Raspberry and blackberry moved into substrate for a specific reason: soil-borne root disease. Growers who lost plantations to Phytophthora root rot went to pots and bags to get the crop out of infected ground and to take control of the root zone. That history shapes everything about what a cane fruit substrate has to do.
The first requirement is drainage. Cane fruit is grown in a relatively deep container, often five to ten litres per plant, and water collects at the base of any deep container. A substrate that holds too much at the bottom recreates exactly the conditions the grower moved to substrate to escape.
The second is that these are perennial crops. A cane structure may occupy the same substrate for two seasons or longer, so the material has to resist slumping and keep its air space over time rather than collapsing after one wet winter.
The third is salt sensitivity. Cane fruit is less demanding than blueberry, but more sensitive than tomato, and a substrate carrying residual sodium shows up as reduced vigour rather than as an obvious failure.
A 50:50 cocopeat to chip blend, at 21% air-filled porosity and 5.66 L/kg, is our usual starting point for cane fruit in pots. It drains freely enough to protect the root zone while holding enough buffer that a missed irrigation on a hot day does not check the crop.
A 20:80 blend, at 25.06% air-filled porosity, suits high-rainfall regions, larger containers, tunnels with poor airflow, and any site where root disease has been a problem before. More air, less buffer, and a substrate that empties quickly after heavy rain blows into the tunnel.
An 80:20 blend, at 10.2%, is worth considering only in genuinely dry climates with tight irrigation control and smaller pots, where retention is doing more work than drainage.
Cane fruit tolerates a wider pH range than blueberry does, so our natural 5.5 to 6.8 is usually workable without acidification. That is the main practical difference between growing cane fruit and blueberry on coco, and it is worth knowing if you grow both.
Low EC matters. We supply washed low-EC material for cane fruit as standard. If you buffer in-house, tell us and we will supply unbuffered.
Full properties across our blend range are on the coco grow bags page. Chip grades are explained on the coco chips page.
Cane fruit is grown three ways on substrate, and we supply for all of them:
Open-top planter bags. Substrate and container in one unit, placed and hydrated in position. Removes the labour of filling pots in a short window before planting. See our open top planter bags.
Loose material for filling pots. Supplied compressed in 5 kg blocks that expand to 70 to 80 litres, or as coco chips, and hydrated into your own pots on site. See 5 kg blocks.
Bulk loose substrate for growers with hydration and filling equipment.
Blending and packing are done to your requirement. Pot fill volume, blend ratio, chip grade, drainage hole layout, film and print are all made to order. Tell us your container size, 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. A 20:80 blend at 25.06% suits high-rainfall regions, larger containers, or sites with a history of root disease.
Usually not. Raspberry and blackberry tolerate a wider pH range than blueberry, so our natural 5.5 to 6.8 is generally workable without acidification. If you grow both crops, that is the main practical difference to plan around.
Chip content is what determines this. A blend with meaningful chip resists slumping and holds its air space through a wet winter far better than straight pith. Tell us how long you intend to keep the crop in the same substrate and we will factor it into the recommendation.
There is no minimum. We will take a single container. That means you can trial a block of tunnels before committing the farm, which most suppliers will not let you do.
The 1:1.5 volume extract method. If your specification uses saturated media extract, tell us and we will supply the equivalent figure. The two differ by roughly a factor of two.
Yes. Every container ships with the batch test report for that exact production lot, and we retain a sealed duplicate here under the same batch number.
Other crops we supply: Blueberry · Strawberry · Tomato · 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 · Our factory
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