Plant Magic - 70/30 Supreme (40L) (70% Coco, 30% Perlite)

Every other 70/30 on this page will tell you, with great confidence, that it is 70% coco and 30% perlite. This is true in the way that saying a car is "mostly metal" is true. It tells you almost nothing useful. Plant Magic 70/30 Supreme is, in fact, 70% coco, 15% fytocell, and 15% perlite — three ingredients doing three different jobs, rather than one ingredient doing a job twice as hard. Nobody puts this on the label because "70/15/15" doesn't roll off the tongue. We're putting it here because it's the actual reason this stuff works better than the maths suggests.

Here is the uncomfortable truth about growing media: almost nobody chooses it rationally. You look at the bag, you look at the price, you assume "coco is coco." But the difference between an average coco mix and a good one isn't visible until three weeks in, when one set of roots is thick and white and the other is sulking. Plant Magic tested this obsessively on their own in-house grows before selling a single bag — which is, frankly, more diligence than most decisions in life get.

Why the Extra Ingredient Matters

Perlite is popcorn made of volcanic glass — expanded, full of air pockets, brilliant at drainage, hopeless at holding onto anything. Fytocell is the ingredient nobody advertises because it's less photogenic: an open-cell, sponge-like organic material that does the opposite job — it grabs water and nutrients and holds them exactly where the roots can find them. Put perlite alone in a substrate and you get excellent drainage and a plant that dries out if you look away for a day. Put fytocell alone in and you risk waterlogging. Use both, in a 15/15 split against 70% buffered coco, and you get a substrate that drains fast and forgives you for being a day late with the watering can. That's not a compromise. That's the entire point of blending three things instead of two.

A Word on Fungus Gnats, Since Nobody Else Will Tell You

Fungus gnats do not appear from nowhere. They breed in decaying organic matter, which is precisely what standard peat compost is made of. Coco coir is sterile and inert, so switching to it doesn't repel gnats so much as starve them out before they arrive — which is a more honest way of solving a pest problem than anything sold in a spray bottle.

There is also a persistent, almost universal habit among houseplant owners: overwatering. Not through carelessness, exactly, but through anxiety — the plant looks sad, so the instinct is to give it more of the thing it appears to be short of. In standard compost this suffocates roots in dense, airless mud. In this substrate it is remarkably difficult to do, because the fytocell and perlite forcibly hold oxygen pockets open even when the whole thing is saturated. The plant is, in effect, protected from its owner's good intentions.

And on the matter of this being unfertilised: treat that as a feature, not an oversight. A bag with fertiliser already mixed in is a bag where you don't know what your plant has already eaten, which is a bad starting position for anyone feeding an expensive, temperamental Aroid liquid nutrients by the drop. Plant Magic 70/30 Supreme is a blank canvas in the proper sense — not empty because something was left out, but empty on purpose, so you can put in exactly what you intend.

Which plants this actually suits — rather than the vague "houseplants" every bag claims to be for: variegated Monstera (Albo, Thai Constellation) and rare Philodendron (Pink Princess, Verrucosum), which grow epiphytically in nature and treat aggressive root aeration as non-negotiable; Alocasia (Frydek, Polly, Black Velvet), Hoya, Syngonium, Scindapsus, and Anthuriums, all of which share the same demand. Calathea, Maranta, and Stromanthe — plants with a reputation for sulking regardless of what you do — tend to do noticeably better here, because they want constant, even moisture without ever quite sitting in it, which is exactly what the fytocell is for. It is also, unglamorously, an excellent medium for unrooted nodes and fresh cuttings, which need sterile, oxygenated moisture to root in rather than rot in.

Key Features & Benefits:

• 70% Buffered Coco Coir: Sourced from India's largest coir producer, buffered with a calcium-magnesium solution to strip the natural excess salts out. This leaves you a genuinely low-EC "blank canvas" — you decide what your plants eat, not the bag.
• 15% Fytocell: The unglamorous hero. Absorbs and retains water and nutrients like a sponge, giving roots a reliable buffer between waterings instead of a cliff-edge.
• 15% Perlite: Improves aeration and drainage dramatically, reducing the risk of root diseases like pythium — the cost being you'll water slightly more often than with a plain coco mix. Faster, larger growth tends to make up for the inconvenience.
• Rapid Root Development: The light, fibrous texture keeps oxygen at the root zone, which matters more than almost anything else you'll read on this page, and is mentioned least in most marketing.

One honest piece of admin before you buy: an unfertilised blank canvas needs paint. Plant Magic Coco A&B is the obvious, same-brand pairing — a two-part feed built for exactly this substrate, which saves you the trouble of guessing whether a stranger's nutrient line was calibrated for it.

Available Sizes:

Sample, 1L, 5L, 10L, 20L, and 40L. Start small if you're the sceptical type — we'd rather you tested it on one plant and came back for the 40L than took our word for it and didn't.

Technical Specifications:

• Composition: 70% Buffered Coco Coir / 15% Fytocell / 15% Perlite
• EC Value: Low (buffered, blank-canvas base)
• Media Type: Soil-less, multi-component growing substrate
• Best Suited For: All coco-based hydroponic and pot-based growing systems, particularly where consistent moisture buffering matters

Most growing media asks you to choose between drainage and water retention, as though it were an either/or decision, like choosing a political party. Plant Magic 70/30 Supreme's answer is, politely, that you shouldn't have to. That's the whole pitch.