composts peat or peat free

I have this year been swayed to try peat free compost!

I am using B&Q  brand. When I opened the pack I thought the compost was rather coarse with some quite hard pieces throughout.

In practice I am disappointed with the results so far, about 75% of seed has failed to germinate and my Courgette plants have not grown on as I would have expected, being slow with some leaf dieback. I think I will need to plant another batch of courgettes in different compost.

I planted out my Tomatoes plants a few days ago in a mixture of peat free and peat compost plus a good helping of horse manure, so far they have not been checked and seem to be ok.

My chitted Charlotte potatoes [in containers]are also doing ok on a mixture of peat free and horse manure, there are about three leaves showing so I should be topping up the levels in the bags after the weekend. My Pentland Javelins have not shown through yet so the jury is still out on this one.

I am growing a variety of lettuce and leaves equally in peat free or peat filled troughs and both seem to be doing well.

I plant the sieve some of the compost to see if there is a difference in the germination of a few selected seeds

Conclusions! A little disappointing in one way but still encouraging in others.

Has anybody else any idea or comments on this subject especially as it has been aired in the GYO Mag’ several times now