Black Gold Seedling Mix, 8 quart

I love this stuff. I used to use Coast of Maine seed starting mix but it changed this year and has become chunky and horribly hydrophobic. Now I use Black Gold and it takes bottom watering 5-10 min (depending on the size of cells you’re using) to saturate vs the hours I was stuck waiting around for CoM to rehydrate.A word of advice: set a timer to what it takes to saturate 50% of your cell/container/etc or it will become too saturated. In about a hour it will have soaked through the whole cell. For me that’s 4-5min. The wetting agent in here works ridiculously well. I have found that sometimes I need to add more perlite because the wetting agent works so well + holds on to moisture a little too much. My peppers and tomatoes have struggled in it, so I started adding perlite for them.Once you get the hang of it, works absolutely wonderful. Great growth. Quality mix. Love the wetting agent (though it takes some time to get used to).Watch the price on Amazon sometimes it drops really low and I can scoop up a bunch of bags!

I used this and it's terrible for starting seedsLost 15 expensive seeds I'll never use it again.It holds far too much water.

The product came fresh and slightly moist.

After a long and really cold winter, I am happy to have a good product like this to start my new flower and veggie seeds indoors!

I’m a beginner to growing and after research I decided on this starter soil to sow my hot pepper and basil seeds. I have a greenhouse type cell tray with led lights and a heating mat. This soil was easy to wet and has a perfect consistency to retain moisture, yet stay gentle enough for young seeds to sprout. With the combination of my cell setup and this soil, my basil seeds have sprouted after TWO days, when the packets say to expect 7-14. I’m literally watching them grow before my eyes, noticing new sprouts over the course of mere hours. Peppers have a longer germination time than basil so I definitely wouldn’t expect to see them yet, but these are obviously ideal conditions for seeds and I certainly give this soil due credit. I won’t buy anything else here on out for starting my seeds!

Black Gold is strictly for seedlings. It would not work for regular potting mix because it is so finely granulated to protect the tiny seeds it is designed to nurture, It does not have the coarse, airy texture that grown plant roots need to breathe. Beautiful fine soil to maximize tiny roots’ contact with soil and water rather than having teensy-weensy developing roots reaching out for moisture or life supporting nutrients, only to be parched in a big pocket within the coatse texture of regular potting mix. Both types—regular coatse pottong mix and seedling potting mix—are needed in gardening because they’re not interchangeable.

I used this to start 36 tomato plants, 12 eggplants, 12 Bell Pepper plants, 12 Poblano Chilis and 12 Anaheim Chilis. I was surprised that all but 2 of the seeds sprouted. Luckily I have enough room for all these plants, as I transplanted them a couple of weeks ago and all have survived and thrived. Looks like I'll be canning and freezing lots of produce in a few months! This is the second year using this brand of seed starting mix and it's the only one I'll use from now on.

Was looking for something that would absorb the water quickly when prepping the soil. A lot of brands, like Jiffy, take a long time to do just that when mixing, this product is the best I've come across, very fast water absorption. I also wanted something with little to no non-composted debris like sticks, a lot of brands, like Jiffy, are full of these unwanted sticks, this product is the best I've come across that is basically pure soil. It looks and smells great and did a wonderful job germinating the seeds.