A tomato crop finishes in eleven months. A rose crop stays in the same substrate for five to eight years.
That single difference changes what matters. For a vegetable slab, the question is how the material performs this season. For roses, the question is what it will be like in year four, after tens of thousands of irrigation cycles, root growth, decomposition and repeated wetting and drying have all had time to act on it.
Substrate that slumps loses air space. Air space is what a rose root system needs to keep functioning at depth, and a slab that has compacted by year three will show up as declining stem quality and length long before anyone thinks to blame the medium.
Cut flower growing is also the most heavily steered horticulture there is. Growers manipulate EC and moisture deliberately to control stem length, bud size and flowering timing. That only works if the substrate responds predictably. A medium that drains differently from one batch to the next makes steering guesswork.
Which is the honest reason to care where your coir comes from and whether anyone measured it before it shipped.
Roses. A 50:50 cocopeat to chip blend, at 21% air-filled porosity, is our usual starting point. The chip fraction is doing two jobs at once: keeping air in the root zone day to day, and holding the slab open structurally across a multi-year crop. Growers in warm, high-light regions such as Kenya, Ethiopia and Ecuador often go further, to 20:80 at 25.06%, where transpiration is high and irrigation frequent.
Gerbera. Similar reasoning to roses. Gerbera is grown in pots or bags for several years and is notably intolerant of a wet crown, so a free-draining blend of 50:50 or more open is the safer starting point.
Chrysanthemum. A short cycle by cut flower standards, usually ten to twelve weeks, so structural longevity matters less. An 80:20 blend at 10.2% suits the higher water demand of a fast crop.
Carnation. Multi-year and very sensitive to waterlogging at the base. Treat it like roses and lean towards the open end.
Low EC is not optional for cut flowers. Because growers deliberately steer EC to control quality, they need to know the starting point precisely. Residual sodium in the substrate does not just add to EC, it distorts the ratio between nutrients, which makes steering unreliable. We supply washed low-EC material below 0.5 mS/cm as standard.
Full properties across our range are on the coco grow bags page.
On a short crop, an unbuffered substrate is a manageable nuisance. Calcium and magnesium disappear into the exchange sites for the first few weeks, potassium appears from nowhere, and a competent grower compensates through the feed until it settles.
On a rose crop being steered for stem quality, those first weeks are the establishment period that sets the productivity of the plant for years. Fighting an unbuffered medium during it is an avoidable handicap.
We buffer with calcium on request and supply unbuffered as standard. For multi-year cut flower crops on automated fertigation, buffered is usually worth the cost. For growers with their own buffering line and a preferred recipe, unbuffered ships lighter and cheaper and gives you control.
The full explanation, including when unbuffered is the better answer, is on our buffered vs unbuffered guide.
Blending and packing are done to your requirement. Slab length and width, compressed and expanded dimensions, planting hole layout, drainage hole position, film colour and print are all made to order. Tell us your bed width, plant density and irrigation frequency and we will propose a specification.
We are a manufacturer. Blending, compression and packing happen at our own facility in Peravurani, Thanjavur district, Tamil Nadu. Visitors are welcome.
A 50:50 cocopeat to chip blend at 21% air-filled porosity is our usual starting point. In warm, high-light regions with frequent irrigation, a 20:80 blend at 25.06% is often better.
Chip content is what determines this. Chips resist slumping and keep air space open far longer than straight pith. Tell us how long you intend to keep the crop in the same substrate and we will factor it into the blend rather than sell you a slab that fails in year three.
Usually yes, for a multi-year crop on automated fertigation. The establishment period sets plant productivity for years, and fighting an unbuffered medium during it is an avoidable handicap. If you buffer in-house, we supply unbuffered.
Yes. Slab length and width, planting hole count and spacing, drainage hole position and diameter, film and print are all made to order.
The 1:1.5 volume extract method. If your specification uses saturated media extract, tell us and we will supply the equivalent figure. For a crop where you steer EC deliberately, knowing which method a figure refers to is essential.
There is no minimum. We will take a single container. That means you can trial one greenhouse before converting the farm.
Other crops we supply: Tomato · Strawberry · Blueberry · Raspberry and blackberry · Cucumber · Capsicum
Our products: Coco grow bags · 5 kg blocks · Coco chips · Open-top bags · Coir fibre
Read next: Buffered vs unbuffered · Quality and laboratory · Private label and OEM
Factory Address:
243, chellaiah street, Ruthrachintamani, peravurani, Aranthangi 614612 TN
Tell us your crop, growing system and volume, and we will propose a specification rather than send a brochure.
Copyright 2023 © All Right Reserved Design by Rometheme