Peat Free Gardening
Peat free gardening is not the distraction -confidence is.
People aged 25-45 years are scared to do garden because they are raised with a fear of getting things wrong. This demographic is also the most open to environmentally sound suggestions.
Many people have no issue with regenerative, sustainable horticulture – they don’t know how to do it! So, the best idea is to obtain plants from peat-free nurseries and locally made peat-free compost.
When it comes to those in manufacturing and retailing, transparency is in demand more than ever. The responsibility, from the top down, is to wind up environmentally harmful practices.
Suggestion indoctrinating new gardeners (often unaware of the problems regarding peat) into using peat-based compost.
We have all known about the detrimental effect of peat extraction for decades and have relied on the industry’s goodwill to move us across to an acceptable substitute.
They have failed and are still screaming their protestations as they are dragged towards inevitable change.
More front gardens will be paved over due to the lack of peat availability, but not the exponential rise in vehicle ownership in urban areas and the lack of available space to park those vehicles.
Garden Centers
Garden centers are where we buy chemicals and sprays to blitz nature and bird food to assuage our guilt 90 percent of the space at garden centers is taken up not by plants but by the gardening industry’s unnecessary accouterments pushes towards us.
As gardeners, being at the forefront of the effects of climate change, and those who follow us are well-schooled in their understanding of the environment and the pursuit of a carbon-free future, so don’t try to scare us with your apocryphal protestations. Change is coming, so get used to it and act as responsible partners, not churlish sulks.
I’m still confused over the use of peat in growing media. I can understand the reluctance to use peat due to its extraction contributing to habitat loss; however, I don’t notice any similar protests over habitat loss due to the mass concreting over the countryside.
I know that homes have gardens and that they are becoming increasingly important for wildlife. Still, the small gardens in new-builds don’t go anywhere near replacing the natural vegetation they often replace.
I’m also unclear over its use in horticulture contributing to atmospheric CO2; I can understand this concern of using peat as a fuel, but not in horticulture. I’d like to know what proportions of extracted peat are used in horticulture and as a fuel.
I would have thought that its use as a growing medium would contribute to carbon capture, as the plants being grown in a peat-based compost are converting CO2 to plant material.
Regarding how much peat contributes to carbon capture, the dense concentration of carbon in peat is built up retailed due to the inundated anaerobic conditions present in peat bogs.
Conclusion
When exposed to air through drainage or extraction, rapid decomposition of the peat occurs, and much of the CO2 is released – a process known as ‘oxidative wastage.’ A more significant proportion of the locked-up CO2 in peat is lost through oxidative wastage than is taken up by the equivalent area of plant growth in gardens.
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