Hmm…. Did a deep dive on this topic and posted it a couple years ago. Sustainability issues can be a real morass, which come down to arguments of personal belief, so will keep it as brief as possible.
But let’s short stop this part of the topic for a quick answer to the thought of using ground up long fibre NZ Sphagnum to mimic the properties of peat moss. While sphagnum moss does eventually decompose to peat moss after many years, this process normally requires an anoxic environment and quite a long time to decompose to have the same physical characteristics of peat moss.
On to Peat Moss and Sustainablity
Long and short of it the peat debacle over sustainability of peat harvesting many years ago when the bogs in Europe were harvested, drained and put to use for other purposes. This movement spread slowly across the world, until recently the Patagonia area eventually began to wake up and realize business as usual wasn’t environmentally sustainable.
This reveal caused a number of nations to overhaul their systems and processes towards sustainably harvesting peat. At present the leading countries seem to be Canada, Australia, Finland, Latvia, Estonia and Sweden. At least on paper these countries are recreating bogs as they go, restoring wetlands etc. That said it will take an awful long time to restore a peat bog. However in the case of Canada the amount of bogs under harvest/restoration is very very small.
@Bonsai Nut is correct in directing towards something that is truly sustainably harvested in many places across the world, with more coming, esp. New Zealand who is one of the world leaders in this area. However as stated above, the this product will not be able to directly mimic peat moss.
The problem with the living alternatives is the harvesting, processing and transportation environmental costs.
Harvesting Coco coir a direct product of coconut plantations which are ravaging the environment in tropical areas. The plantations eventually are left an environmental wasteland after depleting the thin tropical soils which is left to erode, often the run off finds its way down onto the coral reefs. imho, from the experience of over fifty years of diving around the world, is doing much more environmental damage than sustainably harvesting peat moss is.
So it’s an issue of competing goods…. Of the not so good alternatives, which… using one’s present knowledge of each products overall environmental costs, is least damaging…
….And this is the crux of all sustainability situations. What item is slightly better environmentally than another item. All have an environmental cost which may be greater than one originally thinks… (include myself in the one please
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After years of working with environmental issues in my careers, I’d say… looking at all the possible alternatives for azaleas… small grain Kanuma (smaller than the small grain sold, but the 1;8” screen sifting for these) would be a really good alternative. The Japanese use this media for seedling and cutting grow out. (I believe they also put a layer of sphagnum in too…). The downside is kanuma is bereft of nutrients, so one has to add nutrients… which most often come from a combination of mining and the Haber-Bosch process which uses an extraordinary amount of energy to create agriculturally usable nitrogen.
Consequently we choose to use Canadian peat which is organic and holds moisture well. Then we toss the media into our compost once we are finished.
Cheers
DSD sends
