Coconut Fiber (Coir) - Benefits and Uses
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- čas přidán 25. 08. 2021
- Coconut Fiber (Or Coir)....What is it and how do we use it? Coconut coir is the byproduct of the husk from coconut shells. Its ground, pulverized, and manufactured into bricks that the modern gardener can rehydrate into a soil-like substance. Its had great structure, moisture retention, drainage, aeration, and is of neutral pH.
In this video, I'll show you how to use it in your garden and how to amend your soil mixes. Stay tuned until the end where I demonstrate how to use it, combine with compost, for the ultimate seeding, potting, topsoil, and container mix that money can't buy!
2021 is the Year of the Garden! We deserve it after the last little while, and growing our own food and self sufficiency is just the reward we need to get back on track!
For more information on all your gardening questions, check out my other videos!:
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100% Germination?: • Seed Germination - 5 R...
Seed Starting Soil: • How To Make Your Own S...
Seed Starting 101, The Basics!: • How To Start Vegetable...
Starting Tomato Seeds: • How To Grow Tomatoes P...
Starting Pepper Seeds: • Growing Peppers Part 1...
Starting Cucumber Seeds: • Video
Starting Zucchini Seeds: • Growing Zucchini Part ...
Starting Corn Seeds: • Growing Corn - Part 1 ...
Starting Pumpkin Seeds: • How To Grow Pumpkins -...
DIY Ultimate Potting Mix: • Make Your Own Potting ...
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#coconut #gardening #homestead #permaculture
If you're just starting out gardening in 2021, this inexpensive set of tools from Amazon can get you and your Veggies up and running this spring! I know there is a fevered and renewed interest in gardening and many of you are seasoned vets. But remember that there's a whole population out there that hasn't gardened before. Let's help them out and encourage as much as possible!
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A lot of stuff doesn't get delivered here, I always have to click on multiple items and cross my fingers it gets here, I'm going to build a 100% off grid garden, all solar, rain harvesting and off grid pumping system is up and running, im going to build off the ground metal raised beds that will be irrigated by irrigation tubbing. I want to start growing all my vegetables.
Just saying hello from zone 6 Columbus Ohio and thanks for the teaching Sir
Hey John! Hope the week is going well!
This was really, really good...thanks again!
Thanks so much Adrianne! Enjoy the day!
I love Coco coir for seed starting. Great success with rooting cuttings too.
Rooting cuttings!! YESSS Gilda, I KNEW I missed something, ha ha!
Agree with you of benefit of coconut coir , happy gardening
Thanks for another knowledge, watching to add more gardening knowledge! Happy planting!
Hey, appreciate that, enjoy your Thursday!
These videos are super helpful. I am just beginning gardening while i still live at my parents house. But once i move out soon i am gona build a huge garden like you have. Thanks for being an inspiration 😊
Right on man, make it happen! Start small indoors now, in a nice sunny windows....grow some Basil or even lettuce/spinach....get your feet wet. Then you'll be on your way! :-)
Awesome advice!! Thankyou!
Cheers Melanie, thanks for watching!
Your videos are so thorough and complete I learn something from each one.
Hey thanks, glad you like! :-)
I'm going to have to check this out. Thank you for the tips.
Cheers PJ! Check back if you have any other questions!
What a great video Jeff. I think i'll be using some of this information in our up coming spring & summer seasons here in Aus. Cheers & keep safe.
Right on Keith, as always, thanks for stopping by man. :-)
That’s a lot of good information. Thank you.
Hey, thanks for that, and thanks for watching!
You answered all my questions about Coco coir. I always ran a high pH. Keep up all the great videos!
Thanks for watching, happy growing! :-)
Very helpful info!
Love tuning into your videos and seeing that Rider Pride
Ha ha always and forever! :-)
Coconut coir is very importance for using in the garden , thanks for sharing to us and how to use it , happy gardening
Agreed! Thanks for watching! :-)
Thank you from North central Texas!!
Hey Naomi, thanks so much for stopping by! :-)
Last year i started growing my Carrots in the Coconut Coir, well not all the Carrots it was 20 Sweet Candle which only had some Liquid Seaweed Feed when they were a certain height out of the ground.
The other 20 went into my Raised Bed which is 22" high and filled with old Compost from the year before, Blood, Fish and Bone and some Chicken Pellets, oh and some Perlite all mixed together in specific portions.
The Carrots from the Coir were the straightest and biggest i have grown, and the others were good some short and long, and some with funny shapes as well.
A New Subscriber now i have seen a good few of your videos and i have enjoyed them all so far.
Stay Safe,
Barry (ENG)
Wish I had a garden center nearby that had all those items. Thx for the excellent guidance on a super potting soil mix.
Yeah, shipping these things really dives up the price too unfortunately...
@@TheRipeTomatoFarms Having free shipping with Amazon helps except for the price of the product. Having a hard time finding canola meal and coarse sand. The Amazon filtering system returns canola oil. LOL
Thanks. I make my own potting mix using coco coir.
Right on, its the best!
Hello, thank you for this interesting video.👍 I use a lot of coconut coir in my garden, and I am very satisfied with it. For my potted crops, I usually use a mixture of 70% coconut coir and 30% perlite + organic fertilizer.
Cheers, thanks for watching!
Use an old cement mixer if you have one around the house to mix your soil. I've got one from when my father and I built a stone wall and poured a porch floor.
Brilliant!
GREAT! 😯😲
Thanks Bivas!
Just the video I needed. I believe my homemade soil this past spring was too acidic. Needless to say I can’t wait for the fall plants to grow with good soil. I did buy organic lime just incase. Thank you so much Jeff, just like it was meant for ones like me. 😆 Just trying to eat better and have better quality food.
Missed the live video has to take hubby to dr a little set back from surgery. All seems good now.
🙏🏻💙🙏🏻
Right on Brandy, I look forward to hearing how it goes for you!! Hope all goes well at the doctor's....good and positive thoughts your way, as always! :-)
@@TheRipeTomatoFarms Thank you so much!!! I promise I will keep ya updated. Learning from my mistakes just makes it easier the next time around. Thank so very much for this great video. Actually playing in dirt is good for your health. 😊
Don't go on belief, go on knowledge. PH tests are available and easy to use. Most garden plants like a PH of about 5.8. Adding lime to an already alkaline soil will reduce the plants ability to absorb nutrients from the soil.
@@emmitstewart1921 going to use the lime for the soil I mixed with peat moss, it’s seems to be a little too acidic. My spring plants don’t grow normally. On a good note the blueberry bushes and strawberries loved it. Lol
@@brandywvstrong9673 If you use peat instead of coir, that's not a bad idea, since peat is acidic. I never bothered because my tap water is hard. (325 ppm) I was using a basic (alkaline) solution every time I watered my plants. Now that I have moved to using reverse osmosis water, I would add a spoonful of lime to any peat based mix, but I have stopped using peat except for carnivorous plants.
Love this. I bought coconut fiber but I didn't know what ti di with it 😂
Awesome! Happy to help! :-)
Hello Joe from Springfield Missouri. Just got done watching this video. I know if you use speed mods if I’m right CMOS calls in the moisture for a longer period of time but make your own piling soil as I’ve been using miracle grow this past year would you say miracle grow, and some coconut fiber, and Eat my snacks make a better let’s say soil mixture with some amendments like rock sulfate alfalfa meal and Epson salts
Hello. Joe from Springfield Mo. just one quick question? What’s the name of the coconut fiber you buy off of Amazon. Seems like I can’t find anyone that sells it directly here.
Thanks for this video. We just made some coir from coconuts out the garden. This is new information so I'm giving it a try thank you so much. At 6.07 in the video what is the third ingredient sand? As I have my own compost, the cocunut coir not quite sure what the other one is?
Cheers Eve. Yes, the third ingredient is just coarse play sand. For slightly better drainage and to help break apart the soil slightly (aeration).
@@TheRipeTomatoFarms thank you
I cant find canola meal on amazon but could I use cottonseed meal?
Hmm I will try this since it might be cheaper than normal potting mix but I wonder what they put in potting mixes that give them their signature spongy feel because it doesn’t feel like coconut coir or peat moss alone 🤔
It is Daniel....its peat moss.....the potting mixes are 70% peat moss.
@@TheRipeTomatoFarms really? Hmm maybe the next time I go to the store I will check if the bags have compositions written on them
👏👍🏻
Thanks for the confirmation that there's no need to wash the soil away. Would adding just worm castings replace all the soil amendments you used?
Worm castings are awesome.... I don't think they replace every amendment though. I love them for microbial activity, but they don't necessarily replace outright nutrients
@@TheRipeTomatoFarms Thanks for sharing. I checked and found that each of the nutrients aren't that expensive in an of themselves.
I have tried coconut fibers in my garden for 1 year now. The only thing is that my suppliers don't carry thing but a one or 2 cakes per package so I bought 30 cakes from a company in California for $200.00 the shipping cost was over $300.00. Don't know if this is too high of a cost or not? Do you have any suggestions for cheaper suppliers?
Hey Stanley, really depends on how much you need. The bricks are sold at almost every Home Depot (they can also order it in), plus they are sold online for cheap. I would search around for better deals.
Where do you buy the soil amendments from in this video? Thanks!
Hey Litia, I mostly buy the ingredients from the local feed barn or places like Home Depot....if I can't find any, then I'll look online.
@@TheRipeTomatoFarms awesome thanks!
4:04 wow! it's rising like a bread
LOL, it totally is!!
So coconut peat expand many times when wet cold or hot water. Thank you my friend.
Ohhhh yeah...its expands big time, hot or cold! Hot water just speeds it up, it doesn't make it expand more.
@@TheRipeTomatoFarms thank you so much for a quick response my friend.
You said coco coir is good as a potting mix, but do you also recommend it for seed starting?
Yes definitely... At around the 5 minute mark I explain how I make a seed stating mix with it
I stopped using peat about fifteen years ago. I am an indoor gardener specializing in cacti and succulents. It has been a long established fact that cacti (For brevity, I will use the term cacti to refer to all kinds of succulents.) do not grow well in soils containing peat. The reason is that, though peat can hold lots of water when moist, when peat dries out it actually repels water and is very hard to remoisten unless the water is boiling hot. In growing cacti, it is necessary to water, then let the soil dry out completely before watering again. When watering, it is necessary to completely saturate the soil mass. If any part of the mass does not get moist, the roots cannot grow into that area. (This is true of any kind of potted plant) Because dry peat repels water, water runs across the surface and down the outside of the soil, and the center remains bone dry. Using coir, the soil immediately absorbs water no matter how dry it is.
my cactus soil mixture is:
one brick of coir
two scoops of coarse, never fine, vermiculite (my scoop is one sold in pet stores to measure out dog food. It holds roughly a quart.)
One scoop of earthworm castings ( use this because, in my apartment, I do not have access to topsoil or compost.)
one tablespoon garden gypsum. (adds calcium and sulfur without changing soil PH.
0ne tablespoon of greensand (adds potassium and trace elements.)
This makes my basic potting soil which I use for begonias, African violets, gesneriads and other common house plants. I add any necessary fertilizer at the time I pot the plant. For cacti/succulents, I add drainage materials. These include:
two scoops coarse sand ( I run ordinary sand through a 1/32 inch screen. Anything smaller than this does not contribute to the drainage of the soil. I set it aside for other uses.)
one scoop of 1/4 inch pumice
one scoop of 1/4 inch lava rock
This is a very fast draining cactus soil. Some species require more moisture retentive soil. For them I add more of my basic potting mix. Some species require better drainage and less moisture retention. For them I add more pumice or lava rock.
PS. For cacti and succulents most growers use tomato fertilizer at a half strength solution. Tomato foods have extra phosphorus and potassium as well as calcium, which is good for cacti. fertilize your cacti biweekly from early spring until early August, then stop fertilizing until next spring.
Fine sand absolutely helps with soil drainage and can single handedly turn non-draining soil into well draining soil.
What size block of Coconut Fiber (Coir) were you using? In pounds.
It comes in a 4KG stack that has 4 bricks in it. So 1 brick is 1KG (2.2lbs).
@@TheRipeTomatoFarms Thank you!
In Ohio we probably don't have it econical.
Oh yeah, you can get it anywhere... Any Home Depot will bring it in for you. Amazon carries it as well.
People in the caribbean have been using coconut husks in their gardens for decades.
Yup, and likely making Biochar from it as well!
You should be using aged coco coir though. Everything grows bigger and nicer that way
I'll give it a try! :-)
Being disabled [[Willing to work but unhireable die to Insurance]] means my income is sub-par so I look for Free Alternatives first. I have a lot of Pine needles on the property. Giving those some though for the same usage as Coir.
Should be good for a mulch... Not sure about a soil mixture though.
@@TheRipeTomatoFarms lol I'm watching 'Garden Quickies Volume 2 Ep 11-20 as this popped up.
@@mindofmadness5593 ha ha perfect!
The price of Coconut Coir needs to come down in price compared to Peet moss. That's my only problem with it, the price.
In my area, its actually cheaper. Which is odd..because I'm in Canada, the BIRTHPLACE of peat, LOL
@@TheRipeTomatoFarms Wow. I can get 3 cubic feet of peet moss around here for a little over $11, but for a 10 lb brick of coconut coir on Amazon, (none of the local stores had any except for one 2lb bag which was $10) I paid $35. It's a lot more money for me to use coconut coir, but honestly, I'd rather use it if I could afford to. I'm in upstate NY.
@@mudpiemudpie785 when hydrated, how large does that 10kb brick of coconut fiber become?
@@TheRipeTomatoFarms Certainly not 3 cubic feet. I got just enough to fill a large cooler once I hydrated it. It was very expensive.
The same problem. Coconut coir is so expensive. I am in
Canada, ON.
Are you related to Doug Benson?
Nope!
Where’s the best source for this on Vancouver Island?
Home Hardware, Home Depot, Buckerfields, and Canadian Tire all carry the bricks.
@@TheRipeTomatoFarms I’ve had a hard time finding it in quantity. Thanks!!
@@OurThriftyCottage out of all the stores, Home Hardware seems to carry the most... Brands and quantity
@@TheRipeTomatoFarms awesomeness thank you!
@@OurThriftyCottage :-)
Is there a difference between coconut coir and coconut peat?
Hi. Adele, it's all grades of fineness.... So just pick the particle size you want for your mix
@@TheRipeTomatoFarms thanks
@@adeleally898 :-)
I live in the tropics, can I throw coconut coir into my compost ?
For sure you can! 🙂
@@TheRipeTomatoFarms I have dry coconuts, im building a coconut dehusking manual machine to dehusk coconut...if it's dry and brown inside, can it be considered a carbon?...and yes I understand it's not a nutrient source, ..Can I also compost goat poop if they just eat untreated grass?... no sprays or chemicals are used here because I have animals.
@@MosaicHomestead no problems at all the with either!
@@TheRipeTomatoFarms The reason I ask is because I see videos of people saying you shouldn't compost grass clippings or manure...And some videos say you can...Some videos say chicken manure shouldn't be even used....I'm a beginner when it comes to composting, I just want to make sure I don't screw something up lol
Coir is acidic and high in salt content.
Not the stuff I've ever used.
I'd love to see links to actual peer reviewed data to prove this claim.
Plenty of peat moss in Canada but not Europe but Canada has plenty.
Plenty... But it's renewability and sustainability are very suspect. Bogs are some of the most sensitive ecosystems around. :(
@@TheRipeTomatoFarms I don't disagree with what you are saying, but specifically within Canada, the amount of peat bogs that are untouched far exceeds those that are being harvested. Anywhere else in the world there is no question about the unsustainable nature of peat bogs though.
I also question the carbon footprint of coco coir being processed and shipped around the world. That and its increased cost have made me hesitate on switching from peat sourced right here in Canada. Great thought provoking video. I do like the texture of the coir better than peat.
with respect for your video and what you are showing people, it is not really accurate what you are saying. that coconut husk is ground husk.
i admit frustration because i am in the land of coconuts( and have a few coconut trees myself), what you are calling choir is really the dust left over from harvesting the fiber from the husk, the fibers are sold to make many things any processing that is done is not to grid the fiber but clean it of the dust, it is the dust that is then used in ag. the bulk is fiber sold , here most will go to china
yes i have been to processing plants and bought left over which contains the short unusable fiber and dust, i have to separate, wash for salt ( coconuts raised inland no not have as much salt ) and buffer to replace any left over salt. ( some believe if it is not buffered it will not work as well for some time because it will soak up and hold nutrients, especially calcium and might cause a calcium deficiency )
to buffer i use calcium and Epsom salt ( magnesium). no i am not positive i do it all correct it is hard to find consistent info that all agree upon. i know some that sell the dust simply leave the husk in the rain for a year of so to wash, then buffer
but thanks for showing people how to use a good video for that info
4:44 WRONG IT IS NOT! READY FOR USE. you need to flush it many times to remove salt. they use ocean water several times in the brick making process. it is thick with salt. you need to flush it repeatedly, get a PPM meter when it gets under 100 THEN it's ready for use, it comes with over 1000 ppm's of salt! not good for plants at all! yes you can buy some salt free coir but its way more expensive. ALSO coir is a huge magnesium absorber so you need to add extra of that to compensate to prevent magnesium deficencies
Do you have any peer reviewed sources that support your claim?
Mine come with next to no salt (Beyond Peat and Nature's Best).....0.00 on a PPM meter. Maybe I just got lucky with the brands I use?