The Truth about Ingredients Listed on Growing Media Bags

Take a look at the list of ingredients on growing media bag labels from a few different companies, particularly the bacterial and fungal strains, and you’ll see quite a variety. Some will include multiple species while others show far fewer. Some labels will even list metrics like how many propagules per gram for each strain. Another brand’s bag won’t provide these numbers at all.

Here’s a little secret all cannabis growers should know. All of these lists and numbers related to biology that are printed on growing media product labels are inaccurate.

Why? Because living organisms consume as part of the cycle of life. By the time the bag gets to a customer, the numbers have changed. Even “inert” coco blocks and peat contain some microbial activity!

Let’s take a look at why this happens and what you can do to make sure you’re buying growing media that will deliver the best results every cycle, regardless of what the label says.

Coco and Peat

If the growing media you buy includes coco or peat (even “sterile” coco blocks), then the ingredients listed on the product bags are going to be inaccurate. Both coco and peat come from the earth, and every bit of dirt on the planet has biology in it. Even coco, which comes from coconuts, is laid out on giant fields after it’s stripped to dry and cure.

Coco coir factory in india

Most manufacturers of “sterile” media don’t sterilize the coco and peat used in their products. However, coco and peat both have some microbial activity. Therefore, the ingredients listed on packaging for these products are inaccurate.

Peat bog in Canada

Biology

Most growing media products contain a small number of bacterial and fungal species – those species that growers think are most important for different reasons. However, a small number of strains isn’t enough. Plants grow best when they have access to diverse biology like they do in nature.

Soil in nature includes vast populations of bacteria, fungi, and more. These populations are very active, and their activities are what build soil structure, ward off disease, influence pests, and ultimately, improve plant health and potential.

As mentioned above, active bacteria and fungi in growing media consume things over time, so the numbers printed on a soil product label will never match what a customer gets when they open a bag.

However, when your media includes wide spectrum biology, the exact number of a specific strain doesn’t matter because there is so much biomass. Other strains pick up the slack.

For example, there are multiple strains that digest phosphorous, and bio365, which is the only clean, living soil made with wide spectrum biology, includes all of them. Other companies’ media products may only have one strain that digests phosphorous, so if something changes in their soil making that one strain incapable of digesting phosphorous, then there is nothing left to digest it. On the other hand, if something changes in bio365 soil, other strains can perform the same function.

Bottom-line, the more diverse the soil biology, the healthier and more resilient your plants will be. For growing media that only give plants access to a small number of species, the numbers printed on bag labels will always be fiction, and the media will never be good enough (even with the addition of amendments). Your plants can only truly thrive when they have access to wide spectrum biology like they do in nature, and when a soil includes wide spectrum biology, specific strain numbers are irrelevant.

Most growing media companies try to include some or all of the species that growers typically look for in their products and on their bag labels. Since the media doesn’t include much biology (or any), it’s easy to do.

We can’t do that at bio365 because our growing media includes millions of strains of bacteria, fungal species, and microbial biomass. We’d need to use hundreds or thousands of bags to list all of them. They could never fit on a single label!

Consistency

As mentioned above, it’s fiction to list specific numbers related to species in a growing media product because the number will change by the time the product gets to the consumer. Unfortunately, that means growers don’t know exactly what they’re getting.

If the growing media you buy only includes a small number of strains, this can become a big problem that will directly affect the health of your plants!

Another problem is how the biology is added to the product. If a strain is dumped into the media during the manufacturing process, it won’t be as effective nor will it be consistent across all bags. Again, this affects the numbers you see on labels.

We do things differently at bio365. Using our patented culturing process, we make our own wide spectrum biology that is 100% consistent from batch to batch and bag to bag. We culture our own bacteria, so all batches have the same diverse microbial biomass that mimics nature.

No other growing media company does this or can do it. Instead, they buy isolated microbes from a lab and add the lab-bought individual microbes to their batches. They have to buy new microbes from their lab suppliers all the time.

At bio365, we culture from the same mother batch every time. It’s a patented and 100% proprietary process that guarantees consistency and no other brand can match.

Key Takeaways

We know one thing for certain, plants grow better in bio365 growing media. Remember, growing media labels don’t tell the full story, so always consider the reality of biology, regulators, and consistency when choosing the growing media to use for your cannabis crops.

To learn more about bio365 growing media, biology, biomimicry, our culturing process, and more, contact us to talk to a soil expert or start a free trial.