Cocogarden Organic Potting Soil Mix Review

This is a hobbyist gardener's review of the Cocogarden Organic Potting Soil Mix available online via Cocogarden's Amazon India retail store. 

Cocogarden Organic Potting Soil Mix - 4.5 Kg Bag

I ordered the 4.5 kg bag, and upon opening the package, the net weight displayed was 4.5 kgs. Unlike a few other brands that have problems with proper weight measures, Cocorgarden isn't cheating you when it comes to the quantity of soil you're paying for.

Cocogarden Organic Potting Soil Mix - 4.5 Kg

You can also notice the moisture content in the bag if you look closely. This was my second time using a readymade soil mix, and from what I've read and understood, the soil should be light, fluffy, and dry. This organic potting mix is soft and fluffy but neither dry nor wet. It was moist.

You can see how it looks in seedling trays here.

Cocogarden Potting Soil Mix in Seedling Trays

This is after a good sprinkling of water. If it looks a bit on the dry side, it was. And this would turn out to be a major problem later. I'd also made my own potting mix with the fertile garden soil from our backyard with 20% cocopeat and 20% vermicompost. Here's how moist my mix stayed despite 37 °C+ temperatures during the day.  

Homemade Potting Soil Mix

And here's how dry the Cocogarden potting soil mix tends to get despite frequent watering. Some clods were so dry, they had a sand-like texture, not conducive to growing most plants.

Drying Potting Soil Mix

Seedlings potted in my homemade potting soil thrived. Those in the readymade potting soil mix by Cocogarden struggled to grow. The seedlings that sprouted were weak, withered, and died after a week or two.

Weak and Droopy Seedlings

Even in summer temperatures, other seedlings planted in my homemade potting soil mix fared much better.

Healthy Marigold Seedlings In Homemade Potting Soil Mix

After two months of observing these seedlings grow, wither, and die, one can safely conclude that the Cocogarden Organic Potting Soil Mix isn't worth it. 

I've mentioned using Ugaao's Potting Soil Mix in the past. I had barely spent any time maintaining those fenugreek and coriander seedlings, yet my harvest was healthy and rich. Go for Ugaoo if you must buy a readymade potting soil mix, especially if you're planting in harsh Indian summers. 

Making your own potting soil mix would be cheaper if you have fertile garden soil handy. You can watch Dr. Surja Prakash Agarwal's Best Potting Soil Mix video to learn more about other ingredients you can include in your mix. His channel is a treasure trove of helpful information and quick tips for Indian gardeners. 

Once I was done with this planting phase, I reused the Cocogarden potting soil mix again - sometimes, I am a slow learner. This time, I added cocopeat and vermicompost to the mix, in addition to watering it with liquid seaweed fertilizer. Nothing sprouted in this mixture, not a single seed except a few wild weeds. Lesson learned!

This product has an average rating of 4.2 stars out of 5 with close to 1000 ratings on Amazon. Perhaps, my experience is a one-off case with a bad batch of potting mix delivered to me. If your experience differs, let me know in the comments. We can discuss what I could have done differently and made it work better for my seeds. 

Feel free to comment on my writing style, diction, and prose, as this is also an exercise in writing a few words every day to hone my skills as a Content Writer.

Thank you for reading. Hope you find this review helpful and avoid wasting your money and time on a less than mediocre product.