Potting & Soil Mixes

Black Gold Potting Soil: What's in It and What It's For

Scroll for more →

Black Gold is a potting soil brand made by Sun Gro Horticulture. Like most bagged potting products, it's soilless: built from peat moss or coir plus amendments, not mineral garden soil, and the line splits into a few different formulations depending on what you're growing.

What's actually in it

Sun Gro's own description of the Black Gold line lists Canadian sphagnum peat moss, coir, perlite, pumice, bark, compost, earthworm castings and mycorrhizae as the ingredients used across its products — the exact blend varies by which specific mix you buy. The flagship Natural & Organic Potting Mix is marketed as organic and natural, and is built for containers and raised beds.

The product line, not just one bag

Black Gold isn't a single formula — it's a line, and picking the right one matters more than picking the brand:

• Natural & Organic Potting Mix — the general-purpose option, suited to annuals, perennials, vegetables, herbs and houseplants.
• Seedling Mix — a separate, finer formulation for starting seeds and rooting cuttings, not for established plants.
• Specialty mixes — African violet, orchid, and succulent & cactus formulations, each built for that plant group's specific drainage and moisture needs.

Using the general potting mix for a succulent, or the seedling mix for a mature houseplant, works against the plant instead of for it — match the formulation to what you're actually growing.

A bagged potting mix suited to your specific plant type is worth choosing by formulation, not just by brand name, for exactly this reason.

Is it worth choosing over another brand?

There's no independent, verified performance comparison available here, so this page won't claim Black Gold outperforms other soilless mixes — the ingredient list (peat or coir plus perlite, pumice, bark, compost and earthworm castings) is a fairly standard construction for a quality bagged mix, similar in concept to other established potting soil brands. The specific formulation matched to your plant matters more than the brand on the bag.

A note on sourcing: the facts above come from Sun Gro Horticulture's own brand page. Prices, current package sizes and retailer availability are intentionally left off this page since they weren't part of that source and shouldn't be guessed.