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'With added John Innes'
PoddingtonP
Posts: 196
I've been buying compost today. I understood John Innes to be a formula for compost which makes it suitable for either seed sowing, cuttings, mature plants etc, and it had a corresponding number I.e. John Innes number 3.
When I was shopping for compost, some of the bags said on them 'with added John Innes'. What does this mean? What number John Innes and how can it just be added to other compost?
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Posts
I think it means very little, possibly some loam in it.
Or maybe poor old John has been recycled
In the sticks near Peterborough
nut - that's a great image I have in my head now!
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
What it probably means is that they have added some of the J.I. base fertiliser. It actually means nothing at all since John Innes refers to a set of recipes devised for different composts.
Berghill, that's what I though about the recipes.
So its basically just a marketing ploy
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Yep
But to justify it they will take some JI compost of whatever sort they can get cheap and put a little in each mix
In the sticks near Peterborough
And in homeopathic proportions presumably.
Unless they've got some they want to get rid of, yes
In the sticks near Peterborough
Who was john Innes?
Snoodle - the John Innes Centre is your neighbour!!!
http://www.jic.ac.uk/corporate/index.htm
My understanding is that when something has 'added John Innes' it has a compound fertiliser added to the compost, to the formulation prescribed for John Innes composts.
However, as stated here http://www.johninnes.info/about.htm this was a formulation developed for use with loam - it is not necessarily in the right proportions for non-loam composts.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Thanks for the info everyone, I did wonder whether it meant it was loam based rather than peat based.