Hi Rio, Down in FL my Dad used to use coconut husks (not shells) for all kinds of yardwork and would love to know how this works out for you for DIY hydroponics. We had our own coconut palms, and the neighbor's too which I had to clean up, so really just old nice memories. I remember having to work it a lot with my hands until they felt weird. Like pulling apart steel wool for a few cycles between two damp buckets, but ours were never completely dehydrated. Please let us know how it comes along.

If it's the husk fibers being too long, maybe you can run them over a metal cheese grater or something because they are very strong and durable. You could also shake them up in a mesh bag of the size that fits best like for oranges or larger and just throw away the big ones and get all the soft stuff to fall out. Or try some sharp, heavy shears. I know that even after floating in the ocean for months, you still need a sharp machete to husk or smash it up. It is a pretty frustrating material for a trouble making kid, they can be bashed and smashed and still hold together in hunks. Just mulling. I remember something about the Hanging Gardens of Babylon using palm fiber so it all is interesting.

This post was edited by PupillaCharites on Tue, Jul 30, 13 at 3:43

Coir works great. I use it in my NFT system when we run out of rockwool. Lettuce doesn't seem to know the difference. Tomatoes and herbs in a drip, run to waste setup do great also. For the tomatoes, we water for 2 minutes 3 times a day. Just be careful of not using beach coconuts, the salt can kill the plants.

So in nft do you put it in the net pots? Does it wick sufficiently? That would drop our cost around 10.00 a hundred heads of lettuce. We have a few blocks of it for some experimenting we were doing into micro greens.