Quoddy Peat

Back in summer, remember summer, I posted about our trip to Maine. We traveled to the beautiful Quoddy Head State Park to see the rocky coastline, balsam forest, and bogs. The surprise of the trip was a bog that is suffering erosion from rising seas. Bounded by an inland bay to the west and an ocean cove to the east, the erosion reveals peat in all its anaerobic glory, in a way I've never seen -its natural state.

We could see years upon years of layered peat, from light and dry on top to wet, dark, and spongy below -the peat already in a process of transformation. Did you know that peat eventually, under the right conditions, becomes coal? 

I do not use raw peat in the garden or on the farm, and I plan to reduce my use of peat to nearly zero this year, primarily by purchasing a fine compost mix for seed starting instead of the common peat-based seed starting mix. I'll report here how that turns out. Consider doing the same, yep, -for peat's sake.

UPDATE: I bought compost and vermiculite to combine as a substitute for peat-based mix.