FibreDust Coco Coir Block (1 PK)

My first time using this and it is great for plants. I leave it in the package, cut the top and push a big butcher knife into it a few times to sort of slice it into 4 slabs. I pull one out, drop it in a big TubTrug bucket and add water. I found you can reconstitute it instantly with HOT water. No waiting or letting it sit overnight, etc. I usually use half Perlite and half Coir for a mix and throw in some Worm compost for great seed starter and houseplant mix. I buy Perlite in bulk. I like that Coir doesn't get hard so the roots penetrate very well and the plants love it. Great mix for my coco fibre lined wire hangers I use for my Epiphyllums, Chenille and Immortality plants and even all my Cactus and Aloe varieties. I use a weak fertilizer solution everytime I water the houseplants. For the veggies and other edibles I just mix in compost, toasted/powdered eggshells and worm compost, followed with an organic fertilizer when watering. Not an exact science, I admit but works great for me. I even potted up an acorn from last year off my very old, big, Northern Red Oak Tree and that thing popped up and started growing like mad in this blend - roots just loved the looseness of the medium. I will reuse the medium for a few years in my vegetable planters and just freshen up with some compost, etc. and rotate plants in the planters yearly. I wasn't sure how economical this would be but it does make a very good amount of medium when reconstituted. I especially like that Fungus Gnats don't like it as I always have some of them even though I don't water much in winter and always try to make sure the tops of my house planters are dry. I mainly use my fish tank water for the houseplants ( no chemicals just fresh water for the big Goldfish tank - I just do 2 complete water changes a week utilizing the old water for plants ). I know it's not the way you are supposed to care for a fish tank but my fish are fine doing this. I just keep the water temperature the same and wipe out the tank with paper towels every water change and they thrive - however I do not have gravel to hold waste either, just 2 chunks of petrified wood for interest which I just scrub off a bit when I clean to renew them. I don't bother with all that water testing, adding chemicals, air pumps, filters, etc. anymore. This regimine seems to work just fine for them and my plants benefit from organically fertilized water. Perfect water for seedlings in a soiless Coir/Perlite potting mix - fish tank water gives just enough food along with a little worm compost until they are ready to be planted. Update: 6-21-2018 I've been using for a little while now. I really think that reconstituting / sterilizing it with boiling water, and adding in some Horticultural Charcoal which would help with filtering & fungus, etc. would benefit indoor plantings. I also notice alot more gravel, etc. than before. Like the muddy bottom of the coconut fibre pit. I don't know if it was the last brick I used or what but I find it grows mold too readily in the root system and I am careful when watering. My recent seedlings started off fine in this, then started peetering out, so I quickly removed and potted them in a bagged mix which also contained coir but bagged potting mixes are sterilized. Other seedlings definitely did better in the peat pellets. So, unless they start sterilizing this product for indoor potted plantings, I'd say safer to use it in outdoor situations and not for house plants. If you want coir for house plants, buy the light commercial bagged mixes that contain coir, maybe throw in some Perlite and Charcoal for good measure.

My plants seem to love the super soil mix I created using this coconut coir material. This media is expensive but I much prefer it to traditional potting soil. Now that I've tried it, I will be using this in lieu of potting soil from now on. It's lightweight and lends an airy quality to your grow media which should encourage better root growth. Once reconstituted, it looks like fine coffee grounds and has a nice texture to it. It is a "clean" material which allows you to amend the media as you see fit and you know exactly what's in it. Tips for first-time coir brick users who are casual home gardeners like myself : I found the best method for reconstituing the coir with water is to slice open the shrink wrap along the side of brick on only one side of brick. Then, using a large flathead screwdriver and a hammer, tap down center of the side of the brick, separating brick in two thinner bricks. This makes coir breakdown easier . Keeping in the shrink wrap in place keeps mess to a minimum. Once split, you can remove plastic wrap and fit each half in its own trash bag and fill with a generous amount of water and let sit overnight (I start with half full, you can always add more later if not enough to adequately reconstitute the coir media). This is handy if you don't need the whole brick or don't have a large bin/bucket to reconstitute the large brick in. I found that this technique makes it much easier, requiring much less effort to breakdown the super hard coir brick. My first few bricks I tried to wet the whole brick all at once and also did not soak long enough and I had to work very hard to break it down. Hopefully, this helps other first timers new to working with coir bricks avoid unnecessary frustration. Another tip - Like when working with mulch or landscaping rocks, figure out how much you think you'll need and add at least one extra brick because you always need more material than you think you will.

I've purchased four of these blocks over the 2017 gardening season and am ordering a final one for the season today. I used one block as a layer in a new raised bed over compost and under top soil. I've gotten good production from it, but not as great as when I'm using straw bales. I will continue with the raised bed and soil next year as I'm very concerned about the persistent herbicides found more and more often in commercial hay. I use this for seed starting and have not had damping off or other problems. However, I'm an experienced gardener and start all my seeds for transplants under three shelves of grow lights. I use it for potted plants, too. Sometimes I mix it with soil and perlite and other times it's just straight coir and more fertilization than I would with soil. I never flush it to remove salt or foreign objects. In fact, I've never seen foreign objects. You do need a very large container if rehydrating the entire cube. I mix it up in a galvanized watering trough (Behrens 3-OV 16-Gallon Oval Steel Tub) and it does the trick nicely. I rehydrate the whole cube at one time and then portion it out into buckets from cat litter so I have it available in the winter for vermicomposting.

I rehydrated a brick of this today and it readily absorbed water and fluffed up easily. (I also tried a block of "Beats Peat" today and that stuff was a nightmare to rehydrate). It had a good texture and a nice reddish color. I don't think it came out to 2.2 to 2.5 cubic feet, but it was superior to the other brand I tried today. The picture below shows the coco coir on the right (reddish) and 1 cubic foot of topsoil on the left (gray) so it looks like the brick hydrated to maybe 1.5 cubic feet. This was a little disappointing, but at least it seems to be good stuff.

I'm kinda stuck, in a good way, out of easy reach of store shopping. Most purchases are on line, good old reliable Amazon. Needed potting soil, a lot of it. So I checked out "recipes" to make my own. The decision to use coco coir vs peat moss was a SWAG, but I love the difference. It's rich feeling, smells good, easy to work with and moderately inexpensive. I added a few amendments, they mixed in without any clumping, and made a nice soil. We've been having quite a bit of drying wind lately but the plants are doing well. One major benefits is the coco coir is very, very compact when you receive it. When water is added it blossoms into a huge amount of product, hard to say, maybe five or more times in volume. This alone makes the coir a good investment. Only time will tell how plantings will develop. I'm pleased with this product and recommend it.

This is an amazing product. Made from coconut husks, it is a renewable resource, whereas peat moss is not. It is great for helping to build garden soil. (Use it to amend soil - not to replace it.) I reconstituted these blocks by first using a hammer and screwdriver to split each block in half (approximately). I used one 30-gallon black trash bag for each half. In the garden area, I added water to each bag, and let the product absorb it. This stuff expands greatly! and it does take some time. Do this near where you plan to use it, as the bag gets very heavy. Using the bags is nice, as cleanup is minimal. Next season, I plan to use the same product and prepare it in the same way. Highly recommended.

I get this to make my own seed starting mixture, and to lighten up potting soil at transplanting time. I make my seed starting mix out of about 1/3 coco coir (the rest being various ratios of perlite, worm castings, and composted potting soil without other additions). I usually don't mix the whole bag at once because this ends up making quite a bit. I used to try cutting/breaking some off, but that is surprisingly challenging. So, now, I get a tub large enough to stick one of the half-blocks in, put warm water in that, and dunk/scrape the coco coir until I have enough. It ends up slightly damp on the end, but it's not a big deal. The quality is high - there are no noticeable impurities or large chunks of coco shell. Over-all, would recommend.

I’m surprised by just how dense this product actually is. Breaking off about 20% of the brick and mixing it with about 2 gallons of water, I ended up with two 5 gallon tubs, each filled approximately 70% full, of reconstituted coco coir. This product is both easy to use and cost effective. The bricks are very small in comparison to the amount of “soil” they produce, and weigh just 10 lbs each, making them easy to store. Also, at any given time, I can reconstitute only what I need for a given garden project in just minutes. I will be ordering more.