Phil:
We’re delighted to welcome onto the show today, Scott Smith. Not your first appearance Scott on The Underground but welcome.

Scott:
Thank you very much for having me again Phil, and lovely to be back.

Kate:
Hi, Scott. Great to see you again.

Scott:
Hello. How are you?

Kate:
I'm good. So, Scott, you have been doing your master's of horticulture. Which is quite, it’s a lot of work, isn't it? As well as working for yourself. Self-employed, doing that, this MSC, does it come under MSC? A masters of horticulture?

Scott:
No. So interestingly The RHS, the Royal Horticultural Society, they offer a few different ranges of qualifications, which starts right down to the RHS level one, which is for people with literally no experience. And it goes up to level two, which is more for people who are perhaps wanting to get into gardening and become a gardener.
Level three is more if you're in a supervisory role. And then after level three, you know, you can do level four at certain places like Wisley. And the MHort is essentially a three year long course. It's called a master of horticulture. But really, it's probably equivalent to a degree. But it's a three year long course.
And essentially your first year is like your level four, second year level five and third year’s level six. And your MHort is if you really want to be, owning your own business or in a high up managerial position, that kind of thing. So it's a lot more academic based and management based as opposed to your level three, which is far more science and plant based.
So there is people who have done the MHort without having done the level three. I personally did the level three and I really enjoyed it, and I felt it was a completely different experience…

Kate:
Me too. Yeah.

Scott:
So the level three was much more to do with plant science. Soil science, you know, it really gave you that backing and foundation for knowing everything you should know as a professional gardener, really.
Whereas my MHort has been much more academic based. It's been dissertations, it's been, writing science articles and journal pieces and things like, essays. So a totally different, totally different experience, to be honest.

Kate:
Interesting. So actually I've done my level three, and I always thought about doing my MHort, but I probably, you know, I find it's so hard to remember anything these days, even my name. So maybe, maybe I've gone past that. But we'll see, we'll see. So it is really interesting. So we're not a gardening podcast. We are a podcast about the garden industry.
And one of the reasons we've got you on Scott is because we've talked a lot about peat and peat free on the podcast. And your thesis, which is what people have to do in their final year, has been on peat free. So that's what this interview is going to be focusing on, if that's all right, Scott. So let's start by what motivated you to focus your thesis on peat free. Was it peat free compost trials is that right? Or just peat free compost?

Scott:
Well, I've got a very catchy title.

Kate:
Okay. Give it to us.

Scott:
Which is; An investigation into peat free compost in the United Kingdom. The cultivation requirements to optimally grow Solanum Lycopersicum ‘Sungold’, which is the Sungold Tomato.

Kate:
Right.

Scott:
So, basically my thesis was looking at peat free. What's the situation with peat free in the UK at the moment? And of that peat free I wanted to do a real-life field trial at my house in Scotland and use Sungold tomatoes as my control method.

Kate:
Right, so tomatoes Scotland already we're looking at a few problems aren’t we. So, anyway, so what made you choose that this this subject, you know, do you see it as a critical issue in horticulture today.

Scott:
Yeah, 100%. Something that has affected me personally. We were told, you know, by your lecturers when you're choosing your dissertation topic, try to do something that you actually have an interest or something that you feel is critical to the horticultural industry. Don't just pick something willy nilly for the fun of it. And for me, the thing immediately straight away off the top of my head was: I personally have had issues with peat free, and I know a lot of other people who've had issues with peat free.

So when I was working, at the National Trust for Scotland, they became peat free. And things that you used to use, like, you know, we used to use Levington Professional Grow Mix, which was peat based, obviously we used to get great results when doing seedlings from that. And then we, when we had to cut that out and switch just to solely using peat free, then, you know, we noticed a bit more erratic germination and perhaps will be difficult or change in growing conditions from what you were used to.
And it was the same at Beech Grove when I was at Beech Grove. They were peat free and it was similar because you had the pressure of wanting to grow everything, and everything had to look great for camera. And, you know, you had Carol Baxter, who wasn't a happy bunny if all her plants failed that she wanted to show on episode seven or whatever.
So I had my own experiences with peat free, and I wanted to kind of learn and go a bit more in depth to find out if I could better understand it. And again, every time I give a garden club talk or I'm invited to talk on this podcast or that podcast, Peat Free always comes up and especially real life people you know, not companies, just Mary from down the road. Scott I can’t get my tomatoes to grow. I've got this peat free stuff. It doesn't seem to work. How do I use it? And it's going to come up time and time and time again. So that's where I thought, right? I want to look into this and understand it better myself.

Kate:
Okay okay. So can you, can you walk us through how you designed your trials, what compost you tested, what metrics you use to measure success or failures. How did you go about it?

Scott:
Well, very handily, the RHS have issued a guide on how to perform trials and field studies and that kind of thing. So, they've got this lovely little grid, which, I can see in front of me, you obviously can’t. But essentially you have a grid which is four by three. And in row one, you've got your first row, second row, then you've got your third row.
So that's your replicate one, two, three. And you know, for example in your first row top left would be your control. Then underneath would be your peat free type one underneath peat free type two, and underneath peat free type three. And then you go to the second row. It's mixed and matched. So, the order of it changes so that it tries to give you a generalised fair distribution of plants.
So, what I was doing was I went and picked a peat based compost to use as my control so that you can just compare, to the peat free. And then I picked three different types of peat free compost. Within all of those I was always using Sungold tomatoes, which was all grown and germinated from the same batch of seedlings.
And it was placed in this specific RHS layout recommended trial. So that it meant even if it was in a room… So mine was in my sunroom at home. Which has got an east west facing layout, which is handy because you get sunlight most of the day. But it meant that even if the stuff on the left got more light in the morning, it didn't matter because there was another replicate grid on the middle and then another one on the right.
So, it meant that there was minimal disruption, if you like, to the results, because you were taking an average across the whole thing and, and the layout was fairly distributed, I would say is the only way I could sort of describe it.

Phil:
So, Scott, what were the key findings that you, you managed to get from the, from your research then?

Scott:
Well, essentially what I found was that when I first investigated into Peat Free, there is a lot of different constituent ingredients that make up peat free compost. So when you talk about peat, you know what it is. It's been the standard in the industry since the 70s. You know, most notably, it came into prominence in the 70s and people started using it a lot, and it was in the garden centre and it just became the go to method, really.
Before that, you know, you were maybe just using John Innes mixes, but when peat started to really dominate in the 70s, 80s, 90s, then it became what everybody used. And although there had been a lot of lobbying and people saying that we can't keep this up, it's not environmentally friendly, it's not sound, peat use was still dominant for a long time. And even if you went back and looked into the, figures produced by the Horticultural Trades Association, they showed that there was starting to become a bit of a steady decline from 2010 onwards. And when you look into, well, what are we actually using instead of peat? There was anaerobic digestate fibres, there was barks, bio char, bracken, coir, green waste, sheep wool, wood fibres. It was all sorts of things. And, I thought, surely this is what's important. Surely, it's the constituent ingredient of your peat free. That's going to be more important than just saying it's because it's peat free. All of those things are made into different products. They've all got probably different, you know, moisture retention capacities, they’ve probably got different NPK ratings and so on.
So I kind of had to look into all of these where they come from and essentially how they work and what I ended up doing for my trial, because as I say, I don't have a massive mansion. Unfortunately, I live in Scotland in a wee house. I've got a sun room, which is sizeable. Much to my wife's chagrin, I had to basically take all the furniture and everything out of the sunroom and turn it into a tomato den. So she's not been allowed in there all summer. And I had enough space to put this RHS trial grid in. Even then, each grid space was supposed to be six pots, and I only had room for three because by the time you got to 15 litre pot, it's a fair size pot.
So, you know, I ended up with, what, 32 pots in their 15 litre pots? So yeah, quite a bit. It's like a little jungle. Every time the postie went past, I think it was going to fall in the police sink. And I was, doing some…

Kate:
Marijuana farm.

Scott:
So I was only able to put in three pots for grid space rather than six, but it was still as good as I could do. And because I say I was narrow for space, I went with a peat based compost, which happened to be Jamieson Brothers Professional Mix was selected and then as my peat free types I picked Carbon Grow which was a biochar based one.

Kate:
Biochar, yeah

Scott:
Then I picked Dale Wool, which was a sheep's wool and bracken and comfrey based one. And then the last one was B&Q Verve multi-purpose, which was, more green waste and wood fibre, bark kind of thing. So I went for a wider range of substrates as I could to try and see the major differences between, because I didn't have, you know, space to do thirty different bags of compost. I went for as wide a selection as I could. As different a range as possible.
So that was how I selected what I was using. And then in terms of results, really what I found was that I was surprised that there wasn't a massive difference in terms of watering.
So, what I did was I set up once a week. I went and and watered on a Saturday morning, and I took any metrics or measurements that I felt were important. In the case of what I was measuring, it was fairly standard stuff, really. I was measuring the, moisture level of the soil, the soil temperature. I took an NPK reading. You know, I did actually buy probes.
I but a specific NPK probe to give me an accurate level. I was measuring each group to see which plant was tallest, which plant was widest. I also took EC readings. EC is electrical conductivity, which is essentially the salinity of the salt. So, it gives you an idea of fertility. So, I was doing that, you know, and then later on when the plants got further on, I was counting the number of trusses and fruit and so on.
I wanted to try and keep it as standardised as possible so that I wasn't running about like an idiot, you know, it just seemed… you know, in real life, if you were tended tomatoes, you would go and probably every day or every second day and you would be mollycoddle them a bit more because this was a trial, I was quite harsh and strict.
I was just like, right, once a week I'm going in. If your moisture reading is under 60%, I'll give you water. If it's over 80%, you're not getting water. And that was it. And I just wanted to compare how do each type retain water and so on. And what I found was interesting with all the peat free, composts, is that all of them have this tendency to be quite dry on the top.
So they have a top inch or so, can be bone dry, and then you scrape down and then it's saturated. So I think it's very easy to overwater peat free compost because you have that slightly misleading factor of the top being dry. So it's worth if you're unconfident, it's worth buying just one of those cheap £5-£10 moisture metres where you can stick it in and it will tell you whether it's dry or wet.

Kate:
That's good advice. Yeah.

Scott:
You know, of course, if you've got the ability to pick up the plant as well, you can feel when it's light and you can feel when it needs watering. And I think if you just only go by eye, it's quite easy to accidentally over water.

Phil:
Right. And was that was that the same across all three of the different compost that you were using? The peat free ones.

Scott:
Yeah, exactly the same for all three. Interestingly, you know, I found the biochar retained heat much better than the other products. And the major thing I found that, as with all these things, you go into it with an open mind. I didn't have any particular care or sway. As I say, it was self-funded. I paid for the whole thing myself. Nobody was saying, here's £500, give me a good result for the Dalefoot, Scott. None of that. It was just me, my money. I just thought, oh, I just go where the results take me. And what I found was the major, important thing was a massive variation in the NPK. So nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium levels of each bag.
So when I initially started, and this is one of the things I wrote down in my test, I should have done this from the start. Initially. I just started off: I germinated my first batch of 50 tomato seedlings, and then I popped them straight into each of the respective pots of peat free compost and the Dalefoot one straight away were just not doing well. They were never moving, they were looking ill. And I thought, this is weird because everything's been done at the same time, same place, same conditions, same water. So it has to be the soil, or the compost, rather. And so I thought, I really need to invest in, you know, one of these digital smart multimeter things that would give me all this information. And when I looked into it, I found that the NPK levels massively varied between each type. So you know that you then have to go into studies and you have to go in and try and find trials from people who'd who done it to give you, what is a perfect NPK level or, you know, the macro and micro ingredient…

Phil:
Nutrients.

Scot:
Nutrients, that’s the word Phil, yeah. The ideal nutrient levels for each stage of a plant, of an indeterminate tomato plant and so on. And you went through it all, and I found that essentially, at the young stage, you know, you were looking at an NPK of 18-9-31, and then it would gradually get a bit bigger as the plants grew up and grew older.
So at the stage where there were fruiting, you were up to 74-17-116. That's milligrams per kilogram. And when I took a direct reading from the bag, I invested in a metre and went in and had a look. So when I looked at the peat. So the Jamieson Brothers one, it was almost identical to exactly what you want, which is why it gave it such a massively great start.
And the B&Q Verve compost was similar. It was almost identical in NPK rating to the peat, so that too tended to be very, very good. So the peat and the B&Q Verve peat free compost, those were just perfect. The plants were thriving. They were getting big. They were growing. They weren't needing much. They were ideal.
And then I when I went over to the Dalefoot, which was really struggling, and it was because the NPK was massive and, you know, the ratios were so high, it was they had a rating of 59-72-164, which, you know, basically there were about 6 or 7 times higher than the peat and the B&Q Verve. So it was so high that it was causing a nutrient lock and not actually allowing the plants to grow and they were dying. So that I think was something I didn't expect and was one of the bigger. I thought that this whole trial would basically be about, they need more water or they need more food or something like that, but actually the watering wasn't greatly different from peat. And in terms of feed, if anything, they were even richer. So, if anything, the peat needed more food, particularly at the stages where the plants were maturing and fruiting and, you know, you were having to give them. Tomorite, tomato liquid feed, to feed and that kind of thing, to get the fruit to go as you would normally do.

Kate:
Were you feeding? You were feeding.

Scott:
I was feeding when it was required. So, you know, again, all standardised. You wait until you've got the first set of fruit trusses, which have got pea sized fruits and beyond and that kind of thing, and then you start feeding. But ultimately that's the biggest takeaway I got from this was that there's a lot of different peat free compost available. They're all made of different things. A lot of the bags fail to give you an NPK rating, and a lot of the bags claimed to be, yeah, I'm good for everything. I'm good for this, I’m good for that, I’m good for the other. And that drives a sale for the company. But that's not good for the end user. And the thing that I was most concerned about and again, this was backed up through academic studies I did looking into peat free in Europe and so on. Is that a lot of the end users, their concern is usability. If they pick up a bag of something and they try and grow their plants and they fail they're going to be put off and they're going to go back to peat or worst case scenario of peat’s banned, then they're just going to go, well, I'm not going to bother anymore.

Kate:
Stop gardening. Yeah.

Scott:
Stop gardening. And that's not what we want at all. So, you know, my biggest takeaway from this study ultimately, was that, it is very much possible to use peat free products just with the right information. And I feel that we really have to have both the government and horticultural bodies like the HTA and things like that.
You know, we need to strive to work together with garden centres and have a better understanding for the end user that you could say this is your product for seedlings. This is your product for young plants. This is for mature plants. This is for, you know, shrubs and trees out in the garden or whatever. And make sure that you are making it as simple and easy as possible for a user. It doesn't matter if they're amateur or they're professional, so that they can actually get the results that they want and hope for. Rather than just trying to drive a sale.

Kate:
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah, absolutely. And you know, something I've been saying is that all purpose compost, multi-purpose compost. There's no such thing. It needs to change. How did you germinate? You see your seeds? Were you in a peat free compost, a special seed and cutting compost or….

Scott:
Yeah. So, I just picked up a pack of, Mr. Fothergills seeds compost, which was, very interesting, actually. I've never tried it before, but it was excellent. It arrived in the post, this tiny little cube, and it was one of those ones that you opened the bag and put in hot water and waited ten minutes, and then it suddenly turned into a massive amount of compost.

Kate:
So it was coir. Coir based, was it?

Scott:
Yeah. Coir based. Yeah. It was, I've never seen that before. And it was very, very clever because it's a great way to get the packaging right down and make it a light product to ship and so forth

Phil:
Yeah, it comes flat-packed.

Scott:
Yeah, it was essentially like a little flat pack cube. So, I used that again. That wasn't the important bit of the trial for me personally. All I needed to do was have a standardised start off. So I bought one packet of that. Mr. Fothergills peat free seed coir compost. And I put my… again, I'm not supporting Mr. Fothergill, it just happened to be what I bought was Mr. Fothergills

Kate
But if they're listening…

Scott:
Yeah, yeah. And. Yep. Fantastic. No problems at all. Great germination rate. Because I'm in Scotland and it was March and it was cold. I did have one of those, little plug in electrical heat mats. So that had some bottom heat to help the seedlings germinate. And that was about it, you know, they germinated as I expected, in about ten days.
And after about 15, 16 days, they were ready, to pot on.

Kate:
I'm just asking that because I know a lot of people try and sow seeds in peat free compost and really don't have much success. And I always recommend using a seed peat free compost, for germinating seeds because I have found that, yeah, it says all purpose, but for the for getting seeds to germinate well, it is really, really tricky.

Scott:
Yeah. Well you don't need much nutrients. In fact you need like no nutrients to get, plants to germinate. That's the whole point of a seed is it's got… it's a little packed lunch box. It's got all the nutrients it needs.

Kate:
Oh, I love that little packed lunch box.

Scott:
Yeah, it is a little, little packed lunch box. I think with people who fail to sow successfully, a lot of the time it's because they don't take the time or effort to run the compost through their hands, get rid of any of those big, horrible clumps, and then you have to make sure that you press it and pack it in, not too tightly.
Just pack it in and nice smooth finish. And sow your seeds on that, because I see so many people that they have such a dogs dinner of seeds sowing, you know, they get a tray, and they just bang some soil in there, it's all higgledy piggledy. And then they just chuck some seeds on and go, that's not working, you know, like, well, yeah, because the water is distributed everywhere. And the seed, you know, take a little tiny bit of time, get rid of the clumps, put it in a nice smooth finish and then sow your seeds gently and you will have success.

Phil:
It's great advice. Great advice. I'm interested in what you're saying, Scott, about the NPK levels that you found actually in the compost, one thing which I'm being told or, and become aware of is the nutrient loss is greater in peat free compost. So is that something that you found when with your measuring and that actually although it may have had, you know, really high levels of nutrients when you first, started using it, did they drop off quite quickly?

Scott:
No. Well, I don't know how long the timescale is that you're perhaps inferring to Phil whether it's over a matter of weeks or months or whatever, but, my trial was quite short in terms of growing. My trial only lasted 14 weeks, and that was not because I wanted to stop there, because I hand my dissertation in.
And, if I could have kept on going, I would have kept on going longer. But within the trial length that I did, absolutely. There was no drop off in nutrients. They remained very consistent. So I didn't personally see an issue with that. But perhaps if it was over six months or a year

Phil:
For that, you're looking at sort of three, four months there for the actual timing of your trial and that was they didn't drop off during that time,really?

Scott:
Correct. Yeah. No, I like I say I've got a giant appendix of tables with every bit of data that I took, which lasts for, you know, about another 40 pages or something ridiculous. And no, within that if I went to any of them any weeks, the NPK rating didn't particularly drop or anything like that.

Kate:
It's interesting that you say that Phil, because one of the things I've learnt is that, peat free seems to be very high in potassium.

Scott:
Yeah.

Kate:
And, and when people are, growing tomatoes, what they tend to do is they then add a very high potassium feed. And as you're saying about the locking in of nutrients and I've certainly I think that is one of the issues people are doing. They're chucking on the, the high potassium feeds. And rather than actually helping the, the plants, it's just making it worse because it, it locks up nutrient uptake. So, I think your what you're saying is actually holding up what I've been finding out Phil that actually it's the opposite. But what is happening is that people are overwatering so much that then the nutrients are leaching out.
So maybe that could be part of the problem as well. If you're constantly watering your plants, you know, not realising that the roots are already saturated, again, you're going to have that that similar problem. And so it's so much about education. But I think we'll talk a bit more about that. So what I'm going to ask is, based on your research, what advice would you give to home gardeners, or professionals considering the switch to peat free or those who've maybe tried peat free had terrible results and going back to peat. Any good, good tips and advice for us Scott?

Scott:
Like I say, I think it's worth doing your homework and basically look at what you are aiming to grow and based on what you're aiming to grow, it's worth taking five, ten minutes and checking. You know, even if you just Google it. What NPK rating should I have for this plant? And then it's worth checking the actual peat free compost that you buy to see how far away is from that ideal measurement.
That was what I found to be the biggest contributor to the differentiation and results. So I was growing tomatoes. I found out what what's my ideal NPK level. And then as I say, I went and got my readings from each compost type. And they varied so wildly, that as you say Kate, the, you know, like for example, the sheep's wool compost because it has additional comfrey feed within it. It had a super high NPK rate and like ridiculously high, and in that case, as you say, you do not want to be adding any more, liquid feed or anything like that because it will just poison the plant. So, I think there's a lot of work to be done within the industry if they want to completely go peat free.
And for the peat free grower at home, I think, you know, look at what you're growing and maybe do a little bit of time, a little bit of research into what would be the best product to buy. You know, don't go buying something that's suitable only for mature plants with a super high rating, if you're trying to just germinate some seeds.
I know it's easier said than done, and that's why, you know, if I had to say to anybody overall, as I say, I really am not endorsing any particular product by any means in the imagination. But for me personally, the B&Q Verve multipurpose compost was by far the most easy to use with the similar results to peat, and it was also the cheapest by a mile.
So it came in at something like £0.11 a litre. Whereas if you went up to the highest end, the biochar compost was £0.48 a litre, so it was for more than four times the price. So, you know, you get four bags of B&Q for the same price as one bag of biochar. And the B&Q, because it tended to be lower in nutrients, was more suitable for younger plants and, then it allowed you to get the plants to a decent stage.
And if the plant, when it was mature looked like it was maybe struggling a wee bit, then you just give it a little bit of extra feed and bang - we’re all good.I think it's easier to do that than it is to try and deal with a young plant that's getting decimated by too much nutrients.

Phil:
Well, that that that's going to be my question, Scott. So, you know, you talked about this a one of the one of the, the composts that you were trialling, which had astronomically high NPK levels. What can you do in that situation?

Scott:
In that situation, I would say that it means that it's not suitable for the purpose at that time. And so it needs basically watered down. So my recommendation, if you were to use that especially for young plants, is that you cut it with something that is very low in nutrients like sand, like maybe leaf mould, or, you know, it's maybe useful as an agent added into a potting mix rather than just directly using it from the bag.
That was well, in the trial. I wanted to take a bag and just use it immediately without cutting it or other things. I just wanted to imagine I was somebody who went into the garden centre, or picked up a bag of stuff chucked in a pot. Let's see how it goes.
But in a situation where you've got something that's far too high in nutrients, for the age or maturity range of the plant, then yeah, you would need to, you need to dilute it, water it down a bit and add some other things in there, so that it's not quite so overwhelming.
And, you know, I kind of think of it as like when you get your diluting juice, you know, it's like drinking it straight without adding any water in it. It's too much. So, you need to you need to water it down a little bit.

Kate:
Okay. So have you, have you approached any of the companies with your findings or are you not going to go there?

Scott:
No. I’m quite comfortable not having it on my head. You know, I don't really want Dalefoot to come up from the deep Welsh valleys and take me out, or in anything. Like I say, this was entirely self-funded. And I have said, of course, in my thesis that, you know, there's a lot of scope for further study and there's a lot of limitations within the study itself. So, me doing this once by no means, you know, correlates any kind of trend. It's not to say that if I didn't repeat the study, it might come out with different results. So, this is not me saying that this is the be all and end all. This is just what I happened to particularly find at this time. And that is another thing I think that is an issue with Peat Free is that, I have had people who, for example, would buy B&Q Verve compost and it would be fantastic for that year. They would buy it the next year and find it was almost a completely different brand, you know, they would find it was nowhere near as good. It was full of rocks. It was, you know, all mushy and horrible. And I think that's another thing that needs to be really looked into is standardisation of the product. And to make sure that you are getting the same thing every time. That was one of the big things people love about peat. They know what they're getting and they know how it's going to work, and it's going to be the same thing every time. And at the moment, if we are getting one batch of a brand like B&Q that's great. And then you go along next year and it's terrible. That really does confuse users because you think: well, I don't know what to pick anymore. So, I think there needs to be a lot of work as well on standardising even just the same product each time.

Kate:
But again, that's about the ingredients that goes within peat free and the change, because I do actually know the company. You I'm pretty sure I know the company that supplies B&Q and I know a lot of money has gone into investing in, storing, the peat free ingredients because the problem has was like especially last year when we had such a wet spring that all the ingredients that are stored outside because you need massive, massive areas, they were just getting wet and getting clumpy and you couldn't kind of put them through the filters properly. And the sieves and the magnets weren't working. So again, it's money that government hasn't realised how much investment has been needed. So suddenly you've gone from you know, just lifting peat out of the bogs, as it were, and putting it in a bag to having to store all these ingredients for a long time, you know, undercover and, and that's, that's a lot of money.
So it's not just home gardeners and the manufacturers. It's really the government needs to understand which they just don't with horticulture anyway, you know, what an important industry is and how much money this switch has taken. But that me going off piste a bit.

Scott:
As you say, there is a lot of there's a lot of research and thought needed and a lot more government support, I would say overall to really make this work properly because it's great for Defra to come out and say, right, you know, we're going to ban peat. And you know, when I, when I started my dissertation, it was actually 2024 was the target for abandoned peat, which hasn't happened.
And then they said, oh 2026 it will be professionals will be banned. And then 2030, everything completely will be banned from, you know, the Scottish whisky industry, right down to mushroom compost, research and all that. But as it stands, there's still no actual policy put in place, no date, no nothing. And again, more confusingly, it varies as well because, you know, that was the target for England and Wales. The Scottish Government actually said, well, we think that's too premature. We'll do it on our own timeline. They haven't produced a timeline. And then when you when you went to Northern Ireland, they had a 28 year peatland strategy, that was intending on banning peat, and then they've now dropped their peat ban completely. So even within the UK it's, it's a bit topsy turvy. You know, Scotland's different to England and Wales which is different to Northern Ireland.

Phil:
I wonder whether actually what you, what you're saying there is whether the, the industry just needs clarity over the transition.

Scott:
It definitely needs clarity because like I said, there's non-government bodies who are advocating peat to stop right back to 1980, 1990, you know, 30, 40 years ago. There's people saying we need to stop peat. And everyone's saying, yeah, that's it's not a great thing. You know, what I found in my research was that peat use as a growing media actually peaked in 1997, believe it or not.
That was the year that the most peat was ever produced and used in the horticultural industry for use as a growing medium. And since then it's been on the slight decline. You know, there's another time it piqued up a little bit and went back down and so on and so forth. But, as I say, since 2011, the Horticultural Trades Association is showing a trend for peat used to be declining in particular, it's gone down quite a lot in the last two, three, four years.
You know, I think it was something like 62% in 2011. And now 2023, it was down to 20%. So, a huge drop. But I think a lot of that is kind of really in the public Zeitgeist, more than government policy, as you say. I think a lot of the time the government just doesn't seem to be on the same wavelength with their finger on the pulse as we are in the industry.
And for them, it's almost do-gooding. It isn't it, it's, you know, well, we're doing well. We're going to do right by the environment. We're going to ban peat. But then where is the actual substance to that? Where is the deadline? Where is the clarity? Where is the standardisation? Where is the funding.

Kate:
So yeah. No. Absolutely. And then you've got companies who've spent so much money making this transition to peat free and are struggling because there is no legislation. And as we said, you know, we just need the industry to get together and get this education and get, as you saying, you know, more research word on packs that people can understand because I mean, I, you know, I use peat free.
I do struggle sometimes, but I don't want to go back to peat because I've been to see the decimation that has been caused by peat extraction on this, you know, on the landscape, you know, just all, all around the country. And it is when you see it, it's shocking that devastation just for me to grow a few plants in pots, you know, it is a difficult one, but that is how I see it. And I know the horticulture industry is a very small user of peat compared to other industries, which is never kind of talked about. But you know, that we need to try we need to get it better. And I think more people like you, Scott, doing, even though it's a small one person self-funded, the more people that do it and talk about it, the more important it is and the more people are gonna listen.

Phil:
You know, I think being able to monitor and understand what's happening, is really important because I think, you know, for a gardener who doesn't have necessarily those, the tools like the probes and stuff to be able to do that NPK analysis, they just don't understand what's actually going on with the with the pots, and with thier plants.
So I think that's quite important to get that across. But one thing I was going to put to Scott, just interested. So we're talking about gardeners, and we're talking about, the ultimate consumers of these peat free compost, products. What can be done and, and, and what channels can be used to try and educate better the consumer on how to use these products, do you think?

Scott:
The Underground podcast is a fabulous outlet!
Phil:
Oh. You can come again.

Kate:
The cheques in the post.

Scott:
Okay. Yeah. I think ultimately you have to think about what does anybody who does gardening, how do they get their information? So, people like The RHS, who I do believe are doing a lot of work on it, they do have their own peat free trial teams, and they're doing their own research and things like that. And if you look at peat free growing, as I mentioned, one of their they've got like a top ten tips.
And one of them is: be careful because it's, appears dry on the surface even though it's not, you know, things like that. I think perhaps programs like we mentioned, such as The Gardeners World, Beechgrove Garden, maybe they could do a bit more additional programming and talking about peat free. Just anything that gets from the professional to the home user or any sort of medium of communication, really.
I think that garden centres could be better equipped. You know, they could probably even have leaflets or pamphlets or information or, you know, even just a little stand with some information next to all the bags of peat free and, you know, some sort of guide or something like that. As I say, bodies like the HTA, they do quite a lot of work to try and get from that high up level of government that we seem to think is impossible to reach, and they bring it right down to us as, as normal consumers.
You know, one of my big helpers in writing my thesis was the HTA guide in 2023, where they gave out an information guide on peat free from the government to garden centres, to try and help garden centres learn about all the substrate, ingredients and what they mean and how it use them and so on.
So yeah, it's as you say it, it's there isn't really a straightforward answer to that one. I think there's so many different mediums of communication that we talk across. I suppose I think for me it would have to be the actual garden centre or a website online so that if you are, going there and before you click buy on your computer or before you pick up the bag in the garden centre, you know you should be able to read it on the bag itself: You know, this is useful for x, y, z. This is the NPK rating and we recommend that you be careful because the top layer can appear dry. Just something dead simple like that is all you would need to try and help.

Kate:
The only problem I do agree with that, and I know some places, some bags do have information on it. But having worked for a complaints line for a big company, I know people just don't read the instructions, don't read back of packs. So, I think maybe that's where the garden centre comes in is having more, you know, point of sale information. – BAM - You know, don't overwater. I do know companies have tried it, but we don't read instructions, especially certain half of the population. Not that I'm going to mention gender stereotypes here, but it's reading back of pack is so important. People don't do it. They don't. They don't do it. And also with compost, if you're storing it somewhere, it gets mucky, it gets dirty, and you cut it and you cut through the, the pack.
So yeah, I think website, social media, all these other kind of things. But NPK levels, that's an interesting one because there's no, there's no legislation where compost has to have an NPK level. Yeah. So maybe that needs to be to be looked at.

Phil:
That's interesting what you're saying there Kate about at the packs and people don't read them. I think part of part of that is just, historic people just assume that compost is compost. You know, I've used this compost before. I don't need to read the back. I know exactly what I'm doing, but it's different. And I think it's communicating that it's different is so important.

Scott:
Yeah. I mean, there's just there's no you couldn't even put like a QR code on your bag and, you know, just a little thing saying: for optimum success, scan this and then it takes you to the website and it gives you all the information or something, you know.

Kate:
Can I ask you, are you going to continue using peat free? There's no judgement here. Will you continue or will you be mixing and matching and different things for different plants?

Scott:
No, I, I had, like I said, it just as good a success with peat free. So that combined with the fact of: let's not be about the bush here, it was cheaper. You know, and that's not just because I'm Scottish, but because why would you pay more for something that does the same job? So, I think I would be interested to try it again next year and see if I had the same level of success.
But certainly this year the B&Q Verve did just as well as the peat product. It was cheaper and, you know, I didn't particularly see any massive variable differences in cultivation. So, it's not like it was a pain in the neck. It's not like it needed a lot more care and attention or water and or heat or whatever, it was almost identical. So for me personally, I don't see why I wouldn't use it.

Kate:
So, Scott, I'm going to finish off. So last year when you were on the podcast, you told us a lovely story about your favourite plant being caraway. Not wanting to get into trouble at all, but is that another plant that, that would, you know, maybe come a close second to Caraway bring bringing you joy?

Scott:
Oh, that's a good question, actually. So whenever I'm on, MT O’Donnell’s podcast, she often asks this question: what's your favourite plant? And of course, I have a real connection with Caraway, but, I would also say another one of my favourites is Nerine and I love in orange. You know, the Cornish Foden Lillies, the Nerine Bowdenii.
And again, I think it's quite possibly just because of a particular stage in my life. It was when I first met my wife and we were first going out, I was a student gardener for the National Trust and I think we'd only been going there for 2 or 3 months, and she decided to take the leap to move in with me at, a lovely property called Crathes Castle.
And they had this little, this little cute gardener's cottage, which was for the student to live in. And it was just that time of year where it was October. Lovely autumn, all the autumn colours, the weather was lovely and we just had this massive row of the Cornish Foden Lilies in front of the cottage that, you know, that super luminous pink.
And every time I see them, it just reminds me of that early days of still being full of gardening wonder. And as a student and in love and, you know. A bit sappy, but…

Kate:
Lovely.

Scott:
I would say those plants always make me smile.

Kate:
Oh. Thank you.

Phil:
I think that just about wraps things up, Scott Thank you so much for coming on and sharing, all about your trials that you've been doing with the, with the peat free. And it sounds absolutely fascinating. And great to hear that you had success, because I was a bit worried that you're going to come on that go, it was disastrous.

Kate:
Yeah. Me too. Phew, for some of the people we work with! They won't be sacking us just yet.

Phil:
So it's been brilliant to, to hear all about that. So thank you so much for being able to share, what your journey has been.

Kate:
Well lovely to talk to you again, Scott. Enjoy the rest of the summer and, speak to you soon.

Scott:
Yeah. Thank you so much for having me, Kate and Phil, it's, been a pleasure as ever. And, I enjoyed that. And hopefully there was something useful. I mean…

Kate:
Lots of very useful information.

Scott:
Ah, very good. Because sometimes these types of trials end up… You end up with more questions than answers. I did kind of feel like I did leave with more questions than answers to be honest with you, but I did find some information that I wasn't expecting that I think is relevant, useful, probably.

Kate:
Yeah, I think the NPK that's my real take home there. So thanks Scott. You take care now.

Scott:
All right. Take care. Thank you. Bye.