Andrejs – Zelta Zeme

Peat moss laboratory testing

Andrejs — Wed, 08 Jul 2020 11:24:26 +0000

Quality has always been a top priority at Zelta Zeme

Certificated laboratory in company facilities

Company owns complete quality control laboratory. Yes, it is expensive, time consuming to proceed each test and really difficult to follow all specified testing points. But in result every cubic meter of product that leaves our factory complies with highest quality standards for peat moss raw materials and ready to use substrates.

To comply with chemical standards, our products are sampled and analyzed for pH, EC and S.M.E. analysis.

Procedures divided into 3 main areas: chemical, physical and packaging.

Testing started with sample obtaining. We run randomly pick up a samples from 6 different places, tests in order to evaluate our products’ real properties.

Start the test procedure with sample taking

Water holding capacity, air porosity and bulk density

Quality control procedures developed regularly to increase the quality of our products.

To assure that physical standards, we analyze particle size distribution, air %, porosity and moisture content.

Physical testing– structure and composition

Testing like in pharmacy, everything is doing “lege artis”

The following tests identify one of the most important substrate parameters that professional growers need to know

Chemical testing – Salt level and pH-value

Commercial value testing

How many pots will filled with one bag?

Packaging

RHP quality mark for horticultural substrates

Substrates by Zelta Zeme benefit from the RHP quality scheme, which sets the strictest technical and qualitative standards (chemical, physical and phytosanitary) for growing medium:

– ensures full process and product control by external auditors and laboratories– controls peat bog management– lays down strict guidelines for harvesting, storage, monitoring of temperatures and treatment of peat raw material

– requires laboratory tests of all raw materials before their use– requires inspection of all substrates when ready to use

– all additives (e. g. fertilisers, wetting agents) and constituents need RHP approval– retained sample of each delivery to be stored under specific conditions

– specific RHP developed standards and methods (e. g. water uptake characteristic WOK, press pot stability, respiration method, potting density …)

– chemical and physical specification of each particular recipe to be predefined (ensuring maximum homogeneity of each delivery

ZELTA ZEME PEAT MOSS GROWING MEDIUM – subject to strict controls

Zelta Zeme is constantly working on its processes to condition, harvest and manufacture its sphagnum peat moss.

Certified raw materials for substrates. All of them are tested for suitability before their use in substrate production accordingly with internationally recognised guidelines of RHP (Regeling Handels Potgronden, www.rhp.nl)

Zelta Zeme fully control qualities are what makes peat moss a unique product in horticulture:

It improves growing medium structure, increases water retention and helps to reduce the leaching of nutrients. Peat moss can retain up to 20 times its weight in water.
It aerates and improve drainage of soils, allowing roots to breathe, grow and better absorb nutrients.
It improves soil buffering capacity because peat moss is highly tolerant to pH variations.
It improves the cation exchange capacity (CEC) that helps to retain minerals, releasing them over time and preventing the leaching of fertilizers.
It is a natural resource free of weeds and pollutants.

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Baltic peat moss is still the best

Andrejs — Sat, 16 May 2020 11:37:18 +0000

We have decades of experience in professional growing media industry and we can confirm this statement

Sphagnum peat moss

Till now peat is and remains the best and most demanded raw material for professional growing medium. All the alternatives that were discovered, developed and applied could not surpass the properties of a good quality peat substrate.

Supreme substrate raw material

Baltic Sphagnum peat moss

As a substrate constituent peat is superior to any other material when it comes to performance.

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Let’s list the some (but not all) main characteristics that have made peat a unique product for growers:

Excellent for increasing water retention properties. It can hold up to 20 times its weight in water.
High air holding capacity.
Perfect for holding onto nutrients in the medium. Provide adequate water and water-soluble nutrients to the roots.
Good source of organic matter, which will slowly degrade over a years.
Improves medium structure, promotes good drainage, and prevents compaction.
High cation exchange capacity (CEC)
Good for adding to acid-loving plants since it has a pH of 3.5 to 4.5.
Naturally weed free.

Sphagnum peat is high in organic matter

Peat consists of more than 95 % organic material. It is a mixture of decomposed plant material that has accumulated in a water-saturated environment without oxygen.

Weakly decomposed (H1-H5, generally referred to as white) Sphagnum peat is still indispensable for soil-less horticulture. Whilst a number of materials can be used as peat additives, especially to improve aeration, no alternative products with equivalent physical properties are available at present.

Peat is the product of choice for organic farming

BALTIC PEAT MOSS GROWING MEDIUM PURITY

One of the best features of peat moss is its sterility. This makes the material perfect for seedlings, which are quite vulnerable to the surrounding environment.

Peat provides a healthy environment to promote plant growth. Generally, white peat (H2-H4 on the von Post scale) are known to be very disease suppressive. This is because they can harbor high populations of ‘friendly’ microbes such as Trichoderma and Streptomyces species, which have shown to reduce the levels of pathogenic microbes in soil.

Testing.

Smell, purity, colour and other visually detectable and are first inspected. Other parameters are then tested by laboratory analysis including, pH, moisture content, water absorption, structural analysis, bulk density, temperature and weed tests. Only peat which passes all the tests then enters into the production facility.

Naturally free of human and plant pathogens, parasitic nematodes, pests and fungi of cultivated plants

Some samples of application

Hydroponic growing

Peat moss is also a good growing medium for the soilless culture.

Seed starting

One of the most useful roles of peat moss is in seed starting because this material is very sterile. Its antiseptic qualities naturally prevent bacteria and fungi from the seeds. It also gives excellent drainage, good aeration, fine texture, and low fertile, making it very ideal for germination.

Growing acid-loving plants

Because of its low pH, peat moss is very suitable for vegetables and fruits that require an acidic environment. These include blueberries, pieris, heathers, azaleas, camellias, tomatoes, and so on.

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Peat bog development

Andrejs — Mon, 23 Mar 2020 10:55:46 +0000

Huge money are needed to start production in the peat industry.

High moor peat

First of all, areas must be deforested, drained, peat extraction fields made, roads constructed, even a narrow gauge railway, if necessary …. Therefore, the investment is at least a 1,5 million lats per 100 hectares, but the return on money is only after four or five years. Then we can also start offsetting the investment.

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Types of peat bogs

Andrejs — Mon, 23 Mar 2020 10:16:52 +0000

Peat is divided into types, subtypes, groups and types depending on the conditions of origin of the peat and the plants from which it is formed. Peat is an organic material formed from bog plants.

High moor peat

High moor peat. Peat occurring on high moors and formed predominantly of moss, such as sphagnum. Its moisture content is derived from rain water rather than from ground water and is acidic. It comes from plants that have adapted to growing in nutrient-poor environments and are living off the food they receive from atmospheric precipitation. The main plant is various mosses. Peat derived from moss is low in minerals and has a high acidity – pH 2.6 – 3.2.

Low moor peat.

…Zelta Zeme Ltd. – one of the biggest peat producer in region

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Low moor peat. Peat deposits of this type occur in the shallowest parts of the terrain, leading to the entry of mineral and lime-rich groundwater, rainwater, river and lake water. Herbs, shrubs, trees and mineral-rich peat layers – pH / KCl 4.5-6.5 – grow well here.

There is also transitional peatland. It is formed from the remains of trees, shrubs, sedges and sphagnum. Transition peat has a medium mineral content and is medium acidic – pH / KCl 3.4-4.2.

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Peat is natural wealth of Latvia

Andrejs — Tue, 28 Jan 2020 09:32:25 +0000

Peat is one of the few natural resources in Latvia. So it is the wealth of our nature and our economy.

Bogs cover about 10.5% of Latvia’s territory. The Latvian Center for Environment, Geology and Meteorology has available data on more than 9,600 mires, or rather peat, because some of them are drained and some are covered with forest. More than 1100 sites are larger than 100 ha. The largest is the Teiči Mire, located in the Teiči Nature Reserve. It covers an area of 19 587 ha. In total, 1.5 billion tonnes of 40% wet, different types of peat have accumulated in the fields. By comparison, Estonia has 2.4 billion tonnes and Lithuania 0.9 billion tonnes. Relatively large resources, when it comes to per capita peat: we are 8-10th in the world as this relatively small area accounts for about 0.4% of the world’s peat reserves.

Zelta Zeme formerly Līvanu Kūdras Fabrika

…Zelta Zeme Ltd. – one of the biggest peat producer in region

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There are 32 peat deposits in the Livani region. The largest peat deposits are in the Steppes, Skrūzmaľu, Māsāni, Peisenieki bogs.

Other valuable uses of peat moss

Peat is also widely known as a biofuel, but it also has other more or less traditional uses, such as in folk and classical medicine, in building materials or in improving the shelf life of food. Several studies suggest that the main producers of peat bogs, Sphagnum moss, may also have the potential of various other value-added products. They are usually associated with the antibacterial and other conservative properties of Sphagnum or their high water adsorption capacity. However, applications at the molecular level are still rarely reported. This could be due to the complex chemistry of Sphagnum and the lack of cost-effective technologies for isolating the components of interest.

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