"Martin Brown" wrote in message
...
Stephen Howard wrote:
On Tue, 7 Jun 2005 00:17:11 +0100, "anon" wrote:

I bought some "organic" growbags from a well known DIY chain (I won't
name
it, but the sort of place you might buy a BarbeQue). I didn't
specifically
want organic, but it was all they had and it was the same price as the
normal bags.

It seems similar to the wood chippings you can buy as a mulch, except
that
the growbag is ground a bit finer, and has been rotted down a little
bit.

The problem is, like the wood chips, the growbags have a very strong,
characteristic smell, which seems to me like creosote or similar. Now
that
may be all well and good for a flower bed mulch, but I don't really
fancy
growing tomatoes in it and eating them!

Creosote or oil of wintergreen? You tend to get the latter in composted
bark and twiglets from commercial forestry. The smell is strongest when
the heaps first heat up and start to steam.

Not sure exactly what the smell is - it is similar to the smell of the
bark/wood chippings you can buy, and also similar to the smell of treated
fence panels. In the case of wood chippings, I had always assumed that they
had been treated to prevent them from rotting too quickly when applied to
the ground. That is why I was disturbed to get the same smell from a
growbag.

Just to clarify, oil of wintergreen - are you saying that this occurs
naturally in composted bark?