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Vegan Gardening
Planthood is a brand that approaches gardening with a cruelty-free and vegan philosophy.
Vegan gardening is a new way of gardening without animal fertilisers such as fish, blood and bone. These are widely used in the gardening industry, including in indoor plants.
Plant Soils
For our soils, we use vegan and organic methods where possible, sourcing our soil ingredients in the most sustainable way.
We do not use livestock blood, bone or manure in any of our soils. Simply put, we don’t support the slaughter of animals.
As the concept of vegan gardening is new, it is not yet defined. At Planthood, our view of "vegan soil" and what can / can't be used in a vegan soil is set out below.
All our soil compositions use the least animal by-products as possible whilst still giving our plants the highest quality nutrients.
Ever bought soil from Bunnings? Yes, we all have! You'll want to know the Planthood vs Bunnings comparison.
What is Vegan Soil?
It's soil without animal products.
Unfortunately, commercially grown indoor pot plants and bags of soil can include fish fertiliser and "blood and bone" of livestock animals.
We believe plants can thrive without using co-products of our food industry. There is no need for animal slaughter.
Plants are simple and only require three macronutrients being potassium, phosphorus and nitrogen along with trace nutrients such as magnesium, calcium and sodium.
In the wild, plants receive these nutrients from forest floor decay, composed mainly of decaying plants, small insects and small animals.
A plant does not know where these nutrients have come from.
We source from suppliers that use the highest quality nutrients in their soil compositions fit for growing our indoor plant collections.
As worms, insects and bees are crucial for good soil and healthy plants, it has been accepted that vegan gardening can include natural animal derivatives and soil nutrients such as worm castings.
However, vegan gardening minimises using soils and fertilisers with animal parts and animal derivatives gained from human exploitation.
Here is our honest take on worm castings. We don't mind using worm castings as long as it is kindly sourced. The castings produced by our worms are given a cruelty-free diet without inputs from the meat industry. Worm castings are the only ingredient we use that is animal derived but is not present in all our soils.
Since the word "vegan" means no animal ingredients and no animal-derived ingredients, we do not use worm castings in our soils labelled vegan. So, our vegan soils allow you to go truly vegan with your gardening, if you wish.
We use worm castings solely because growing plants completely naturally without animal derivatives in a pot is not possible, unless chemical fertilisers are used. We feel worm castings, if sourced in a responsible way, are the most environmentally friendly natural fertiliser compared to the other animal-derived fertilisers available.
After all, our plants are derived from the wild and relies on the ecosystem and the animals in it.
Read The Study to learn about the widespread use of fish, blood and bone in the indoor plant industry.