In this week’s Wildings I’m on about Peat. you know that sticky, boggy stuff your boots get stuck in, or that can swallow you up like in the Hound of the Baskervilles!
What is peat, apart from sticky, Hound of the Baskervilles stuff and stuff to put in your garden?
It’s amazing stuff. Did you know, it takes a staggering 10 years for just 1cm of peat to form and, in the wild, it can be 10 metres deep and 12,000 years old. Peat that old formed just after the end of the last Ice Age and used to cover great swathes of land all over the world, soaking up carbon! I find that stunning!
The International Peatlands Society tell us, “Peat formation is the result of incomplete decomposition of the remains of plants growing in waterlogged conditions. This may happen in standing water (lakes or margins of slow flowing rivers) or under consistently high rainfall (upland or mountain regions). As a result, partially decomposed plant remains accumulate and become compacted, forming peat that changes the substrate chemical and physical properties leading to a succession of plant communities.”
And so, since it took that long to make the stuff that business people cheerfully dig up to sell us to put in our gardens, it will take that long again to make more. and it can only make more if we give it the chance, the space and the ingredients to make it. All of those 3 things are pretty well gone now in the modern world of concrete, house, roads, railways, factories, towns, shops, supermarkets, etc, etc.
Well, Elen, so what? Why does that matter? What does peat do that’s so important? Apart from enable me to grow rhododendrons and acid-loving plants?
It does lots of incredible and amazing things, like …