compost

[el48tel]

There are arguments for the liberation of your precious plants as quickly as possible from peat based composts. The commercial growers use it because plants grow quickly in it. All they want to do is to ship them out as quickly as possible and as large as possible to attract the best price. But peat runs out of nutrients quickly and when wet it holds the moisture, but when it dries ... you can't wet it. And the pros say that cacti and succulents will grow in pretty much anything.

[MikeT]

Another vote for Westlands

...and another from me. Verve (B & Q) was OK a few years ago, then the proportion of wood lumps and bits of plastic increased markedly, as did the amount of sand. I hope Westlands sticks to its current formulation.

[wildedges]

I've been using Bord Na Mona John Innes for a while as that's what my local nursery sells

I couldn't find many suppliers of this, but when I did it was a "Material Peat Based With Added John Innes".

This is frankly nonsense.

Erin, as Clover, being Ireland based, trade mainly on their peat-based products.

John Innes specification, as has been repeatedly said on other threads, was not fussy about its inclusion of peat as well as loam in the formulation.

It seems clear to me that our plants are adaptable and will grow in a variety of media. There are environmental issues involved here - it's up to everyone to take a position.

There's no easy answer.

https://www.rhs.org.uk/about-the-rhs/po ... nt-on-peat

I think the Bord Na Mona JI2 has a higher proportion of peat than the Erin JI2 which is the main reason I've swapped over. The Erin looks more soil based in colour and you can pick out what appears to be lumps of peat and there's not that much in there. It's a shame that the companies won't list their formulas so you can see the actual peat content. By the time I've added grit to the mix the final percentage of peat in the pot will probably be quite small. I've considered buying the Erin bagged topsoil instead and using that as a base for my compost mixes as it should be similar to the JI but without the peat. The one bag I bought though (to fill a hole in the lawn) contained a lot of large stones. I've found it very hard to judge as I'm fairly new to making my own soil mixes and I've only got a very limited amount of time to spend in the garden. I know JI works and don't have enough spare plants to risk them on experiments let alone the space to keep several similar plants side by side to see how they get on in different soils. I imagine it's the same for a lot of people. I could go completely peat free by not buying the 2 or 3 25L bags of JI I use each year and using coir instead but without knowing my current peat useage and without knowing the true enviornmental impact of coir it's impossible to judge which is the better solution.

I'm also aware that grit isn't something that should be wasted and I try my best to recover it from the old soil to be sterilised and reused. This is something that doesn't seem to be discussed much in the gardening community either as far as I've seen.

[agavedave]

I always recover old grit as much as I can, probably about 40 kg this year. Just let it dry out completely in a 2mm sieve, get rid of all the dust and sand, then add it to a bucket of water and skim off anything that floats a few times then put the remains back in the sieve and attack it with the hose pipe.

Regards
Dave.

[el48tel]

I do similar ... a hose to float the organics off into a very large plant pot which has fleece lining .... water runs through .... organics retained to be tipped out later .... grit washed couple of times with water into the pot .... then one final time with a bio-kill before drying.