@McMuffin, I’ve been using coco since mid-January 2016. I changed over after I figured out I had flyin’ fuckers messing with my grows. The reason I did the changeover was because my pest problem got worse after I bought a new bag of potting soil. It turns out that the soil was infested with eggs. I purchased some Pro-Mix next and there was virtually no difference with my infestation. I decided to stop using soil because to buy the really good soils (to avoid problems like insect eggs, etc.) would cost me 4X what the soils I was using did.
I logged on here and read about different substrate choices. Here is where I learned about coco. Since I was already using Botanicare Hydroguard (root onnoculant) and Botanicare CNS17 Grow formula (veg formula) nutes, I thought I’d try their coco product (CocoGro). It gets extra rinses to remove the salt which is why I still use it.
After a one week learning curve, I found it was actually easy to use. It works similar to dirt, but you need to provide ALL the nutrients as coco doesn’t have any. When I first got it, I watered until I had around 20% runoff. My babies started growing quickly and larger than they did in dirt. Shortly after, I also started using Botanicare CNS17 Bloom formula, CNS17 Ripe formula and Cal-Mag Plus.
When I figured out my flyin’ fuckers were thrips and started treating my plants for that, my plants were growing bigger and healthier than they ever before, yielding about an extra 40 grams per plant of smoking material per plant.
I buy a 5 kilo block of compressed CocoGro and it expands to about twice as much as a 2 cubic foot bag of soil, making it approximately the same price as the soil. After it expands, I let it dry out to avoid mold, because it takes me about 3 months to use it up.
I won’t ever go back to soil. The nutrients found in soil varies radically from maker to maker. It can have bugs in it already when you buy it. It comes with bits of bark and wood and other plant bits such as leaf material, which can and do rot in the soil creating another source for fungus in the soil, making it very attractive again to gnats and thrips. Lastly, getting rid of the used up soil is a challenge. I was using it to fill in holes in my yard, but the pearlite would eventually rise to the top with enough rainfalls and blow away, leaving the holes needing to be filled again and bits of pearlite and vermiculite all over my yard. I tried to separate the pearlite, but that was impossible. Without the pearlite, discarding used up soil would be a piece of cake. Vermiculite blends in nicely with the dirt, but pearlite always looks exactly like pearlite.
I can’t think of anything that has made me regret going to coco. It is as convenient to use as soil with none of the drawbacks.
If none of this is convincing, check out my grows here:
Happy growing, which ever way you end up going.