The Elephant in the Room
21.08.2023 - 11:59
/ theunconventionalgardener.com
/ Emma Doughty
We see a lot of articles about how you can save money by growing your own food. And it’s true, it’s absolutely true, you can. A packet of salad seeds is roughly the same price as a bagged salad, and will keep you in salads all summer (and probably beyond). You can save money by picking up seeds at seed swaps, saving your own seeds, sharing with friends and neighbours, making your own compost and plant feeds and recycling household items into pots, etc. But there’s an elephant in the room – a factor that’s often left out.
Container growing is increasingly popular, especially with Generation Rent who need to be able to move their garden, and anyone in urban areas where the top of the waiting list for an allotment is like the retirement age – as you get closer to it, it just moves farther away. My friend Chris, for example, has decided to grow his potatoes in containers this year, and for that he needs… mud, as he calls it. Except it’s not mud (or dirt) – garden soil doesn’t work well in containers. You need some sort of potting mix to grow vegetables in containers. If you’ve got a large garden you can make enough compost and leaf mould to make your own potting mixes, but I suspect that habit is dying out.
It’s possible to pick up peat-based potting mixes for next to nothing at garden centres, DIY stores and even supermarkets. It’s familiar and reliable, but it’s contributing to the destruction of peat bogs (a valuable wildlife habitat) and to global warming (peat bogs act as carbon dioxide sinks).
Peat-free alternatives are (a) more difficult to find and (b) usually more expensive. Buying in bulk is generally cheaper, but then you have the problem of getting it home, and storing it in a dry place – and potting compost doesn’t
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