I originally heard about "salty coir" in what seemed to be a technical study. It bashed and BASHED coir for killing seedlings and then stunting growth.
Finally, towards the end of the article, as if to prove how fair and balanced it was in every minor detail, it explained how they had fertilized both coir and a control soiless mix to the same point of FINAL mineral ion content. If you looked closely enough, you would see that the coir STARTED with enough salt that they could hardly add any fertilizer ever.
In other words, they never flushed the coir, even though they knew it started out too salty to use.
I thought they should have concluded "you can't start seeds and grow them out in salty medium and then never fertilize them" or "we bought a batch of salty coir", instead of "coir kills seedlings and stunts growth".
It made me wonder cynically if the study had been funded by some organization for marketing peat-based soil mixes!
