Many of the most dramatic scenes in English Gothic literature take place on the moors: Heathcliff is haunted by ghosts in Wuthering Heights; Jane Eyre’s titular character runs aimlessly after learning her beloved Mr. Rochester has been keeping his first wife captive in his attic. If the Brontë sisters’ fictional worlds work in a similar way to ours, sphagnum (or peat) moss was cushioning these characters’ wandering feet. And if Jane and Heathcliff had any seedlings on their windowsills, chunks of that same moss may have been padding those pots. Peat moss is acidic (which some plants like), has antimicrobial properties that can keep your plants healthy, and stores and distributes water better than almost anything else on this planet, whether the moss itself is dead or alive. These properties make it an ideal medium for many types of gardening, and about 30 percent of extracted peat is used for horticultural purposes. But drained peatlands also release about 1.9 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide every year, or about 5 percent of total human-generated greenhouse gas emissions—a significant amount for our planet. Thankfully, there are effective ways to replace peat in your garden.
Why peat moss is so special
Some of the same attributes that make hundreds of layers of sphagnum moss feel like a solid puddle are also what make them so good at storing carbon. For example, they take a long time to decay, so they end up holding their organic molecules for hundreds to thousands of years. If you’re a numbers person, consider this: they make up about 3 percent of the world’s land area but store a quarter of the carbon—carbon that would contribute to the climate crisis if released. While these are important considerations, every growing medium has some sort of environmental impact—choosing is a matter of mitigation, not elimination. And, as always, we can only make so much difference on the individual level. “It’s a lot different than the professional individuals who are using growing media to grow vast acreages of crops,” says Jackson.
Forestry scraps can hold nutrients just as well
To make soil more acidic and avoid rinsing out crucial nutrients when you water the plant, Jackson recommends adding aged pine bark to the soil. It’s a byproduct in the forestry industry, especially in the southeastern US. It’s all about the cation exchange capacity (CEC): how well the soil can hold positive ions, which hold on to nutrients. “[The CEC] is quite high in peat moss, but it also can be very high in aged and composted barks,” Jackson says.
How to recreate peat’s antimicrobial properties
This may seem like disappointing news, but scientists are discovering more and more about soil microbiomes and underground fungi networks that link trees every day. It’s only a matter of time before there’s a probiotic for your houseplants. In the meantime, you can use local compost, which is teeming with life. Given the environmental effects of harvesting all growing mediums, composting at home or locally is also probably the best way to reduce your impact on the world around you, even if you don’t get those eerie Heathcliff vibes.
