BARKWASTE AS A GROWING MEDIUM FOR PLANTS

The production of ornamental plants in Belgium has nearly tripled the last ten years. Consequently the demand for substrates is increasing accordingly. The Belgian horticulturists normally are using oak and pine leaf mould, peat or mixtures of these.

As the resources of these substrates are quite exhausted in our country, it is of great interest to look for a valuable substrate from local resources.

As different paper plants in Belgium are using large quantities of wood, bark is available in large amounts. In this paper the use of hardwood bark as a substrate for ornamental plants is studied. The hardwood bark used in the experiments is a mixture of different kinds of hardwood. In table 1 the types of hardwood present in