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I used to buy big bags of potting mix for my balcony, then I weighed what I was actually spending
For two seasons I hauled 40 lb bags of potting mix up three floors to my place in Oakland, and I never once thought about what was in them. Last month I finally sat down and added it up: I was spending about $75 a year on dirt for six containers, and half of that mix was peat that turns to dust by August. What changed my mind was reading that peat takes hundreds of years to form and bogs store way more carbon than the little bags help me grow. So I switched to a coco coir and compost blend I mix myself in a storage bin, and honestly the peppers in container number four look better than anything I grew last summer. I still have two bags of the old stuff under my sink, and now I don't know if I should use them up or give them away. Has anyone else made the switch and had their tomatoes actually care about it?
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blake82915d ago
The line about half the mix turning to dust by August is the part where I'd push back a little. That hasn't been my experience at all. I've been running the same peat based mix for years in fabric pots and it holds up fine as long as I don't let it dry out all the way, so the dust thing sounds more like a watering problem than a peat problem. The carbon argument about bogs is fair and I won't argue with it, but peat is also a renewable-ish resource when it's harvested from managed bogs, and coir has its own baggage with shipping it halfway around the world. If the coir blend is working for your peppers then keep at it, but I wouldn't dump the old bags just because of a blog post. Use them up on something you don't care much about and see how it goes.
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