Is a better peat replacement possible?

Could new technology create peat-free gardening’s Holy Grail, asks Marc Rosenberg

- Marc Rosenberg

WITH the Government poised to ban peat by 2024 and TV gardener Monty Don recently describing peat harvesting as ‘an act of eco-vandalism’, demand for peat-free compost is set to go through the roof.

Most current peat-frees contain ingredients such as bark, coir, wood fiber or composted green waste, but there isn’t enough to meet demand (AG, 23 October), leaving the industry in a race to find novel materials to replace the 2.3million cubic meters of peat used by UK horticulture every year.

Paludiculture, where sphagnum moss is commercially grown, is being hailed as an eco-friendly alternative to digging-up peat bogs. Garden expert and AG columnist Peter Seabrook said he has seen the technique in action on reflooded, cut-away bogs on the DutchGerman border, with sphagnum-planted areas ‘annually recovering a five to seven-centimeter layer of peat’.

Sphagnum trials take off

One UK company pioneering a different approach is Leicestershire-based BeadaMoss. In an Innovate UK-funded project with partners, sustainably micro propagated sphagnum has been successfully grown on an agricultural grassland site where, after two to three years, it was harvested, dried, and processed before being mixed with other compost ingredients such as bark.