Coco Coir Block (1 PK)

My first time using this and it is great for plants. I leave it in the package, cut the top and push a big butcher knife into it a few times to sort of slice it into 4 slabs. I pull one out, drop it in a big TubTrug bucket and add water. I found you can reconstitute it instantly with HOT water. No waiting or letting it sit overnight, etc. I usually use half Perlite and half Coir for a mix and throw in some Worm compost for great seed starter and houseplant mix. I buy Perlite in bulk. I like that Coir doesn't get hard so the roots penetrate very well and the plants love it. Great mix for my coco fibre lined wire hangers I use for my Epiphyllums, Chenille and Immortality plants and even all my Cactus and Aloe varieties. I use a weak fertilizer solution everytime I water the houseplants. For the veggies and other edibles I just mix in compost, toasted/powdered eggshells and worm compost, followed with an organic fertilizer when watering. Not an exact science, I admit but works great for me. I even potted up an acorn from last year off my very old, big, Northern Red Oak Tree and that thing popped up and started growing like mad in this blend - roots just loved the looseness of the medium.I will reuse the medium for a few years in my vegetable planters and just freshen up with some compost, etc. and rotate plants in the planters yearly.I wasn't sure how economical this would be but it does make a very good amount of medium when reconstituted. I especially like that Fungus Gnats don't like it as I always have some of them even though I don't water much in winter and always try to make sure the tops of my house planters are dry. I mainly use my fish tank water for the houseplants ( no chemicals just fresh water for the big Goldfish tank - I just do 2 complete water changes a week utilizing the old water for plants ). I know it's not the way you are supposed to care for a fish tank but my fish are fine doing this. I just keep the water temperature the same and wipe out the tank with paper towels every water change and they thrive - however I do not have gravel to hold waste either, just 2 chunks of petrified wood for interest which I just scrub off a bit when I clean to renew them. I don't bother with all that water testing, adding chemicals, air pumps, filters, etc. anymore. This regimine seems to work just fine for them and my plants benefit from organically fertilized water. Perfect water for seedlings in a soiless Coir/Perlite potting mix - fish tank water gives just enough food along with a little worm compost until they are ready to be planted.Update: 6-21-2018I've been using for a little while now. I really think that reconstituting / sterilizing it with boiling water, and adding in some Horticultural Charcoal which would help with filtering & fungus, etc. would benefit indoor plantings. I also notice alot more gravel, etc. than before. Like the muddy bottom of the coconut fibre pit. I don't know if it was the last brick I used or what but I find it grows mold too readily in the root system and I am careful when watering. My recent seedlings started off fine in this, then started peetering out, so I quickly removed and potted them in a bagged mix which also contained coir but bagged potting mixes are sterilized. Other seedlings definitely did better in the peat pellets. So, unless they start sterilizing this product for indoor potted plantings, I'd say safer to use it in outdoor situations and not for house plants. If you want coir for house plants, buy the light commercial bagged mixes that contain coir, maybe throw in some Perlite and Charcoal for good measure.

I'm kinda stuck, in a good way, out of easy reach of store shopping. Most purchases are on line, good old reliable Amazon. Needed potting soil, a lot of it. So I checked out "recipes" to make my own. The decision to use coco coir vs peat moss was a SWAG, but I love the difference. It's rich feeling, smells good, easy to work with and moderately inexpensive. I added a few amendments, they mixed in without any clumping, and made a nice soil. We've been having quite a bit of drying wind lately but the plants are doing well. One major benefits is the coco coir is very, very compact when you receive it. When water is added it blossoms into a huge amount of product, hard to say, maybe five or more times in volume. This alone makes the coir a good investment. Only time will tell how plantings will develop. I'm pleased with this product and recommend it.

I've purchased four of these blocks over the 2017 gardening season and am ordering a final one for the season today. I used one block as a layer in a new raised bed over compost and under top soil. I've gotten good production from it, but not as great as when I'm using straw bales. I will continue with the raised bed and soil next year as I'm very concerned about the persistent herbicides found more and more often in commercial hay. I use this for seed starting and have not had damping off or other problems. However, I'm an experienced gardener and start all my seeds for transplants under three shelves of grow lights. I use it for potted plants, too. Sometimes I mix it with soil and perlite and other times it's just straight coir and more fertilization than I would with soil. I never flush it to remove salt or foreign objects. In fact, I've never seen foreign objects. You do need a very large container if rehydrating the entire cube. I mix it up in a galvanized watering trough (Behrens 3-OV 16-Gallon Oval Steel Tub) and it does the trick nicely. I rehydrate the whole cube at one time and then portion it out into buckets from cat litter so I have it available in the winter for vermicomposting.

I've never used any other brand of coco coir, so I don't have much to compare this to. I'm mostly happy with it. I was able to dissolve it in a wheel barrow to create about 30 gallons of plating media, which I mixed with pearlite. The dissolving too several hours, not the few minutes I was expecting; but this worked in the end. I've now got several vegeratble growing in it, most doingquite well (with, of course, the recommended added nutrients - this is NOT soil!)My only frustration was when I needed a little more soil, I decided to use about 1/3 of my second block of Coco Coir. Trying to cut 1/3 off the block off was a serious challenge. This brick is about as hard as wood, and well over 4 inches thick. no way can you slice it with a knife, and it's too thick to cut with a normal jig saw or skill saw. I finally made a cut through it with a reciprocating saw, which took a while and was quite challenging (the block kept wanting the snag on the saw teeth, and it's to odd a shape to easily hold down.If I had to do it over again i'd try a table saw with a 10" blade, or just dissolve the whole block as throw away the excess.