Best Supplier Of Compost 2021

When I was talking about husks, I meant coir husks or you could call it coir chips. It is the husk of the coir which is 25mm chips. I have no experience of rice husks, I misinterpreted the post, sorry.

 

True, it never was. When we first started to import coir it was to blend into the peat, basically to help to dry up the growing media if it was a wet summer. Twenty plus years ago the harvesting of peat was totally different compared to now, with improvements in technology and if you have a heat wave in summer these guys can harvest enough peat to last years now. In fact, Bord na Mona's last main harvest was in 2018, they might have still had stock until next year if it wasn't for covid, the demand soon depleted their stocks. In the past even Bord na Mona have asked me who who I was importing coir from, I think myself and Humax were the first to start incorporating coir into peat composts. Not really viable now, as demand increases so does the cost.

 

And it's not just increased demand from reducing use of peat, there's supposed to have been something like a 30% increase in gardening since Lockdown 1, but whether that increase will completely dissapear on 19th July, continue, or something in between, remains to be seen.

 

I am already seeing a drop off, not only just with the public coming out to us but also with the G/C's we supply. Our turnover from June is still up on 2019 but is down compared to June last year. As long as we have no more lockdowns, the demand of 2020 should hopefully be a one off.

Still leaves the question about the quality and volume of compost in the future though. In all the years we have made compost we always put quality first, no double standards or one set of rules for the commercial sector and another for the amateur sector. If a commercial grower is wanting Pot Bedding the only difference is they will have Osmocote incorporated, for which they will have paid a little bit more. If anyone of you guys on here came to me and bought an 80l multipurpose and an 80l Pot Bedding, then the only difference you would visibly notice is the Osmocote.

Its getting harder and harder now to go down the peat free route, in fact I probably will have to start increasing the peat content. Reason 1, the substitutes that we had been using over the last 20 years are being burnt and what we are left with is not acceptable. Reason 2, I have found mind self a new supplier of peat in Ireland and the load I received today I am more than happy with.

If this government is serious about banning peat all together, then they have to ban biomass too. For me, this is when the problems started, in the past we were the saviours of the waste bark instead of it going to landfill, now we get substandard quality at premium costs. I can see me having more chance of getting hold of hens teeth than poultry manure pellets in the future too.

I have posted this link before, but if no one has seen it then take note that 40% of renewable energy is now coming from biomass, take note of what is being burnt. What is the point in the likes of us manufacturers investing and doing trials in making compost with these substitutes only for that source to be then classed as biomass.

A burning issue: biomass is the biggest source of renewable energy consumed in the UK - Office for National Statistics

 

Walking local footpaths 2 or 3 weeks ago, it appeared a local farmer was harvestesting green wheat. His cows are kept in barns and fed grass grown in fields devoid of wildlife.

This could be something that might cause shortage of straw.

 

Starting to get the feeling the billionaires and their stooges in government dont want people to grow their own food and plants anymore.
Make it impossible to get decent quality compost and ramp up the prices too.
Build on the allotments, pave over the front gardens,and build extentions all over the back gardens too .
Conform people and buy ALL your food from the supermarkets !!!

 

I think there was a bit about that way of dairy farming on country file last week.

 

I thought we had to ban cows because they produce too much methane, anyway.

 

We are just moving our emissions around as you say @shiney .

It kind of makes sense to me, you can't create or destroy any thing without causing a byproduct.

 

Did anyone watch the programme "feast to save the planet" earlier this year. It was a dinner party for special guests and were scored on the environmental impact of their meal. So depending on what your eating and where it is produced affected your score . I think they said or I might of read it somewhere else. If you are to purchase an Australian wine that is bottled in the UK it would have less of an impact than wine produced and bottled in Greece before being shipped to the UK. I think wine from Australia is shipped in balloon bags inside a 40ft container, if it was bottled before being shipped then 1/3 of the weight of the container would be glass.

Same for me with peat, In the past I will get as much peat in the summer months that I can afford and have room to put under cover, probably 20-25 loads. Peat is sold by the cubic metre but in the summer months they might get as much as 110 cube on a truck, yet late autumn and winter I might only get 70 cube. So even though I am always charged by the cube for the peat., it costs me more to get it to me as there is less volume on the trucks, due to more moisture in the peat.

 

Just opened a bag of JM bought from Wickes a couple of weeks ago and it's full of small lumps, not suitable for fine seed sowing unless seived. The lumps will break up if pushed through seive mesh. OK as is for the beans, beet, sweetcorn I'm sowing now, but not the likes of lettuce, spring onions, etc.

I've still got bags of the original fine stuff, so wiĺl reserve them for fine seed sowing.

 

I've checked the quantity of lumps in my latest Jack's Magic by pouring 10L of it into a plastic mushroom crate and used it as a sieve to extract nearly 2L of lumps.



Pushed as much as I could of the lumps through it to break them up and was left with 1L of fibres and hard lumps, a whopping 10% wastage.



Think it's going to need sieving for all seed sowing and transplanting of small seedlings. The lumps will get bagged up and used when growing potatoes in containers.

 

Oh this looks familiar @ scrungee. You can sort the issue as long as you have a steam road roller handy. You and I live in very different parts of the UK so extremely doubtful we got the poor quality from the same batch. Yours actually look worse than mine.