Let's Grow Together!
You are invited to grow with us! Our grow challenges are open to all growers!
The New Year's Grow Challenge begins on January 1st, 2022! You can Sign up for the Challenge starting now! All of our grow challenges are free to join!
There is always a ton to learn when dozens of friendly growers grow together. We love to compare different media, lights, nutrients, and strategies. Whether you are a new grower looking for guidance, or an experienced grower looking to share knowledge, we would love to grow together with you in our Cannabis Grow Challenges!
The Annual Coco for Cannabis Grow Challenge Calendar
- The New Year's Grow Challenge: January 1 (Sign up for the NYGC NOW!)
- The Spring Auto Flower Challenge: April 20 (Read SAFC 2021 Journals)
- The Plant Training Grow Challenge: August 15 (Read PTGC 2021 Journals)
The 4th Annual Coco for Cannabis
New Year's Grow Challenge
Our most popular grow challenge, the New Year’s Grow Challenge (NYGC), is officially underway! There is still time for you to sign up! Make sure to register to participate in the NYGC today! All of our grow challenges are free to join and open to all growers, regardless of skill level.
NYGC Theme: Growing Media
Our theme for this year’s NYGC is types of growing media! We organized our challenge groups based around what media you grow your cannabis plants in. We want to emphasize that our grow challenges are not competitions! We recognize and appreciate that all growing medias have their strengths as well as their drawbacks. Our intention for choosing media types as the challenge theme is to compare different types of growing media in a fun, supportive, and collaborative way.
The Challenge Groups
There will be five challenge groups in total. Read more about each NYGC group below, and decide which group is the best fit for you! To join a group, simply create a grow journal in that group's section of the NYGC Forum.
Peat
If the primary ingredient in your growing medium is peat, this is the group for you. Although often referred to as “soil”, peat is really a soilless medium. Peat mixes are composed primarily of organic matter, often in the form of decayed vegetation, with just a few mineral amendments added (perlite, vermiculite, etc), whereas soil is primarily minerals with some organic materials added.
Coco
Coco is a hydroponic, soilless medium made from shredded coconut hulls. Once properly buffered, coco is a largely inert media that allows the grower to have near complete control over the pH and nutrient element ratio (NER) in the root zone. One of coco’s most unique and important properties is its air-to-water ratio, making it nearly impossible to “overwater” coco.
Soil
Soil is a growing medium that is made up of a complex mixture of minerals of different particle sizes (sand, silt, clay), organic materials, water, air, and living organisms. The distinction between soil and peat is that the dominant ingredients of soil are inorganic materials, whereas organic materials dominate peat mixes. Loam is an easily crumbled combination of sand, silt, clay-sized soil particles and is most desirable as the base for growing cannabis in soil.
Water
Here, we use “water” to refer to all hydroponic growing techniques aside from coco. This includes: deep water culture (DWC), nutrient film technique (NFT), wick systems, drip systems, ebb and flow, and aeroponics. Hydroponic systems are well known for the explosive rate of plant growth that they produce.
Misfits
Like all our grow challenges, the NYGC will have a Misfits group! This group is for growers who grow in a media that doesn’t fit neatly into any of the above categories, or who simply identify as a “misfit”!
NYGC Prizes and Giveaways
To help keep everyone motivated and having fun, we will be giving away prizes throughout the challenge! Our first giveaway of the NYGC will be the Photontek New Gear Giveaway series, the biggest giveaway series in CFC history!! We will also have monthly Picture Challenges that all NYGC growers can participate in. At the end of the grow, we will save some of our best prizes for the winners of Best Journal, Best Recovery, and Best Growmie.
The Photontek New Gear Giveaway!
We are kicking off the New Year’s Grow Challenge with a New Gear Giveaway sponsored by Photontek Lighting!! Three lucky growers will win beautiful, brand new Photontek fixtures! The New Gear Giveaway prizes are: a Photontek SQ200W PRO, a Photontek SQ300W PRO, and a Photontek X600W PRO!
For more information on New Gear Giveaway draw dates, eligibility, and how to enter, visit the NYGC Giveaways page.
NYGC Picture Challenges
This year, the NYGC will feature a new type of additional challenge, the Picture Challenges! Over the course of the grow, we will announce optional photo competitions that all NYGC growers can participate in. There will be three picture challenges during the NYGC, each with its own theme and prize! This will be a fun, new series of challenges that give growers the opportunity to show off their creativity as well as their plants!
NYGC Important Dates!
The NYGC Starts at Midnight Eastern Standard Time (-5:00 UTC) on January 1st
The Official start time for the NYGC is Midnight Eastern Standard Time on January 1. When the ball drops in Time Square, then you should drop your seeds or cut your clones. Join us in the chat room on the evening of December 31st as we countdown to the germination hour!
The NYGC is a collaboration much more than a competition. We coordinate start times so that we can grow together and share the experience! If you can coordinate with our schedule, that is great, but if you are a little off schedule, then you are still welcome to grow together in the NYGC. If you cannot start at exactly midnight on January 1, please start your grow and your grow journal as soon as possible afterwards in order to be eligible for our first NYGC Giveaway!
NYGC Flip Dates
For those growing photo-period plants, we have designated two different flip days to initiate 12/12 lighting. Our early flip date is February 1st. This is only 31 days after we get seeds wet or take cuttings, so hopefully it will accommodate those who need a shorter vegetation period. The late flip date is Valentine’s Day, February 14th. We hope that one of those flip dates will work for your grow! However, you are always free to flip on your own schedule if your grow demands it.
What is a Grow Challenge?
The Coco for Cannabis grow challenges are not competitions! Our goal is to bring new and experienced growers together in the spirit of collaboration. We coordinate timing to grow along together and learn from each other.
We create a special forum for each challenge where growers keep grow journals to document their grows. We organize the journals into groups for each challenge. The groups, the forum, and the whole idea behind growing together is about creating community and supporting fellow growers. We cultivate the Spirit of Collaboration along with our plants.
To be a full part of the grow challenge, all you need to do is sign up and keep an updated journal. How you manage your journal is up to you. You can document every step every day, or you can post a few pictures and a quick blurb once a week.
Sign-Up for the New Year's Grow Challenge!
The NYGC officially began on January 1st, but there is still time for you to sign up for the Challenge! Sign-up is free and open to all growers. We can't wait to grow with you!
CocoforCannabis.com is an inclusive and supportive community. We work to cultivate the spirit of collaboration along with our plants! We welcome all growers who want to learn, share and grow together!
