I don't really use peat unless I am growing an acid-loving plant. Peat is acidic. Sphagnum is neutral and if found fresh, can be used as a living amendment. Peat bogs can be many hundreds of years old and if you go deep enough it becomes tens of thousands year-old peat. Intact bodies, animal/insect/plant, have been found in peat that are over a thousand years old. Peat itself is dead as a door-hammer but because it is anaerobic and acidic, it preserves tissue quite well. Both peat and sphagnum are certainly renewable resources. Go to Ireland and you'll see miles and miles of sphagnum growing. Peat is nothing more than decades old sphagnum, dead, decaying, and accumulating, generation upon generation. The same can be found in many places in Europe as well as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Heck, I have sphagnum growing in my yard where is gets lots of shade and holds moisture. When I lived on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, I found an area across the Alabama line where sphagnum grew a foot deep. I harvested that sphagnum for my own use and never reveled to anyone where I got it. It was a living moss. One day I need to return and see if that sphagnum is still growing there.
