Anybody whose done any amount of gardening or has houseplants is probably familiar with peat. Though its harvest is destructive to the unique peat bog environments it forms
There's a huge push to go peat-free, and I agree 95%.
There are just a few uses for peat that don't have an alternative. I mention this to fellow gardeners because if you go 100% peat-free, you'll end up with an expensive disaster and, out of frustration, may go back to peat entirely.
I think it's not productive to ignore the small corner cases where peat is almost a requirement.
Say more? I've heard coconut coir can sometimes contain salt and has less nutrients but that can be fixed by buying properly processed coir and mixing in something like finished compost. What's irreplaceable about peat?
My observation: Some starts just seem to need peat during germination, and that's sort of a hard requirement. While a lot of things just need better-draining soil (Coir, perlite, etc.), some very slow-germinating but delicate things just don't work well at all without peat. By the time they're starting to sprout, the peat-free alternatives are full of algae and basically rotting.
Thankfully, the use cases are small - I have 20lbs of peat, and it's seen me through about four years and is still half full.
Comments
Anybody whose done any amount of gardening or has houseplants is probably familiar with peat. Though its harvest is destructive to the unique peat bog environments it forms
There's a huge push to go peat-free, and I agree 95%.
There are just a few uses for peat that don't have an alternative. I mention this to fellow gardeners because if you go 100% peat-free, you'll end up with an expensive disaster and, out of frustration, may go back to peat entirely.
I think it's not productive to ignore the small corner cases where peat is almost a requirement.
Say more? I've heard coconut coir can sometimes contain salt and has less nutrients but that can be fixed by buying properly processed coir and mixing in something like finished compost. What's irreplaceable about peat?
My observation: Some starts just seem to need peat during germination, and that's sort of a hard requirement. While a lot of things just need better-draining soil (Coir, perlite, etc.), some very slow-germinating but delicate things just don't work well at all without peat. By the time they're starting to sprout, the peat-free alternatives are full of algae and basically rotting.
Thankfully, the use cases are small - I have 20lbs of peat, and it's seen me through about four years and is still half full.