Black Stuff

Since Alan Titchmarsh's contentious comments in a recent Gardeners' World magazine, peat is once more a hot topic in the blogsphere. I'm not going to go into the reasons why its use is a bad idea - Mark Diacono of Otter Farm has done an excellent - and not at all boring, despite what he says - job of explaining this, while Sue Beesley of Lodge Lane Nursery presents a very good case for the use of peat-free compost, so I don't need to.

I agree with Mark and Sue that there's never a good reason for gardeners to use peat, and that in recent years peat-free compost has improved immeasurably, but it can still be difficult knowing which compost to buy, and some peat-free compost is still very expensive, poor quality, or both. For most things (seeds, cuttings, and container plants) I use Fertile Fibre Mulitpurpose Compost, which is wonderful stuff - based on coir but with nutrients added, with a fine crumbly texture, and good water-holding qualities - but (and it's a big but) it is extremely expensive. I can't afford to use it to fill big planters for annual veg growing, so every year I wander round the garden centres looking for alternatives.

Even in the few years since I've been gardening, I've noticed a difference in the composts available. Not long ago I had two options - one compost labelled organic, but which contained peat, and one compost labelled peat-free, which wasn't organic. I found this astonishing, as I'd thought one of the principles of organic gardening was not to use peat, until I realised that the company producing the "organic" compost were using the word in its original sense of "relating to or derived from living matter", and the compost wasn't actually certified organic. It was also nasty lumpy stuff, and nearly everything I planted in it died.


I don't have any photos of compost to break up all this text, so here's a gratuitous picture of a Magnolia Stellata flower

Nowadays, there's a wide choice of composts which are both chemical-free and peat-free. My concern is that, for the ordinary gardener, it can be difficult to tell which of a garden centre's composts do or don't contain peat. A lot don't specify on the packaging, and often the staff have no idea (I even found one member of staff who didn't know what the word "peat" meant - admittedly English wasn't his first language, but I did think that knowledge of basic gardening terminology ought to be a prerequisite for working in a garden centre). I was therefore very pleased to see, at one of my local garden centres, that manufacturers Miracle Gro and Levington (both part of the Scotts group of companies) are now producing big boards which specify the amount of peat in each of their composts - Miracle Gro's Organic Choice Potato and Vegetable Gro-Sac, for instance, despite the organic label, contains 40-70% peat - not something the average organic gardener would be expecting. So well done to them for coming clean about their peat-use, but not well done at all for using it in the first place, and very badly done for putting it in an "organic" product.

Westland don't say what's in most of their products, and despite a careful perusal of the small print on the back of the bags, I couldn't work out what was in their Organic Vegetable Growing Compost. The only clue as to its contents is that it's not suitable for lime-hating plants, which at least suggests that it doesn't contain large quantities of peat. On the other hand, Westland do make some composts which are labelled peat-free, and this suggests that their other products aren't.

The safest thing would be to buy something like New Horizon Organic and Peat-free Compost or Westland Earth Matters Organic Peat-Free Compost, but they are general multipurpose ones, not intended for the growing of vegetables in planters. Even better would be home-made compost, but for those people with gardens too small to have space for compost bins, too large to have enough waste to provide enough compost, or for those (like me) who aren't well enough to have energy to expend on turning compost, this isn't an option.

So, if you're an organic gardener with a conscience, what do you use for plants such as tomatoes? Do you just buy an organic grow-bag, without checking to see whether "organic" also means peat-free? Do you use an ordinary multipurpose compost which is organic and peat-free, and add your own nutrients? Or do you use your own home-made black gold? I'd be interested to hear from anyone who's found a solution ... and also from anyone who knows what's in that Westland Organic Vegetable Growing Compost, because that's what I ended up buying, for the second year running, and if I need to find something else next year I don't want to leave the decision until it's already May yet again!