Unless you’re making your own potting soil or gardening soil, it seems nearly impossible to find a bagged product that does not have peat moss in it.

Northern Europe has cleared and drained much of their peatland for agricultural & industrial use. Listen to a UK gardening podcast, and you’ll hear about peat.

Here in N. America, we get 80% of our peat moss from Canada which has about 25% of the world’s peatland.

What’s the issue w/ using peat moss?

-peatlands are one of the planets best sequesters of carbon. The peat bogs accumulate & store carbon (even more efficiently than forest) for an indefinite period of time, lowering the concentration of CO2 from the atmosphere.

-when we burn, harvest, & drain peatlands, we are releasing CO2 & methane back into the atmosphere. It’s estimated that peat use emits 400,000 tons of carbon every year.

-Peatlands took 1000’s of yrs to establish. The peat industry says that peatlands can be renewable. But with current best practices, there’s a 10-15 year time difference before the new peatland can match the pre-harvest land for carbon sequencing.

-peatlands are unique habitats for animals, fungi, and plants. Carnivorous plants, orchids, and evergreens, rare birds & amphibians have adopted to the wetland and low nutrient bog environment.

How is peat used?

For agriculture, peat is used to retain moisture, enrich soil, & as a mulch. Peat can absorb 20x its weight in water.

For industrial, peat is used as for fuel. In Ireland, Finland, Scotland, Germany, & Russia homes are heated by peat bricks.

For manufacturing, the smoke from burning peat, is used in the production of scotch whisky.

In gardening there are substitutes for peat:

-Coco coir - South Asia

-Perlite-Greece

-Vermiculite-South Africa

All have an environmental footprint either from production, transport or both.

and there’s Biochar.

Have you tried it?👇🏾

I wonder…

🤔what’s a gardener to do?

-Make your own garden soil.

-Look for products that are peat free & environmental friendly

-Look for products that are regionally sourced.

After doing my own search, I found PIttMoss.com which makes an organic potting mix and seed starting mix that are peat-free. The one I recommend and that worked for me is “Plentiful Organic Potting Mix” if you are interested in trying it, please get a 15% off discount by using my code bb15.

Here’s my thoughts…

Although PM1 out performed the peat-free mix probably by just a few extra days of growth, I recommend “Plentiful Organic Potting Mix” (peat-FREE) for environmental reasons. Saving a precious natural carbon sequestering habitat (peat bogs) versus saving a few days of extra seed growing time, is right.

Also Plentiful has several attributes:

👉🏾It Works!

👉🏾Chemical clean & food safe

👉🏾Sustainable

👉🏾Conserves water

👉🏾Reduces Nitrogen Runoff

👉🏾Recycles paper products that would otherwise end up in landfills.

👉🏾Multi-purpose & can be used for seed starting, indoor & outdoor plants, mulch, native soil improvement, grass seeding.

👉🏾Can be used for soil block recipes, mixed in with soil products, compost, worm bedding, & more

👉🏾Compostable

You might think, can make my own? It’s basically paper…yes, probably w/ some effort!

But If you want convenience, & want to reduce global waste, & save peat bogs, then PittMoss is a good choice.

Pittmoss offers these Peat-Free products:

Plentiful (✔️)

Performance

Prime

Good to know…

PittMoss started in 2014, as the first company to create peat free potting mixes using recycled newspaper and cardboard.

Since then, PittMoss has recycled 714 tons of paper and 502 tons of cardboard, and prevented the emissions of 6382.41 metric tons of carbon emissions. Mining 2 cubic feet of peat emits the carbon equivalent of burning 22 pounds of coal.

I wonder…

🤔how long can seeds stay in PittMoss before needing transfer.

For Plentiful, seedlings lasts up to 60 days for smaller plants & 40 days for larger ones.

🌍 don’t forget to compost!