AN ASHBOURNE compost company has received mixed fortune after a series of independent trials by a national consumer magazine.
Vital Earth, situated on the Airfield Industrial Estate, has had two of its compost products voted best buys, in the container compost category, in Which? Magazine’s March report on container compost.
The same magazine also told gardening enthusiasts to avoid Vital Earth’s seed and cutting compost and gave it their ‘don’t buy’ stamp.
Which? sowed 14,400 seeds and potted 960 plug plants to test the best composts on the market.
The magazine says the fate of plants depends on the type of compost.
Each compost bag was trialled from four different parts of the country to check for consistency. To make the conditions fair, Which? chose easy-to-grow basil and tricky petunia as test plants.
Experts at an independent site sowed 25 basil seeds and the same amount of petunias in to 12 pots of each compost.
The plants were then assessed after six weeks in a trial which consisted of 400 bags, totalling 6,455 litres of compost.
Vital Earth’s seed and cutting compost scored 38 per cent, although Homebase’s multi purpose peat free compost received the worst ranking with a 33 per cent score. Both were deemed to have performed ‘poorly overall’ as the petunia seeds ‘struggled to germinate’.
Vital Earth’s managing director Steve Harper said he was unsure why some of his company’s compost had been celebrated and another type had been criticised.
He said seeds are an unreliable way of testing compost as there is no guarantee that the seeds are all of the same quality.
The company recently won both the Innovation in Technology Award and the Environmental Award at the Business Awards Derbyshire 2010.
This is the first time that Vital Earth has entered the Derbyshire Business Awards.
Mr Harper said: “We are delighted to have won these awards as it demonstrates that Vital Earth is a business created entirely on an environmental premise.
“We have invested three-years of research and seven-years of development in creating a suitable in-vessel production method, using our own system control that is totally sympathetic to the natural composting process.
“The team is bowled over that our accomplishments have been recognised in this way.
“This is the first time that peat-free compost has outperformed a peat-based competitor, which is great news for the environment.”
The company produces environmentallyfriendly composts and fertilisers made from locally sourced and recycled garden waste.
