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Carnivorous Plants & Bonsai - a potential hack for using Coco Grow Media · Hydroponics Daily

• 0:00
  Hello there and welcome back to
• 0:01
  Hydroponics Daily, your go-to podcast for everything soilless cultivation.
• 0:06
  Today I was thinking about why plants like carnivorous plants and bonsai suffer
• 0:14
  in cocoa grow media compared to,
• 0:18
  well in carnivorous plants case, compared to peat.
• 0:22
  And I think I've come to a realization of one possible reason.
• 0:27
  They're both organic grow media, Yeah.
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  Cocoa is obviously inert and there's
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  no mineral nutrition in it when it's harvested and processed and so it's good
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  for hydroponics where you just add the nutrition that you need but carnivorous
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  plants need very low nitrogen levels now the problem with cocoa is because it
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  contains a lot of sodium and salt because of how it's harvested and where the coconut plants grow,
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  they flush it with calcium nitrate to treat it and this gets rid of the sodium
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  and makes it perfect for growing very fast-growing plants.
• 1:03
  There's a good supply of both calcium and nitrogen, which are two very important macronutrients.
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  However, I think this is the reason why people are struggling to grow carnivorous
• 1:13
  plants in it, and why people are not growing carnivorous plants hydroponically.
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  And so I've thought of a potential solution to this.
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  You could buy really cheap, what's considered rubbish cocoa from,
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  say, Sri Lanka or Indonesia,
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  or a disreputable supplier that you know doesn't buffer with calcium nitrate,
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  the really high-sodium raw cocoa.
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  And then you could treat it with liquid gypsum. We sell a liquid gypsum here at Utrema.
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  And that contains calcium sulfate, so calcium and sulfur compounds.
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  And that would be a way of
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  flushing out the sodium without crucially without adding
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  extra nitrogen so for plants that you don't want growing
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  fast or nitrogen is toxic to
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  so carnivorous plants bonsai and things
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  like this you could potentially flush with calcium sulfate
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  so you could produce carnivorous specific grow media now that's a potential
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  business idea for somebody there in the carnivorous plants niche you could or
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  the bonsai niche you could do grow media containing cocoa so pure cocoa for
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  carnivorous plants or a cocoa mix with mineral soil-based components, a sort of John Innes type.
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  Peat-free alternative for bonsai there. So you could either sell that or you
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  could set up your business growing peat-free carnivorous plants,
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  which is a big win because everyone knows that peat is bad for the environment
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  for a number of different reasons, which I'm not going to go into here.
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  And so you could produce peat-free hydropotnic carnivorous plants or bonsai.
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  So there you go. That's my idea.
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  Buffering cocoa with calcium liquid gypsum rather than calcium nitrate.
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  Let me know what you think is this a good idea is this a terrible idea i don't think it is though,
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  that's been hydroponics daily for today if you thought it was interesting if that
• 3:02
  was a good hack then please leave an apple podcast review a written review would
• 3:07
  be outstanding help us share the podcast with the wider community and if you're
• 3:12
  not an apple just make sure you click follow so that you like this podcast and
• 3:15
  check out utreema.co.uk that's latin for wasabi utreema and you'll find products
• 3:20
  like liquid gypsum and other fertilizers,
• 3:22
  biostimulants and biopesticides unique to us.
• 3:25
  You can't find them anywhere else and so always worth checking out.
• 3:28
  I know I say that every episode but it is definitely worth checking out what we've got.
• 3:31
  Any questions at all related to growing any type of plant, send me a message,
• 3:35
  email, DM and I'm more than happy to answer any challenges you've got.
• 3:39
  All right, thank you very much for listening. Until next time, goodbye.