Steve, Believe me, that wasn't "too" much info! I just potted some geos in it today and I was so amazed at how well it held water and how quickly it drained! I ordered a few more bricks right afterwards, now I'm regreting it! I'll give it a good bath and we'll see what happens, I just dont want to risk losing any of my plants, I usually only have a plant or two of each species that I collect and to lose one isn't worth it! Josh Indiana ________________________________ From: Steve Marak <samarak@gizmoworks.com> To: Pacific Bulb Society <pbs@lists.ibiblio.org> Sent: Wed, July 28, 2010 7:06:31 PM Subject: Re: [pbs] What Do You Think Of Coconut Coir? This is a subject that seems to be coming up on a lot of lists I'm on. There's some confusion because there seem to be several closely related products. I'm aware of three: fibrous coir, coconut husk chips, and coir peat (obtained usually from the dust generated when producing the other two). All are obtained from the husks of coconuts, and the stories I hear about them seem to be similar, but they're rarely interchangable in use. Fibrous coir has many non-horticultural uses, too. With good quality bark becoming more expensive and harder to get, many orchid growers are looking at coconut husk chips as an alternative, and - since even among fanatic plant-growers few groups are as fervant as orchidists - I've done a lot of reading in those circles (plus I'm an orchid grower too, and I hate repotting). Some are also using fibrous coir as a substitute for long-fiber sphagnum. Most people seem happy with the water-holding qualities of all three products, as well as their stability in use (less repotting). The question of salt, and how to remove it, is always the big one - there are many reports of people losing plants after moving them to a coir-based medium, and it's always blamed on salt, though I don't know how many people actually test to be sure. Salt content is reported to vary widely depending on source. At any rate, it's always recommended to thoroughly wash the fibrous coir and coconut husk chips, soaking them for at least several days and changing the water regularly, before using it. If you're going to use a lot of it, I'd recommend buying a cheap "Total Dissolved Solids" meter. It won't produce lab-quality measurements, since they measure using electrical conductivity, but it's good enough to give you a baseline on your tap water (or whatever the source of your rinse water is), and to compare that to what's shown after the coir has been soaking. When the two numbers get fairly close together, we assume that we've done all we can do just leaching with our tap water. Some have looked into it much more deeply - Bob and Lynn Wellenstein, at Antec Laboratories, suggest that after water-soaking the coir, you soak it in a solution of calcium nitrate and magnesium sulfate, to help remove sodium and potassium ions which may be adhering to the surface (and which may not be removed by just a water soak). Here's a link: http://ladyslipper.com/coco3.htm I've tried soaking coir peat, too. As you'd expect, it's a dirty, unrewarding task which leaves you with a sodden glob of muck. I've read that coir peat is much more thoroughly washed by the time we get it, and that additional soaking isn't necessary, but can't verify that. We haven't used that much of it. So far, we're happy with the chips we've used for orchids. Probably more than anyone wanted to read or know ... Steve On Wed, 28 Jul 2010, Mary Sue Ittner wrote: ... > As I recall there were some negative responses and some positive ones about > using coir. On a recent trip to South Africa, I helped Rod and Rachel Saunders > repot some Scadoxus to sell and they were growing them in pure coir, nothing > else. When I asked about this, remembering that people had said they had lost > things using coir, Rod told me that you needed to wash it many times before > using it to be sure that you have removed the salt from it. But then they > found it worked quite well. It reminded me that I once heard a lecture on > insectivorous plants by a man who had written a great book about growing them > and he lost everything using coir, but I don't know if he washed it first. -- Steve Marak -- samarak@gizmoworks.com