Best Supplier Of Compost 2021

Its not a problem Scrungee. Golden Days is not a cheap GC, and charges £6.90 for Jacks Magic. But you park by the compost section and they do load it into your car, also its just a mile up the road from me. So it is really handy. I may try Wickes next season for my JM

 

@Scrungee, thanks; I will call at Wigan Wickes and buy 4 bags
Previously I bought the big bags of compost from B & Q but the last lot was below standard

@HarryS, we called at Golden Days a couple of weeks ago
As I live in Pem it is handy to nip down to Wickes at Robin Park
Cheers
John

 

Harbro stores JM 2 for a tenner . Aldi peat free cheapo 2 quid for 40ltr. Mixed together making a good mix with a bit of perlite.
I like JM but find it gets too dense when wet, so the Aldi stuff adds some more " fluffiness" .

 

I have used Jack’s Magic for quite a few years for certain things and was happy to pay a premium. However, this year I bought 3 bags fairly early in the season for sowing the likes of Tomatoes. I immediately noticed the consistency was not as it had been. Big lumps of dried out peat bits of wood and suspicious that the % of sand had increased. I also found despite the possible increase in sand that,like some of the cheaper composts I have used in the past, this batch of Jack’s is a pain to try and wet again if it even slightly gets dry, forming a crust. I used it but had to sieve the compost to get rid of most of the lumps so not exactly thrilled. Worse was to follow as some of my Tomato seedlings showed what I can only think is herbicide damage?
I threw most of the seedlings away but kept 1 to see if it would recover. Well it sort of has and will produce fruit despite the twisted and contorted stems. It is looking a lot healthier than it was. The affected plants were sown indoors and absolutely no chance that the damage, if caused by herbicide residue was caused by anything other than the compost. Can I prove it, of course not but I definitely will not bother to pay a premium for a product which no longer is!
I read that there are 3,000,000 extra gardeners since Covid struck, wonderful for the likes of Westland who no doubt are making fantastic profits and maybe not fussed if their quality is slipping a bit. I will have to try another brand in future and mix in some of my own leaf mould ( zapped in the microwave to kill any weed seeds hopefully) to perhaps dilute the chances having seedlings damaged again. I wonder if Tomato seedlings are more susceptible than other seedlings? The same compost was used for sowing leeks and onions and they were fine.

 

Good point @Loofah. Personally I don’t buy in much compost as fortunate enough to have a big garden which creates lots of compost plus huge trees that enable me to create quantities of leaf mould. The snag is for people with small gardens who do not have the raw material or the space to have compost heaps. It takes an enormous amount of leaves and time to create even say 100 ltrs of leaf mould. Certainly if the quality of bought in compost does not improve I will give up buying it altogether and as you say just put up with the weed seedlings

 

I dont think that making your own plant growing compost is likely to catch on with the masses, its only something that relatively few gardeners will be able to do.

As to lumps in bought in compost, they dont actually bother me that much, I'm thinking sieving compost is down really requiring seed sowing compost.
Now if you were buying that and having to sieve it I could understand there was a problem.

I know its called multipurpose but I think we need to accept that seed sowing and plant growing on are two different things.

 

Sort if agree @pete. My gripe is that the quality has gone down hill. For years unless I was sowing something that required a really really fine growing medium Jack’s Magic was fine. Not any more. Certainly the bags I got were rubbish, literally!

 

I wonder if this is a local thing.
The last couple of bags of JM I bought were pretty much the same as usual.

 

Possible, all 3 bags bought admittedly at the same time were pretty dire. I might try another bag and see if I was just unlucky. If the next 1 is dire as well I will be having words with Westland.

 

That was the norm in the past and not just the general public. I still supply commercial growers who in the past made their own growing media. I just supplied them with the bales of peat, lime and fertiliser. I can remember when we used to get our peat from Humax, they have two bogs at Annan and Gretna, there was pallets upon pallets of baled and bagged peat, yet literally no compost in sight. When Humax was bought out by the Scott's group, they closed our account.

On our FB page and the, showing for growing, we have discussed compost and the alternatives to peat. Most agree with you, they have been pampered as making your own can be back breaking if your using large quantities.

When we started making a, Leek & Onion compost and a Carrot & Parsnip compost it snowballed with virtually everyone saying, "brilliant, now I don't have to make my own".
The only compost we made when we first started was, John Innes, Soilless and Growbags.
Now we make John Innes, Multipurpose, Ericaceous, Alpine, Hanging Basket & Patio, Seed & Cutting, Potting, Coir Seed & Cutting, Coir Potting, Cactus, Herbaceous, Container Shrub, Tree Planting, Pot Bedding, Pansy, Primula, Leek & Onion, Carrot & Parsnip, Potato, Chrysanthemum, Bulb Fibre, plus we do Lawn Dressing, Sterilised Loam and two types of soil conditioner.

The Garden Centres orders are mainly multipurpose, growbags and soil conditioners, where as the allotment societies, growing for showing and commercial growers are more into the specialist composts.

I have a motto, never substitute quality for quantity. Well the commercial growers and semi professional growers have been impeccable, they have communicated with us, giving me a forecast of their needs for the growing season. I can't say the same for the Garden Centres, they just think there is a bottomless pit and they can double, triple their orders and expect it within days. I even told the retail sector in autumn I would not be able to meet the demand, if they wanted volume over quality then they should look for a new supplier, 40% of them did. Yet all my commercial growers and allotment societies have been loyal, with some even saying, "what can we do to help"

 

gks said Quote. "Now we make John Innes, Multipurpose, Ericaceous, Alpine, Hanging Basket & Patio, Seed & Cutting, Potting, Coir Seed & Cutting, Coir Potting, Cactus, Herbaceous, Container Shrub, Tree Planting, Pot Bedding, Pansy, Primula, Leek & Onion, Carrot & Parsnip, Potato, Chrysanthemum, Bulb Fibre, plus we do Lawn Dressing, Sterilised Loam and two types of soil conditioner."


Sounds like you are making as many different composts as there are fertilisers on the garden centre shelves, its all got out of hand IMO.

 

True, but its more enjoyable, you get the feedback from the growers plus the volumes are nothing compared to Multipurpose. The problem with Multipurpose and growbags is the retail sector want the volumes and a quick turnaround. Its the only two lines that the retail sector are always pushing for it to be produced cheaper.