Be Green Go Peat Free

If peat-based composts had to have warning labels, like cigarettes, more people would think twice about buying them - having something in your trolley labelled "Harvesting this peat destroyed a valuable wildlife habitat" would become as much of a social faux pas as dolphin-unfriendly tuna.

But peat composts don't have to be labelled as such, and so it's up to gardeners to look for composts that are 'peat-free' if they want to be green. It's easy enough to forget in the spur of the moment, but perhaps if we knew a little bit more about peat then it would be easier to remember.

Peat is a special kind of soil, formed when sphagnum moss (for the main part) rots down very slowly in acid, waterlogged conditions. It therefore only occurs in peat bogs and fens, which are rich wildlife habitats that support a variety of plants and animals that only thrive in these circumstances.

Peat bogs form at the rate of about one millimetre every year, which is roughly the thickness of a paper clip. If you dig down a metre you're digging into a thousand years of history, and peat bogs often preserve archaeological treasures.

Although peat bogs only cover around 3% of Earth's surface, they store as much carbon (in the decayed moss) as all of the world's forests put together. When the peat is dug up, dried out and processed into compost, all of that carbon is released. If we stopped using peat in our gardens we could keep all that carbon in the ground, and be well on the way to reducing our carbon emissions to manageable levels and preventing the worst effects of climate change.

Peat has only really been used in gardening since the 50s, when everything was standardized and mechanized and people came to expect every bag of potting compost to be exactly the same. The advantages of peat here are that it is sterile and stable, but it is very low in nutrients, and so those have to be added to the potting compost.

In recent times there has been a lot of investment in peat-free composts. Many of these are made from waste products (bark, or even garden waste that has been collected), and are far more environmentally-friendly that peat-based composts. It's true that some are better than others for particular purposes, so if you have tried one and found that you didn't get good results then try another brand.

While you're getting used to peat-free compost you'll need to keep an eye on your feeding and watering regime, as peat-free composts hold water and nutrients differently to peat-based composts. But once you've got the hang of that, your green fingers will really be green!

Emma Cooper is a freelance garden writer, based in Oxfordshire. She's been gardening without peat for over ten years, and if you'd like to know more about avoiding the use of peat in the garden you can read her new book 'The Peat-Free Diet' online at http://emmacooper.org/peat-free-diet.

At Notcutts we are supportive of the Government target for amateur growing media products to be peat free by 2020 and are playing an active role towards this.

By doing so we have proudly achieved ‘Full Member’ status of the Growing Media Initiative (GMI) following a recent audit of the bagged growing media we sell to the public.