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Did you know ... ? Coconut

Coconut is probably the most completely utilized crop in the world. Nearly every part of the tree has a use:

Trunk – as timber for furniture and housing.

Fronds – as thatch roofing or woven into mats and walls.

Leaf stalks – as brooms and food skewers.

Leaf buds – as a salad vegetable, heart of palm (although collecting this kills the tree).

Husk – as coir, used to make doormats, rope and coco peat, a sustainable replacement for peat in horticulture.

Shell – as musical instruments, or burned for fuel or charcoal.

Flesh – eaten fresh (as coconut meat) or dried (as desiccated coconut); ground fresh and extracted to make coconut milk and coconut cream; or dried (to copra) for extraction of oil.

Juice – from unripe coconuts, drunk as a refreshing drink.

Sap – fermented into an alcoholic beverage called toddy, or boiled and evaporated to produce palm sugar.

Roots – for dye and medicines.

Coco peat

These days most “peat” on the market is coco peat, which is not peat at all but the short corky fibres from the husk of the coconut, called coir dust. (The long fibres are used to make coir rope and doormats.)

Traditional horticultural peat moss is partly decomposed Sphagnum moss. It is dug out of the ground in colder climates (notably Tasmania, New Zealand, Canada and Eastern Europe).

Unfortunately, the long-term collection of peat moss has destroyed many ecosystems. Because Sphagnum moss grows slowly (on account of the cold climate and very low nutrient availability) and decomposes very slowly (again on account of the cold climate, low nutrients and lack of oxygen in the bogs where it forms), the practice of collection is not sustainable. As peat bogs are gradually emptied, they are not being replaced - peat moss can take thousands of years to form.

This is the reason why coco peat is so popular today, because it is an endlessly renewable resource.

Sellers of coco peat are emphatic that it is an excellent substitute for peat moss, but no studies comparing the two have been published, and only one published study has tested it.

Fresh coco peat contains phytotoxic chemicals which can suppress plant growth or even kill plants, as people writing in specialist forums on the Internet have reported.

Yau and Murphy found that coco peat composted for 3 months with added nitrogen had a higher cation exchange capacity (CEC) and humic acid content than fresh coco peat. As the CEC of organic matter is due in large part to organic acids and surface area, both of which increase with decomposition, composting clearly improved the horticultural value of the coco peat. Tomato plants grown in this composted coco peat produced 64% more yield than plants grown in fresh coco peat.

So if you are considering using coco peat, compost it first to reduce the risk of plant injury.