Peat......

Over the years I have written multiple posts and blogs on the importance of going peat free and so I thought I would put them all here, in no particular order, so that it's all in one place.

I have been advocating for peat free compost and a ban on peat based compost for well over a decade. Having transitioned a large, production nursery to peat free back in my nursery production manager days, and set up a peat free herb nursery, I will constantly advocate that a peat free future is not only possible, but actually ought to have been achieved by now.

So I’ll attach previous writing below and no doubt there will be more…….

Plugs, Peat and Propaganda-First published April 2022 at www.thecommunitygarden.co.uk

Last week again the Horticultural Trades Association said, again, that a ban on peat use in horticulture would be disastrous for the horticulture industry, and added into that that it could also risk food security. which made my ears perk up as that felt like an inflammatory comment. My spidey sense told me it was likely propaganda but I needed to do some research and look into what they meant.

Now it’s zero surprise to anyone I hope that lots of plants that end up in our garden centres start off life as plug plants, which are grown onto firstly 9cm and then 1-3 lite pot sizes. Indeed gardeners can buy plugs from merchants like Thompson and Morgan and Sarah Raven. Plug production is highly mechanised, as is any potting production today, and there will be no surprise that potting machines are set up to manage a specific type of compost. There is nothing to say that needs to be peat based, but it does need to be free flowing and free of pieces of wood and sticks because they are likely, and do, create blockages in the machinery. As we are all aware peat free compost that is made from green waste is often a bit woody and whilst there is nothing wrong with that as what can be described as an end user, it is frustrating on nurseries as it slows work down when machines get clogged.

However, and this is an important point, peat based composts also often clog up machinery. In fact having thought about this I began to recall some of the things we found in peat based composts on nurseries prior to turning peat free, and they include glass, plastic, string and twine amongst other things, all of which clog up any type of compost hopper/potting machinery.

But let’s get back to plugs. And we can look at this statment from the HTA with new eyes this week, as Tesco announced peat free bedding and Delfland Organics, an enormous plug supplier to the agricultural trade, announced all their plugs would be peat free, and in both cases, with immediate effect, proving that it can be done.

Plugs are great things. They allow for a huge amount of material to be propagated in a very small space, using relatively small amounts of growing medium, and cuttings and seeds grow on particularly well in plugs that have been carefully designed to allow root and top growth to be at an optimal when the plugs are fully rooted out and ready to grow on. They are efficient and whilst gardeners at home may not focus on efficiency that allow plants to be grown fast, and therefore the end price is better to the consumer. It also means that nurseries can buy plugs of various sizes to grow on, and not have to undertake the propagation of the stock but just grow it on. Whilst this might seem a bit like cheating to some, it’s actually often the best way for nurseries with limited space to grow stock. Distributing plugs is also far less work as you can get literally thousands of plants into one delivery. Great for the supplier but somewhat daunting for the nursery facing a delivery of thousands of tiny plants……

But, I was confused by the comments about food security until I chatted to a farmer pal, about how plugs are used in field scale farming. In order to avoid use of pesticides and herbicides brassica and salad plugs in particular, grown onto a specific size will grow on fast, outcompeting the weeds and coping with a hit from slugs and flea beetle and holding back any need to spray. Presumably what was meant by the HTA was that a ban would stop plug production, but my guess is that as Delfland Organics have started to grow peat free, that threat is actually untrue, and what we need to ensure is that there is a stable product available for plug growers to use. This is likely to rely on coir I would imagine, mixed with a green waste compost and likely needing to be sieved for plug production. Certainly those of us who grow on a market gardening scale grow what are technically our own plugs in modules each year and thus far in the last twelve months a mix of our own made compost with coir is the best potting and seed sowing compost we can find that is affordable. So yet again all of this goes back to ensuring that there is enough green waste in the system, and that it is composted well and available to horticulture and agriculture at an affordable cost.

With Peat Free April in full swing it’s easy to focus on what hasn’t been done, but actually when the large organisations such as Tesco, who are the largest supplier of bedding plants in the UK apparently, and Delfland prove it’s perfectly possible to be peat free, and presumably have put their money into finding ways to ensure they can be peat free, it’s astounding that we are even still having the conversation. In fact in reality it’s making the loud voices in the corner look a little silly, not unlike th uncle at a wedding reception still dancing like it is the 1970s whilst all around him giggle and prove it’s not.To quote Jessica Yellin, a US based news broadcaster, we need to make sure we listen to the news and not the noise……

Thoughts on a practical, peat free future-First published December 2021

Whilst it is great to see the consultation published about banning peat for horticultural use, we are likely all aware of the beginnings of a backlash from certain parts of the industry. Whilst sad, it’s an inevitability, and so rather than focusing on the negative I thought it might be a good idea to talk about my experiences of turning nurseries from conventional, peat based compost, over to peat free compost. This was a process I did twice in the south east, firstly with the large, 50+ acre nursery I ran and then on a smaller scale on my own small herb growing nursery. i will share both as they were very different beasts although they did share some basics that need talking into account. Of course I still grow using entirely peat free compost and have done now for well over a decade and I would never consider going back to peat, which will not surprise anyone. But I do have to add to that. As with any growing media, there is the good, the bad and the indifferent, but there are lots of ways to make these composts work for all, unless they are truly bad……

I will start by saying that with all composts there is a difference in quality, and I have had some nightmares with both peat based and peat free. In particular I recall on ton consignment from a very large manufacturer which was so poor we had to repot every single plant we had used it for, and even the rep admitted it was, and I quote, ‘shit”. Equally the year before last 4 tons of peat free came to us at Edible Bristol from a supplier who had not checked for aminopyralid and that caused more damage than I even care to remember. We learn, or we should learn, from these things and I will just say here and now, if this happens to you, whether in a professional or home based setting, you must complain and demand they take back a sample for testing and replace the product. If you’re ordering tons every other month, you need not fear-they will replace!

With peat free composts there are a huge variety of materials used, from coir to wood chip, bracken and sheepswool, green waste, food waste, and wood waste. The list is long and most likely getting longer. Because of this the management of your growing needs to be tempered to the ingredients. Something that is coir based will dry out much faster than something wool based as an example. This means that when you use a new product to you there is a need for experimentation and an understanding that the growing media will not behave the same way as previously used peat based media. Peat’s power is water retention although once it’s dry it’s not that simple to rehydrate, in exactly the sam way as once a peat bog is dried out for cutting it takes considerable skill and knowledge and resources to rewet it.

When we turned the large nursery over to peat free we were also doing an organic conversion and we had allowed ourselves years to do that. In reality it took , and moving over to peat free was one of the first steps, along with creating wildlife friendly habitats and moving over to compost teas rather than chemical fertilisers. we did the conversion fro a point in time, and plant group by plant group, beginning with our herbaceous perennial stock and then moving on to small shrubs and climbers, then larger shrubs and small trees and then large shrubs and trees. Newly propagated plants were put into peat free immediately, and that season’s new acquisitions along with any potting up was also put into peat free, but we then separated out the peat free plants and the peat based plants and kept them separately so we could manage their watering regimes differently as was necessary. What we learned very fast was that our automatic irrigation system needed to utilise all of it’s programming skills as the peat free composts needed watering little and often, unsurprisingly as the mix we were using was high in coir. Coir holds onto water as long as it doesn’t dry out and we learnt this and fast, by being extra vigilant and making sure someone was available to address watering daily. It’s important to realise that even a magical automated watering system can fail in places as droppers can block, so watering needs always to be a morning activity, not just because that is what is best for the plant, but to ensure you are not left watering until 11pm.

Of course with a different watering technique comes a need for a different feeding regime. All nurseries and I would hope all gardeners are trying to cut down in water usage and especially where water is particularly chalky water capture is not just environmentally right, but also stops the need for hideous applications of nitric acid to control pH. Collecting water is a a project to begin with, but once it is achieved it’s incredible just how much you can collect and how much you use if you’re not careful and run out in August when it’s most needed. However, whether you’re growing on a commercial scale or in your garden, water is a precious resource which will only get more and more scarce as climate change becomes our reality, and with that water prices are inevitably going to rise to appoint where on a commercial scale it’s going to be unaffordable and yet more needed as higher temperatures require more watering…….. I can see that will be a vicious circle so it’s time to really address that now if not a decade ago.

Of course your feeding regime will depend on your plants and what you are growing and how you are growing. If you want speedy growth then upping the nitrogen to a high N NPK in mid March and April will promote that growth, but if you’re using peat free make sure that nitrogen is staying in the pot and not ending up on the nursery floor feeding weeds .For our 5 litre herbaceous perennials we found that on average watering 4 times a day in spring , and increasing that to 6 in the peak of summer and ensuring we looked at the watering levels each day, with a twice weekly bacterial based compost tea encouraged natural growth patterns on containerised stock with good, consistent colour and great flowering and fruiting, but with a change to a tea with more K in mid summer. Ensuring maximum moisture also ensured that the teas were enabling the healthiest soil ecology possible in the pots, and kept us, within years, fungal disease free.

If you’Ve made it this far, well done. I just want to add something, and then I’ll let you go. If you think this is mainly for nursery folk, I just ant to ensure you all that this is just as relevant in your gardens as on any nursery.

If you grow pots in containers, grow plants from seeds or cuttings, watering is often a hidden problem that we blame other things for. Your plants need to be moist in order for them to take up any kind of nutrition and whilst plants in the ground can spread their roots, those in containers and pots are like tiny babies and completely reliant on you for their every need.

And finally a word on potting. When potting on or potting up, water those plants so that when you put them wherever thy are going to go, in your garden, on your nursery, balcony vcommunity garden, make sure you water them so they are fully hydrated. Never assume that because the water is coming out of the pot that all the soil is moist, but use your hands and check. It’s easy, a s we all know, to water a plant, pick it up and realise it’s still very light. Especially if the compost is dry, water more than once, and once the plant is fully hydrated, then you just need to top up daily or when needed. But if you allow the plants to dry out you’re affecting not only the ability of the plant to grow, but you are damaging the ecology in the container and therefore the health of the plant.

Finally, I promise this time, whilst coir based composts are free draining, composts made of other materials like wool, hold their water far better. Sheeps wool is made to keep the sheep dry and that means it holds the water away from the skin. It also holds nutrients far better so if you change from one to the other, remember you will need a serious adjust of watering.

Peat-are we back to where we started-first published December 2021

Last week it was quietly announced that a new bill was being introduced to the Seanad, the Irish parliament, that will allow continued extraction of Irish peat for horticulture, because the peat that was being imported from Latvia and Spain has been found to not be of such high quality……

This as I see it, presents a position that really has not changed since the the UK government asked for a voluntary 80% reduction in peat use in 2011, in that rather than looking at and investing in alternatives, the peat industry as a whole is still convinced that we cannot grow without peat. And with this we need to urgently ask questions. There are market forces at work here, with most peat based compost manufacturers having long leases on the peatlands, or indeed owning them. In 2011 a rep from one of these companies quite forcibly told me that a ban would never happen because their lobbyists would ensure it didn’t, and still we see the myths perpetuated at that time rolling around the horticulture industry which seems to be stuck and refusing to understand the severity of the issue. Peatlands are vital carbon sinks when they are healthy, but when they are not, they are the opposite and leaching carbon into the atmosphere.

So why are we where we are and why is the peat debate still raging?

Well it has become political and therefore there is debate where facts are being ignored and myths spread because, and this is a bold statement I know, lobbyists are lobbying for the market and not taking into account the climate and biodiversity crisis. And whilst most of the big peat based compost companies are now offering a peat free option, they are generally of poor quality, and there is no education about using peat free compost, with gardeners then expecting peat free composts to act in the same way as peat. Which of course it does not. Just as different peat based composts are far from all the same, peat free compost needs a different watering regime and a different feeding regime if you are growing in pots.

But what the peat free sector also needs is an understanding from the gardening and horticulture industry, that peat is no longer an acceptable or ethical component of any growing media. All of the wildlife trusts, the RSPB, FOE and so many others have worked tirelessly on campaigns to stop peat extraction and moorland burning, and yet still we hear the same old excuses that “horticulture doesn’t use that much”, “why should the UK be the only place banning peat”, “nothing works as well” etc etc etc. The list of excuses is endless, and might I add tiring. These are literally excuses and not reasons, made by people who again are market focused and refusing to see the bigger picture. Whilst this was understandable in 2011, as no one likes change, there has been over a decade now for compost manufacturers to invest in a peat free future, rather than carry on with their heads in the sand, or in this case, in the peat.

And I understand that there is worry that whilst so much plant material arrives in the UK through Holland from Dutch suppliers, and nurseries all across the world, all of which are likely to use peat, that the UK market will collapse, because peat free alternatives are more expensive, but are we not known as the nation of gardeners and do we not hear the nations head gardener each week mention peat free compost? Are there not enough people, like the National Trust and English Heritage who are peat free, and proving that the market is there for peat free products? The RHS have stopped selling peat based growing media in their garden shops and Garden Organic have been singing the peat free song for years, and yet still we see accusations of the peat free campaign being simply a woke social media campaign from people within the horticulture industry. And this is amplified by publications such as Hort Week acting as if the need for peat can be debated, as if horticulture doesn’t see the need for reaching net zero emissions or even for being a green industry. The irony here is that as a sector horticulture is assumed as being green when in fact it’s far, far from it.

In the UK the government have promised a consultation on the use of peat in horticulture by the end of their term, in 2024, but is this enough? Who are they going to consult with? Because that is the most important thing about any consultation; making sure it is a consultation and not just a conversation with the industry that refuses to acknowledge the environment above the market. And at this point it’s important to remember that the market is important. Ornamental horticulture in 2017 made an estimated £24.2 billion contribution to the .Uk’s economy and it’s vital that doesn’t stop, but we need to find circular systems and create sustainability within the sector, and stop the vast inputs that go into it, much of which is deeply problematic to the climate to biodiversity. We desperately need to fight for the garden sector to become green………