Things I’m thinking while working in a peat fen, a wetland where peat has formed over millennia #wetlands #peat #fen 🌿🌰
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I used to use peat to amend soil in my garden, until I read more deeply about how it forms and how irreplaceable it is to the ecosystems that it develops in. I have been using ground leaves and tree limb fall since to amend my garden soil.
aug 30, 2025, 6:07 pm • 2 0 • view
Yes, leaves and wood chips are game changers for amending garden soil!! I’ve been really happy with the results — no need for peat. Plus they’re free
aug 31, 2025, 2:43 pm • 1 0 • view
requires planning on the timing.
aug 31, 2025, 7:59 pm • 0 0 • view
Makes sense
aug 31, 2025, 8:37 pm • 1 0 • view
Basically a person has to grind up the leaves, pile the grinds and allow them to compose until the late Summer to work them into the soil. We have a very long growing season, heat loving pants during the Summer and cool weather loving plants during the Fall and Winter. So working leaves into soil
aug 31, 2025, 7:59 pm • 1 0 • view
Yes, I have found chipped wood to be great. That is easy to find due to lots of limb fall in Florida. I am new to using ground up leaves, my region of the country has flaky leaf-fall, leaves don’t fall here until almost Spring - making planning essential for anyone planning to use them in soil.
aug 31, 2025, 7:56 pm • 1 0 • view
Ah, interesting. In eastern WA state, fallen leaves are so abundant in the fall that people burn them just to get them out of the way. Tragic because it makes the skies smoky, and puts carbon in the air when we could put it in the soil. I go around and ask people if I can take their bagged leaves 😂
aug 31, 2025, 8:36 pm • 0 0 • view
There were companies that sold composed leaves, but they required local pickup, not an option for a person who lives in Florida and was looking for northern fallen leaves.
aug 31, 2025, 11:00 pm • 0 0 • view
Sell whatever weight of packed ground leaves that you can get into the bag. Burlap bags are really sustainable and pretty inexpensive. Paper bags are cheaper but not as sustainable.
aug 31, 2025, 10:57 pm • 0 0 • view
You should set up a mail order business for ground up leaves. I am serious. Because Florida has such quirky leaf-fall, I looked at buying leaves from northern climates, nothing. Pack ground up leaves into a 50 Lb bag and sell them online as soil amendment. Of course the leaves won’t weigh 50 Lbs
aug 31, 2025, 10:54 pm • 0 0 • view
So it's a finite resource too
aug 30, 2025, 5:29 pm • 0 0 • view
We have several other commonly used finite resources, Epsom Salts, and mined Rock Phosphate are two common examples.
aug 30, 2025, 6:10 pm • 1 0 • view
Epsom salts too? I was thinking of purchasing..it seems to help create the vibrancy of the Zinnias looking washed out in my Idaho clay soil. Does anyone know what else could do that?
aug 31, 2025, 12:03 am • 0 0 • view
You can use an old jar that has a lid to compose it. Mix the ingredients, lightly apply the cap but don’t tighten. Store in a shed or in a garage corner. You can chop up fallen leaves into your clay soil, they will rot and loosen the soil so that your zinnias can grow out more root mass.
aug 31, 2025, 12:34 am • 1 0 • view
Yes, this does work. I did not collect leaves last year from my neighbor. Now my own 3 year old tree is big enough to give me leaves so I will hit my garden up hard with leaves to compost this winter. I like your idea on the compost fertilizer
aug 31, 2025, 12:42 am • 1 0 • view
drink I did something like that in a 5 gallon bucket last year with weeds. It smelled to high heaven, but it was a miracle worker.
aug 31, 2025, 12:42 am • 0 0 • view
If you tried composing like I pointed out, then you are already ahead of the game, just research what you want to do and then set up your own custom compost.
aug 31, 2025, 12:58 am • 1 0 • view
I forgot that you need to add water to the ingredients, enough water to cover all ingredients by a couple inches. If you don’t want it to stink, add some peppermint leaves or a stick of cinnamon to the mix, the peppermint or cinnamon keeps the stink down.
aug 31, 2025, 12:55 am • 1 0 • view
Peppermint leaves too wow you are so smart. OK!!
aug 31, 2025, 12:56 am • 1 0 • view
Try a small amount of banana peel powder composed with fresh grass clippings (still green) and a pinch of Brewer’s yeast. After a month of composting (or better over the winter), use a tablespoon diluted with the same amount of water and pour around your plant, away from the stem but on the roots.
aug 31, 2025, 12:26 am • 1 0 • view
I have all of those ingredients I will do that. This is gonna be fun to try.
aug 31, 2025, 12:27 am • 1 0 • view
Although Epsom salts can be produced chemically, it requires mining of a magnesium oxide rock and reacting that with sulfuric acid and then purifying. Most Epsom salts are mined from ancient deposits, or produced by evaporating magnesium sulfate rich water to separate the salts from the water.
aug 31, 2025, 12:15 am • 2 0 • view
Thank you!
aug 31, 2025, 12:17 am • 1 0 • view
Many finite resources in our culture — means all the more reason to look for alternatives. Peat is a next level resource because of how much good it does when left in place, and the multiple functions that are lost when it’s harvested — water storage, biodiversity, carbon storage, and more
aug 31, 2025, 2:47 pm • 2 0 • view
from the explosion of a mega sized star that could fuse to phosphorus and atomic numbers beyond phosphorus, but was unstable due to it’s massive size and explode to form a supernova.
aug 31, 2025, 7:52 pm • 1 0 • view
Phosphorus is finite in our entire solar system. The Sun is not a big enough star to fuse up to an element of the atomic number of phosphorus. The phosphorus in our solar system is from the origin of our solar system. The phosphorus got into the highly compressed cloud of hydrogen and particles,
aug 31, 2025, 7:46 pm • 1 0 • view
There is a sustainability movement that promotes secondary use of finite materials that we have no choice but to use, like Rock Phosphate. Some plant material end up rich in phosphate, the secondary use people compost that plant material to make fertilizer and avoid using rock phosphate.
aug 31, 2025, 7:43 pm • 1 0 • view
This!!
aug 31, 2025, 8:34 pm • 0 0 • view
This is Bay Area marshlands where Silicon Valley billionaires want to build a 400,000 home walkable city! It's gonna wreck the peat we still have
aug 31, 2025, 3:58 pm • 0 0 • view
Building on peat? That's a swampy foundation for utopia.
aug 31, 2025, 4:17 pm • 0 0 • view
They drain & remove it
aug 31, 2025, 4:19 pm • 0 0 • view
I would have thought we knew better by now! Is this moving forward?
aug 31, 2025, 8:32 pm • 0 0 • view
The amount of peat we have feels finite due to the timescale of our lives. Technically, it can regenerate, if given enough centuries… but it makes sense to treat it as finite. Plus the implications of harvesting it are significant! More carbon is stored in peat wetlands than in all other ecosystems
aug 31, 2025, 2:40 pm • 1 0 • view