Canna Coco Professional Plus

Arguably the finest coir product currently available on the market. Growing in coco coir has steadily become one of the most popular methods of growing throughout the UK. Whilst feeling (and looking) very much like traditional peat based potting mixes, coco has significant differences that offer the gardener a wealth of advantages.

Whether you are hand watering, using drip irrigation or even flood and drain systems, Canna Coco Professional Plus makes the ideal choice for your substrate. In terms of consistency, quality and performance, it really doesn’t get much better. With production and manufacturing processes that far out-strip any of their rivals, Canna have successfully held the coir crown since it all began.

Aside from some very low level ‘background’ nutrients, for all intents and purposes coco is an inert substrate. This means you get all the control over the nutrient inputs as you would in a more typical hydroponic media like rockwool, but retain the benefits associated with it being an entirely natural product. Many growers opt to use coco as a ‘stepping stone’ when moving from soil based growing to hydroponics.

ABOUT CANNA COCO PROFESSIONAL PLUS

Coir is the outer husk of a coconut shell refined and processed for agricultural use. It is this production process which is crucial to making coco a useable product for growing plants with and not many brands do it as well as Canna do! Their coco is washed and buffered twice giving an incredibly low EC value of on average 0.1 which means the product can receive the RHP Stamp. They also use a different sterilisation process throughout which ensures a high amount of the naturally occurring beneficial bacteria Trichoderma remains present in the medium which is perfect for fast growing, healthy roots.

USING COCO

Growing with coco coir provides the ideal anchor for which your plants can grow on. Having a much higher air content and higher water holding capacity than peat mixes, coir offers a much greater buffer on which your plants can thrive. As Canna Coco Professional Plus contains no nutrients you will need to use fertiliser with every watering right from the beginning. It very important to choose a ‘coco-specific’ nutrient that works in harmony with your medium. Due to it’s make-up and the way coco works choosing the wrong type of nutrient can potentially cause lockout issues especially calcium and potassium related.

Canna Coco Professional Plus is perfect for use in pots as a standalone media whether you are hand-watering or using drip-irrigation (e.g. a Wilma System). It is best suited in a run-to-waste environment, getting rid of any excess/waste nutrient or water after each irrigation. However, with regular tank changes to mitigate against any build up in unwanted elements, coir can still be used very successfully in a re-circulating system.

TIPS ON USING

Never compact the coir too much when you are potting up your plants. Try to shake and tap the pots to make sure the coir settles out and levels properly. Compacting the media will reduce the overall availability of oxygen and result in less than optimal growth.

When potting up, apply a healthy dose of mycorrhizal fungi for improved root development. We highly recommend Ecothrive Biosys. Inoculating with Trichoderma fungi is not necessary as it is already naturally present within the coco fibres themselves.

Weigh your pots between irrigations to ensure that you are watering adequately. Overwatering your plants can be more damaging than underwatering. As a rule of thumb we recommend around 10-15% run off each time and to re-water your plants once the pots have dropped around half the weight of when they was previously watered.

To measure the EC of your Coco, it is ideal to perform a 1:1.5 extraction rather than just checking the run-off. While the run-off is a good indicator, sometimes you can get misleading results.