Is growing in ready to use potting mix
better than coconut coir? Well let's find out
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So in this episode its a face-off between ready to use potting mix
and coconut coir and this coconut coir is just plain coir with nothing
added
the potting mix is a ready to use potting mix
which has some added fertilizer in it
so we sowed some fenugreek seeds in these two containers
and after exactly a week
we can see that the germination is pretty much consistent between the
coconut coir vs
the potting mix now when seedlings emerge
that don't need much nutrition it's only when they develop their first set of
leaves
do they start feeding on the nutrients in the soil
so as you can see here the plants have really taken off very well
in both these containers and at this stage it's really hard to say which of
these mixes is doing better the one on the left what we see here is the coconut
coir
and the one on that right is the ready to use potting mix
so depending on the type of the
ready to use potting mix that you use you will
either get a lot of organic ingredients in the potting mix
or you might have a lot of organic ingredients but you might have some kind
of slow release fertilizer
added to the potting mix the whole idea of the added fertilizer is to make
sure that the plants are being
well fed for the next three months or so
so yes the coconut coir doesn't have any fertilizer
but it has naturally occurring potassium now although fenugreek doesn't
need a lot of
heavy feeding you can see that as the plants are growing
the plants that are growing in the
ready to use potting mix which is on the right is showing
much healthier growth which is even more evident at this stage
the coconut choir is a great potting medium
but the lack of nutrition
in the coconut coir is beginning to show in the health of the plants
this also goes to show how important it is for you
to provide adequate nutrition to your plants
in order for them to grow well so let's go ahead and harvest
these fenugreek plants this a good stage to harvest and consume them
so let's go and harvest these and
let's look at the way the plants have grown
so as I was pulling out these
plants from the coconut coir potting medium
I noticed that the roots had developed very well
And let's take a closer look here so as you can see here when I pull out the roots from
this coir
you can see that how well the root systems have developed
and the were able to penetrate the medium
very comfortably and this is one of the benefits of using
coconut coir is that it is such a nice and fluffy
growing medium that the root vegetables or the root plants
are able to send out these nice looking roots
very easily into this coconut coir medium
Now porosity of the container medium is one of the things that
I feel is a very important aspect of growing in containers
so what is porosity
Porosity is nothing but how porous
your container growing medium is so for example coconut coir
has a lot of porosity because
air can freely move through the coir itself
and if you add other elements to your potting mix
like perlite or vermiculite
that really helps your container medium to become more
porous and it also enables the plants to send out their roots very easily into
your containers
so if you're not having a lot of success growing plants in containers
I would highly recommend that you try out
creating your own potting mix by mixing up a lot of porous
medium like coconut coir, perlite,
vermiculite while also adding nutrition in the form of
either compost or worm castings
and you can watch this video that I had created
a few days earlier to give you an idea of how to create your own potting mix
So we're almost done with the harvest
here from the coconut coir medium and that looks like a good harvest
great leaves and a great root system
So now let's harvest our fenugreek greens from the potting mix
so as you can see the plants have grown slightly bigger
and have developed sturdier stems and the reason for that is
the added fertilizer in
this potting mix has enabled the plants to grow really strong
and hence you can see the difference in the results
now when you're buying potting mixes
if you want to go organic
you need to buy potting mixes that are strictly organic and have only organic
matter
if you buy a potting mixes that are not listed as organic
they might contain synthetic fertilizers so its up to your discretion
whether you need to use them or not
and as you can see as I am pulling out the roots here
the root systems are not as thoroughly developed
as the ones in the coconut coir however you
get better results on the top part of the plants
so all in all I think
our ready to use potting mix with some added fertilizer definitely
has an edge
over something like coconut coir alone
so in my opinion the best
way to create your potting mix is still mix your own coconut coir
with a porous medium like perlite or
vermiculite and also add in a lot of compost
I think that is what what will give you the best
container solution for
growing all your container plants and I have discussed that
in detail in my previous video as I mentioned and
that actually creates a veryoptimum medium
So you use
a 30 percent mix of
either Coconut coir or
peat moss then add 30 percent
of compost and then thirty percent of perlite or vermiculite
you can add 10 percent of worm castings
or additional compost and a handful of
fertilizer and garden lime
so although there was a close competition between using
ready to use potting mix and coconut coir, I think we have a winner
and the winner is ready to use potting mix
now partially this result is skewed towards the potting mix because
of the added fertilizers
but most of the ready to use potting mixes that you find in garden stores
will have some kind of organic material added to it
which means that it has added nutrition and it'll feed your plants better
so I hope you like this video
and I would like to hear from you how you create your potting mix
or your container growing medium do you use
your own recipe for
creating your container mix or do you use a ready to use container mix
or potting mix
I would like to hear from you I would like to know what kind of
mixes you use and how successful are you with
those let me know your suggestions and I'll see you again soon
Happy Gardening!
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