COCONUT COIR VS POTTING MIX TEST SOIL POROSITY EXPLAINED

is growing in ready to use potting mix better than coconut coir well let's find out so in this episode it's a face-off between ready to use potting mix and coconut coir and this coconut coir is just plain core with nothing added the potting mix is ready to use potting mix which has some added fertiliser 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 versus the potting mix now in seedlings emerge they don't need much nutrition it's only when they develop their first set of leaves - 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 the 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 coir is a great potting medium but the lack of nutrition in the coconut core 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 is a good stage to harvest and consume them so let's go ahead 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 core you can see that how well the root systems have developed and they 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 koi 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've created a few days earlier to give you an idea of how to create your own potting mix so we are 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 plant 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 they have only organic matter if you buy potting mixes that are not listed as organic they might contain synthetic fertilizers so it's up to your discretion whether you need to use them or not as you can see as I'm 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 are ready to use potting mix fit some added fertilizer definitely has an edge over something like coconut choir alone so in my opinion the best way to create your potting mix is to 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 is 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 very optimum medium so you use a 30% mix of either coconut choir or peat moss then I had 30% of compost and then 30% of pore light or vermiculite you can add 10% 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 supporting 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 will feed your plants better 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 ready to use container mix or potting mix I would like to hear from you I would like to what kind of mixes you use and how successful are you with those let me know your suggestions and I will see you again soon happy gardening