Making Your Own Peat Pellets
Here's a good start on making your own pellets - without the non-biodegradeable nylon wrapped with them, but swaddled in good ole organic cotton cloth.
Making Your Own Peat Pellets
RELATED CONTENT
by JOHN FUNK
REMEMBER THOSE GREAT LITTLE PEAT PELLET PLANT STARTERS THAT
JACK ROLAND COGGINS WROTE ABOUT IN MOTHER NO. 8 . . .
GREAT, THAT IS, EXCEPT FOR THE NON-BIODEGRADEABLE NYLON
THAT THE MANUFACTURER INSISTS ON WRAPPING THEM WITH. WELL,
JOHN FUNK SAYS YOU CAN MAKE YOUR OWN—SWADDLED IN GOOD
OLE ORGANIC COTTON CLOTH—RIGHT AT HOME. THEY WON'T BE
AS PRETTY AS STORE-BOUGHT AND EVEN JOHN HOPES YOU'LL
IMPROVE ON HIS IDEA . . . BUT IT'S A DARN GOOD START ON
The peat pellet article in Mother No. 8 really grabbed me.
Here was technology at its best: a simple, convenient way
to get around at least half the heavy directions and
frightening illustrations tucked away in my
innocent-looking new gardening books. Why, armed with ten
or twelve dollars worth of pellets, even we city folk could
easily get back to the land—by first bringing the
land into the house. My head was off and running, and then
. . . I stumbled into the author's note.
Plastic mesh! Peat pellets were a technical miracle all
right . . . neatly packaged in an ecological disaster.
Score another point for the opposition. I just couldn't see
adding plastic to gardens when lawns and streets were
already filled with the stuff. Write the manufacturer?
Forget it. I had about decided to chuck the whole idea when
another look at the gardening books convinced me that, if I
had to have a garden, I had to have peat pellets. And I'd
do away with the plastic by making my own.
In order to duplicate the little buggers I did buy one box
of the ready-mades and found that peat pellets are actually
flat peat discs. These discs look and feel as though
they've died violently in a 50 ton hydraulic press but,
with a little water, they instantly spring back to life as
perfectly-shaped little peat pots.
Now the pellets I'm going to tell you how to make won't be
quite that professional. They'll look more like a bloated
poker chip than a disc and, once expanded, more like a
meatball than a flower pot. But don't worry. They
will do the job, and they won't leave a plastic
shell behind—because they're "skinned" with genuine,
old-fashioned, cotton cheesecloth. Come September, your
pellets will each be a happily rotting mess!
I don't suppose you happen to own one of those
aforementioned 50-ton presses. I sure don't, so I was
forced to invent my very own Super-Special Tin Can Peat
Pellet Mini-Press. The compression power is supplied by an
automotive hydraulic jack working against a relatively
immovable object like the underside of a pickup truck (most
cars are too low to the ground) or the underside of
basement stairs (an iron fire escape would be even better).
I don't know if I have a "better" press—no one's
beaten a path to my door—but the path to my garden
leads all over the house to every available patch of
sunlight.
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