Peat free compost

[Nicos]

I’ve just spotted this in the news…

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-62069553

It looks like some of us will need to review our seed sowing and potting on techniques, and in particular the watering of them.

How many of us use peat free compost already - any tips please?

[ameno]

I've always used peat-free compost. I just buy one of the Which best buys every year, and it always performs very well.
This year, the best one seems to be B&Q Good Home Multi-purpose Enriched Compost (it is peat free, despite not saying so in the name).
In previous years it had been Melcourt Sylvagrow, but they reformulated last year, and it's not as good anymore (it's still reasonable, but not as good as it was).
These reformulations are the major issue, really. Sometimes they lead to improvement, but just as often they get worse. That's why I check what the best buys are for each year, rather than just buying the same one every year and simply trusting it to still be good.

For those who prefer using peat, I would not recommend stocking up on compost before the ban comes into effect. It might sound like a good idea, but compost breaks down rather quickly, and by the time you use it it is likely that both the texture and the nutrient content will be rather worse than when you bought it.

Also, I wonder if composts which use so-called "moorland gold" will be exempt from the ban?
These composts technically contain peat, however the peat is not cut from peat bogs, but rather is peat which is filtered out of drinking water in areas where the water supplies filter through peat bogs. As such, it doesn't cause any damage to peat bogs at all.

[mrsbusy]

I got the recommended Which peat free enriched B&Q etc.
I am seriously not impressed. It does not hold water and my plants have not done well.
I bought quite a few bags of it as it's a long drive to B&Q from me.
I got round the poor performance by mixing it half and half with top soil dug out from our recent pond project.
I'm trying to make as much compost as I can - I'm fed up with spending money on rubbish compost and plastic bags.
Major leaf collection in progress. Plastic bags useful for that!

[Jungle Jane]

It says in the news article the ban applies to England & just for amateur gardeners,not businesses & it’s banned from 2024,so plenty of time for companies to perfect their peat free versions & if it is good compost everybody should use it,not just amateur gardeners? I read the reviews on B&Q about that “good home peat free compost”,reviews aren’t that good,but the bad reviews are based on the look of the compost,nothing about how the plants are doing in it. I re-use my old compost here,nothing wrong with texture,all the bits of wood have broken down,just add fertiliser & all’s good. I do buy compost for seed sowing indoors tho.

[Jungle Jane]

I was just thinking,there was a lot more people buying food plants this year when I was at the GC & when covid happened there was a boost in gardening sales,it was the only shop open along with food shops,there might’ve been an all time high of compost sales? The demand can’t have been good for the peat resources.

[mothhawk]

The government wanted amateur gardeners to be voluntarily peat-free by 2020. They are living in cloud-cuckoo-land, if peat products are produced the public wil buy them.

And peat producers are not going to take a knock to their profits if they can help it. I suspect that once peat is banned here, the producers will simply export what they produce. We currently import more than half the peat used in the UK. No doubt those foreign producers will find other markets and carry on digging up their peat too.

[ameno]

I read the reviews on B&Q about that “good home peat free compost”,reviews aren’t that good,but the bad reviews are based on the look of the compost,nothing about how the plants are doing in it.

That's not the Which recommended one. That one actually scored quite poorly.
The Which Best Buy is specifically the "enriched" one (which apparently is actually a completely different formula to the normal one, not just the normal one with added extra fertiliser).

I've been using the enriched one for seed sowing and raising young plants this year, and it has done very well for me. Seeds germinate well, and plants grow strongly and quickly with no signs of deficiencies.
I never use bagged compost for large containers, mind you. I find that compost never holds enough water or nutrient, not to mention filling multiple large pots with it is very expensive. I always use my own mix of garden soil, horse manure, and used compost, with added poultry manure and slow-release fertiliser (and usually a bit of water-retaining gel for things like peppers or tomatoes, too).

[Jungle Jane]

It was the good home enriched multi purpose peat free compost that I was talking about,I just wrote that because it was quicker. Why would I have looked at a different compost that wasn’t being spoken about. One of the reviews says this (copy & pasted from review on B & Q page -
“I bought this compost on the strength of a good Which@ review. It was my first time using peat free compost as I felt compelled to do my bit. What a mistake. Seed germination rates were terrible and young plants refused to grow. This has been my worst gardening experience in 40 years!”

[Jungle Jane]

Maybe you don’t get the peat free one because it does say peat free in the name Ameno.

[goosander]

I was short of compost last spring and my wife got me a bag out of B&Q and i got a Sinclair mix that was as near as my usual only peat free. I usually use Clover potting compost. Because of this i had my toms in the 3 different compost. My usual Clover came away as usual and the Sinclair one struggled and the other the plants died.
Bob.

[mrsbusy]

I have had good feedback about Coir as a peat substitute.
I intended to get some - always next year!
I had a chat with my local nursery (Englefield) manager who said lots of problems with peat free.

[ameno]

It was the good home enriched multi purpose peat free compost that I was talking about,I just wrote that because it was quicker. Why would I have looked at a different compost that wasn’t being spoken about.

My mistake, then. But in my defence, they do two composts with very similar names ("Good Home Multi-purpose Enriched Compost" and "Good Home Multi-purpose Compost") and very similar bags, so one could easily confuse the two, yet the actual contents are completely different.

Maybe you don’t get the peat free one because it does say peat free in the name Ameno.

There is no non-peat-free version. The name is quite misleading, I agree. The entire "Good Home" range is peat-free, and if one looks on the back of the bag it states that it is 0% peat, yet it does not actually say "peat-free" in any of the names (it does say it on the website, but not on the name on the actual bag).

As for the reviews on their website, personally I trust my own experience, combined with that of Which Gardening, over random customers leaving reviews online. Especially as there are only 18 reviews, which is not really enough to give a fair statistical representation of the views of everyone using it.
Given the easily confused names, I wouldn't be surprised if many of the dissatisfied customers simply bought the wrong compost by mistake (indeed, reading through the reviews, it seems like at least two of the negative reviews are from people mistaking the slow-release fertiliser capsules for snail eggs, and two more are just because of complaints about the way the compost was packaged or stored, rather than about the compost itself).

[Sweet savory]

I had good results in pots for cucumbers, tomatoes and dahlias with Blue Diamond multi purpose which is peat free. It was “enriched” to last plants up to 3 months and the texture was too lumpy for seeds but fine for established plants. Also it said it was made relatively locally in Somerset which is a plus for me.
To help with drainage I do add a handful of vermiculite to peat free initially which helps. Just using plain peat free (the first bag I bought this year but I forget the name) I had green algae on the surface due to poor drainage.
I also reuse most compost like JJ adding fertiliser to beef it up a bit and sometime sieving to remove the worst of the roots although seeds generally get new compost.

[Ger-annie-um]

I would love to go totally peat free but every single bag from different suppliers have resulted in spectacular failure. I've tried using a peat free but mixing it with some 'homemade' compost with a bit of sterilised topsoil and added fbb which has worked to some extent but I'd be grateful for any other tips. In the meantime I've been using a 'reduced peat' mix and further diluted it with homemade compost. This gardening lark gets tricky sometimes