I have used coir compost for the last four years and will be doing so again this year.
Mixes are used for tomato (and similar tender crop) growing and potting compost for bringing on young plants both veg and flowers.
I wet in a large black plastic dustbin for the 70litre blocks and leave for a day before filling out onto a mixing area and add a little vermiculite but also rock dust from the local quarry. Coir is light and the dust gives it a bit more weight to anchor roots, bulks it out a bit and provides minerals. About five shovel fulls or more per mix. (No significant extra minerals but coarse sand/grit could do the same job.) I use the slow release organic fertiliser that the sellers provide.
The first year the recommended levels of fertiliser was too strong for young seedlings so ended up using at half rate only. Subsequently the fertiliser strength was reduced so that is no longer an issue for most plants.
After several weeks I supplement with organic fertiliser/sea weed for greenhouse tomatoes and fish blood and bone, pelleted chicken manure or (only when necessary) specialist fertiliser for everything else.
I have no complaints both in the growing and eating of tasty produce.
With regard to making smaller quantities up, smaller bales are available (but less economic). The larger bales could probably be cut with a wood saw quite easily, but maybe dusty, but bales can be halved using a hose with a fine jet of water across the middle (approximately!) or even with a watering can. It would need a bit of patience and maybe done in a wheel barrow or large plastic trug. (Just to put this into context I have found blocks often split during watering when the water is added from a watering can accross the middle of a block. Care might be needed to prevent watering the whole block and a subsequent eruption to a greater size than wished at the time but it would be easy to pull out a few lumps early in the wetting process)
A last positive point is it is a very clean compost so doesn't leave black stains if I inadvertantly drop a bit on the carpet!!!
I buy this from my local poundland of course it is only £1 per block but makes 10 litres of compost. I sow a lot of seeds and have found trhat it works even for the smallest. I then grow tomatoes , runner beans broad beans and peas in the £1 vegetable bags I buy from poundland, again using the coir blocks. They are as others have said very easy to transport, need only a short time soaking in water and a great deal easier for me at least than lugging heavy growbags to and from the car. I buy them all through the winter , each time I go into Poundland as a couple at a time easy to manage with other shopping and have a good supply buy the time it comes to planting seeds.. After the crops have finished emptying the spent coir on the garden helps a great deal with improving the texture.
I am trying coir this year and so far it is working out really well. Much nicer consistency than other peat free compost that I have tried where there are loads of chunks of bark and twigs so has to be sieved first for seedlings. Stays wetter for longer especially good for seedlings
Oxfam sell Traidcraft coir compost blocks, making 9 litres of compost each. They're fairly traded and support community projects. The ones I bought from the Oxfam shop were £1.27, but the normal retail price seems to be £2 or £2.50.
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Is that like a pound shop Fishy?
The bag of damp coir I made up last spring is still damp.
The only thing is coir is highly processed and shipped a long way, so there's loads of embedded energy and CO2.
No fungus. Take that, peat!
It is similar to a pound shop Lyn
I have used coir compost for the last four years and will be doing so again this year.
Mixes are used for tomato (and similar tender crop) growing and potting compost for bringing on young plants both veg and flowers.
I wet in a large black plastic dustbin for the 70litre blocks and leave for a day before filling out onto a mixing area and add a little vermiculite but also rock dust from the local quarry. Coir is light and the dust gives it a bit more weight to anchor roots, bulks it out a bit and provides minerals. About five shovel fulls or more per mix. (No significant extra minerals but coarse sand/grit could do the same job.) I use the slow release organic fertiliser that the sellers provide.
The first year the recommended levels of fertiliser was too strong for young seedlings so ended up using at half rate only. Subsequently the fertiliser strength was reduced so that is no longer an issue for most plants.
After several weeks I supplement with organic fertiliser/sea weed for greenhouse tomatoes and fish blood and bone, pelleted chicken manure or (only when necessary) specialist fertiliser for everything else.
I have no complaints both in the growing and eating of tasty produce.
With regard to making smaller quantities up, smaller bales are available (but less economic). The larger bales could probably be cut with a wood saw quite easily, but maybe dusty, but bales can be halved using a hose with a fine jet of water across the middle (approximately!) or even with a watering can. It would need a bit of patience and maybe done in a wheel barrow or large plastic trug. (Just to put this into context I have found blocks often split during watering when the water is added from a watering can accross the middle of a block. Care might be needed to prevent watering the whole block and a subsequent eruption to a greater size than wished at the time but it would be easy to pull out a few lumps early in the wetting process)
A last positive point is it is a very clean compost so doesn't leave black stains if I inadvertantly drop a bit on the carpet!!!
I buy this from my local poundland of course it is only £1 per block but makes 10 litres of compost. I sow a lot of seeds and have found trhat it works even for the smallest. I then grow tomatoes , runner beans broad beans and peas in the £1 vegetable bags I buy from poundland, again using the coir blocks. They are as others have said very easy to transport, need only a short time soaking in water and a great deal easier for me at least than lugging heavy growbags to and from the car. I buy them all through the winter , each time I go into Poundland as a couple at a time easy to manage with other shopping and have a good supply buy the time it comes to planting seeds.. After the crops have finished emptying the spent coir on the garden helps a great deal with improving the texture.
I'm using coir again this year, though adding some John Innes No 2. Peat based compost is becoming a thing of the past for me
I am trying coir this year and so far it is working out really well. Much nicer consistency than other peat free compost that I have tried where there are loads of chunks of bark and twigs so has to be sieved first for seedlings. Stays wetter for longer especially good for seedlings
How much water should I add to 7.5cm blocks of coir?
How much water should I add to 7.5cm blocks of coir?