New Horizon Peat Free Growbag – GW? ‘Best-Buy’ for a Third Year ‘This peat-free growing bag produced on average 11.3kg of tomatoes per bag in our trial. We harvested almost 2kg more fruit from this Best Buy than from any other peat-free growing bag on test. Often, peat-free composts need more watering, but this bag retained moisture well and didn’t need any more water than the peat-based growing bags in our trial.’ ‘Our Best Buy Growing Bags, Which? Gardening, March 2009
New Horizon Peat Free Growbag – GW? ‘Best-Buy’ for a Second Year
Gardening which? (GW?) kicks off 2008 with a review of peat free composts. Given the government target of achieving 90% introduction by 2010, GW asked if peat free matches traditional multipurpose composts.
Peat free compost is often criticised because of variation in quality between bags of the same product. It was only the "best-buy" in January’s report, Sinclair's New Horizon Organic and Peat Free Growbag, which supplied compost that was consistently reliable. The New Horizon Multipurpose Peat Free Compost, Westland Earth Matters Peat Free Multipurpose Compost, and B&Q Peat Free Multipurpose Compost all showed variations in quality, despite performing well in some tests.
The peat free composts were compared with Homebase Multipurpose Compost containing peat. They were tested for seed growing (for which they are not particularly recommended), young plants, growing Busy Lizzies and potatoes in containers and for their water holding capacity. None matched the benchmark peat compost when growing from seed or for the tricky Busy Lizzies. However, the "best-buy" did consistently well.
Gardening Which? Compost Trial in Amateur Gardening - dated 2 February 2008 - made reference to this trial: "...New Horizon's Organic and Peat Free Growing Bag was the only peat-free compost deemed to be a Best Buy for growing on young plants."
New Horizon Peat Free Growbag on BBC Gardeners' World
The March 27th edition of Gardeners World on the BBC had an hour long special on the 'peat debate'. The programme gave a balanced view of all the issues from the various parties and ultimately came out in favour of using peat free products for gardening. Of particular interest, and highlighted at the end of the programme, were the winners of the Which Award for Peat Free Composts. The New Horizon Growbag (winner) and Multipurpose Compost (recommended) were given special mention and were heavily endorsed by both Which and the BBC presenter.
The link below takes you straight to the programme on the BBC's iPlayer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00jgzfj/Gardeners_World_Specials_2009_For_Peats_Sake/
