To peat or not to peat

Go for it! Peat bogs are disappearing at a rate of knots and anything we do to stop the decline helps. I've used peat free, as well as 'home' compost as a substitute for peat in JI type mixes and apart from a bit less water retention (not always a bad thing) things seem to grow just as well.

 

Agree with Froggy. Peat extraction does enormous harm and we should leave it where it is.

 

All the garden tests I have read say that peat free compost does not perform as well, but I agree with F and H we should persevere. I try to use mostly my own, too.

 

Quite a few nurseries are goiung over to it and the ones I know were growing good plants. But they do lose moisture quickly... and vine weevils love those compost.

 

I use a mixture. JI with about 25% added peat based compost. Quite apart from the environmental implications of using 100% peat based; peat when died out is difficult to re-hydrate. JI plus peat seems to strike a nice balance.
If I can find an alternative to peat to add to the mix I'll use it.

 

I wonder if a wetting agent, as used in film developing would help.

 

I wonder if a wetting agent, as used in film developing would help. </font>[/quote]Wetting agent as used in your washing up bowl is probably cheaper :D Just a drop of washing up liquid in a watering can makes a big difference.

If compost does dry out it is better to do a 1/3 immersion in a bucket overnight. With luck the compost will re-wet in time - it saved my friend's hanging baskets during the summer.

 

Best wetting agent for dry peat is washing up liquid!
Vine weevils love peat composts. I have had far fewer problems with peat free ones than ever before.
The main reason originally for using peat was that it is sterile therefore it does not decompose as rapidly as other materials like leaf mould or garden compost, thus it lasted longer in storage. Plus it does not react badly with any chemicals added to it, like fertiliser or insecticides, or fungicides.
I do tend to use a mixture of peat and other stuff as seed compost because of its cleanliness, but the major mis-use of this resource is as a soil covering mulch.
By the way. the majority of peat bogs in Britain are man made, even if it has taken a couple of thousand years to do it!