5. Using your compost | 20 mins
Compost mixes
Sowing, potting and multipurpose composts that you can buy in garden centres are mixtures of various materials such as loam, sand, coir and fertilisers, and are commonly used for raising seedlings and growing plants in pots.
Many of these products also contain peat, more than 95% of our lowland peat bogs in the UK have been destroyed or damaged in order to gather peat on an industrial scale. This process destroys vast habitats which support many rare and endangered species of plants and wildlife which cannot be regenerated, it takes a year to create just 1mm of peat. Find out more about our campaigns for peat free growing on our website, and if you do buy commercial compost always ask to make sure that it's ‘Peat Free’.
The good news is that if you make your own compost at home, it is easy and much cheaper to make your own compost mixes to perform different functions. Click through the slides below to learn about a range of compost mix recipes.