The scientists at Sunshine Advanced formulated their growing media to take guesswork out of mixing your own wet and dry mix. Ultra Coir is created to retain moisture while Super Hydro features an highly aerated, well drained media. The perfect choice for your crop depends on how much moisture you wish to retain in the root zone.

Coir isn’t new to the hydro world where it became valued for fibrous texture that stands up against compaction. This material can be highly variable depending on where it originates. In the past you had to buy and mix it yourself for the ideal custom blend. At Sunshine Advanced, Ultra Coir uses only the finest coir blended with peat and coarse perlite, lime, mycorrhizae and organic fertilizer to get your seedlings off to a vigorous start. This mix is ideal for dry climates where water conservation and a consistent level of moisture in the root zone can present a two-fold challenge. The accelerated absorption and water holding capacity makes this material the vital component that distinguishes Ultra Coir from the rest of our products.

Where growing conditions are moist, the goal is to protect against problems due to overly saturated media. Here the porosity of the mix is paramount, yet it must also be equally absorptive when moisture is applied. Though these qualities may seem mutually exclusive, Sunshine Advanced balanced Super Hydro to both absorb and release water to prevent anaerobic conditions that can quickly kill actively growing roots.

Super Hydro is designed with our highest percentage of coarse perlite plus aged, fine bark and peat. These exact proportions maintain plenty of oxygen in the root zone while retaining even moisture content. With addition of microbes from worm castings and a wetting agent that ensures your media is adequately absorbent, Super Hydro holds moisture and air until your plants need them.

Each grower fine tunes his growing media to better serve the size and location of a hydroponic garden. Where air circulation is limited, the value of aeration from Super Hydro will help to prevent undesirable fungi, bacteria and other pathogens related to anaerobic conditions. For a greenhouse or outdoor growing conditions in the west, Ultra Coir prevents dehydration that can slow and sometimes even stop growth.

Sunshine Advanced soil scientists are devoted to creating media suited to a wide range of conditions. They eliminate the time consuming process of fine tuning your own recipe. Mycorhizzae ensures the symbiotic organisms boost plant performance. Our own organic fertilizer maintains fertility over those vital first weeks of life.

When it comes to a grower’s right to choose, Sunshine Advanced offers the perfect blend tailored to every site.

Obtaining OMRI listing for any product isn’t easy. That’s why the soil scientists at Sun Gro Horticulture are so proud to announce that all four of our Sunshine Advanced grow mixes are now OMRI Listed.

OMRI is the Organic Materials Review Institute, a trusted non-profit organization that independently verifies if a product labeled as organic really is organic and can be used for organic production. OMRI uses the U.S. organic standards established by the USDA National Organic Program to evaluate a product and its material origins. These are the standards that farmers must follow to label their produce as certified organic.

This seal is the result of a rigorous testing process which analyzes all materials used in organic crop production to ensure they are on the Permitted Substances List. Once accepted, this hydroponic media becomes part of the OMRI Products List© so that growers and consumers alike can verify the purity of this product. The presence of the OMRI seal on the bag provides at-a-glance verification that these retail products can be used for cultivating an organic crop.

Now Sunshine Advanced Mix #4, Rainforest Blend, Ultra Coir and Super Hydro are all individually OMRI listed. Each of these blends creates an ideal environment for mycorhizzae, added to ensure the presence of beneficial microbes to benefit young and further developed hydroponic plants. Such organisms are sensitive to toxins, so their presence ensures that all four blends offer both ideal rooting media and the natural microbes that improve rooting strength and disease resistance. Such organisms are hyper-sensitive to chemicals and require a truly organic media to thrive.

Choosing a soilless media for your hydroponic garden can be a real challenge when there are just a few small differences from one brand to another. But when it comes to the end game of a healthy mature crop, these small differences can have a big impact on plant performance. It pays to note the details because in them lies the key to what’s best for your plants, their longevity, vigor and overall health.

To simplify hydroponic gardening, you need soilless media that is complete from day one. That ensures that every seedling is well nourished from the start. This is why Sunshine Advanced Rain Forest Blend includes an organic nutrient package that boosts performance in these early weeks when plants are just getting started.

Other growing mixes often lack this early life nutrition, forcing you to add fertilizer for a more vigorous start. That is always risky because tender seedlings can be badly damaged by too high a nutrient load at the start of life. By the time you see the signs of this deficiency or toxicity, it’s too late.

Sunshine Advanced Rain Forest Blend is uniquely fortified with mycorrhizae, the most important soil borne organism to plant life. Our soil scientists have integrated these living organisms into the mix so they are well established when plants arrive. Putting these microbes in direct contact with young roots allows them to enter through the root hairs to live symbiotically within each plant. It is well known those plants with such a relationship maintain a healthier immune system, root better, reach further into the soil and take up even more nutrients.

Despite the high concentrations of fishing industry byproducts in other soilless media, mycorhizzae are absent altogether. This eliminates the potential for symbiosis between mycorhizzae and your plants, thus slowing development, reducing disease resistance and inhibiting a truly maximized root system.

Rain Forest Blend earns its fertility from earthworm castings, humic acid, kelp and alfalfa meal, which yields readily available nitrogen. Fishing byproducts may contribute nitrogen to other products, but often the nutrients are not readily available because it’s in the ammonium nitrogen form. While this form is taken up by plants, they must use vital growth energy to change it to nitrate nitrogen before it becomes beneficial. This extra work load slows plant growth. Sunshine Advanced Rain Forest Blend contains enough kelp to offer the same marine nutrient load without problem ammonia build up and the ever present threat of unrecognized sea salt accumulations.

Sunshine Advanced Rain Forest Blend is carefully crafted to ensure excellent drainage both early and late in the process. As organic matter breaks down, other bark based media will not hold its structure risking compaction that cuts off vital oxygen from hard working roots. To maximize the benefits of an adventurous root system fortified with mycorhizzae, media must remain porous to guarantee all nutrients reach every inch of root zone. With generous perlite and our highest percentage of aged fir bark, there is little chance growth will slow late in the vegetative process as plants struggle to thrive in media that is growing more dense by the day.

Finally, the simplicity of using Sunshine Advanced Rain Forest Blend eliminates the need to add peat so you can use it as is. Our two step system of Plant Fuel nutrition takes the guess work out of growing plants hydroponically. Keep it simple so the microbes and their plant hosts have what they need when they need it. Above all, know that Rain Forest Blend is complete from day one, as designed by the diligent soil scientists who put their name and reputation behind development and extensive testing of every Sunshine Advanced product.