Best supplier of compost 2025

I have visited numerous compost sites, especially those that deal in green waste. If you were to visit any of these sites you would not say that we skimp on sieving. Industrial machines are not called sieve's but trommel screens, these can be as big as 3m wide and over 10 metres long. They tend to rotate around about 24rpm and will have different aperture screens. So for example if the whole screen was fitted with a 6mm aperture mesh, you will still get plenty of material larger than that passing through the mesh. If you were to get 10 boxes of safety matches, which are 2mm in diameter and are 38mm in length, you will be very surprised how many will pass through the screen as it's rotating due to the length of the trommel as not all matches will drop horizontally when passing through the screen, many drop vertically going straight through the mesh.

The problem at these green wastes sites, the percentage of browns is to high, so even though the heap heats up it does not accelerate the heap to decompose, it does the opposite to the heap, it also makes it more like to ignite due the high content of brown's in the mix. With the high percentage of wood chip, much of this will just pass straight through the screen.

When you have a high percentage of browns going to green waste, it does not take weeks for it to decompose not even months, but years, then virtually all the material will pass through the mesh. The only other way is to keep on passing the material through the crushers and chippers, all these machines not only cost hundreds of thousands to purchase but they are also very expensive to operate. My mate has huge industrial wood chippers that burn through large amounts of fuel an hour, or can run on electric at 420kWh. Then you have to replace the hammers of blades regularly, as they soon get blunt.

There is only a handful of materials that you can pass through a screen with a high volume out put, peat, soil, sand and coir. The volume of green waste passing through a 10mm is considerably lower meaning costs increase. I could get hold of 0-20mm PAS 100 no problem, getting PAS 100 that has passed through a 0-10mm mesh, then you have to order well in advance and trying to get PAS 100 that has passed through a 0-6mm mesh is very very difficult. I could order a 40ft container coir blocks that have went through a 0-6mm in Indonesia shipped to me quicker than I could get a load of 0-10mm PAS100 last year.

The government has been wanting to ban peat based compost to the retail sector since 2015, here we are 2025 and still no ban. Does peat free compost work, yes, but the manufacturers could cope and make a decent peat free compost as the demand was small. As retailers have been switching to peat free as they were all lead to believe the ban was to come into force in January 2025 it is now proving that making peat free compost in large volumes to replace peat is proving very difficult.

Sylva grow has been one of the best peat free composts on the market, it is also more expensive that peat based. But as the large supermarkets and DIY stores are now only stocking peat free, its now proving very difficult to produce in large quantities, especially when business have to be seen to be lowering their carbon footprint and making peat free compost has a higher energy cost than harvesting and processing peat.

 

Hi

what are brown waste ?

 

It can be numerous things , in general it is woody waste, or materials that were made from wood. Most of the brown waste that I see at these green waste sites are branches, but you will see scrap wooden pallets, the carcass of wooden cabinets and MDF board. The trouble is, these green waste sites are for green waste only, but the amount of plastic, glass, metal and artificial products is also very noticeable.

The issue is, many of these sites are basically recycling plants, third parties. Very few are actually compost manufacturing sites as they have contracts with local councils to process the waste instead of going to land fill.

 

If a G/C wants to stock only a certain size of compost, then I can't see how that is classed as shrinkflation.

I am still selling my 80Litre Multipurpose compost and many manufactures do still offer 75L and 100L for the retail sector, whether they stock it is down to the retailer.

MULTI-PURPOSE COMPOST | Cloverpete

Multi-Purpose Compost - Evergreen HorticultureEvergreen Horticulture

Humax Multipurpose compost 75L bags – Bark UK Online

Evergreen Irish Peat Bale 100 Litre - Horticentre - Your Family Run Garden Centre in Wakefield and Huddersfield

80L Multi Purpose Compost – Bespoke Blooms By Maybury

The reason why, all are made with either 100% peat or with a small percentage of wood fibre, open light material. When you starting getting compost that has PAS100 incorporated, then the volume in the bag will decrease due to the weight.

If, in the future green waste sites could make this PAS100 material into a very good growing media that needed nothing else than nutrients, you would only ever see compost in bags of 40L as the weight would be around the 25kg bracket. John Innes compost would never be sold in 75L bags for the same reason.

 

Alan Titchmarsh wrote an article for country file on peat free compost, his solution, peat free John Innes. The down side, soil is not sterile and is also heavy per cubic metre compared to peat, so considerably more heavy freight will be needed to move the same volume compared to peat based compost, but otherwise I agree. As manufacturers only have to use a small percentage of a peat alternative due to main material in John Innes being loam. So, when I was importing peat from Estonia, there was 24 pallets of 6 cubic metre bales on the truck, 144 cubic metres of peat in total. Each bale would weigh between 900kg and 1100kg, the heavier bales was always the 0-6mm peat, with the 0-20mm being in the 900kg bracket, air pockets. Making peat free John Innes, then your looking around the 40-45 cubic metre mark that a HGV could carry without being overweight. So you not only need more trucks leading the end product, you also need more trucks to lead in soil, what do HGV burn through, a lot of diesel.

Alan Titchmarsh: I've been looking for the answer to peat-free compost — and now I think I've found it

 

My 75ltr bags of Clover WITH peat are bad enough weight wise but very pleased with the contents!

 

You could also say the same to the energy companies.

Early excavations on the Viking Energy site, Sandwater, Shetland 2020.







They now plan to build more on the isle of Yell, planing permission was granted that they do not excavate no more than 2 metres deep on the peat land.

Peat landslide halts work at Shetland cabling project | Ground Engineering

Footage shows landslide at Shetland wind farm

They reckon this landslip in Ireland was one of the largest pollution events in the history of Northern Ireland and Ireland.

Donegal: Peat landslide linked to wind farm raised in Dáil.

I wonder how many more of these landslips will pollute the waterways in the future.

 

Poundland sold Coir Blocks last year.

 

Thanks @john558 I will take a look in our local store next week.

 

My supplier of compost who mainly serves the professional wholesale market has said many many things about Coir, none of them printable on here. Does he have any professional growers who will buy anything with Coir in it? Answer no!

 

Hi coir really holds the wet , and I bought a huge block and I had to pre wash it to get the salts out

 

I've used Coir mixed with my own compost for years now.

 

Blimey, bet that made a mess of the washing machine.

 

If you purchased your blocks from a reputable retailer, then there should of been no need to wash the blocks.

When we have purchased 40ft containers of coir blocks, 4,800 coir blocks, they are already pre washed.
Coir can come, raw, single washed, doubled washed and double washed and buffered. The raw is the cheapest to buy and is recommended to use at 20% with another growing medium, with the doubled washed and buffered which you can use neat as the salts have literally all been washed out.

In the past we have purchased single washed, that has been used to blend in with peat when there has been a wet season with the peat having to much moisture content.
The double washed and buffered are what we use to make our own coir compost range but also to sell the blocks.