THE CALEY
Lewis Normand, President of the Royal Caledonian Horticultural Society, discusses the continued phasing out of peat in compost.
I must confess that I did not see the compost shortage coming. When the UK government determined in 2008, and then reiterated in 2013, that compost in the UK would be peat-free by 2020, I was already moving myself away from peat-based composts. My position was to protect European peatlands, their unique habitat, flora and fauna, and the essential CO2 holding carbon sink that peatlands are.
It is true to say that we could simply import more peat-based compost from Eastern Europe to accommodate shortages and still reach UK targets to finish extraction and use of peat by the revised dates set by Defra of a complete ban by 2030. We could do this, but in my opinion shouldn’t. One of the main points of debate throughout horticultural media has been that the production of good compost should not cause the environment to suffer.
Traditional views that peat is the best medium for compost production have been challenged for well over a decade now and as someone who gardens peat-free, I can say that modern peat-free composts are great.
Made largely from composted barks and wood fibres, there are a number of excellent peat-free alternative composts available although I treat plants grown in them marginally differently to those that I have previously grown in peat-based compost (water more often, but using less water each time). They all produce happy, healthy, and bountiful crops.
Why then should we argue about peat use? There are several valuable arguments for the continued use of peat in composts, the first being to recognise the significant lack of non-peat alternatives. While this argument has been rumbling on quietly for many years, lack of demand from end users has not called for compost manufacturers to invest in peat-free alternatives. As such, there is a small fraction of the amount of compost available that does not contain peat.
This is changing, and demand for peat-free alternatives has grown exponentially in the last five years (and will continue to). Manufacturers have struggled - and will likely continue to struggle - to meet demand, although the demand for peat-free will eventually be met. One in twenty people interviewed by a retailers’ association planned to be peat-free in 2021. Not a very high figure, but as change is driven by bodies like Defra, people will soon have to make these changes.
Another factor for the defence of peat use must be the comparative carbon footprint of peat-free alternatives - we must, after-all, be able to measure apples for apples.
Products like coir, a useful material to add texture and bulk to compost, can make up significant parts of many peat-free composts, but it has to travel from parts of the world with tropical climates in order to reach us, giving it a pretty high carbon footprint which we should consider. Is it ethically sound to ship coir from Sri Lanka, for example, to the UK to avoid extracting peat in the UK? A tough call to make!
Not all peat-free alternatives use coir though, some use wood fibre and FSC (Forestry Stewardship Council) approved bi-product bark from the timber industry as the main constituents for their composts. These are UK sourced so have a significantly reduced carbon footprint, and are bi-products of another industry, thus further reducing waste.
A new trade initiative, funded by Defra and a number of trade bodies, to add QR codes that will explain their carbon footprint to compost bags, will be launched this year. This should make it clearer to the domestic gardener just what is in their bag of compost, and its relative merits.
It does, however, take us to the final point we must consider in defence of peat use, which is consistency of quality and reliability. From decades of use, we can reliably determine the results we get from growing in peat-based media, although most peat-based composts have been reducing the volume of peat in them for some time to manage change.
Many of the newer peat-free alternatives are relatively untested, with growing results unknown. Horror stories and joyous successes have been shared on social media and in print about some, but the reality is, we need to do comparative tests to evaluate their merits. I am confident using the manufacturers that I do for my garden and in commercial projects.
We all have to make up our minds on how we feel about using peat, either extracted here in the UK, or now commonly brought in from Ireland, Poland, Lithuania, Scandinavia, and further afield.
We have to consider peatlands as increasingly rare and unique habitats that cannot be recreated.
We need to consider the value of peatlands in storing carbon dioxide, which is otherwise leaked into the atmosphere, advancing global warming.
Equally, we must be confident in the carbon footprint and quality of materials of alternatives, and evaluate their suitability for use.
It is rare that we have to make ethical and moral decisions in gardening, and the reason this debate is so hotly contested is because of the passion many feel over both sides of the argument.
As a consumer, our hands will ultimately be forced to make a change to peat-free alternatives in the not-too-distant future, but to get there, we should all attempt, before the change, to find our happy place in terms of peat use and the best quality alternative that suits us as gardeners.
The Royal Caledonian Horticultural Society, known affectionately as ‘The Caley’, was established in 1809 by a group of seventeen Edinburgh worthies at a meeting held at the Royal College of Physicians.
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