Best Supplier Of Compost 2021

Which part of commercials are you implying?

I sent out a wagon today to a garden centre with compost and shrub liners, I am getting between 75p and £1.10 for my liners, are you suggesting that I am making huge profits. If you look online or shop in a GC how much you pay for your plants is not a reflection of what we get. Thompson and Morgan are charging £8.99 plus for shrub liners and if you purchase a Pieris forest flame in a 2 Litre pot they are charging £24.99, not a bad mark up for something I only get 85p for in a 9cm pot. I don't supply them by the way.

In another topic members said I was being to cheap selling toms to the general public for 80p, well if I could sell toms to the general public in the same volumes I make multipurpose, then I would shut down the compost plant, I make more profit on a tom than I do selling an 80L bag of compost to a G/C.

I am now into my fortieth year of making compost and the market has never been so competitive and cutthroat. I had my second jab on Tuesday and had to walk past Asda and Aldi, I also called into B&Q and they were awash with danish trolleys full of bedding and stacks of multipurpose. All of them are cheaper than me but I smash them out of the park when it comes to ornamentals, fertiliser, aggregates, vermiculite, perlite hanging baskets etc etc. Even my local diy where I purchased cuprinol and sandtex was 15% & 30% cheaper than B&Q. Multipurpose, growbags and bedding are by far the biggest sellers, the volumes that are shifted are phenomenal, hence why it is so competitive. As the saying goes, "look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves". Very slim margins on certain lines but margins percentage wise will be 3 digits in other lines.

I have said I have a good following with the allotment societies and they purchase across the range from me, fertiliser, compost, pots, tree stakes, fleece, lime, plant supports etc etc. They are none profit societies and can't reclaim back the VAT, but they can sell fertiliser in 25kg for roughly the same price you would buy a 10kg tub from a major retailer. What a major retailer charges the public has nothing to do with the manufacturers or commercial growers. Westlands is a big player, but with an annual turnover of 180million they are small compared to the likes of B&Q and Wickes, they have a turnover of 5billion combined. The major retailers rule the roost and always have.

 

In all my trips to the far east, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam they will tend to use coir and decompose rice husks. Garden centres are few and far between. You will not see plants or compost in their DIY stores. Over there they grow to feed their family if they have land, hanging baskets or patio planters is not something you see over there.

 

When it comes to growers, I would put you guys in the same sector as the semi professionals. The amateur growers and semi growers are the busy bees of the garden, your knowledgeable, your conscious about the environment and wildlife, you will collect rain water, you fleece your crop or take them in doors when a cold snapped is forecast etc etc. But when Monty Don had a go at the sector blaming the mass production of cheap compost and bedding plants, he does have a valid point.

Would any of you class buying a trolley full of bedding & patio plants with containers and compost class it as growing?

 

You see them every year at the GC.
Trolley loaded with plants ,bag of compost and expensive planters.
Usually around Easter ,so the first lot of plants die.
At the end of the season it all ends up in the local tip.

 

But they must have professional growers, I presume they use coir?

 

If amateur growers can't get decent enough compost to sow seeds in and pot them on to planting out size, they will be completely dependent on commercial growers/garden centres for their plants, which already cost far more than it does sowing seeds yourself.

Example: Packet of 130 french bean seeds from Premier Seeds costs 99p + some compost @ 10p/L and something for re-used cheap cell trays = £0.02 (two pence) per plant. Thompson and Morgan sell 12 tiny french bean plants for £11.99, £1 per plant, and there's p&p on top of that. Might be cheaper at a garden centre, but only if wasting an hour (or two) driving around, and spending £5 on fuel. And the commercially grown plants will all be in single use plastic modules.

I doubt very much indeed that if amateurs can't get decent compost, that commercial growers will reduce their prices to help them out, the opposite I suspect.

 

If you can make compost out of that kind of stuff, surely you can do it with paper or straw.

 

Where would I get the raw materials from? It's probably all ending up being burnt in the name of green energy.

Straw shortage means farmers must be efficient with straw use over the winter months - Agriland.co.uk

 

They reckon, globally transport contributes to about 25% of C02 emissions, so I really do not understand why coir has been pushed as a substitute to peat. If the likes of France or Spain was the main source of coir then I could understand, but its mainly imported from Sri Lanka, India, Vietnam etc etc.

They come in 5kg blocks and they really are compressed solid, we used to in the past put them through a chipper but if your not wearing masks and goggles you would soon be paying AE a visit to have your eyes washed out.

If we have an order in for coir, then if there is any rain forecast I will put the blocks out on the yard. Once it starts taking in rain water it soon expands, for something so dry it does take water in far better than peat if it was bone dry.

I also get the husks, not much of a market for them though. I tend to use them for making some orchid compost. I got 2 pallets of husks over 2 years ago and have only just started using the second pallet recently. I would say I sell more coir blocks to people who keep reptiles than what is used in compost.

 

More areas of concern other than CO2 emissions from transportation

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

And will there be enough coir to replace peat?

 

The main ingredient in the last peat free compost (Homebase own brand) I bought appeared to be partially composted shredded Lleylandii clippings and plants struggled to grow in it. No wonder it was all reduced to 30p a bag.

 

Rice farming up to twice as bad for climate change as previously thought, study reveals