Peat and Growing Media – An Introduction

What is peat?

Peat is a soft heterogenous mixture of partly decayed plant matter that has accumulated in a water-saturated environment and in the absence of oxygen. A peatland is an area with naturally accumulated peat layer at the surface.

What are peatlands?

Peatlands are the most widespread types of wetland in the world and cover more than 4 million square km - that is 3% of the land and freshwater surface of the planet. In these ecosystems are found one third of the world’s soil carbon and 10% of global freshwater resources. Over 90% of peatlands are to be found in the temperate and cold areas of the Northern Hemisphere

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Peatlands are natural systems performing local, regional and often global funcions. They may be considered as land, wetland, geological deposit, natural habitat, grazing meadow or forest. They provide a wide range of wildlife habitats supporting important biological diversity. They also make important contributions to human communities, as they are used, for instance, for agriculture, forestry, fuel production, industry, pollution control, recreation, tourism, nature conservation and scientific research.

How is peat used?

Peat is extracted from peatlands and used principally in horticulture, agriculture, domestic heating and energy generation. Peat extraction includes the drying of wet peat and the collection, transport and storage of the dried product.

Peat has been extracted and used for over two centuries, originally for domestic heating purposes. In Europe, agriculture has been the principal use of peatlands for several centuries, utilizing 125,000 km². Well-managed peatland soils are amongst the most productive agricultural lands available, providing essential food crops

What is growing media?

As defined by the European Commission for Standarization (CEN), a growing medium is a material, other than soil in situ (in its original place), in which plants are grown.

The growing media sector produces a wide range of products to provide an optimum rooting environment for plants. The range of growing media constituents includes peat, other organics like coir, composted materials, and mineral constituents like perlite. Growing media are often formulated from a blend of different raw materials in order to achieve the correct balance of physical and chemical properties for the plants to be grown.

Key role played by peat in growing media

Of all the different and varying growing media, due to its unique properties of stimulating plant growth, peat represents 86% of all constituents used in the professional sector and 69% of the constituents used for the hobby growing media market within the EU. A general substitute for peat in growing media is not available.

Peat allows, as a carrier, a higher added value to other constituents, e.g. compost. Compost on its own is never suitable as a growing medium due to unfavourable chemical, physical or biological properties and requires blending with peat and possibly other materials.

Peat is a key component of most readily available, easily processed, high performing and cost-effective growing media.

Economic impact of peat and growing media industry

The peat and growing media industry represents an industry of 1,3 billion euro turnover accounting for 11.000 jobs across the EU Member States.

Most of the horticultural peat producers in the EU are small to medium-sized companies but with strong impact in rural areas in which peat reserves are located.

The EU Growing Media industry and consumer structure can be divided into three categories. Countries like the Netherlands, France, Italy and Spain hardly have any indigenous peat resources but they are all large users of growing media. A second group of countries are peat extracting and also growing media manufacturing countries as it is the case for Germany, Finland, Ireland and Sweden. A third category mainly extracts peat for further sale and/or export (e.g. Baltic states).

Peat-based growing media are available worldwide and they help improve horticultural production. Without peat modern horticulture would not be sustainable.

Of all growing media produced in EU member states 71% are sold on home markets, 25% are EU exports and 4% are non-EU exports.

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Peat: a valuable local energy source

In several countries, particularly in Ireland and the Nordic and Baltic regions, peat provides an important source of heat and power. As a local fuel, it plays an important role in the decentralized and diversified energy system, providing employment and securing energy supply. Economically speaking, it is a competitive type of energy.

As a fuel it can be used in three forms:

• Sod peat - slabs of peat, cut by hand or by machine, and dried in the air; mostly used as a household fuel;
• Milled peat - granulated peat, produced on a large scale by special machines; used either as a power station fuel or as raw material for briquettes;
• Peat briquettes - small blocks of dried, highly compressed peat; used mainly as a household fuel.

As a fuel, peat is much closer to wood fuels than fossil fuels, which are formed through enormous pressure and require millions of years to form. We therefore define peat as slowly renewable biomass.