Coir Blimey!

When not sorting out who runs it, the Government of the United Kingdom has been busy encouraging gardeners to go 'peat-free' by 2020. Garden Centres and other stores will be asked to stop selling any products containing peat (or peatmoss) within ten years.

A report in the latest issue of The Garden (May 2010), the magazine of the Royal Horticultural Society, announced that the Environment Secretary Hilary Benn launched the peat-free initiative as part of its 'Act on CO2' campaign. As I summarised in September, harvesting of peat is generally unsustainable.

It seems the initiative has been well received by industry which has already begun to replace peat with products such as coir and wood fibre. 54% of the market is said to be peat-free. However there are some concerns about the availability and size of the environmental footprint for the alternatives.

When I wrote on this topic last year, Jim Croft (from the Australian National Botanic Gardens) commented that he favoured composted pine bark and similar produts over coir. The latter, he said, was too 'strong' for seedlings and young plants. He had read that the sodium content of coir was high, which would be toxic to quite a few species. For succulents, coir's water holding capacity was just too high.

The Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in the UK would support these comments it seems. They note that "alternative media for specialist plants such as carnivorous and ericaceous subjects [acid-loving plants] might be more difficult to develop".

The Royal Horticultural Society has posted some further advice and background information on its website.

Jim Croft concluded in his comment that while coir is a useful substitute for peatmoss (which he doesn't use for ideological reasons) we shouldn't "get too carried away with a good idea" and he too warns us to take care with more "delicate things". So don't use peat, do use coir, but be careful with any potentially sensitive plants.

Which reminds me of a remark made by an overseas colleague when I responsed indignantly to his criticism of something I had written - he said I had always been a 'sensitive plant'. While I would dispute this as well, it's a nice line!

Image: Coconut Husk Chips for sale at the Bilpin Collectors Plant Fair this year. This is just one of a variety of coir-related products available - coir fibre is the usual peat substitute.