Peat Free

So starts the sowing of seeds. We would have to drive miles out of our way to find a retailer that sells ready mixed peat free seed sowing and seedling compost so the alternative is to continue to reconstitute coir compost blocks...which is easily done.

In our experience we add half the suggested amount of water to get a dryish substrate into which we can evenly mix additives such as biochar, rock dust, grit or vermiculite depending on the seeds we are are sowing. That said we are not sure about the true ecological impact of using these mined & processed minerals, though logically it can only be negative. So we're going to use the very last from the bottom of bags from the years of yore and then experiment with garden soil, watching for damping off and germination rates. Hey ho.

Lovely stuff

For Peat's Sake

We've finally scraped the bottom of an ages-old bag of peat-based compost that we used to start our seedlings and with it we had to face up to our hypocrisy in our concern regarding the threats to all lands peat, boggy and bogeyman.

So, we changed our ways and purchased a coir substitute. We'll let you know how we get on...