I know "pgrs" is a swear word, but hear me out!

[Cannamancan]

Good morning guys.

I have an allotment, and I allow one of my mates to dump his Coco on a separate compost heap.

My query is, I have acquired a ton sack full of his ex fabric pots, and would like to use some of them. I know he uses strong pgrs, would the pots be ok to use?
The guy in the hydro shop says pgrs bind to the roots & Coco, so that can't be reused.

[Keeno]

Good morning and welcome to Growroom420.

I'm not sure if the pots would be ok, I'm interested to see what others say on the matter. In my heD a good soak in a strong cleaning solution would do rhe trick.

Do you know which pgr"s he was using? "PGR" is a word that gets a lot of shit in the hobby, but many don't understand pgr's in general. There are plenty of naturally occurring pgr's that are wrongly put in the same bracket as the nasty synthetic ones

[Cannamancan]

He said diamond density. That, to me sounds like what pgrs are supposed to be
But I've never used them, so don't know.
Never say never, though!

[seymore_budz]

Good morning guys.

I have an allotment, and I allow one of my mates to dump his Coco on a separate compost heap.

My query is, I have acquired a ton sack full of his ex fabric pots, and would like to use some of them. I know he uses strong pgrs, would the pots be ok to use?
The guy in the hydro shop says pgrs bind to the roots & Coco, so that can't be reused.

Hey @Cannamancan!

The TL;DR version is The pots can be washed. A wash and rinse with clean water and they'll be fine. The coco should be fine to use too as long as you rett it all again.

The long winded version:

First thing, I can say for sure that you shouldn't listen to the guy down your local hydro shop :) Especially if he's making blanket statements like that. As @Keeno said, PGRs are greatly misunderstood and most of them are harmless. Many are derived from plant material, i.e. cold-press seaweed, tree bark etc. Even the synthetic ones are not as bad as people are led to believe. That being said, their potency should not be disregard. I'd be more worried about pestercides than PGRs.

Coco has a high cation exchange capacity, so it will hold onto cations. It will also hold onto other crap that the planta have been fed, but all of the rest can be rinsed off. To remove the cations, they have to be displaced with other cations. The process is called "buffering".

You won't need to buffer used coco because it will already be loaded with Ca and Mg. Most coco sold by hydroponics stores have already been buffered, and most cannabis growers are shoveling more Ca and Mg into their coco grows as they're paranoid that the coco sequestered all of those elements from their feed solution.

Now, the question about the pots, are they safe as they are? It's hard to say without knowing what the previous guy used. I can say for sure nothing will be binded to the roots :) But you can wash them! Washing them will remove most contaminates and they will be safe to use. They're probably safe to use as-is, but to be 100% sure, you should at least rinse them.

If you wanted to use the coco and wanted to make sure it was clean, you could just rett it all. Adding enzymes will speed up the process significantly. Retting is the process of rinsing the coco to remove contaminates and displacing other cations with one's plants like. Normally replacing Na with Ca, Mg and K as coco grows near the sea. Your not retting to remove sodium, but retting will rinse away any contaminates, buffer the PH and give enzymes a chance to breakdown residual roots. You can add enzymes to speed up that process.

Hope this helps and happy growing!

[2-Scoops]

From a quick look around at product and what it does I believe PGR in Diamond Density will be Paclobutrazol which breaks down into nitrosamines when smoked and its that which is most carcinogenic compound in cigarettes . Although its widely used in crops we eat like grain used to make cereals or fruit and veg, tomato and peppers etc. Shrub like plants grown inside greenhouses. Apparently its unlikely to be carcinogenic to humans in its normal state, its more that its dodgy when smoked and it becomes a carcinogen to humans in form of nitrosamines. Basically what i get reading around is that its not best thing to use if your a weed grower that smokes their own, but is ok to use if your grow tomatoes in your greenhouse.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paclobutrazol