Peat .....?

Just wondering what everyone thinks about using peat free compost, I bought a peat free grow bag this year to try (every little helps !) and planted it with cucumbers. 8 weeks on and I've just eaten my first 2 cucumbers from the plants in the neighbouring grow bag (with peat) while the peat free are still the size they were (although now slightly yellow !) Does anyone else use peat free and got better results or can recommend a brand to look out for ?

Cheers

 

Hi Fretters

"New Horizon" organic and peat free multi-purpose compost is the stuff I use and I've found it to be pretty good. It's obviously a bit coarser than the peat based composts but that's no problem. I've used it for seeds (after sieving), cuttings and potting on. I always mix it with vermuculite and a slow release feed when I'm potting on establlshed plants.

Remember that peat by itself contains very few nutrients. Therefore I think the peat based grow bag's faster growth of cucumbers has more to do with the amount of fertilizers added by the manufacturer, rather than the fact it's peat based.

 

I'm with Flinty there,(whats your soil like again ?) I too use new horizon, not had probs with it. But then again, not had a control of peat to compare it to.
compared to my building site soil however, its fantastic. Did a mixed salad sowing that overlaped onto the peat free compost & you can see the difference, its pickable from the compost, but tiny on the soil.

 

I've never had any success with the peat free stuff.
Last year I had to repot all my seedlings as they were sitting there doing nothing.

 

Have a look at this

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/ea...free-compost-not-worth-buying-says-Which.html

 

Good link Ziggy, topical ! Interestingly it was the B&Q peat free grow bag I used for my cucumbers ! I don't normally use grow bags but thought I'd give them a go as I've got more inside space this year. I guess the answer is to buy peat free multi compost and add to it as Flinty says, I'll keep an eye out for the New Horizon stuff next time !

Thanks all, really handy advice ! :D

 

Thanks for the tip about 'New Horizon', Flinty. I'll give it a go. I've never been very successful with peat-free composts and some of the 'bargain' ones I've picked up in places like Homebase recently have been dire. It's true that peat contains no nutrients, but the lovely crumbly texture of a peat-based compost is superior to anything else I've tried. I'm just struggling with one of my 'bargain' buys now. It's full of large lumps of wood and what looks like semi-composted rope. The 'foreign bodies' don't absorb water and there's nothing for plants to get their roots into. It's a bit like Izal loo paper - you wonder how on earth anyone ever thought it would do the job.

 

I like Izal.

The main thing is to find a peat free that we can get along with. I remember a documentary about dissapearing peat lands saying, destroying this habitat to put on roses is like knocking down St Pauls cathedral & using the rubble to line the garden path.

 

For tracing paper, no doubt.

 

You read my mind :ntwrth:

We still have limited peat cutting down here on the Somerset levels, but we can't keep taking it out. The more you dig, the more the remaining peat shrinks & seeing most of the levels are between 2 to 5 metres above sea level, with rising sea levels and a reliance on fossil fuels to pump the water up & out to sea, it would be foolish to make the levels lower. In winter, most of it is underwater. One idea would be to dig a VERY deep pit right in the middle so instead of pumping it out in the winter, we could save the water for domestic use in the summer. Anyone got a shovel?

 

I 'm thinking "you only get what you pay for".

When growbags were first launched they were great I even used them as potting compost in the 70s.

I've not bought one in years, I think its best to buy potting compost and grow in large pots, and even then I add some controlled release fertilizer.
Peat is on the way out, but I find if I mix a bag of peat free with a bag of JI no3, in a concrete mixer, chuck in a handful of osmacote, a bit of sharp sand or just grit, I get a very good growing medium.

The more expensive peat free ones seem OK but they very soon run out of nutrient if used straight from the bag.

I think newspaper was actually better than Izal, but then I'm a bit downmarket

 

Can't trace very well with newspaper, but can do other things equally as well with both.

Glad you mentioned JI, its the way forward to get us out of the peat crisis. We need to balance the needs of our plots against the needs of the planet.

If you really need peat, then go down to the chesil after a winter storm, big blocks of it get washed up from the old land that was submerged during the interglacial (we are still in an ice age, despite what the government tell us)

The peat blocks there still contain bits of plants that died 10,000 to 8,000 years ago.