Selecting the right substrate is fundamental to crop success. Beyond physical properties such as water holding and porosity, the chemical behavior of a substrate determines how nutrients are stored, exchanged, and delivered to plants. A central property in this context is cation exchange capacity (CEC), which is the measure of how many positively charged ions a medium can adsorb and release. CEC is quantified...

In today’s blog post, we will be discussing pros and cons of various growing methods and media types, as they apply to commercial production of high value horticultural crops. Although there are nearly infinite ways to grow plants, we will only focus on the more popular methods that are often employed by large scale operations and methods that are popular in today’s production environments....