Coir and Salt: pbs Digest, Vol 144, Issue 15

Erik Van Lennep erik@tepuidesign.com
Wed, 14 Jan 2015 22:50:06 PST
Here is my understanding of coir and salt. Others on here may know more,
and I would love to learn from you, to get a fuller picture:

There are two primary paths to salt accumulation in coir. One is via
treatment (harvest and processing) as some have already described.

The other is trickier. Coconuts naturally grow along the sea. While there
are plantations further inland, the bulk are coastal. Coconut palms are
able to grow with salt water. To survive this, they have evolved a strategy
which enables them to pump the excess salts out of their cells, and into
the inter-cellular space, where it remains.

Coir does not start as the brown fiber we buy, but as the green (thus
living) material which grows to become the coconut husk. Thus it has the
same supply of inter-cellular salts accumulating. This is much harder to
wash out, at least until the fibers have broken down...at which point they
are no longer suited to potting. Soaking and washing can draw a certain
amount of salts out via osmosis, but bulbs and other plants particularly
sensitive to salts, are probably not going to do well in it, regardless.

Peat is a non-renewable (OK, painfully slowly renewing) resource, for which
coir has been adopted as a replacement. We have ready access to another
alternative: leaf mould and other vegetable compost; this includes starting
with paper. What's even better about these is they can be made by almost
everyone, at home. Tons of D.I.Y. information, tutorials, videos and
manuals are on the internet, in many languages. Find one that works for
your situation and have fun :)

Not only will your plants thank you, but your wallet will too. Plus, by
keeping organic matter out of the waste stream, landfilling is avoided, and
this is significant, because organic matter which decays underground,
without oxygen, produces methane gas...and this makes CO2 as a greenhouse
gas look like a rank amateur. Methane overload in our atmosphere is a
massive issue.

Erik



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