Peat-free compost disappointment

Heartinthedirt

You do your best, you buy a bag of Westland New Horizons peat-free compost, you use it transplant seedlings that you've been nurturing indoors for weeks and you lose the bloody lot (plus the rest of the bag of compost) to mold! Gutted! Definitely don't recommend this product 

Fairygirl

Moulds are quite normal though, in any compost. It's part of the decomposition process.
Seedlings are very vulnerable to damping off and all sorts of things when being transplanted, so it isn't necessarily the compost. 

Uff

I'm not surprised you're disappointed with that stuff Heartinthe dirt, I would have been and I wouldn't have wanted to put delicate seedlings into that. 
I bought a bag of multi purpose compost the other day, in a hurry and not my usual brand. It was Westland, a brand I've bought many, many times in the past but this bag was utter rubbish, and looked like the type you get from council recycling places, all fibre. Never again.  

Loxley

Yes I bought a bag of Westland 'Gardener's Multipurpose' the other day, and it is awful, fibrous stuff. And it contains peat! It might be OK mixed with topsoil.

thevictorian

We bought 3 bags of the westland new horizon peat free compost and I'm not impressed either. It seems prices go up but bag sizes and quality go down.

AnniD

If you get your milk delivered through the milk and more website, it may be worth giving this a try.
https://www.milkandmore.co.uk/New-In/Durstons-Organic-Peat-Free-Multi-Purpose-Compost,-40L/p/77143/

Fairygirl

If it doesn't say peat free, it contains peat @Loxley.
It can sometimes be difficult to assess, especially when there are loads of different bags staring you in the face though!
I bought the Miracle Gro one. I haven't used much yet, and it'll take a while to asses. I've done some sweet peas - one lot in some standard compost with grit, and one in the peat free stuff. I think it'll be harder to use with seeds which need more specific conditions though.
For @Heartinthedirt, I should have said earlier, that when you move any seedlings into their own pots, it's important that the medium they're going into is suitable in terms of drainage.
They still don't need a huge amount of nutrients at this stage, but they do need good drainage because you're putting them into bigger volume of soil. A good amount of Perlite, grit or similar, will help   

LunarSea

The most annoying aspect of all this is that Westland bought out 'New Horizon' as an established & much-loved brand and then totally messed it up . The original New Horizon company were one of the early pioneers of peat-free composts and we'd been buying it for years and loved it.

Loxley

Fairygirl said:

If it doesn't say peat free, it contains peat @Loxley.
It can sometimes be difficult to assess, especially when there are loads of different bags staring you in the face though!

Yes, I know - my point is that it's not just "Peat Free" composts that are so bad they're virtually unusable.

didyw

Having gone peat free for all my pots last year I realised that the bags were variable from one bag to another of the same make.  (One even smelt strongly of weed!). It is all very fibrous though.  Fine for pots, but not seedlings.  I'm afraid I bought some multipurpose in readiness for pricking out my seedlings (but haven't opened the bag yet, so don't know what it's like) which I'll mix with a bit of the JI seed compost and vermiculite for the seedlings.  Once they are established plants they will to into peat free, or the garden.

Fairygirl

I've used Jack's Magic for many years, and it's always been consistent. 
I thought you meant you were looking for a peat free compost @Loxley -sorry for the misunderstanding.