Post by meizzwang on Mar 5, 2019 13:45:25 GMT -5
I've been talking to Bristol about using alternative substrates for Sarracenia, and the elephant in the closet, at least here in the US, is cost. Here's the email copied and pasted with the profanity taken out so that I don't get any nasty complaints from concerned parents:
I think prices for milled pine bark is hyper-inflated right now because it's near impossible to source in bulk and not mass produced in the US. I tried buying a bulk sample of some milled pine bark at lyngso ( a large scale soil/garden supply company up here) and their expert aquisitions team couldn't even source a sample for me. For perspective, Lyngso can source almost any other garden material!
Pine bark mulch is a bi-product of harvesting pine, and down south, they grow and harvest a mother-father load of pine (derrogatory word edited). Almost the entire deep south is planted with pine, very little pristine native forest is left in comparison. It just means there's plenty of the raw product around to mass produce it: what are they doing with all that pine bark? If producers milled the bark on a large scale and sold it as a nursery product, it doesn't require many steps to produce, it's sustainable, has suitable low pH, low EC, and can easily rival peat in price. With the right particle size, you wouldn't need to add granite grit or bark or all that fancy [bull...loney] that everyone else does, that [fecal matter] is totally not necessary.
Problem with peat is that it's unsustainable, relatively cheap to harvest, sift, and bag and mass produce. But the economics are there for milled pine bark: once someone buys a [gosh-darn] machine to mill it, they just have to bag it and sell it. They'll get 2-3X the price for it compared to turning it into woodchips! They still sell pine woodchips, so that suggests wholesalers are willing to process pine bark and get a least 2X less for it. My best guess is peat moss is keeping them out of the milled pine bark game, but eventually, we'll have no choice but to go to a sustainable soil mix once the peat is all used up or the general public finds out about how much land/habitat is irreversably being destroyed by peat harvesting. Europe is about 10 years ahead of the US when it comes to these sort of things, and peat is already banned in some countries out there.
I gotta say though, I'm not convinced any soil mix can rival the amazing life (ie. time it takes before you have to repot), cation exchange capacity, and buffering capacity of top notch peat, but I'm very willing to switch out to milled pine if it becomes comparable in price and quality to peat. Without a doubt, you can still grow very nice looking plants in it, as proven by THA KING™ himself aka Mike King. Getting a precise particle size that maximizes both moisture content and aeration is key, and once they get it perfected and mass produced on a large scale, peat will become a substrate of the past.
I think prices for milled pine bark is hyper-inflated right now because it's near impossible to source in bulk and not mass produced in the US. I tried buying a bulk sample of some milled pine bark at lyngso ( a large scale soil/garden supply company up here) and their expert aquisitions team couldn't even source a sample for me. For perspective, Lyngso can source almost any other garden material!
Pine bark mulch is a bi-product of harvesting pine, and down south, they grow and harvest a mother-father load of pine (derrogatory word edited). Almost the entire deep south is planted with pine, very little pristine native forest is left in comparison. It just means there's plenty of the raw product around to mass produce it: what are they doing with all that pine bark? If producers milled the bark on a large scale and sold it as a nursery product, it doesn't require many steps to produce, it's sustainable, has suitable low pH, low EC, and can easily rival peat in price. With the right particle size, you wouldn't need to add granite grit or bark or all that fancy [bull...loney] that everyone else does, that [fecal matter] is totally not necessary.
Problem with peat is that it's unsustainable, relatively cheap to harvest, sift, and bag and mass produce. But the economics are there for milled pine bark: once someone buys a [gosh-darn] machine to mill it, they just have to bag it and sell it. They'll get 2-3X the price for it compared to turning it into woodchips! They still sell pine woodchips, so that suggests wholesalers are willing to process pine bark and get a least 2X less for it. My best guess is peat moss is keeping them out of the milled pine bark game, but eventually, we'll have no choice but to go to a sustainable soil mix once the peat is all used up or the general public finds out about how much land/habitat is irreversably being destroyed by peat harvesting. Europe is about 10 years ahead of the US when it comes to these sort of things, and peat is already banned in some countries out there.
I gotta say though, I'm not convinced any soil mix can rival the amazing life (ie. time it takes before you have to repot), cation exchange capacity, and buffering capacity of top notch peat, but I'm very willing to switch out to milled pine if it becomes comparable in price and quality to peat. Without a doubt, you can still grow very nice looking plants in it, as proven by THA KING™ himself aka Mike King. Getting a precise particle size that maximizes both moisture content and aeration is key, and once they get it perfected and mass produced on a large scale, peat will become a substrate of the past.