RSSFor peat's sake-- Should you stop using handy garden material?
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If you are like most gardeners, you use peat moss, at least occasionally.
The soilless potting soils you use in your hanging baskets, containers and houseplant pots contain peat moss as a major component. You may also add peat moss to your garden soil to improve its aeration and water holding capacity.
But a controversy has sprung up about using peat moss. Some environmentalists are claiming that harvesting peat moss adds to the threat of global warming. Additionally, they believe that harvesting it also endangers peat bogs that are habitats for wildlife and for plants that live in bog habitats.
Does harvesting peat moss and using it in your garden really pose a serious problem, or is this controversy just a tempest in a teapot?
* What is peat moss and how is it formed?
Peat bogs, or peatlands as they are often called, are found in Canada and in a number of northern European countries. They are created with the addition of new layers of living sphagnum moss each year that grow on top of each previous layer of dead moss.
Because bogs are acidic and contain very little oxygen, sphagnum moss decays very slowly. After hundreds or even thousands of layers of sphagnum have accumulated, the lower layers will have nearly decomposed and turned into peat moss. Well, that's an oversimplification, but you get the picture.
* Why is peat moss important?
Peat has been used for more than a thousand years in northern Europe and the British Isles as an inexpensive alternative to coal for heating homes and cooking. But since the middle of the last century, peat moss has been used mainly in horticulture.
Virtually all of the peat moss used in our country -- for both commercial horticulture and home gardening -- comes from Canada. Fortunately, Canada has more than a quarter of a billion acres of peatlands, of which only 45,000 acres has been or is now being harvested.
* How is peat moss harvested?
First, a shallow ditch is dug around the bog to drain it. Then the top layer of living moss is removed, dried and sold for lining wire-framed hanging baskets and for making wreaths and various other craft projects. Next, harrows loosen the decomposed layers of moss, which is then removed by large vacuuming machines. Finally, it is milled or screened into smaller particles and compressed into the bales that you see in garden centers.
* What is the problem with using peat moss?
Peat bogs in Europe have been mined for hundreds of years. Once all the peat had been removed, bogs in the past had routinely been abandoned, although some have been converted into farmland.
It is true that with the abandonment of peat bogs, valuable habitat for acidic-loving plants, including wild cranberries, lingonberries and carnivorous plants, will be lost. At the present rate of harvesting, the remaining bogs in Europe could be depleted in the not-so-distant future.
* Are Canada's peatlands in danger?
Unlike European peat bogs, Canadian bogs are forming peat moss at a rate 70 times faster than it is being harvested, which means that more carbon dioxide is being stored than is being released from the harvest and through its use. It would take many hundreds of years of harvesting before Canada's peatlands could be totally exhausted. But that will not be allowed to happen.
Even with their vast reserves of peatlands, Canadian peat moss companies treat their bogs as a sustainable resource by restoring those that have been completely harvested. Ditches are filled in so that rain and snowfall once again are returned to the bogs. Living sphagnum plants and spores are then spread across the surface. Within 20 years, depleted bogs are well on their way to recovery, although it will be many years before they will be ready to be harvested again.
* What are the alternatives to peat moss?
You may already have the best alternative for peat moss in your own backyard: homemade compost. Compost is just as good or better than peat moss as an additive for your soil, though it will not completely take the place of peat moss in potting soil. The only problem that you might have with compost is that you may not be able to make as much as you need. But no problem. Many nurseries sell excellent commercially made compost by the bag.
Coir, made from waste coconut husks, has been suggested as an alternative for peat moss. It is made from the dust and small particles of fiber left after the long fibers of the husks are separated for use in upholstery stuffing and for making rope, doormats and brushes.
So, are you really contributing to the loss of peat bog habitat and global warming by using peat moss? Make up you own mind.
* Gardening columnist Jim McLain can be reached at 697-6112 or ongardening@compwrx.com.
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