Topic: peat-free compost

[Robert_Brenchley]

I used to make my own compost using the John innes recipes, with leafmould substituted for peat. It's easy to sterilise (in the oven, which is smelly, or with Jeye's Fluid), and works fine. I never had problems with weeds sprouting.

[Big Gee]

I used to make my own compost using the John innes recipes, with leafmould substituted for peat. It's easy to sterilise (in the oven, which is smelly, or with Jeye's Fluid), and works fine. I never had problems with weeds sprouting.

Therein lies the secret - the oven kills any lurking weed seeds that may be fertile by incinerating them, or Jeye's Fluid which kills everything - including the good organisms!

The John Innes recipes have stood the test of time (they were made widely available in the year I was born - 1954). John Innes who was actually a nineteenth century property and land dealer in the City of London, died in 1904 but bequeathed part of his fortune to the improvement of horticulture by experiments and research. Bless him - the rest (as they say) - is history! Peat & leaf mold are not quite the same things but both are equally safe.

The 'Jeyes Fluid' mixture was patented by John Jeyes in 1877, at a time when things like arsenic were also used by Victorian gardeners (e.g. copper arsenate)! However the lifespan of many such gardeners was a short one.   

Jeyes is made from tar acids. The actual modern composition of Jeye's Fluid contains:
4-chloro-m-cresol,
Tar acids, (poly-)alkylphenol fraction,
Propan-2-ol & Terpineol.

Tar has carcenogenic properties in it and according to Jeyes themselves (after contacting them by phone in the past) they said Jeyes should not be used on a veg patch or soil that's to be used for edible plants.
To disinfect other gardening items like tools etc. then it's fine, but applying it to sterilize soil is a different matter.

Sorry to sound like a kill-joy! But I think I'll stick with good ol' clean organic peat! Or peat as part of a John Innes recipe - that's been heat treated.

[aj]

sorry to have sparked a row!

aj - is your homemade version clean enough? I always get lots of weeds growing in my homemade compost, so i use it for mulching or, mixed with soil, for more mature plants in pots.

last year's leaf mold might be useable next spring, though. my garden soil is awful (clay) so not really suitable for propagation, but i could buy a bag.

If the weed seed don't cook when composting then it wasn't hot enough. If you pile the greens and browns together and make the pile in one day, and wet it down; it heats up enough to kill 90% of the weed seeds. I might get a couple growing but I use it mainly for potting not sowing. All seed compost gets shoved in the earth oven once pizzas are made to kill off the remainder.

I am experimenting with a special mix; comfrey, cardboard and clay. I'll let you know how that goes, but the comfrey is rotting down nicely inbetween the cardboard at the moment.

[raisedbedted]

Where did you get the figure that 91% or peat is burned in Power Stations and what area does that represent.  UK, the World??
In the UK virtually all peat is used for horticulture and most by amateur gardeners..

From http://www.peatsociety.org/peatlands-and-peat/global-peat-resources-country

Almost all peat industry output is for the horticultural market; there is however still quite extensive (but unquantified) use of peat as a domestic fuel in the rural parts of Scotland and Northern Ireland. About 20 000 tonnes per annum of air-dried sod peat is reported by the International Peat Society to be produced for energy purposes, part of which is exported to Sweden.

From http://www.rhs.org.uk/

Defra (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) estimate that 2.96 million m3 of peat is used in the UK annually, of which 99% is used as growing media and 69% of which is used by gardeners. Sixty-eight percent of all peat used in the United Kingdom is imported from other countries, incl. the Republic of Ireland and the Baltic states (Defra, 2010).

Interesting to note that commercial agriculture consumes very little in the way of peat (relatively of course).  Those that do use peat are primarily producing potted goods for households or for nurserys or for mushroom production and not for producing the nations friut and veg.  http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=487 - figures are a little old.

Apologies yes you are quite right the 9% I was thinking of was something like the use of Peat by domestic gardeners, there are certainly Peat fuelled power stations and the use of Peat as fuel both industrially and domestically in Russia and Belarus is very high.  I wouldn't place too much store in DEFRA, there is after all a unilateral ban on Peat that they need to defend.
My point was that ultimately whether you or I use peat in our potting mixes it is going to make the a**e end of b****r all difference.

[Jeannine]

Just to to toss  something in the mix so to speak, there seems to be shortage of peat here we get huge bales of it  very cheap. As a country Canada seems to be usually right up there in the front with conservation issues but nothing much being said here


Can't get anything like Jeyes fluid anymore though.


XX Jeannine

[Digeroo]

If the weed seed don't cook when composting then it wasn't hot enough

There are some seeds that come through composting however hot you get it, even the recycled compost carries some.   Fat hen, tomatoes, cucumbers and cleavers (goosegrass) are all particularly stubborn.