What is the story with peat and the environment?
Well it’s a non-renewable resource. We get our peat from a guy in Cherryfield, Maine, who has the oldest operating peat bog in the North America. It’s not a big operation but it’s been his family for three or four generations. There are other things that might take over like coconut coir. That’s a recycled product, but it travels a long way. We’re testing coir, but we’re Coast of Maine, so it seems kind of funny to be using something from Bangladesh. Someday we might be able to use recycled short fiber waste from the paper industry. But right now it’s all about peat.I’ve heard a lot of people say they don’t use organics because the numbers are so low.
The problem with organics is that everyone looks at the numbers [nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus often referred to as NPK] and says, “Hey, I’m not getting my money’s worth.” The organic numbers are something like 3-1-5 and the chemical is 15-15-15 or even 30-30-30. But the difference is that the 15-15-15 is soluble and it starts to leach away as soon as you water it in or it rains. Some of it goes to the plants but the rest of it just washes away. With a 3-1-5, or any of the organics out there that are insoluble, you add them to the soil and they stay in the system. You’re building soil equity each time you add organic food.
Any advice for beginners?
You want to buy a great organic soil and get an organic, granular fertilizer and mix that in – lots of it. You really don’t need anything else. If you live in a place with a long growing season you might have to water-in a soluble, organic liquid fertilizer or scratch a granular fertilizer into the soil surface, sometime in the middle of summer. That’s all you have to do – let the living soil and organic food do the work.
