How to use cocopeat for growing plants - part 1

Hello friends, I'm Ashok Sanodia and I welcome you back in your own organic gardening channel. Friends, Coco peat is a natural and soilless media that help us to make the best soil mix for our plants for giving excellent growth. But before using Coco peat, you must know the right way to make it ready for growing plants. Otherwise, it will not give good result and your plants would damage also. So, in today's video, we are going to explain that how we should make the Coco peat ready And if you also wish to use Coco peat in the right way, then please see this video till the end for knowing the complete information. So, friends, generally we get Coco peat in this type of brick shape and it is made by coconut husk after grinding and compressing process. If we talk about the benefits, then the first benefit is that it is light weighted soilless media that help us to reduce the excess weight if we use for terrace gardening. The second benefit is that it makes our soil more porous and increase the water drainage capacity. The third benefit is that it improves aeration inside the soil for better root formation and growth. And the fourth benefit is that it helps us to retain moisture in soil for a long time and our plants would get enough moisture properly even in dry environment. So, overall it provides a good environment to our plants for getting proper growth. But all these benefits come if we use Coco peat in the right way and that is start with making it ready for use. And now we will explain that how we should make Coco peat ready for using for plants. So, please understand it carefully. So, friends as we all know that Coco peat bricks made by coconut husk by grinding and compressing process and before using it we must understand that all these coconut come from the coastal area and contain very high amount of potassium salt and if we use it without removing the salt then this salt affect the water absorbing capacity of our plants and plant start drying by dehydration. So, before using it we should remove the salt content by following this simple step. First of all we should remove the plastic packaging from it and keep one bucket or container ready like this. Now we should take one thin layer cotton bag like this and keep this Coco peat brick under it as we are doing here. After keeping Coco peat brick inside the bag now we will pour clean water on it as we are doing here. Slowly the Coco peat fibers will soak water inside it and start breaking in small pieces like this. After this we will close the bag opening by twisting it like this and now we will wash it properly as we are doing here. And after proper washing we will remove the bag from it and keep it aside. Now we will show you that how this process reduce the salt content from the Coco peat brick and this can be easily identified by measuring the TDS value of this water. However, you do not need to perform this activity as we are doing here for your knowledge only. So, here we have taken one TDS meter and now we will measure the TDS value of this water to show you that how much ocean salt may contain with Coco peat brick. And here you can see that the TDS value of this water is 422 ppm means the total dissolving solids in this water is high and it should be less than 200 ppm. So, we will again take fresh water and wash it again for cleaning more salt from it and after this we will again measure the TDS value of this water. And now you can see that after washing it again the TDS value is 189 ppm which is less than 200 ppm and now we can move for next step. Now after washing it two time we will hang this bag in any suitable place like this so that excess water will drain out quickly and we will left this bag as it is for 24 hours. And after 24 hours our Coco peat will dry completely and become ready for use. Now after one day our Coco peat has become safe to use for our plants and now it will provide all the benefits which we have explained at the time of starting this video. So, friends these were the simple steps for making Coco peat ready for using on plants and if we follow all these steps then there is no chances of waste also. I hope this information will help you and for any further query and suggestion please write us in comments box and we will try to answer you soon. Thank you and have a nice day.