Coconut Coir: What it is and How To Use It In The Garden

What's up everyone? Kevin from Epic Gardening here and today we're learning all about coconut coir. So the first thing to talk about really is the structure of coconut coir. What, what part of the coconut is it actually from? So you've got the inside, the absolute core, like the center of the earth. That's your coconut milk. Then you have your coconut flesh, you have your seed husk. And then in between, think of it sort of as the mantle of the coconut. If you, if you're talking about like the earth, you know, uh, the mantle or the section that's the largest is the coir. It's that fleshy area that, you know, honestly in the past, a lot of people didn't know what to do with. They're like, Oh, this is a waste product of the coconut. And only in the last, I don't even know how long, couple decades, coir has really just skyrocketed up in use both in home and in the garden. And we're going to talk about the hydroponic applications as well as the soil applications of coconut coir in just a second. So when we're talking about any soil amendment or additive, it's important to know how it's actually made. We already know what coir is, but how does it actually get processed and turned into the product that you see right here, which is basically a dehydrated compressed coconut coir brick. Now that's not the only formulation of coconut coir that can exist. And we'll get into that once we talk about the processing right now. So when the coir is collected, it needs to be rinsed out. It needs to be cleaned. This is sometimes done in freshwater, but a lot of the times it's done in tidal waters. If it's done in tidal waters, as you might imagine, the ocean being made of salt, it's going to absorb and collect quite a bit of salt, which will then later need to be flushed out. And so when it comes to the quality of your coconut coir product, that's really the main concern is figuring out, has it been properly flushed? How was it cleaned? How was it soaked? And how was it dry? That's the process that really matters. And if you want, at the end, and in the video description, I'll give you some links to my favorite brands. Those are the ones that I've used. I know how it's processed, or to the best of my possible knowledge, I know how it's processed. So that is really pretty much how it's made. And then it's then dried, it's put into bales and it's turned into various types of products. You have this here, which to my mind is the most economical way to buy and use coconut coir because, you know, shipping soil and shipping, you know, non-compressed soil, it can be very, very expensive. That's heavy and it's high volume. But when you dehydrate coconut coir and compress it into these bricks, you can ship it very efficiently and then you can then expand it later where this is going to be very, very, very huge amount of coconut coir. I mean, I don't even know what the compression ratio is on this one, but it's going to be pretty significant. I would say at least, uh, three cubic feet, if not more. So let's go ahead and talk about some of the benefits of coir. Like why would I want to use this instead of some other soil amendments? Or especially if I'm in a hydroponic system like this Aponix here, why would I want to use coir over maybe hydroton, perlite, vermiculite, many of the other mediums that people commonly use in hydroponics. Like I said, it can be a soil medium, it can be a hydroponic medium. In soil, you'll find coir typically will replace peat moss and there's two good reasons for that. Number one, it's typically a bit cheaper. And then number two, peat moss is, although it is technically a sustainable resource in the sense that over many, many hundreds, thousands of years, more peat is created, uh, at the rate that we are depleting it, it is sometimes seen as not as sustainable a source for the water retention qualities that you would want in your soil. So a lot of peat's coming out of the Canada peat bogs. They manage it very well, but some people still feel like why not use something like coir, which mimics the properties of peat moss and you know, just get that little extra boost of sustainability. Honestly, sometimes it's a little cheaper too. In hydroponics, what's nice is you can grow in, in coconut coir and it really looks a lot like soil. So, you know, it's brown, it is granular in some sense and you can have a completely hydroponic medium where the roots are able to root through, take hold, really establish themselves. But it doesn't look, um, it doesn't look too scientific. It doesn't look too crazy because you're not growing in those, you know, big expanded clay pellets. You're not growing in white perlite, you're not growing in pebbles or sand or anything like that. So if you want an easy transition, then sometimes it's nice to use coconut coir. Another good reason why people will use it is because like I said, it ships compressed and it can expand up to 10 times its weight or its size. So it's absolutely crazy and it makes it a really affordable way to get a lot shipped to you. Okay, now that we've talked about some of the benefits, some of the downsides, one more downside I will add is going to be that it's inert. There's no inherent nutrition within this. So if you're going to be using this in soil, then you can't just use coconut coir. You're going to want to use maybe one third potting mix or compost, one third coconut coir and one third something to improve drainage like maybe a mixture of topsoil or some, uh, some builder's sand, something like that. That's going to be a pretty good mix. But again, it's inert. So you do have to add supplemental nutrients. And then in hydroponics, of course you have to do that because that's sort of the nature of hydroponics. Now there are a couple different types of products made from coconuts that we commonly call coir, which actually aren't. So you've got your cocoa peat. That's kind of what this is here. It is made from the coconut coir husk, but then it's ground down. And you can see if you look really closely how sort of granular that is. Then you've got cocoa fiber. That's long fibers that have not yet been chopped and ground up. Oftentimes people use that as a mulch layer. They'll use that as just a topper. It's not very prevalent. I mean, I personally don't use it that much. Then you've got cocoa chips. That's when people are grinding up the coir in processing, but they're not grinding it all the way down to a soil-like texture. They're grinding it down more to like wood chips. And people will use that again as a mulch. So if you do decide to get one of these big bales of coconut coir, I will say it does take quite a while to rehydrate it because the stuff that's in the middle, you have to get to first by rehydrating the outside. So what actually works for me is I throw it in a big bucket, like maybe a big storage tote, and then I'll take a little hand tool, like a hand rake and I'll scrape away and then it'll slowly rehydrate. You could also just let it soak for quite a while. Eventually it'll get all the way through. Um, but the one thing I will say, let's talk about soil first. I already mentioned it, but you can't really just use a ton of coconut coir or else you're going to have some serious problems with drainage. This is a water retentive medium, which means that it's going to hold onto a lot, which is great if you have sandy soil. But if you're making a mix from scratch, I wouldn't go over about a third of your total volume as coconut coir because you're going to have some serious problems with drainage. Now in hydroponics, that could technically also happen too. A lot of people will use a mixture of let's say coconut coir and they'll might, they might add in some perlite. So that's actually a really popular one is you do maybe a 70-30 coir perlite mixture. Those larger, more lightweight and more porous perlite pieces are going to help break up the sort of texture of just straight up coir and it's going to help with a little bit more drainage. You know, provided that you're actually oxygenating your water well and there's enough aeration, your roots should be fine. But I've seen that work really, really well both for me and for others. I've also seen people mix expanded clay pellets, also known as hydroton into their mixtures with coconut coir. So as far as brands, I am going to link those all down in the description below. There's too many to mention and there's different sort of variations that I would like to recommend to you guys. So just check the video description. The only other thing I will say is that there are, if you do grow in hydroponic systems, maybe some specific hydroponic nutrients that you may want to consider when you're growing in specific coconut coir mediums. So I'll put those in the video description too. It's kind of an edge case. It's not really something too crazy to worry about unless you're like really trying to optimize your hydroponic garden. But for the most part, that's it guys. Coconut coir is a fantastic medium. I use, I probably have like, I don't know, five of these in my garden shed right now, which is more coir than I'm going to need for a long, long time. But I'm actually going to use some of this in my worm bins that you're going to see me put together in a little bit. So I just wanted to do a quick video on coconut coir. I know I've been kind of slow on the uploads lately, so I wanted to get that out to you, give you some knowledge and wish you guys a happy holidays if you're watching this at the time of video release. All right, good luck in the garden. Keep on growing and I'll see you in the next one.