Hi Erik, This is very sound advice and believe me, I definitely keep all my organic material (vegetable matter) out of landfills. Even though I live in the city (Cambridge- Boston, MA) I have three full time compost bins that I put all my organic refuse into. I think I will start utilizing it more as you suggested and not only for the vegetable garden. Thank You and Warm Regards, Fred -----Original Message----- From: pbs [mailto:pbs-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Erik Van Lennep Sent: Thursday, January 15, 2015 1:50 AM To: pbs@lists.ibiblio.org Subject: Re: [pbs] Coir and Salt: pbs Digest, Vol 144, Issue 15 Here is my understanding of coir and salt. Others on here may know more, and I would love to learn from you, to get a fuller picture: There are two primary paths to salt accumulation in coir. One is via treatment (harvest and processing) as some have already described. The other is trickier. Coconuts naturally grow along the sea. While there are plantations further inland, the bulk are coastal. Coconut palms are able to grow with salt water. To survive this, they have evolved a strategy which enables them to pump the excess salts out of their cells, and into the inter-cellular space, where it remains. Coir does not start as the brown fiber we buy, but as the green (thus living) material which grows to become the coconut husk. Thus it has the same supply of inter-cellular salts accumulating. This is much harder to wash out, at least until the fibers have broken down...at which point they are no longer suited to potting. Soaking and washing can draw a certain amount of salts out via osmosis, but bulbs and other plants particularly sensitive to salts, are probably not going to do well in it, regardless. Peat is a non-renewable (OK, painfully slowly renewing) resource, for which coir has been adopted as a replacement. We have ready access to another alternative: leaf mould and other vegetable compost; this includes starting with paper. What's even better about these is they can be made by almost everyone, at home. Tons of D.I.Y. information, tutorials, videos and manuals are on the internet, in many languages. Find one that works for your situation and have fun :) Not only will your plants thank you, but your wallet will too. Plus, by keeping organic matter out of the waste stream, landfilling is avoided, and this is significant, because organic matter which decays underground, without oxygen, produces methane gas...and this makes CO2 as a greenhouse gas look like a rank amateur. Methane overload in our atmosphere is a massive issue. Erik