The peat controversy

I don't know what these are, only what they are not.  They are not peat pellets.  They look like peat pellets, but they swell much faster, smell quite different, and are a bit more difficult to loosen up for seed insertion.  Fiber Grow® pellets are made in Vietnam.  My guess is coconut fiber, but it's only a guess.

The use of peat for horticulture is apparently becoming a crime against nature.  This was news to me when I read  it on the packaging of the Planters' Pride greenhouse kit I bought on the weekend.  The recommended site to verify this information has a big Fiber Grow® logo in the top corner.  However, several other websites support the claim that peat bogs are an endangered habitat due to extensive "mining" of peat.  The Canadian Sphagnum Peat Moss Association is of a different opinion.  It's members work diligently on site restoration after peat has been "harvested".  One side claims that this renewable resource is being used 220 times faster than it can be renewed.  This describes the typical annual take from a given site.  The other side argues that peat accumulates 60 times faster than it is removed from bogs in Canada, which is quite possibly true since only a small fraction of our total peat bog area is subjected to extractors in a year.  They can't even keep up with it!  But what about the disrupted local ecosystems?  Can they really be restored after being drained, dried, and skinned?  Is it better to ship coconut fiber from Vietnam than to use a resource available closer to home?

I'll have to read more about this issue.  For now, I happen to have non-peat pellets to start seeds and half of a bale of peat purchased two or three years ago.  They buy a little time for me to make up my mind.