Coco Coir question
Mary Sue Ittner (Wed, 14 Jan 2015 07:39:34 PST)

I'd like to remind everyone that the wiki has a wonderful page
entitled Growing Medium which describes and often illustrates (thanks
to Gastil) the different ingredients that people add to mixes and
why. There is a chart that describes:
Dry Density = weight of dry medium per volume of dry medium. (In
other words, how heavy does it make your pots? Higher numbers are heavier.)
Water Retention = volume of water retained per volume of saturated
medium. (In other words, how well does it store water for the roots?
Higher numbers mean more water is stored.)
Air Filled Porosity = volume of air space after draining per volume
of saturated medium. (How much air does it allow into the soil? In
other words, how well-drained is it? Higher numbers mean better drainage.)
for each.
There is an entry for coir.
http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/…
This recommends washing at least once and 3 times for the best
results to remove the salts. When visiting Rod and Rachel Saunders in
South Africa we observed some plants they were growing directly in
washed coir and they looked very healthy and were easy to move since
the pots weren't heavy.

What works best is dependent on your conditions. You could also
search the archives as people have talked about this in the past.

Mary Sue