Amazing peat!
On 7 & 8 June we are joining colleagues on a stall at the Newcastle Green Festival. The stall is organised by the team from the National Trust’s Inner City Project, based at Holy Jesus Hospital in the centre of Newcastle.
Our theme for the weekend is peat and John Ellis, Wallington’s Head Gardener, will be there to give his tips on peat-free gardening. There are lots of reasons why it’s better to use alternatives to peat-based compost, including the need to protect plants and animals that rely on peat land habitats.
Did you know that peat also has a crucial role to play in relation to climate change?
It's all about the way peat locks away carbon and prevents it from entering the atmosphere, where it forms carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. Every type of soil contains carbon and therefore the way we manage land is crucial to limiting climate change. Peat is especially important because it contains more carbon than any other type of soil.
How much carbon is in peat?
There’s around 100kg of carbon per cubic metre of peat, that’s equivalent to the emissions from one car driving 2,000 miles. Across the globe, Peat covers about 3 per cent of global land surface, yet the amount of carbon stored within it is enormous – equivalent to twice that of all the world’s forests combined.
Why is there so much carbon in peat?
Because carbon in soils comes from dead plant matter, and peat is composed almost entirely of dead mosses, sedges and grasses. Water-logging prevents these plants from fully decomposing, and peat slowly grows as new layers of dead plant matter are laid down.
How can the carbon escape?
Healthy peat is wet, covered in vegetation and protected from the air. If the peat is eroded, drained, over grazed or dug up, it comes into contact with air. The oxygen in air then combines with the carbon in peat to form carbon dioxide (CO2), which is released into the atmosphere and contributes to climate change.
Irreplaceable
Peat develops very slowly, no more than 1mm in depth per year. A 10 metre deep peat reserve will have taken 10,000 years to develop. So when peat is mined for garden compost it will take 1,000 years to replace every metre that is taken away.
How can we protect peat?
Everyone can help by not buying peat based compost. The National Trust is working hard to restore damaged peat in upland areas, notably the High Peak in Derbyshire.
At Wallington, Durham University are studying the carbon in the estate’s peat and other soils to advise us on how to manage the land to protect our carbon stores.
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