Growing Media Suppliers Offering Both Products and Resources
November 27, 2021 
Jiffy Flexistart
The growing media community is innovating quickly to keep up with evolving markets in the controlled-environment industry. At the same time, many of them offer online tools and other resources to help you produce high-quality plants.
We reached out to several of these companies to learn more. Here’s what they had to say.
What’s the latest innovation your company is working on or has recently introduced?
ASB Greenworld: Some the latest innovations that our company has introduced in our media is the availability of wood fiber as an ingredient in media. Wood fiber mixes can have better physical properties and create better assurance of supply being available.
Berger: Innovation is a priority at Berger. With our new, state-of-the-art research greenhouse, we have a lot in the pipeline right now. We are currently developing and fine-tuning many products for well-established markets such as floriculture, but also for emerging markets such as leafy greens. We are very excited with all the data we are collecting from these ground-breaking studies. Innovation in not limited to our R&D department, though. We have also recently opened a brand new, high-tech growing media factory in Oakbank, Manitoba. The meticulous design was years in the making and flawlessly executed by our dedicated engineering team, during a pandemic nonetheless. We are extremely happy to have this additional manufacturing site to help us answer the ever-growing demand for our high-quality growing media.
Kekkila-BVB: Our BVB Grow Squares and Strawberry Boards are dry compressed growing media slabs that can perfectly fit square pots that are commonly used for example for growing medicinal cannabis or long containers used in strawberry cultivation. The dry compressed boards are handy because they are light and small, so they are easy to store and logistically smart. With these types of boards, it is easy to estimate the amount of growing media needed because one square or board is needed per container. Filling the pots and expanding the product is also quick, clean, and simple. What makes them unique is that as they are peat-based which means that they have a high water-holding capacity, good water distribution, and an excellent nutrient and pH buffer when compared to similar products made out of coconut coir.
Grodan: Our most recent innovation is binding technologies that distribute water within the plant. These improvements allow for better water holding and the ability to refresh the nutrient solution and manage water content, so the grower can be more confident in uniformity and crop steering.
Harvest Hero, a division of Dicalite Management Group: While horticultural soil media has been around for decades, Harvest Hero’s teams of agronomists, engineers, and operations personnel put their industry experience and expertise to the test to challenge the status quo in soil media. We’ve partnered with leading horticultural institutions like North Carolina State University to test the efficacy of a nutrient-coated horticultural perlite particle. Positive results from internal and external testing led our team to develop the first fertilizer coated horticultural perlite product on the market today. In fact, our patent-pending Enhanced Perlite Mix is recognized by states’ departments of Food and Agriculture as both a fertilizer and a soil amendment/growing medium. We’ve added one more component to our flagship product: Natural Diatomaceous Earth (DE). DE, now recognized by the American Association of Plant Food Control Officials (AAPFCO) as a beneficial plant substance, rounds the 3-in-1 formula with the addition of soluble silicon. The inclusion of Diatomaceous Earth fortifies plants cell walls, adding greater resilience to stress conditions such as drought or water logging.
Jiffy Group: Jiffy’s introduction of Flexistart, a stabilized media, will help change the way growers look at automation. This innovative media produced in the Netherlands allows growers to improve efficiencies with the newest generation of automated equipment available for today’s growers. The select line of mixes is available in several pH ranges and starter charges to help growers reduce labor costs, and improve the general quality of their plants.
Klasmann-Deilmann Americas: TerraAktiv Plus is a substrate component based on GWC (green waste compost), GreenFibre (wood fiber), and microorganism inoculants to improve plant health and reduce the use of pesticides. Log & Solve is a digital platform to organize the records of crop data, like analysis, fertilization, irrigation, sensors, etc. This data can then be shared among growers within the same organization and provides the data base for future production planning.
Profile Products: As the parent company of HydraFiber, we continue to provide new solutions to growers to help them integrate HydraFiber into their growing media program. Our new HydraFiber Coir blocks provide an OMRI Listed solution that combines coir pith with HydraFiber. It opens through most existing coir equipment; it can be used as a stand-alone mix or can be further blended with other growing media components and additives. With the difficulties of finding freight, this product is gaining traction quickly as you can get roughly 40% more yield out of a container compared to your standard straight coir container.
Sakata Solutions: We offer a perlite-free option for our most popular mixes. Some end users prefer to have a mix that is completely biodegradable and do not want the perlite particles remaining in the final soil. This includes landscapers and home gardeners as well as any growers that might be discarding the growing media after harvesting a crop. By adjusting the particle size of the peat in the mix, we can offer the same physical properties as our standard mixes with perlite.
What resource(s) can you offer for growers to make the best use of their media?
ASB Greenworld: The best resources that we can offer is our technical support and education. The right media depends on so many issues, such as the plant, size of the container, water being used in production, targeted size of the finished product/plant, use of the plant, local climate, growing season, and many more.
Berger: We offer analytical services to our customers. Our technical services team is also available to help growers interpret the results. Moreover, our team of grower advisors is available to help troubleshoot as well as answer any and all questions they may have, whether related to the soil or not. They can help select the right growing media and set up trials to make sure it truly fits growers’ needs. The grower advisors will also support you while you make the transition and adapt your practices. We have a lot of technical tools and literature available on our website, and we are constantly adding new stuff.
Kekkila-BVB: As a global leader in the production of growing media, we strongly believe in sharing our knowledge and resources to benefit growers all over the world. We are able to stay on the cutting edge of horticultural R&D because we work closely with the top horticultural research centers and universities globally. It is important for us to combine the local growing practices with our knowledge from a global scale to ensure the best products and performance for our customers. We offer tailored blends and technical advice based on the grower’s cultivation methods and needs. In addition to this specialized advice, our customers are also entitled to attend our BVB College. As part of the BVB College, growers are provided with a safe, professional environment to network and share knowledge. Our experts provide masterclasses about plant physiology, pH, and nutrients, to enable growers to achieve the best possible results. The BVB College is offered in two ways: as a fully digital experience or as an on-site experience where growers can actually visit our factories, greenhouses, and centers of horticultural importance. This way we hope to grow together with our customers and partners in the industry.
Harvest Hero, a division of Dicalite Management Group: To get the most benefit from your artificial media, be sure to store product in a sealed, closed container. You can use the original package if it is still sealable after opening. Be sure to keep media dry before use. Wet media will begin to decompose and lose fertility along with creating a moldy environment for your freshly planted specimens.
Jiffy Group: Jiffy has a large portfolio of raw materials that can be used in production to produce top quality plants. Our selection of peat, coir, fertilizer and other items allow us to replicate mixes across our production portfolio. As an innovative company, Jiffy’s sales team works hand in hand with growers to ensure we are selecting the right mix for their crops. Having a reliable partner creates a winning team and ensure a grower’s success.
Klasmann-Deilmann Americas: Klasmann provides a Technical Services team with support from the U.S. and Europe. Our main lab in Germany, Technikum is equipped with blocking line, potting machines, tray fillers, etc., to test substrates under practical conditions. We also have a physical properties lab which uses innovative techniques like WOK (Dutch procedure to test water uptake characteristics), press pot stability testing, raw material quality control, etc. All our products are produced under RHP guidelines and certification. We produce KD Academy, which is a training program to keep customers updated about the latest innovations and developments from the company. We also produce all our raw materials in-house including coco supply from India and Sri Lanka, Greenfibre(wood fiber) production from our own forests, TerraActiv compost production, and perlite. This helps to ensure the consistent quality of all the components going into our substrates.
Premier Tech Horticulture: We have a technical support team called our Grower Services team that works with growers to achieve the best results with our PRO-MIX Professional growing media products. This is a knowledgeable team that assists growers in the use of the various products we offer and assist growers in adjusting and making cultural adjustments ranging from fertility programs, fertilizer selection, water quality determination, and laboratory testing. We also have important technical support materials available on our website as a valuable resource for growers to access. This includes technical tips for plant culture, understand water quality and fertilizers, and understanding the benefits of active ingredients.
Profile Products: Since we brought HydraFiber to market six years ago, we’ve learned a lot about how to help our customers optimize their HydraFiber experience by closely collaborating with independent labs, universities, and our customers themselves. As a result, we offer our customers who start with HydraFiber ‘Culture Clinics’ which are a wide variety of training resources for growers, their growing staff, maintenance, and production teams. We feel that these training resources have provided key information to new customers to help them not just learn about HydraFiber, but also some of the basics related to growing media. We also continue to add resources to our website, Hydrafiber.com and try to provide webinars regularly to the industry on specific topics.
Sakata Solutions: We offer free lab analysis for our growers to help them make the best choices as they evaluate the Sakata Solutions media. Additionally, we have technical advisors to assist with any growing media questions or concerns and an experienced sales team in all aspects of greenhouse and nursery growing.
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