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Really enjoyed this article and I learned something new, always a pleasure. The link to the info from the Canadian Peat Industry was educational - seems I've been guilty of assuming that the peat industry in this country was all bad, when it would appear that's not entirely the case. I'd prefer that the bogs be left undisturbed, but in the long run it appears that the industry is not as irresponsible as I had long believed it to be. However, I don't like peat based potting mixes, regardless of how the peat is obtained, primarily because of it's nasty habit of becoming water repellent when it's dry. Takes very hot water to rewet it, and a lot of time and effort, whether it's dried out in the package or in the planter, and I don't like the idea that some sort of chemical wetting agents have to be added to peat based mixes to help prevent this.
I like coir far better than peat, ever since I first tried it. But I have to admit, I hadn't considered the varied costs, like fuel and the pollution from it that are incurred in shipping to places like Ontario from the tropical countries that produce it, nor the costs in fresh water used to flush out accumulated salt. The husks are soaked in sea water to soften them after harvest, and there's no viable substitute for that process. One thing I did not see mentioned on the good side for coir, was that before it began to be used for horticulture, it was purely a waste product that accumulated in enormous heaps. Because there was no local use for it, and because it breaks down quite slowly, it was very often burned simply to get rid of it. Burning all those big heaps was certainly not good environmentally either. Perhaps the fuel pollution from shipping coir is offset somewhat by the fact it is no longer burned as useless waste ? I don't know if that's the case, but coir production does provide the countries who produce coconuts, countries that are generally not particularly well off, with another useful product to sell, and thereby helps support their economies. sigh. It seems that no choice today is ever as simple as it might look at first.
Environmental concerns aside, since it first became available here, I have had excellent results using coir for growing all kinds of things in containers, more so than I did using peat based mixes. It never shrinks or repels water when dry. I've mixed it into the peat based stuff I already had and it helps to offset peat's bad qualities. As I have only indoors and a balcony, I am restricted to container growing and I find coir produces superior results in containers both in terms of holding water and allowing drainage. I have read some reports from large commercial growers reporting that coir can be too water retentive for certain water sensitive plants, so if I had a plant like that I wouldn't use coir for it, but otherwise I've found it very useful and versatile, in hanging baskets, boxes and pots of any size, and it's certainly a lot easier and neater to store in the compressed blocks. And it can easily be used straight, with some sort of fertilizer added to deal with the lack of nutrients in it.
I've never had a chance to try rice hulls, and until I read this article I wasn't aware they were used for horticulture. The only rice hulls I've ever seen here were being touted as ideal stable bedding for horses, some decades ago. The hulls had an enormous advantage over traditional bedding materials, partly because of their light weight but mainly because they don't burn. I saw several demonstrations where lighted matches were dropped onto piles of rice hulls, shavings and straw. The latter two materials burned up in a flash but the match in the rice hulls simply went out without ever catching, just a few hulls were slightly blackened. Y'know, I once had a friend butt his cigarette out in one of my window boxes, which had a mix comprised mainly of coir, plus the plants, and was nowhere near bone dry. The coir caught fire a few minutes after he thought he'd stubbed out the butt and was alarmingly difficult to put out after we noticed the foot high flame shooting up out of the box ! Nothing like sheer fear to get one's heart rate up !!
I didn't mention it piling up in great heaps, although I can imagine that it would have... but I do like the concept that we're basically using a leftover leftover from coconut harvests -- it's what's left after the fruit has been harvested and the useful fiber has been removed from the husk.
Glad to know about the rice hulls being fire resistant... interesting!
When I first learned coir existed, quite awhile ago now, I was very interested and wanted to learn about it. At that time salt was still a problem with much of the early product, and it was making it difficult for coir to gain much support in the marketplace in North America, and I wanted to know about that too. I found a couple of sites that followed the development of coir from the very beginning of the idea that it might be useful for growing plants, through early marketing efforts, and the idea of compressing it for ease of shipping. These sites showed pictures of huge piles of waste coir being burned. They were hoping it would be successful, so as to put an end to the big smoky fires and bring much added benefit to the communities that grew the coconuts.
