I plan on BOYCOTTING PEAT MOSS - Who else has the balls to do the same??

[Guest]

People really ought to stop using peat moss. I was reading up on how bad it is for the environment and it makes me really regret the few times I have used it. I will never ever use peat moss from now on and will be using coco coir from now on. I better see people following suit

 

[PazVerdeRadical]

boycott them bitches. boycott petroleum derived products while you are at it. boycotting is pretty powerful, it is non-violent as well as legal, gotta love it.

peace.

 

[trybud]

i never knew anything was wrong with peat moss. i dont use it, but not for environmental reasons. i thought rockwool was the 'necessary' enemy (i use oasis cubes)

 

[dmcheatw]

peat moss sux anyway b/c the soil tension. fill a cup w/dried peat and water. you will see run off in short order. but whats this? stick ya finga in the middle of the container a 'lo the shit will be bone dry in the center.

this is why i hate peat moss, nearly impossible to wet thoroughly

 

[mybeans420]

Peat Bogs in Danger

What is Peat?
Peat is made of incompletely decomposed plant remains, which accumulate in waterlogged soils over thousands of years. It occurs because the natural processes of decay are prevented by the acidic water logging and depleted oxygen.

Peat has a very slow growth rate of no more than 1 mm per year. Areas where peat accumulates are called peat bogs or peat lands. Different types of bog have different names including blanket bogs and raised bogs.

Why is Peat important?

The way peat is formed creates unique and fragile ecosystems, with many highly adapted plant and animal species found only on peat bogs. Peat land plants are highly specialised to survive in these poor conditions. Certain mosses and carnivorous plants, such as the Sundew, survive only on peat bogs.

Why are peat bogs in danger?
Why peat is an important growing medium

The value of peat as a medium for horticulture is indisputable. It improves the structure of soil, and due to the way it is formed it has high water retention properties, providing an ideal growing environment for our garden plants.

Exploitation by afforestation, conversion to agriculture and commercial peat extraction has destroyed much of our peat lands. In the last century we lost 75% of our blanket bogs and 94% of our raised bogs. Gardeners and horticulture used a staggering 2.55 million cubic metres of peat each year. In the UK there is less than 9,500 acres of near natural raised bog left.

David Bellamy said, "We criticise people from the third world countries for not conserving their rainforests, but when it comes to our peat bogs which are actually a rarer habitat than the tropical rainforest, we are doing a much worse job". (The Times, Saturday November 25, 2000).

Waverley has not used peat in its horticultural activities for at least two decades, but it was felt that, as peat is a matter of national importance, the Council should adopt a policy to support the continued conservation of the remaining peat lands. Waverley therefore became a signatory of the Royal Society of Nature Conservation's Peat Lands Protection Charter in 1990.

What are the alternatives?
There are however alternatives to Peat, which hold many of the same properties.

Coir (Coco-fibre)
Coir is the fibre between the outer skin and the shell of the coconut. It is a by-product of the coconut industry, and before peat became popular coir was extensively used in horticulture as a growing medium.

Peat free soil conditioners
These are produced on a commercial scale and can be bought from most garden centres. They are excellent alternatives to peat, consisting mainly of commercially produced compost.

Home composting
This is probably the best alternative to peat. Garden compost is a renewable resource made from waste products. It helps to reduce the green waste, going to landfill, and unlike peat it is full of nutrients and returns organic matter to the soil in a useful form.

Waverley strongly promotes home composting as a means of reducing Surrey's Waste and helping to protect the UK's peat bogs.

 

[mybeans420]

Peat bogs harbour carbon time bomb
NewScientist.com news service
Fred Pearce

The world’s peat bogs are haemorrhaging carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, accelerating global warming, warns a UK researcher.

And worse still, the process appears to be feeding off itself, as rising atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide are triggering further releases from the bogs.

Billions of tonnes of carbon could pour into the air from peat bogs in the coming decades, says Chris Freeman of the University of Wales at Bangor, UK. “The world’s peatland stores of carbon are emptying at an alarming rate,” he says. “It’s a vicious circle. The problem gets worse and worse, faster and faster.”

Peat bogs are a vast natural reservoir of organic carbon. By one estimate, the bogs of Europe, Siberia and North America hold the equivalent of 70 years of global industrial emissions. But concern is growing that such bogs are releasing ever more of their carbon into rivers in the form of dissolved organic carbon (DOC).

“There seems to be an increase of DOC in rivers of about 6 per cent a year at present,” says Fred Worrall of the University of Durham in the UK, who collates global data on DOC levels in rivers. Worrall suspects the rise in DOC began about 40 years ago.

Summer droughts?
Bacteria in the rivers rapidly convert DOC into carbon dioxide that bubbles into the atmosphere. But speculation has been rife about why the peat bogs are giving up their carbon in the first place. In 2001, Freeman proposed that global warming was the cause (New Scientist print edition, 25 August 2001). But that hypothesis failed to stand up in field trials. A second suggestion, that increased river flows were flushing more carbon out of the bogs, also failed.

So Freeman tested a third idea - that summer droughts cause more vegetable matter in bogs to decompose, freeing up more carbon that is released into the rivers. But that too failed when Freeman simulated drought conditions in a bog in central Wales, and found that this reduced the DOC in rivers, rather than increasing it.

The trials indicate that there may be another culprit altogether: the direct effects of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Freeman grew plants on soil from peat bogs in igloo-like glass structures, some containing normal air and others with a CO2-rich atmosphere.

He found that plants in the CO2-rich atmosphere began to assimilate much larger amounts of CO2, which in turn was released into the soil moisture. There it can feed bacteria in the water that break down the peaty soil itself, releasing stored carbon from the bog into the rivers.

Rate of acceleration
After three years, the proportion of DOC in the CO2-rich soil was 10 times that within the normal soil. And there was no sign of the increase tailing off. “This shows that even without global warming, rising CO2 can damage our environment,” says Freeman. “The peat bogs are going into solution.”

Recent data from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Lancaster, UK shows a 90 per cent increase in DOC levels in Welsh mountain rivers since 1988.

“The rate of acceleration suggests that we have disturbed something critical that controls the stability of the carbon cycle in our planet,” Freeman says. “On these trends, by the middle of the century, DOC emissions from peat bogs and rivers could be as big a source of CO2 to the atmosphere as burning fossil fuels.”

Journal reference: Nature (vol 430 , p 195)

 

[Guest]

It isn't all the same, GeneralHydro

 

[Guest]

Hydro/Omo - not sure if you're joking but this isn't really a laughing matter, and it's not something to shrug off.

Sure, peat contributes to CO2 - but that is a NATURAL occurence.

What is not natural is humans raping bogs of peat which in turn causes even more problems. Bad stuff.

 

[Makavellian]

im not going to be using spaghnum peat moss (is that the same?) in the future bcuz the ph isnt stable.

 

[kushedout]

LoooooL. How is peat bad for the environment?

 

[Guest]

Peat itself isn't really 'bad' for the environment. It has been here for many many years, and is an integral part of the world's ecosystem that has evolved probably even longer than it took for us to evolve.

The problem with peat releasing co2 is NOT caused by the peat itself but is caused by global warming. If we want to stop peat from breaking down so much and releasing more co2 we need to stop global warming which will in turn result in less co2 for the plants which in turn means less co2 being let into the soil to break down peat which thenreleases co2.

The problem is that humans will go into wetlands (very fragile ecosystems that are dissapearing very quickly because of human interference) and strip-mine the peat out of the bogs, destroying valuble ecosystems that contribute to the water purification of the wetlands as well as housing for different animals and organisms.

Peat bogs are NOT renewable- this means that we are destroying them and using them faster than they can be replenished by the environment, which will eventually lead to the destruction of the wetlands and peat bogs.

THAT is why you should not use peat. Ontop of that, peat moss has shitty water absorbsion when it is dry, and the pH of peatmoss is very unstable and usually acidic.

Coco coir is a renewable resource and is a better option overall and does not hurt the environment by using it.

 

[gnosis]

I have trouble understanding if there is a real case or if its some kind of "human exploitation of the world is so bad mkay" thing.

 

[D0nC0smic]

its bad because there is not much left of it, and its an important ecosystem for the areas where it exists, and once it is gone it will be gone for good

 

[Guest]

I have trouble understanding if there is a real case or if its some kind of "human exploitation of the world is so bad mkay" thing.

There is a real case. This isn't just shibbydobbins blabbering about something, this is an established fact - we KNOW that peat bogs are a non renewable resource, and we KNOW that wetlands are dissapearing before our very eyes. Florida used to have a shitload of everglades (wetlands) but now they are nearly all gone. All boyotting peat requires is a little effort in terms of searching for a new amendment and a respect for the environment

 

[gnosis]

There is a lot of contradictory informations on that subject, but this one seems to be intersting (also, i'm not english speaker, i don't know the New Scientist enough to react on its behalf only).

Questions about Peat Harvesting

The journal New Scientist reports that 455 billion tons of carbon are sequestered in peat bogs worldwide. That is equivalent to about 70 years of industrial emissions, making conservation of peat bogs as important an issue as saving the rainforests.(12) Much of the peatland in Europe has already been exploited and destroyed, in good part to provide fuel for power plants.(13) Therefore, concerns about the sustainability of peat harvesting in North America are certainly justified.

The source of the harvested peat is the first factor in assessing the problem. Sphagnum peat moss appears to be the least threatened at the moment. Most sphagnum peat comes from 40,000 acres of bogs in Canada. These bogs are extensive, and less than 1% of the total is harvested annually. Within five years after a section is harvested, the peat moss is growing again, and the bog is restored to a functioning peatland.(15) However, peat bogs grow at the rate of only one millimeter per year (13), and increased demand from Europe may encourage more extensive harvesting.

In the U.S., 17 states produce peat, including Alaska, Florida, Michigan, and Minnesota. About 81% of the U.S. production is reedsedge peat (14), which is usually harvested from marshes, mountain fens, and other sensitive wetlands. The environmental impact and sustainability of reed-sedge peat harvesting as it is now practiced is certainly questionable.

http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/potmix.html

 

[Guest]

I'm lucky I just bought 2 bags of peat right before you posted this Shibby Dobbins.

There go both of me: one says "yea, I gotta do somthn' and help future generations" blahblah ego-talk stuff; and the other one is like "I don't give a shit what comes after I'm gone" I dunno.... the second one makes more sence, actually...

 

[Guest]

The facts are out there. Believe them, or not.

You read your "facts" from the same people who dig this stuff up - the Canadian Peat company.

If you aren't close-minded you'll look at other studies and scientific facts from third parties who do NOT have a stake in the peat industry.

You're doing the equivalent of listening to oil companies tell us there's no such thing as global warming. I suggest you read other sources.

Not to mention, peat grows in places other than Canada.

Being a human it is up to you - you can either care about your damaging the environment or you can not care.

We all know that harvesting peat is bad - we know that bogs are depleted - and we know that peat is non-renewable - so the ultimate choice is up to you. Do you want to damage the environment, or do you want to help it, by switching from peat? Up to you.

 

[Guest]

" The bale of peat moss my father used on our lawn always stood in a corner of the garden like a burlap refrigerator, holding a rich, dark substance smelling of the swamp. The sharp, vinegary reek of decaying vegetable matter seemed to me an essential part of gardening.

But as wetlands around the world have been drained and filled and cut away, some environmentally minded gardeners have begun to wonder if they are building up their lawns and flowerbeds at the expense of fragile ecosystems elsewhere.

Peat moss is the partially decomposed remains of sphagnum moss, a plant that defines the bogland ecosystems where it is found. As it grows, the lower parts of sphagnum die and are buried beneath the new growth; eventually, the dead moss is compacted and deprived of oxygen by the weight above it and forms peat, a dense vegetable mud. This mat of dead and living sphagnum literally supports the plant life of the bog. If sphagnum moss is not cut out completely, it will slowly grow back. But since it is the keystone of bog ecosystems, cutting it results in the destruction of many other plants as well as wildlife habitat.

In Ireland and Great Britain, peat bogs are in danger of disappearing. The problem is exacerbated by the relatively small acreage of peatlands, and by development, agricultural use, and the commercial harvesting of peat for fuel. Many conservationists, gardeners, and wetlands scientists in these countries have recommended a boycott of horticultural peat.
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In the United States, peat moss is harvested in Indiana, Florida, Maine, Michigan, and Minnesota, but most of the peat Americans use comes from Canada, which boasts 270 million acres of peatlands. Canada harvests some 40,000 acres of sphagnum and exports 90 percent of it to the United States for lawn and garden use.

Producers in both Canada and the United States maintain that they never cut sphagnum faster than it grows, and leave behind enough peat to ensure regeneration. "Harvesting peat bogs actually helps preserve them," says Gerry Hood of the Canadian Sphagnum Peat Moss Association, who claims that peat-moss operations keep the bogs from being drained for development. Five to ten years after harvesting, Hood says, the bog will be a "functioning wetland" again. He admits that it will take up to 25 years for a bog to return to its preharvested state, but says that 90 percent of the original flora will eventually grow back.
Some wetlands scientists, however, point out that a managed bog bears little resemblance to a natural one. Like tree farms, these peatlands tend toward monoculture, lacking the biodiversity of an unharvested bog.

Though gardeners may have a nostalgic attachment to peat moss, there's no real need to use it. Fallen leaves and grass clippings make a better mulch; though it won't last as long as peat moss, compost from yard clippings is a suitable soil conditioner. Leaf mulch in particular will help soil hold water.

Lawns are big absorbers of peat moss and other resources as well: perhaps we should reconsider the whole concept of putting-green perfection and allow distant ecosystems - such as peat bogs - to flourish unmolested."

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1525/is_n3_v78/ai_13695256

 

[Guest]

Detrimental effects of peat mining on amphibian abundance and species richness in bogs
http://www.gret-perg.ulaval.ca/Mazerolle2003.pdf

 

[Guest]

****
Peat bogs are areas of great natural beauty, as well as being rich in wild plants, insects and animals. Yet we are still using peat in our gardens and putting these irreplaceable habitats under threat. Michaela Strachan wants to know why.

Did you know that 30th July is International Bog Day? Well you’d be forgiven if you didn’t, but it is. It’s a day to celebrate these rare and unique habitats and to make people aware that they are sadly fast disappearing. There are a few reasons why this happening, namely drainage for agriculture, forestry and the commercial extraction of peat for the horticultural industry. And that brings me to the subject of this month’s article: PEAT, PEAT, GLORIOUS PEAT!

Now I don’t want to go off on one, but why oh why are people still using peat? I recently did an item on Countryfile about bogs and peat and was astonished to learn that despite the fact that environmentalists have been banging on for years about why gardeners shouldn’t use peat, sales have risen dramatically. Has everyone just put their heads in their peat-filled sand pits or does no one care? Maybe everyone’s just forgotten what the whole issue is about or simply got too bogged down in trying to make their gardens grow! For those caring wildlife gardeners amongst us I thought I’d do a little refresher course.

First of all, what is a peat bog?

Well it’s a wetland site with poor drainage. Peat bogs are fed by rainwater and the soil builds up its own water table and acidity. Sphagnum mosses grow and decay eventually forming layers of peat, then peat mounds many metres deep. This process takes thousands of years, which is why sustainable large-scale peat extraction is impossible; the extraction is always faster than the growth. Habitats like these simply take too long to grow back.

Why are they so important?

Because so many peat bogs have been damaged, they are now very rare. Around 94% of Britain’s peatlands have been destroyed or damaged, and peat mining still goes on, and will continue to go on while demand is high.

If you’ve ever been to a peat bog you’ll know what amazing places they are. If not, I recommend a visit. Peat bogs are rich in diversity of plants and wildlife, some of which are unique to these environments. They are home to thousands of insects including butterflies, dragonflies and the rare raft spider. Nearly a thousand different flowering plants grow there, including carnivorous plants such as the great sundew as well as mosses, fungi and lichens. Birdlife is abundant: waders, wildfowl, nightjar, winchat, merlin, short-eared owl, golden plover, snipe, sparrowhawks and - as I witnessed myself when I recently went to the restored Fenn’s Whixall and Bettisfield Mosses site in Wales - hobbies, which were feasting on the numerous dragonflies.

Peat bogs are also rich in social and biological history. They contain irreplaceable materials dating back to the ice age. Many objects are preserved in peat bogs, things like ancient boats, trees and even bodies.

What is peat used for?

Peat was used for centuries as fuel, but these days gardeners get through huge amounts in the form of compost, growbags and peat pots; the solid bales are even used for garden walls.

So now you’ve all been reminded about the huge environmental impact that using peat has, I’m sure you’re very keen to know what you can do about it. It’s very simple, DON’T BUY PEAT. You’ll be doing the environment a huge favour. There are many alternatives that gardening outlets can recommend; here are a few.

1. Home-made compost - this is an obvious soil improver and one that I hope you have all started to make by now. (Check out my compost article from a few months ago, click here.) Not only does this reduce your garden and household waste, it is also extremely environmentally friendly.

2. Coir - this is the most popular alternative to peat when used as a growing media. It’s a by-product of the coconut industry and is imported from Sri Lanka, India and the Philippines. It comes as a tough, fibrous, pithy material or as dust and has proved to be very successful for bedding plants, germinating seeds and propagating cuttings.

3. Leaf mould - again this is very environmentally friendly. After two years, leaf mould can be sieved and used as a great peat substitute for improving soil.

4. Manure - if you live on or near a farm this is ideal! Well-rotted cow, chicken and horse manure are particularly good.

5. Bark chipping and even sheep’s fleeces can be used as an effective mulch.

6. Pine needles and composted bracken are excellent if you need to increase the acidity of your soil.

At present, alternatives to peat account for less than 30% of the market, which if you ask me is pretty unimpressive! A staggering 2.55 million cubic metres of peat are used every year in the UK for horticultural uses.

So next time you have a little peat memory lapse remember this: you can have peat in a bag or you can have peat in a bog but you can’t have both. We can’t rely on the government to make the decision, so once again its up to the consumer to make the choice. I hope you’ll all make the right one!

Stay gardening wild, be a proud and peat-free gardener.

http://www.greenfingers.com/articledisplay.asp?id=896