Isn't any peat in compost an environmental no-no?

We have found by adding 10% sterilised loam helps to manage watering.

We import it, the coir comes in 5kg (approx) solid blocks and when rehydrated you get about 65L of coir.
We used to put it through the chipper, but it was vile work doing it that way. You needed full face masks and goggles, you don't want to be getting it in your eyes or breathing it in while its bone dry.

I get people buy it online from us in the compressed blocks. I sometimes get a message asking for it to be packed in discrete packaging, we have even had to help the police providing details of how much coir a customer had purchased.

 

We screen the soil using a power screen, which we put through a 8mm woven mesh. If anyone has top soil for sale locally I am always interested, if it is good top soil it tends to be fibrous in texture. If it's sub soil I will mix some organic matter into it, I won't screen it for 12 months or until it shows some texture. I have even turned down the chance of getting soil for free in the past. If it's poor quality with to much stone or debris in the soil, we can't justify putting it through the screen and paying for the waste to be tipped. Sometimes I will go and collect a couple of ton of the soil and put it through the screen. If I am not getting a high enough percentage of soil coming through the screen, I will decline it.

I will be delivering 6 pallets of JI No2 to the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh next week, I think we have supplied them for over 20 years now. I also batch up a compost to the spec of the national chrysanthemum society. It is possible to make good compost but I wouldn't like to be doing the volumes that the big boys do.

 

It's that price (£4 for 60L) at Wickes, but only a few stores have any stock New Horizon All Plant Compost 60L | Wickes.co.uk

There's supposed to be 41 in stock at their Bracknell store.

 

Are the days of using Kettering loam well and truly over, gks? My father's garden was pure KL. You could stick a corpse in it (without it's box) and it would resurrect That's what started me off 'gardening' at 5 years old.....

 

For me, when Charles Dowding says he feels safer making his own compost than using municipal/waste compost, says it all. With all these horrible weed killers and pesticides still on the market, it is always going to be an issue. Would anyone on here allow your next door neighbour to put grass cuttings in your compost bin if you knew 2 days earlier they had been using a lawn fertiliser with a weed killer?

Somethings should not be allowed to go for composting and belong only in landfill.
They made a mistake giving grants to people with no experience and when the money dried up they were off, that in itself tells you it was never composted correctly in the first place.

 

We had a plant near here, all sorts of things were going in on the qt even raw meats/waste, had lots of tax payers money because it was "green" like you said when the money/grants came to a close the compost cault fire then they were off. all the locals had to keep windows doors closed because of the flies, they blamed the fish meal that was near by but the locals new that that wasn't the case because they lived with the fish meal for 20+ years before the compost site turned up and they wasn't a proplem with flies before then

 

He did spend a few years over here, under a Camellia, which would really have cheesed him off had he known. (Nothing against Camellias, but he never intended emigrating ) But then I did the decent thing and took him and Mother back to Kettering Come to think of it, being mingled with Mother would have cheesed him off even more.... Bless!

 

Coir v Peat

Is Coir an Eco-friendly Substitute for Peat Moss? - Garden Myths