A Holy Grail of gardeners and environmentalists is to identify a sustainable and horticulturally effective alternative to peat.
Carbon Gold has achieved this. Its Soil Association approved, biochar-based Seed and All-Purpose composts are based on ‘peatless peat’.
Natural peat is essentially a mixture of lignin and carbon formed over thousands of years. Its high black carbon content is an important factor in its horticultural effectiveness.
Carbon Gold’s GroChar All-Purpose and Seed Composts are sustainable and horticulturally credible alternatives to peat. Mixing coir, a lignin rich natural by-product from coconuts with biochar, which is 90% carbon, Carbon Gold has created a base for them that does not depend on the unsustainable harvesting of a non-renewable and precious resource.
Biochar is a modern take on a tradition that is thousands of years old and inspired by the Pre-Columbian Amazonian Indians. They used charred plant matter to enrich their poor, infertile jungle soil. This ‘Terra Preta’ or ‘dark earth’ remains highly fertile two thousand years after it was formed. Modern biochar is produced by a clean technology known as pyrolysis and made from woody biomass, largely unwanted by-products from forestry, the timber trade and agriculture.
The ‘peatless peat’ in Carbon Gold’s All-Purpose Compost and Seed Compost is mixed with mycorrhizal fungi, wormcast, seaweed and vegetable-based nutrient blends.
Using them helps gardeners reduce their personal carbon footprint. The composts will naturally grow better, stronger and healthier flowers, shrubs, fruit and vegetables. After use it should be fed into compost heaps or spread on the garden where they will continue improving the health and fertility of the soil over the longer term.
Carbon Gold founder, Craig Sams, is anxious to clearly differentiate between his two environmentally sustainable products and the mass of ‘peat free’ and ‘peat reduced’ composts now on the market and, in his view, confusing consumers.
Craig, a former chair of the Soil Association and co-founder Green & Black’s chocolate in 1991, explains: “We do not want the garden centre buyers to regard Carbon Gold as ‘another peat free outfit’. We have moved the whole debate about peat forward to a considerably higher level. Government and increasingly consumers want to reduce the use of peat and we are the only UK company to have a horticulturally proven technology to achieve this. We are not peat free or even peat reduced, we are ‘peatless peat’. There is a very significant difference.”
The company has invested extensively in a number of comparative growing trials that demonstrate that the two composts compare favourably with convention peat-based alternatives.
After founding Green & Blacks Craig quickly established it as a core supporter of the Fairtrade movement. This encouraged consumers to recognise that their purchasing decisions have a direct impact down the line, right back to the farmers in the third world who actually grow the cocoa.
He believes his GroChar peatless peat products will produce a similar effect for gardeners and eventually the garden trade. They will encourage individuals to re think their personal environmental position about using peat-based products. Earlier this year he received the PEA Award for the Green Entrepreneur of the Year for his work on biochar.
If you would like samples of Carbon Gold’s two ‘peatless peat’ composts do send an email grahampaskett@paskett.co.uk or gemmasharpe@paskett.co.uk with a note of the address to where you would like the products delivering. Call us on 01332 258 335.
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