Peat Moss vs Coco Coir: the Ugly Truth 

That's a great idea! As I was listening to all this I was thinking, how did people start seedlings in the years before either peat or coir were available?

@@laurabehenna7950 I was raised on a 1940's farm and never started from seedlings in the garden. I assume seedlings started with affordable lights and heaters.

@@evilroyslade2491 I start my seedlings in an unheated greenhouse. They come up when the conditions are right for them. That's how nature does it, so that's how I do it now.

I think it was good for you to use your local coconuts for a very good use, in your area........here where I live in GA. the coconut is very expensive to plant in.........I just bought 3 cubic feet of peat moss for 11.00 last weekend in Home Depot..........I was thinking about ordering some of the coconut coir soon but it is 25.00 for a little block and I have to put off planting and I feel it is not worth it.........I searched and searched for the right answer, and here I found it from Gardner Scott.......

Wow, the 2 months I can buy a whole coconut, it costs $4.50, so that’s not very many seedlings!

Thank you very much for first-hand information. I appreciate you sharing it.

Thank you kind sir! We use coir in hydroponics, and then spread the nutrient rich used coir to mulch our outdoor plants, as Australia gets to over 40C in summer. It also helps water to reach through the hydrophobic sandy soil here. Coir (pronounced : coy-er ) is far more pleasant to work with. And I agree about the wonderful people of Sri Lanka! (Tom's wife)

Thanks for your helpful information. It sounds like a dream world, interested to visit Sri lanka when travelling is permitted after the pandemic. Will continue to use coir for my home garden. Thanks.

Afternoon . I don't understand what is meant by..."used for buffering." So is the Calcium Nitrate absorbed in the coir as an added nutrient for the benefit of the end user?

Way cool, thanks for sharing.

Thanks for the info!

Save peet!!

LOL, me too.

too damn funny

Hahaha

Peat moss is for me been using it for years and I wont change .

Not an easy decision, but yeah.

not sure about the part where he is scaring us with "chemicals" used in processing coir. what he is talking is just sea water - yes, it is salty, but if you soak coir in freshwater at home the salt will be washed off, no biggy. no need to scare your audience with scary "chemicals"

Thanks. Contrary to much misinformation, peat can be and is a sustainable resource.

Makes a valid point ... being self sustaining. Also very little processing and no chemicals.

I watched a really good RU-vid video about the way they start new bogs. It was fantastic!

It takes far longer than that to get a compressed peat layer underneath the top layer of moss. Where are you getting this info of "a couple years?"

bkrbkrl It takes a couple of years for the living layer to reestablish itself and for water management to no longer be necessary, I didn’t say any about compression.

You're welcome. Thank you.

I sincerely appreciated the objectivity as well. Issues regarding sustainability, ethics, global impacts are very nuanced and complex. Information is often perverted by people with an agenda. I also appreciate that you brought geography into the equation. I live in Canada, so peat is a very logical choice - unlike coconuts which don’t successfully grow in our climate. Thank you for respecting your viewers personal values with your balanced and unbiased review.

Yea many people do that in addition to using peat moss when prefered for various uses.

Hear-hear.

Coco is amazing for rooting though because of it's natural K content and structure (very fine fibres). Good quality coco (properly washed and buffered) has almost zero Calcium uptake problems. You can easily improve it by adding Gypsum or Dolomite for Ca/Mg heavy plants.

Coir is awesome for tomato. Soaked and squeezed to help remove any salt.

@@sixmillionsilencedaccounts3517 or use a weak solution of calcium nitrate at flowering.

Glad to know about the potassium and calcium content, thanks 😊

You're welcome.

Thanks!

Thanks, Kimberly.

Nothing is impossible... However peat is a pain in the ass to get it to initially absorb water.

@@wanderingspider8988 Use warm water

It doesn't hold water for a long time, infact, only for a short time. That's why I'd mix some perlite into it

Coco is hydrophilic, peat is hydrophobic. No one is best. Combination of both (+perlite/rice hulls) is the best.

Peat is superior even in the watering department. With enough perlite, peat is impossible to overwater too.

Thanks so much. Welcome to the channel!

I agree. Many others shared the same experience.

Exactly! I live in the Philippines where coir is more accessible and cheaper. Support local. 👍👍👍

Am at my in laws. Collecting some of their unused coconut coirs and planning to shred them somehow. I see the argument for peat as well. In all go local :)

Yeah, I think he's thinking less like an environmentalist and more like if he was pushing more farming that doesnt go well with environment/geography and how the earth is changing right now. I trust coir, I only new about it first as a safe substate for my baby gecko's tank. It has live plants the substrate is bioactive. I also know coconut to be good in fungus regulation. And there's a lot of pollution out there that will change the mycological landscape of Earth. A good way we can tell if the Earth is sick from pollution and getting a fever is by seeing how our soils/Earth's substrate is doing, bioactively speaking.

Same here David.

You missed the point. Local products don't make the cut.

if price is the only criteria the destructive choices will usally be the cheapest. if you destroy something for short term gains the product can be often very cheap. Like plundering eco systems in a few decades that needed thousands of years to develop. Like is the case with peat moss. It is of course cheap, because the damage in the countries where it is harvested is usually not factored in (those bogs are also often important for the hydrology, and if enough of the peat moss is removed that sponge is sorely missed).

The reason plundering of the bogs is prohibited in rich countries (think Germany for instance, Austria, likely also France, .....) is that the destruction of ecosystems IN the country is not tolerated. The "solution" is then either to import it from other countries where local oligarchs have more influence on politics or the population is so busy with surviving that they can't spare a thought on the long term effects of plundering the bogs. usually those countries are extra corrupt and that shows in the extraction of all natural resources incl. peat. Countries that have a lot of peat may be more generous with allowing extraction (Canada and Sweden, although the Swedes normally look better after their environment).

When you consider the occasional break throughs in bio mimicry - we cannot afford to lose eco systems, we do not know what we lose when we destroy those niches for short term (minimal) gains. _Are you really THAT poor that you could not buy a soil amendment that would be SUSTAINABLE or find a workaround to using peat ?_ The niches that are destroyed within a few decades have a very unique and specialized plant and animal life - we cannot afford to lose that just because there is no flashing price tag on it for the costs of destruction. We could just not care what is going on in Canada, or the Baltic states and the negative effects on their hydrology (that will hit them sooner or later - not the gardeners in search of the cheapest price and not the people that made money from extraction - the price will be to pay by the locals that used to benfit from the eco system as long as it was intact. It is worse than the regional damage - mankind might miss out on that one plant, or that one fungi, or bacteria that only grows there. (bacteria that have special properties, molecules that are medicine, or inspire the development of new materials or medical drugs, or paints or coatings, fibre etc.).

Im not the only one 😂

1.25 is better.

😁😂

Yeah, I upped the speed immediately as well.

Yeah I just bumped up the speed to 1.5. Holy cow could this guy talk any slower? Is this gardening for kindergarteners?

fresh water is NOT a scarce resource in the tropics. On a global scale peat moss extraction destroys eco systems. Coconuts _can_ be grown in a sustainable manner. (and put to good use, everything of the plant). As part of a plantation (not a monoculture) they can also fix the soil, and provide income for local farmers. Never mind that they are also pioneer plants that will grow in sand and tolerate salt.

Coco is reusable.

pelletized gypsum assists in breaking up clay...(do not put sand in clay... clay and sand = pottery ) horse manure compost is best animal compost...free to the taking at some stables ...

Compost seems to be really good to improve clay soil (and lots of mulch on top, so that the soil life can work it and soften it, you can use compost as mulch as well). Then of course daikon radish to aerate it * and chicory seems to be even better as cover / soil improvement crop resp. "green manure". you can let the radish in the soil over winter and let it rot, the earth worms will be happy. Rye is also said to be a good and robust cover crop. Never leave the soil naked and consider no-till practices - or you will constantly kill and disturb the soil life that would do the magic with you clay soil. Chicory is a perennial (2 years I think) and is rooting very deep (it breaks through bedrock according to a speaker of Cotswold Seeds, an U.K. company, that seell seeds for green manure and cover crops and holds seminars and webinars for farmers). They also say that cover crops with a LOT of different plants perform better than one plant or only a mix of two, or 4 or 6, They tested a mix of 12 and it by far outperformed all other mixes and also the single performance of the best among the varieties. That is important, because for farmers the seed costs and easy germination matter as well, and the cover crop that had the best performance as "monoculture" is not among the varities with cheap seeds (for instance clovers) But luckily they can be mixed with much cheaper seeds and the results will be even better. Plus some tolerance - if the conditions are not good for one plant, there are still 11 others to step up. Nature likes variety. Chicory is also a fancy vegetable that is protected in year 2 from the sun, so it will stay white and what not - well if you grow it as green manure and because the deep and extensive roots will do wonders for your clay soil, you you can spare yourself the trouble. Not sure if it is good to eat if it is not groomed to be white, I think it is less bitter then (but bitter would be healthy. I seem to remember that chicory is related to endive salad). U.S. farmers have Daikon radishes sown by planes ! to counteract the compaction of the earth with the large machines, and they do not grow them for food. the varities may not be quite as tasty as the ones grown as vegetable. The purpose is soil improvement and they are composted on site l (eaten by the earth worms). But normal varieties will do - it is a question of seed cost and optimitzed specialized performance for the farmers with large fields and machine use, but a middle of the road seed will do well for a hobby gardener. I would use gypsum only sparingly - if at all. If the soil has been already somewhat developed it does not need the gyspsum (if you plant a tree for instance you could add a little bit into a larger than usual plant hole). and it can cost you some fertility and the effect is not lasting. Compost also improves the structure of clay soil and that IS lasting.

I prefer peat moss. I use local materials too.

Rite on.

perfect!! another reason leaves, maple over most others is king in organic gardening. It increases humus, and the best of all reason it outperforms either peat or the super high salt levels of coir, is the sugar content!!! if you test your veggies you will find they have a much higher brix rating using the leaves! although testing isnt necessary as they are juicier and much more flavorful!! tomatoes 4 life!! god bless and keep using them leaves....

I make same think each automn

We live across (The Lake) The Strait...can we get that here?

Composted fish = plundering the oceans. The Great White Sharks might be already in trouble. Some Orcas recently "hunted" a yacht off Gibraltar. (probably checking out if that is another whale or large shark).

Fish is used as soil amendment, let that sink in ! I can easily belive that the fishers take that out of the ocean, the question is if that t is good. - Those fish would be the source of food for other fish. O.K. maybe they use the waste when they process fish (but even then it would be better to return the nutrients to the ocean.

@@xyzsame4081 the fish compost is made with the waste products from fish processing, and is composted with waste products from the forest industry. Taking two materials which we have a lot of here in B.C. which would end up in the land fill, and turning them into a valuable commodity, creating jobs as a side benefit in a region that is short of jobs.

@@xyzsame4081 >>We eat fish, God gave us fish.......I live close to a fish market and restaurant......and to me, if I was smart I would ask for their "waste" to grow food in my garden.....God gave us the fish to use.....Jesus ate fish and gathered up the scraps ........In no way are we to stop eating fish so that they could remain in the ocean to feed other fish............wow, ......Animals were made for man........ not man for the animals...wow

I'm on Maui, any chance you found someone who cleans it up and sells it here local? My main use for Coir is to hold a bit of moisture for starters in aeroponic verticle towers so the minerals are covered, and the soil is not a factor. I have been trying to find a supplier but the only thing close was a non-responsive FB group and DaKine (online) which was actually in Washington. If you happen to know anyone, feel free to message me on IG @a.rae.under.the.stars

Too bad it doesn't work like that. Did you even listen to the video?

@@LittleLikeness i know this guy sells it on craigslist but thats in wahiawa

@@krane15 If all you’re doing is removing salt and sand from the husks, then “chemicals” aren’t necessary, but it’s still a huge waste of Fresh water to soak them and dilute the salt. Also, if the tree grows in the interior of the island/isn’t allowed to make contact with the beaches and ocean water, I think they’d be fine to use without much processing. A lot of the commercially harvested coir comes from huge piles of husks that were previously left to rot for months along the shores of the plantations they were grown in, giving them way too much time to absorb sea water during monsoon/hurricane season. If they were my own trees, I’d even experiment with composting them. It would help to breakup and soften the more course fibers and would be less back-breaking labor than trying to soak, dry and chop/grind the raw fibers for their usual applications. And the water added during composting could serve to dilute or extract trace amounts of salt.

@@Chemeleon15 The claim that the peat production in CANADA is sustainable and that they harvest much less than grows back is made by the 20 companies that dominate the industry, and are of course organized to protect their interests. They are big fish (local politics) and also provide jobs in rural areas, and the damage is not as visible as let's say an oil spill. So we can safely assume that they get away with a lot if they want to, and if the area after "restauration" will not look like a mess, the locals will be content (never mind what a biologist would say because of course they can impossibly restore a system that developed over thousands of years.

More peat moss for me😃

It isn't all true don't be brainwashed. He isn't wrong some coir is made like he says, but I buy locally made coir that is organic. They make it with no chemicals, and they buy the leftover husks from Some company that makes coconut products so it is actually VERY GREEN to be using something that would be thrown away. It also is made in the USA which means no slave labor. His cons about coir are not true for all coir so if you want to use coir do it! I love coir, I just make sure to get organic coir that is not made with slave labor!

I like the sound of that recipe. Thanks.

If you're not potting plant material and are instead planting in the ground, then you need to use some original ground from the site where you're planting your plant material, whatever that is.

PERLITE is a type of volcanic silicate glass. It's mostly air so it's used for drainage. Be aware it can affect the body much as asbestos, causing a permanent incurable lung disease called silicosis. If used without a dust mask, you are likely to gasp for a looking time before secondary pneumonia kills you. For drainage, I use the MUCH LARGER, heavier chunks of volcanic lava foam aka pumice. You can get a bag of 1/2 cu. ft. for a few bucks at any big hardware store or garden center. I live in an urban forest (primarily maples) and already raked up about 600 gal. of dry leaves which we are grinding. I'm planning to compost some of that in a cold frame to bring in for seed starting in early April. (4/28 is l s.f. here.) We have at least 2 kinds of earthworms in my 15 raised beds each of which get 2-6" of ground leaves every fall. But my hubby won't let me raise them indoors. I use peat for my blue berry beds and sometimes to make potting mix. I'm wondering if I should use half-finished leaf mold plus commercial, heat treated worm castings as a seed starter mix? Worm castings are somewhat alkaline.

Coir actually doesn't add nutrition. You might want to add very finely ground eggshells to balance the pH.

This is what I do also. With charcoal and sometimes sand or pumice pebbles.

Penny, I suspect the carbon release from peat moss he spoke of is from when it decomposes. If left in the bog, the carbon is held under the living moss, in the ground. If put in your garden, it's decomposing and releasing a lot of that carbon into the atmosphere because it's not sealed off under a thick layer of living moss.

Where do you buy your strong compost...? I buy black cow brand in my part of the country and it has so many sticks in it......

@@carolburnett8372 I make my own compost. I save kitchen scraps, coffee filters and paper towels. I put them in plastic trash cans with holes drilled. I add plant waste, leaves, shredded brown bags and ripped cardboard. In 6-9 months I have beautiful black gold. No need to purchase potting soil or compost. I do add peat moss as it’s too dense for some veggies & needs some aeration.

@@Waterlily480 Thanks, I like the idea of the huge black bag with holes......this way I can quit throwing this mess all over my garden to trash it up as I view it out my kitchen window........also I might put it close to the back door so I won't put off the trips to the garden....and the idea of dry peat moss put in between dumpings makes it not seem as gross, thank you

@@carolburnett8372 I hadn’t thought of adding the peat to the garbage. Usually I add it to the finished compost when I am potting my plants. It needs to be well watered and mixed to absorb the water or it may not be effective.

​@@Waterlily480 -- I am listening on uTube to Gardner Scott, and he talks about a mulch bag and getting an anaerobic or aerobic, I am not sure how to get each one. I purchased a huge trashcan that opens up with a foot petal and recluses automatically. I bought thick industrial bags to line it with........I guess this way it will not really get oxygen.....wonder if this will work?? Ideas ??

On the farm in MN there were implantable peat fields. What a dusty mess in the wind!

Thank you.

Thank you. Compost is the better choice, by far.

You plant in straight up compost?

It is retaining carbon in your soil and amending the crumb structure.... Doesn't matter if the fibres are visible years later.... The Coco is not toxic and gradually releases K.

Right. It’s not intended as a sole media. It is intended as an additive. As with peat moss. If the plants were stunted, most likely amendments were not done, and cal mag supplement was not given. Coco coir needs calcium and magnesium regularly unlike soil

@@getlost3094 Coco is what the Dutch use in Greenhouse Tomato cultivation (and most fast growing annual species including floriculture).... Tomatoes are notoriously hungry for Ca & Mg.... Coco works perfectly. Only grower errors stunt plants.

I so agree with you......those suffering are the ones who are needy of many things we take for granted......

I seem to be allergic to the coir rugs so maybe the soil too.

Technically there’s a third side to a coin if you think about it he raised some good points but there may be some more information out there that is not being shown to see the full picture none of us know everything there are uses for both I’m sure and as he saidBoth are potentially sustainable and have the downsides

Depends on the plant you're growing. I used to watch this education TV urban horticulturist that would recommend all your plants be grown in Sphagnum moss. In fact, his entire show revolved around it.

So I glad I could help.

Yes, it is best when pH is important and nutrients come from another source.

Exactly the reason i stop using as i wanted a nutrient free mix from the beginning

Many gardeners forget that a nutrient-free mix can be very useful. Thanks,.

@just watching Videos you could probably grown in shredded plastic ... rocks or most anything that has nothing in it.

Carbon is wonderful👍. Ill stick to keep using peat moss too.

I agree with you, Pat. Each gardener can decide which is best.