I want to go with peat-free gardening: how can I do it?

Q: I am trying to go completely peat-free. Are there any nurseries or garden centres in Ireland that grow/sell plants in peat-free compost? Sydney Cassidy, Co Wexford
A: Your stance on the use of peat is admirable. You’ll be pleased to know that it’s also slowly going to become the norm for Irish gardeners in the years ahead, as the use of peat is gradually phased out because of EU targets to mitigate climate change, support biodiversity, and protect wetlands that act as vital carbon sumps. Right now, the Irish horticultural industry is only at the beginning of a period of seismic change in this regard, as growers seek out suitable alternatives.
But while few dispute the unsustainable environmental cost and the urgent need for radical change as regards the use of this fossil material, finding suitable alternatives hasn’t been easy. Peat has been the go-to growing medium since the 1960s precisely because it’s relatively lightweight, easy to handle, resists compaction, and retains both nutrients and water relatively well – all key considerations for growers, nurseries and garden centres that want strong, healthy container-grown plants with a decent pot life that are easy to transport.
Irish nurseries testing peat-free alternatives have encountered problems in this regard, with the root-balls of containerised plants grown in peat-free compost generally quicker to dry out and their growth levels proving less consistent.
But the good news is that innovators within the industry are slowly but surely beginning to make important strides, helped by the wealth of new research on the subject. One of them is family-owned Kilmurry Nursery (kilmurrynursery.com), the herbaceous perennial nursery in Co Wexford owned by Orla and Paul Woods and managed by their daughter and grower Hazel Woods, which voluntarily stopped use of peat-based products in late 2021.
After careful trial and experimentation, the nursery now uses a pine-bark based product with some added coir for the 50,000-100,000 potted plants it produces for sale each year.
Future Forests in west Cork (futureforests.ie), another family-owned Irish garden centre and nursery that stocks a wide range of trees, shrubs, climbers, perennials and fruit bushes, also uses a peat-free, organic compost. Both offer a mail-order service. Many other Irish nurseries operate a peat-reduced policy, where the compost used is anywhere between 30 per cent and 70 per cent peat free, all part of the move towards a 100 per cent peat-free future. Alternatives being explored include wood fibres, wool, composted bark, green compost and coir pith.
[ Your gardening questions answered: What’s the best peat-free seed compost for my garden?Opens in new window ]
Commercially produced plants aside, another great way to go peat-free is to propagate as many of your own plants as possible, something that eliminates many of the other embedded environmental costs associated with the propagation, production and transport of nursery-grown plants. Not only does this nurture resilience and self-reliance as a gardener, it’s also hugely rewarding. In this case, I recommend using a very good quality, organic, peat-free compost such as Klasmann’s (quickcrop.ie) which is a joy to use and produces excellent results.