Waching daily Aug 5 2018

Hi guys this is Ashish and I

welcome you to my youtube channel. In today's video I will try to give you all

the information about Coco Peat, like what is Coco Peat, how to expand coco peat,

benefits of Coco Peat. So let's start. This is a 5 kg block of

coco peat. It costed me 250 rupees. This has been made from coconut husk

compressed at high pressure. This 5 kg block of coco peat can expand up to 10

times of its volume. Coco peat has become a preferred choice of potting mix for

terrace gardeners because of its light weight and its ability to hold moisture

for a long time. It doesn't contain any nutrients so it cannot be used as a

standalone potting mix, it has to be mixed with your garden soil, vermicompost

or any other type of compost which is full of nutrients. Right now it is very

hard as a rock. These are my 3 plastic tumblers and

two of them have the capacity of 15 liters each and the one on the left has

25 liters of capacity. So this 5 kg block of coco peat will expand up to 50 kg and

all of these tumblers will be full of coco peat. Now we will start the process

of expansion. We will require 35 to 40 liters of water for the expansion

process. This bucket has 20 liters of water. Now with the help of a mug I will

start pouring water on this block. You can see it is absorbing water. Keep on

pouring water. You can see it has started to expand. It will drink a lot of water.

Before water was applied it was hard but now it has become very soft. You can now

easily break and grab it with your hands. Now friends we will start the process of

transferring the coco peat in each of the plastic tumblers. Let's fill this one

first. I have filled this tumbler and you can see not even 25% of the block has

been consumed. By the way this tumbler has 15 liters of capacity.

It looks very soft and it seems as it has no weight. Now in the same way we

will fill the second tumbler which also has 15 liters of capacity. You can see

still the block looks healthy and fat and I have in fact collected around 30

kgs of coco peat. All the water has been exhausted and now it's time to refill.

Now it's time to fill this tumbler which has a capacity of 25 liters. This

tumbler has also been filled with coco peat. So friends you can see 5 kg block of

coco peat has been expanded to 9 times, that is about 45 kgs. 40 liters of water

was consumed during the expansion process. Earlier I told you 5 kg of coco

peat block costed me 250 rupees and it has expanded to about 45 kgs, so per kg

cost is about 5 rupees 50p. This is very economical and it will not burn

your pocket. At this rate you cannot even get an ordinary garden soil. It has a lot

of benefits but there are few disadvantages also.

The major disadvantage is that it has no nutrients so you cannot grow plants on

just coco peat. The other slight con is, it consumes a lot of water for expansion.

Apart from these I do not see any disadvantages. In terrace garden the

most important thing we have to take care is we have to see that we do not

put excess weight on the terrace. So mix this with your garden soil and it will

lighten the potting mix. In all of my potting mix I use 2

parts of coco peat, 1 part of garden soil and 1 part of compost. You can

also use coco peat for mulching. During summers the moisture gets easily

evaporated and mulching with coco peat will retain moisture as it can hold a

lot of moisture. You may see that the top surface of the coco peat has become dry

but if you dig your hands deep into coco peat you will find it has a lot of

moisture. It is 100% organic and has no expiry date. You can grow all types of

vegetables, fruits, flowering plants on the potting mix which has coco peat.

Because it is so light the roots find easy to grow. In fact use only coco peat

for growing plants through seeds as the new roots are very tender and they find

easy to grow in coco peat and once the plant is about 15 to 20 days old then

transplant it into a well-balanced potting mix. So friends I hope I have

given you enough information on coco peat. it is easily available on both

offline and online. If you are using coco peat extensively in your garden then do

share your thoughts with us. If I have left anything and you need more

information on coco peat then do let us know in the comment box.