Multipurpose compost

Murphybear

I’d be interested to hear people’s views.

There are loads of multipurpose composts on the market from 3 for £10 in Wilco to eye watering “premium professional” on some of the shopping channels and lots in between.  We do a lot of container gardening so get through lots.  

Last year I bought quite a lot from Wilco for my tomatoes and they were amazing popped up like weeds

After a few weeks I put some Miracle Gro fertiliser pellets in them. 

What do you do?  Do you think it’s worth paying more or get reasonable results with more cost friendly brands?

Effician

We've switched to making & using all homemade compost due to inconsistency & cost of store bought stuff, hopefully after the domestic ban on peat based composts come into effect & things settle down we can once again be sure of the quality & consistency of the compost we're buying.

Cheap fb&b & epsom salts is all the food we buy , comfrey & nettle tea will make up the bulk of the feeding.

Woolsery

I can't recommend any of the average cost brands nowadays due to the inconsistencies Effician also notices. Unfortunately, I bought a bad batch of Westland's 'Jack's Magic' in early 2020 intending to ride out lockdown with them. Most of the 10 bags are still with me, they're so awful. They turned to sludge and killed everything I put in them, even after adding other material in an attempt at improvement.

I never use composts 'straight from the bag' and always add grit, sterilised loam, vermiculite etc depending on purpose, so the variability isn't usually a huge problem. I prefer incorporating a pelleted fertiliser like Osmocote in mixes for longer term pots, but I imagine that's getting pretty pricey now. At least my forward planning worked with that and I have enough for the foreseeable future, but the last lot I bought was about £100 a bag. I grow a lot of comfrey and people give me trailer loads of horse manure, so I use that in beds & borders rather than an expensive chemical solution.

How to tell what you'll get? If I can't find an open bag among the batch at, say, B&Q, I open one in the back of the van, then either buy some more or drive on to somewhere else!

Murphybear

Thanks for the comments, very helpful 

Effician

This is really just my thoughts without any science or proof to back it up , but it my head it makes sense.

I think in order to understand the inconsistency in the UK's peat free of mixed blend composts you have to look at where it's ingedients are sourced, i believe the 2 main areas  are forestry waste & council green waste collections.

Please correct me if my assumptions are wrong as it's only my limited observations.

Forestry waste is basically made up from tree/shrub branches & leaves from coppicing/logging operations so not a wide range of ingredients to make up a well balanced nutrient compost.i have tried a vaiety of this , it was very fibrous &  had a strange fermented whiff to it ..

Green council waste, well a huge variety of ingrdients , some good some not so, i would prefer my compost not to contain leaves & roots which may have been treated with glyphosate or whatever weedkiller , never mind some of the uncompostables that some folk throw in their green waste bin .A certain amount of luck is needed with regards to where you're bag is filled from the compost heap & which heap.

Whilst i'm all in favour of peat free there needs to be a consistent quality alternative otherwise it's going to put a lot of people off gardening due to poor results through no fault of their own.