Sphagnum Farming UK - A Sustainable Alternative to Peat in Growing Media

This project seeks to establish a method for growing Sphagnum moss on a large scale to provide a

sustainable alternative to peat in horticulture. Natural peat is expected to run out within 2 decades, and

harvesting is causing great harm to the environment. Sphagnum grown on a commercial scale offers an

fast, effective and sustainable solution to this market need for horticultural growing media because peat

is merely old preserved Sphagnum. This is an innovative approach, as Sphagnum is difficult to

propagate, and is relatively slow growing. However, our propagation methods have shown that we can

mass-cultivate successfully and we now wish to determine optimum Sphagnum strains and growing

conditions to create a much larger scale product which can be used to cultivate a crop at field scale and

generate a cash crop for landowners/farmers in the form of a growing medium to replace peat whilst

restoring wetland and peat-forming conditions.