?
Roots before shoots! Don’t panic! If your plant is green and healthy looking you are about to witness the miracle of coco. The plant likes to have its roots in place before it kicks into high gear, so it’s building root mass and searching for that water table (in this case our bucket’s reservoir). Once it finds it all hell breaks loose
The plant switches to building plant mass above ground and it has a direct root highway to that big fat lake of nutrients we have served up. Super fast explosive growth that you can see daily
Happy days.
Mac, what if I am a lazy sod who doesn’t want to hand water? Do hempys work with auto feed systems?
They sure do, I recommend using halos rather than drippers so you can saturate the medium more evenly. Make sure you set it up to water to runoff everytime.
Coco is perfect for high frequency watering and can grow some monsters with multiple waterings per day so make sure you have plenty of space
I think that covers most of it Mac, any other little tips or tricks for coco hempys?
As it happens yes.
Here’s one I learned just this morning. If you move the buckets … keep them level unless you like wet socks
Always water slowly. Listen when you stop you will hear a gurgle. Thats air sucking in behind your feed so water slowly and allow it time to suck that air in behind it before you continue pouring
Already mentioned the anchor holes round the top lip of the bucket for stress training but worth mentioning again
I personally don’t add extra perlite to my coco, but if you do I would recommend an 80:20 mix coco to perlite.
I use a 1 litre spray bottle to water the seed, this helps prevent drowning it out before it breaks ground
I don’t test my runoff. I don’t believe it’s a true representation of what’s going on in the root zone. It consists of yesterday's nutrients and salts. Pouring in fresh ph’d nutrients daily resets the PH of the root zone to whatever you are pouring in. And as we are watering to runoff then dilutes the old nutrient water. It can’t be accurate.
I do believe I have waffled on enough so there it is.
Hopefully it has helped you in some way shape or form to come up with a method that works for you.
Thanks for taking the time to read it and happy growing
Any questions feel free to ask, and i’ll do my best to answer, but I’m not a pro by any means. Constructive criticism is welcomed as this is my 1st time writing a guide of any description
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