Different compost and pea's quick test.

forgotmyname

I bought 4 different types of compost to start some pea plants off.

Miracle grow seed compost, Westland Multi-Purpose compost, Sainsbury's Peat Free and ASDA professional Multi-Purpose.

Surprisingly the cheap Sainsbury's peat free appears to be the best so far, Plants are approx 6" tall now.
ASDA compost a very close 2nd and the Westland slightly behind that.

The seed compost. The dearest out of the lot. Nothing...Not one pea has grown from it. Utterly useless.

I do appear to have a couple of mushrooms growing from it though.

Wrong compost for peas or is it just rubbish?

Linda32

I've never managed to grow peas dispite trying three or four times so I've given up now.

I have previously sown them direct so havn't used a specific compost.

Its always worth doing a trial and now you know what works best. I would imagine the seed compost is okay for seed sowing. No idea on the mushrooms, can't help there, but someone will be along soon.

LincolnshireYokel

Umm........

Seed compost has only a tiny amount of the nutrients of Multipurpose, thats the point of it, too high nutrient levels can fry the root hairs on some plantlets. So I wouldnt expect plants to do well in seed compost once they are past the two true leaves stage. Thats why you plant them out into something with higher nutrient levels, such as multipurpose or JI No2.

Lotus-eater

Linda32 wrote: »

I've never managed to grow peas dispite trying three or four times so I've given up now.

I have previously sown them direct so havn't used a specific compost.

Well either they have been eaten by mice, or slugs, or pigeons, or they have rotted

Lotus-eater

LincolnshireYokel wrote: »

Umm........

Seed compost has only a tiny amount of the nutrients of Multipurpose, thats the point of it, too high nutrient levels can fry the root hairs on some plantlets. So I wouldnt expect plants to do well in seed compost once they are past the two true leaves stage. Thats why you plant them out into something with higher nutrient levels, such as multipurpose or JI No2.

They are still supposed to germinate though, that's kind of the whole idea.

A._Badger

Peas really don't need fertiliser - they have root nodules which enable them to fix nitrogen from the air. Which means, in theory, your low NPK seed compost should have been fine.

How many seeds did you sow? Were the containers identical? Were the seeds? Was the placement of the containers?

Assuming it was a large enough sample and the conditions were the same it does suggest the compost is at fault.

forgotmyname

Containers were toilet roll tubes.

I forgot to mention i planted 2 types of pea's also Kelvedon Wonder and Hurst Greenshaft.

I planted 10 of each all sitting on the same trays

1 tray or K.Wonder and 1 of Hurst.. So 40 pea plants on each tray.

So all watered exactly the same, Same temperature, Light etc etc etc.

Most composts had between 1 and 3 no shows for each variety, But the proper seed compost had zero out of a possible 20 plants.

If i ignore the seed compost, Out of 60 seeds i got 50 plants. ( I think 51 actually)

0 out of 20 for seed compost seems like poor value to me, And why the mushrooms? Is it just old mushroom compost, With no nurients left?

I need to get them planted now before the roots break through.


Beetroot test coming soon i think.. Just enough time to get some in i hope.

A._Badger

That sounds pretty convincing, forgotmyname, and worryingly believable. I had some extremely unusual results with seeds this year that I am pretty sure were down to unreliable compost.

forgotmyname

It does seem that way. Beetroot has had similar results.

Ive had a couple grow from the seed compost but they were slow and spindly.

Planted them in the ground now so will see how they do. But i wont be buying that brand of seed compost again.

Lots of little spindly mushrooms though. Maybe too much light for them to get bigger?

Does light stunt them? I know your supposed to grow mushrooms in a dark place.

Lotus-eater

The mushrooms probably came from the toilet rolls, I've had the same thing.

I don't use seed compost just decent normal compost for my seeds.

This year I was running a bit late so just popped into some garden centre for a bag and it's been awful. Nothing sown in it has been good. Lots of no shows.

Some of the stuff has been repotted into new compost and it's picked up, but some has just been lost to me this year, as it was too late to sow by the time I realised what was going on.