What's new
TerraForums Venus Flytrap, Nepenthes, Drosera and more talk

Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

Peat Harvesting

  • #21
I guess everyone missed my post, or had nothing to say about it. I'll put it here again, and give a quick run-down.

http://www.organix.us/product/repeat/

A non-peat product engineered to be as nearly identical to horticultural peat-moss as possible, with the one caveat of being slightly more ph neutral than real peat. The company's sole goal is to produce a sustainable product that will lessen the demand for wild-harvested peat.

I've e-mailed them about where to order, to see if I can get some to try.
 
  • #22
I started to read that, but it took them forever to get to the point so I stopped reading.

But yes, I did skip through this time and it sounds like a wonderful product. I would like to try it too.
 
Last edited:
  • #23
It sounds almost too good to be true, but I hope it isn't prohibitively expensive. I would like to try it too.
 
  • #24
It sounds almost too good to be true, but I hope it isn't prohibitively expensive. I would like to try it too.

The site claims it is "competitively priced". Which retailer figures they're referring to, I haven't the foggiest. I would expect the upper ranges, but nothing too extravagant. In the interests of bringing the topic up, I'll update if / when I hear from them. Hopefully, if they're this concerned about bog ecosystems, they will also be familiar with CP's, at least in a general sense of soil and water conditions.
 
  • #26
Last product I tried that claimed to be inert, ended up leaching a lot. Contacted the company and they told the product was made to do that and plants love it. Ppm went from the 10s to the 100s within a few hours.

I would also love to try the product. Sounds good but test before you plant.
 
  • #27
They actually just discovered a huge peat bog in the Republic of Congo.

Nonsense, the locals knew it was there all the time.
 
  • #30
Well you gotta hide your child armies somewhere! Ok I even feel bad about that joke lol.

Similar to that story and a few years older I just randomly read this.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9359000/9359075.stm

Apparently the Sphagnum subnitens in northwest America all originated from just one plant. As in ALL of the sphagnum is genetically identical to each other without any mutation. The same goes for New Zealand where two separate plants colonized the southern island. In Europe subnitens appears to be a ***** with as many varieties as you can find haha.
 
  • #31
As I posted in another thread...I used more peat moss on my lawn last year than in all my CPs.

I'm much more concerned with issues such as commercial car washes being able to run during heavy water restrictions than I am about the peat renewable issue. I can easily grow/compost my own peat/sphagnum for my plants if/when its needed.

There are a ton of good replacement products already out there if you feel the need to switch over, but all that peat is not going to CP/orchid/ect growers...its going on lawns/landscaping.

If you really want to get depressed look at what gold mining is doing...and they are not even concerned about anything renewable...just strip mining, run off into streams/rivers.
 
  • #32
Considering the nature of the fossilization process, and the fact that coal is pretty much fossilized peat, you might want to walk back the assertion that peat is no more renewable than coal...........

Because a peat bog can regenerate itself several times on a time scale within the lifespan of a human being, it is in the interests of the humans harvesting it to do so sustainably. There is no reason peat can't be harvested sustainably just as timber is. It takes longer to grow a harvest sized tree than to allow a bog to regenerate. Burning peat, like burning wood is essentially carbon neutral, and likely the text book you read was written with that in mind.

That's pretty misleading. By completely ignoring spatial and temporal factors -- sure, what you say is true. If you look at a long enough time scale, sure, fossil fuels are 100% renewable! Likewise, since water isn't destroyed when it goes down my drain I may as well just leave the tap on. Thank goodness for the water cycle.

While it is technically true that both peat and coal are renewable, sustainability is a much more useful metric. Renewability is a gross measure while sustainability is a net measure. Essentially, renewal rate minus usage rate equals an index of sustainability. While coal takes longer to renew, they both take pretty huge timescales. So huge that they are essentially negligibly different, especially when put in terms of current rates of use. If we could quickly regenerate meters of soil organic material we wouldn't be so concerned with atmospheric carbon concentrations. Just because we don't gain or lose C from our global balance (we'll ignore radioisotopes and meteorites), that doesn't mean we can just ignore it -- form matters! Water is great, but that doesn't mean that you would be equally excited in a pool of H2 and O2.

My connection to to Cambridge Books Online is currently unavailable, but if you'd like to take a look at the pages Warren cited let me know, I should be able to access them. But really, you can look around the world for all the evidence you need (from the former prairies of the midwest to the highly weathered soils of the tropics) -- we tend to lose soil C much faster than we regenerate it. Come up with a good way for us to regenerate many meters of soil organic matter several times over the course of a lifetime and there's surely a Nobel waiting for you.
 
  • #33
That's pretty misleading. By completely ignoring spatial and temporal factors -- sure, what you say is true. If you look at a long enough time scale, sure, fossil fuels are 100% renewable! Likewise, since water isn't destroyed when it goes down my drain I may as well just leave the tap on. Thank goodness for the water cycle.

While it is technically true that both peat and coal are renewable, sustainability is a much more useful metric. Renewability is a gross measure while sustainability is a net measure. Essentially, renewal rate minus usage rate equals an index of sustainability. While coal takes longer to renew, they both take pretty huge timescales. So huge that they are essentially negligibly different, especially when put in terms of current rates of use. If we could quickly regenerate meters of soil organic material we wouldn't be so concerned with atmospheric carbon concentrations. Just because we don't gain or lose C from our global balance (we'll ignore radioisotopes and meteorites), that doesn't mean we can just ignore it -- form matters! Water is great, but that doesn't mean that you would be equally excited in a pool of H2 and O2.

My connection to to Cambridge Books Online is currently unavailable, but if you'd like to take a look at the pages Warren cited let me know, I should be able to access them. But really, you can look around the world for all the evidence you need (from the former prairies of the midwest to the highly weathered soils of the tropics) -- we tend to lose soil C much faster than we regenerate it. Come up with a good way for us to regenerate many meters of soil organic matter several times over the course of a lifetime and there's surely a Nobel waiting for you.

I'd be grateful for any info you could provide, but you're not seriously equating the renewability/sustainability of peat vs coal are you? The biological process which creates peat is hardly in the same time scale as the geological process which converts peat into coal.
 
  • #34
I'd be grateful for any info you could provide, but you're not seriously equating the renewability/sustainability of peat vs coal are you? The biological process which creates peat is hardly in the same time scale as the geological process which converts peat into coal.

I seriously am. On any sort of human-relevant timescale, neither is renewed. With current usage, neither is sustainable because it's being used much faster than it can be created. It's like being in deep poverty -- if your job offered you 10 cents per day, you're functionally just as broke as if they offered you 35 cents per day. On geological timescales, of course peat will form more quickly than coal, but geological timescales are wholly irrelevant in the discussion of conservation when usage rates are so high. If we look at geological timescales, sources of peat which are being commercially utilized disappear before the blink of an eye. It's true that peat will renew at geological timescales, but it's also essentially a non-sequitur.

Looking at a few popular sources for peat accumulation I see 1mm/yr as regular main number cited (1, 2, 3, and I see NaN's source cited as giving the same value). Let's be optimistic and say I live a full century -- that'd make it 100mm over the course of my life. That's just under 4 inches in a lifetime. Even if we take the fasted estimated historical rate from those sources, 4.7mm/yr (far above the average), that'd still only give me under 18.5 inches. This is a far cry from being renewed several times over the course of my life.

Spgahnum certainly grows faster, as do the other constituents of peat. But only a small portion of that biomass goes unconsumed and turns into peat.
 
  • #35
Well said Est...plant regeneration is simply not equivalent to peat formation, and the timescale is most definitely longer than a single human's lifetime if you are talking about significant accumulation.

Harvesting isn't the only threat to peat deposits either. I personally find it hard to label it a "renewable resource" when so many are poorly managed to begin with...it is REALLY easy to lose peat. Not so easy to get it back...
 
Back
Top