The avid gardeners among you may have noticed a move towards coir soil in recent years. The potting medium is great and has the look and feel of peat, without actually being peat! It comes from coconut husks which is what gives coir it’s fibrous texture. Another advantage of coir is that it is actually a byproduct of coconuts!
But why choose coir over peat? Demand for peat is high and it isn’t a particularly sustainable resource as peat takes hundreds of years to form. Moreover, peat is a huge soil carbon store and so the harvesting of the coir is leading to a large amount of carbon dioxide being released. Now there are some companies that are trying to sustainably harvest and manage peat, but ideally we need to be looking for other resources to replace it which is why we turned to coir.
Our coir blocks are brilliant as they are so compact and store really well. To turn your coir block into soil you just need to add hot water. The coir disk will expand up to six times in volume and of course we have made sure it will fill your dish so you can grow your nutritious microgreens. It may take some time to fully expand but to speed up the process you can try to spread it out with a fork. But if it is taking its time just leave it for 5 minutes and come back to it and you will be amazed how much it has grown. Check out this video on our Instagram of our coir disks expanding and make sure to give us a follow to see what's going on with Teeny Greeny as I am way better at posting on Instagram rather than sending out emails!