Growing Media Companies on Flexibility in Tailoring Mixes
November 25, 2025 The right growing media can make or break your greenhouse crop. Beyond achieving reliable performance, growers today must also navigate sourcing challenges, material availability, and shifting expectations around sustainability.
We reached out to growing media suppliers to get their perspective on many of these concerns. In this Part 7 of a series of articles, we look at how flexible suppliers might be in tailoring mixes for specific crops and other things. You can check out previous parts of the series here.
Vijay Rapaka, Ph.D., Director of Global Grower Operations and Research, Smithers-Oasis/Oasis Grower Solutions: “At the end of the day, we are more interested in providing the right solution to the grower. If somebody has a demand, if there’s a problem that we can solve, we’re all for it. So, we offer a lot of customization in terms of pH and starter charges, as well as blends in our non-engineered substrates, plus sizes and tray options. We even developed an engineered hydroponic substrate line that has options tailored to different climates, crops and growing systems. Customization at the propagation level is becoming more and more popular. It’s very common in Europe. They have a New Guinea impatiens blend. They have a geranium blend. Because the young plant production footprint is so small and done in centralized rooting stations, you have these specialized locations and specialized blends. We’re seeing similar things here, where there is a lot more customization for top-tier crops especially. Incorporation of fertilizers, pH and additives — we’re seeing more and more of that. However, it does seem to be very regional. We see few requests from the Northeast, for example, but the Southeast has more and more questions about that.”
Jennifer Neujahr, Senior Director, Global Business Development Horticulture, Profile Products LLC: “Suppliers today must deliver crop-specific solutions: blueberries (low pH), orchids (bark-heavy blends), lightweight propagation mixes. The winners will combine supply-chain flexibility with crop culture precision. As I often tell my team, the company that understands labor, climate, and transportation will win. These three variables determine whether an opportunity is captured or lost.”
Josh Peoples, Sun Gro: “One of our focuses is making sure, from a operational standpoint, that we continue to be heavily invested in modernizing our infrastructure and the capabilities, not only on the front end (mixing, packaging, and distribution), but also on the back end (order processing) and making it more turnkey for all of our growers.”
Daniel Norden, Director Technical Development, Profile Products LLC: “In North America, we take a consultative approach to auditing customer recipes to meet the performance needs of the customer. This involves auditing the physical and chemical properties of current recipes and then recommending modifications to help adapt. In North America, the trend for ornamental crops is to move away from crop-specific recipes in favor of recipes that target specific chemical or physical properties; for example, low, standard, or high pH mixes or wet/dry mixes. Research conducted on controlled release fertilizers in growing media has demonstrated crops can be grown more efficiently compared with liquid feed and improving the grower’s and consumer’s experience.”
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