hello friends in today's episode we will look at how to create a very nice well
draining potting mix using coco chips or cocoa coir chips
now the cocoa coir chips that we are going to be using is by VermisTerra
they have this coco coir based potting mix which is a very well draining
potting mix with a lot of coco chips now in one of our previous episodes we
had gone over a different kind of coco coir mix which was more fine
it was finer particles and it was very similar to this brick but did not have
the thick coco chips inside it so although it was well draining it wasn't
as well draining as this potting mix now if you look at these coco coir chips
they are pretty dry and they have a lot of coco fiber as well as the coco
chips inside them and I tried to separate these out by hand and I
realized that it was dry and not very easy to separate out the individual
chips or break down this potting mix into something usable so we will use the
same technique as we did earlier with our previous coco coir mix what we'll be
doing is just adding some water I'm using some aluminum trays here adding
some water and in about an hour or so the coco coir chips will absorb all the
water and will create this very easy to use coco chips based potting mix
and now let's look at how to create a potting mix using these coco coir chips
and while you would usually think that you would need something like
vermiculite or perlite while creating the potting mix all this potting mix
requires really is just the coco coir chips and some worm castings
now why worm castings you can use compost of course you can it's very good
organic matter addition to your potting mix but worm castings are finer they
just work very well with the way this potting mix is set up so you have an
option to use three parts of the coco coir with one part of worm castings and
this makes for a very good mix so all we'll be doing is taking the
coco coir potting mix that we just created by adding some water to the
coco coir brick and then we will be just eyeballing it we will be adding
some worm castings to this and these worm castings are also by VermisTerra
they make excellent quality worm castings and since they make it in bulk
their prices are actually quite cheap so if you want to buy these products do
check out the links in the video description and the comments below and I
usually do not recommend products unless I really like them and this is one of
the products that I really liked and you will soon see the progress on how these
plants grew with this potting mix and then you can make a decision yourself
whether you want to buy this potting mix or not now we are planting this cardamom
plant in this potting mix and the plant was quite rootbound as you can see
cardamom plants are not very easy to grow they require very specific tropical
conditions to grow and the coco coir chip based potting mix will allow us to
have a lot of water retention in these plants and hopefully this cardamom plant
should do well with this potting mix
now one thing I do want to point out is when you what are the plants since you
added a lot of worm castings they are finer worm castings as soon as you water
the plant you will see that the worm castings will start leaking out from the
bottom of the container now you do want good drainage in your container you do
want the water to drip down from the bottom but it is a good idea to retain
these nutrients by just capturing it or catching it with a catch or a saucer and
it's very easy to get these pot saucers they are very cheap and they do a great
job at catching all the nutrients that are flowing down from the bottom of the
pot now in our next test we are going to transplant a Jasmine plant that was
growing in this container and it had become severely rootbound now before I
transplant this Jasmine plant I am going to prune these stems and the reason for
pruning the stems is to just make it a little easier for me to transplant the
plant now remember that if you haven't reported or transplanted your plants in
quite some time it may be a good idea to check your plants plants get severely
rootbound in about a year or maybe two years it just depends on the plant and
by pruning this plant I'm just making it easier to get this plant out of the
container and as soon as I bring this plant out of the container you will see
that the plant is root bound the soil at the base is quite compacted and we will
be using this coco chip based potting mix to transplant this plant into this
container now remember that this potting mix is
quite loose and quite well draining and here you can see we are mixing the worm
castings now there are two types of worm castings there is a premium one which is
a finer particle version and there's also a standard VermisTerra
worm casting so there is a standard and premium I prefer to use the premium one
for the containers and I use the standard ones on my raised beds now why
is that the standard ones are a little more granular and the premium one is
finer which is great for containers so when you are growing in containers or
you're growing indoor plants the premium version of the worm castings are a lot
better and which is what we are using here so we are just mixing the coco coir
chips or the coco coir potting mix along with the worm castings to make our
planting mix here now note that I haven't really washed this coco coir mix
nor have I done any kind of cleansing or any kind of amendment to this and the
reason is that this coco coir mix is free from any salts or additives and
it's also very well draining so even if it had contained something it would just
drain out of the container and and just be flushed out and in our final
demonstration we will be showing you how to use this coco coir mix in a whisky
barrel container now as you can see the whiskey barrel container can hold a lot
of potting mix and with just one break I was able to fill most of this whiskey
barrel container which is a good thing so that also tells you that after the
coco coir break expands it's not really that expensive because it does create a
lot of potting mix as you can see here and once again we are laying out this
potting mix and then adding some worm castings we're just going to be
eyeballing the amount of worm castings we add so it's gonna be three parts of
the potting mix with one part worm castings and this creates a good mix as
you can see we are mixing it up very thoroughly to make sure that the worm
castings are evenly distributed all around the cocoa core mix and the cocoa
core mix can also store a lot of nutrients which is one of the big
advantages of using a cocoa core based potting mix and I know some of you had
mentioned the disadvantages of using peat moss based potting mix so for those
of you who are looking for a good alternative this is a great quality mix
and remember that we do not need to add any vermiculite or perlite for drainage
because of the nature of this coco coir mix so it's a very premium quality mix
that's actually cheaper if you factor in the cost of the vermiculite or the
perlite that you're gonna be adding since you're using only coco coir here
the worm castings are optional I mean it's a good organic amendment to your
potting mix but you could always add some kind of a salt based fertilizer or
any other kind of fertilizer that you would like to use I prefer to use worm
castings because they are organic and they help the plant build a lot of
disease resistance they help the plant absorb a lot of nutrients that are
available in the soil so they have a lot of advantages
and what we are doing here is transplanting this alter ego pepper
something that we tried out for the first time this year and I was
pleasantly surprised it was not too hot this pepper was not too hot nor was it
too sweet it was right in the middle very nice quality very nice tasting
pepper so for those of you who do not like very hot peppers this is a good
pepper variety to grow
and remember that when you expand the cocoa coir brick can you eventually
convert it to a potting mix you can store a lot of this in a separate bag for
future use so once you take the break you expand it you get a lot of potting
mix I think the amount of potting mix you get is enough to almost fill up a
whiskey barrel container so not sure about the size but it looked to me about
three cubic feet or so so it's not a bad idea to just use some of these bricks
expand the cocoa coir mix and then use them as you need it
once again you can see how well draining this potting mix is because it contains
the coco chips you don't need to add anything else for aeration this will
ensure that the roots get plenty of air while they're growing and this is what
makes this potting mix a very good quality a very good premium potting mix
and overall cost wise as well it wasn't very expensive now I will show you one
more way to expand the coco coir brick which is by using your garden cart now
for those of you who haven't seen the gorilla garden cart that we bought many
years ago you can check out the video review of the garden cart and it's one
of the most useful tools in your garden and here you will see one more benefit
of using a garden cart which is just to put this coco coir brick and water let
it soak in all the water and then the garden cart is so large that it gives
you ample room to break up your coco coir brick very easily and as you can
see here there are a lot of layers so you might have to do this a few times it
does absorb a lot of water from the sides but since the brick is so thick
you might need to keep it submerged in water for some more time and as you can
see here it does absorb a lot of water and then expands to its full size and
then you can just use a trowel to break down the potting mix and once it's
broken down into smaller particles it's very easy to store it
now while you can store the bricks compressed in the compressed format I
highly recommend that you just do it one time just take your whole brick and then
add in a lot of water let it expand and then store it in some bags that you
might already have like potting mix bags and it's approximately about three cubic
feet of potting mix that this one brick will give you and this is how our plant
looks like after the transplant after a few weeks and as you can see it looks
pretty good it looks healthy and I never had any issues with over watering or
under watering with this plant so there we have it folks that was our episode on
the coco chips based potting mix I think it's a great idea it's a great
solution it's not very expensive when you consider the fact that you don't
have to add anything else other than an organic amendment like compost or worm
castings if you like this video do give us a thumbs up if you have any comments
please put them in the comments box below you will see links to all these
products in the pinned comment as well as in the video description so see you
again soon happy gardening