Is Peat Moss Good for Flower Beds?

Water Retention

• Peat moss has an exceptional ability to store water. A peat moss bog, in fact, is 90 percent water and 10 percent solids. When peat moss is dried, it has the capacity to re-absorb and store that amount of water again. Mixing peat moss in with garden soil makes it much easier to keep plants' roots moist without having them sit in puddles of water. Peat moss can absorb up to 20 times its weight in water and release that moisture slowly into the soil.

Soil Texture

• Peat moss is lighter, softer and more friable than soil. Mixing it into soil changes the structure of the soil, loosening it up and making it better able to hold water and circulate air around the roots. Peat moss's ability to aerate the soil is particularly useful if your garden soil has clay, which tends to pack down hard.

Nutrients

• Peat moss does not provide much by way of nutrients for plants, but it does absorb and retain nutrients from the soil, making them available to plants as they grow. Soils that do not store nutrients and allow them to leach away need much more fertilizer than soils with that ability.

Adding Peat Moss to Flower Beds

• If you are creating flower beds, you should mix 2 inches of peat moss into the top 6 inches of soil. If you are working with existing flower beds, you should carefully dig down 6 to 8 inches, being careful not to disturb the plant roots. Mix in 1 to 2 inches of peat moss with the soil in new and existing beds.

Concerns

• Peat moss is the partially rotted remains of dead sphagnum moss. It forms in watery bogs and gets thicker with time. Some environmentalists believe peat bogs are being harvested much faster than they are growing, thereby raising the specter that some bogs could be destroyed. Peat moss bogs not only filter fresh water and mitigate floods, they also provide habitat for diverse species of plants and animals, some of which exist only in the bogs. Due to their acidic nature, bogs also help preserve archaeological sites and the remains of ancient animals. Finally, peat moss bogs store carbon, reports the website Organic Gardening. When bogs are harvested, the carbon, believed to be a major contributor to global warming, is released into the atmosphere. In some parts of Ireland, harvesting peat moss has been banned.