Senior Researcher Olli Reinikainen -- 'The role and characteristics of peat in horticulture are unique'

摘要

The use of peat revolutionized horticulture in the 1950s. The first standardized and peat-based growing media based on a standardized formula, the John Innes Composts, were already developed in England in 1939 but the actual break-through came when German Anton Fruhstorfer developed the famous Einheitserde soil mixture containing clay and peat in the 1950s. The change from the use of field soil to peat-based growing media enabled the development of "gardening" to become an "industrial" and efficient business activity. It lightened the growing media and allowed for uniformity in their quality and also in the resulting growth. "There has been an interesting development in the use of peat from the 1950s up to now. First peat was used as a mixture. In the 1950s and 1960s professors Franz Penningsfeld in Germany and Viljo Puustjarvi in Finland studied the use of peat as a growing medium and they each developed various growing techniques based only on peat. As a consequence, there was a shift to growing media prepared only from peat produced industrially."