Peat-free gardening concerns and peat-free posters

Since starting the ‘Leicester is no place for peat’ campaign, we’ve heard a few concerns about gardening without using peat. I wanted to take this opportunity to respond to those. 

Quite a few of us in Leicester Friends of the Earth are keen gardeners so we can talk from experience. I’ve got a garden and an allotment. I’ve had my allotment for just over 10 years and I grow vegetables and soft fruit there. In my garden, I grow herbs and flowers in the borders and salad leaves in containers. 

My sister helping with re-potting

Plants grown in peat-free compost at my allotment

Here are my responses to the concerns we’ve heard: 

“It's difficult to find peat-free compost / plants in shops”

You do have to shop carefully if you’re trying to avoid peat because compost and plants grown using peat won’t usually be labelled. You have to look for products specifically labelled ‘peat-free’. There is a handy list of peat-free compost brands to look out for and nurseries that sell plants grown in peat-free compost on the DogwoodDays blog – you might want to bookmark it! Unfortunately, none of the nurseries are close to Leicester but most sell online. If you visit a garden centre and you can’t tell whether plants are grown in peat-free compost, ask! It will help garden centres to move towards being peat-free if they understand that there is a demand for it. 

“Peat-free compost is expensive”

The price of compost does vary but the peat-free compost I buy from my local hardware shop is the same price as the high-peat brand. I think it might be a complete myth that peat-free is more expensive. Peat does of course also have an enormous environmental cost; extracting it destroys valuable wildlife habitat and contributes to climate change. So if ever you’re tempted by a cheap peat-based compost, remember that you’re not paying the real price! The cheapest compost of all, of course, is garden compost, so make sure that you’re composting your green waste at home – the RHS have useful advice about how to start composting. 

“Peat-free compost is too coarse for seeds”

I grow nearly all of my plants (vegetables, flowers and herbs) from seed in shop-bought peat-free compost mixed with garden compost. I tend to use the same brand (New Horizon), because that seems to be most widely available near to where I live. However, there are several different brands and I’ve spoken to friends who use other brands with similar results. I never have any problems growing seeds. There are sometimes small pieces of woody material in peat-free compost, just as there are in my garden compost. I pick out any larger pieces as I’m sowing seeds but the smaller pieces don’t seem to cause any problems. I think the idea that seed compost has to be very fine comes from old gardening books – in my experience, it isn’t true! 

The other thing to remember is that peat itself does not contain the nutrients that growing plants need – it has to be added artificially to peat-based composts. Whereas garden compost and peat-free compost you buy in the shops is full of plant nutrients, just as nature intended. 

If you have any other concerns about gardening without peat, please leave a comment below or get in touch – we’d be happy to talk about this further.

 

If you’ve gone peat-free and you’re trying to persuade friends and neighbours to join you, we now have peat-free posters available! Please feel free to download and print. The two hand-drawn posters were designed by pupils at Brooke House Day School in Cosby, who have been learning about peat in their climate literacy lessons.