Experiment with your composts

Composts for seed sowing, container growing, and general use have always been key to our gardening year, so securing them asap is an important part of our preparations.

Only this time around there is an element of indecision highlighted by the imminent banning of peat.

We have known for some time that this was coming, and from an environmental point of view it’s long overdue, so experimenting with potential substitutes has occurred.

The trade has introduced composts based on coir from coconuts, wood fibre and bark, coco, paper pulp or a combination of these. So there’s plenty of choice around but how effective are they?

Feedback from local gardeners suggests that no single compost fully satisfies their need for cultivating different plant types, but this is not new!

In days of yore, when our large country house grounds were maintained by a head gardener and his team, there was a strong element of competition that culminated at the annual flower show where bragging rights were won, and the estate gained prestige.

Head gardeners were the deciding factor in growing prizewinning produce in their special composts, whose ingredients were a closely guarded secret.

When the John Innes Institute developed and launched their standardised composts for seed sowing and potting in the 1930s it represented for some a levelling of the playing field. The combination of loam (soil), peat and sand, plus appropriate fertilisers and their amounts, was well accepted by most.

The general advice given to gardeners now is to experiment with the existing composts and ingredients available until a suitable mixture that suits your requirement is found. We’ve always tinkered a little with leaf mould, composted garden waste, perlite, vermiculite, and base fertilisers anyway, so this situation is nothing new – as some of those 19th century gardeners would understand!