Well, that was a long, wet winter…
Well, what a past nine months we have had. Climate change certainly seems to be biting us hard here in Lincolnshire, having experienced one of the wettest winters on record. For the first time since we moved here in 2015, we had puddles of water all round the nursery, with certain parts of the nursery only just starting to dry out in recent weeks. Sadly, this has led to rather a lot of plants rotting in their pots. Of course, it also hasn’t helped that a lot of those plants were in either a reduced peat or peat free soil. As you will know if you have used these products, anything that is ‘reduced’ or ‘peat free’ tends to exaggerate the climate that plants are in. So, when it’s wet the soil gets very wet; when it’s dry the soil gets super dry and can be almost impossible to rehydrate.
Necessity is the mother of invention
With both of us born and raised in Scotland it goes against all our beliefs to have any sort of wastage (although all spoilt soil is always regenerated into mulch for use around the garden). But they say that necessity is the mother of invention and we decided that we really needed to do something to prevent this scale of loss should next winter be as wet as the last one. We are therefore delighted to announce two exciting new developments at the nursery which we believe will enable the nursery to thrive in wet conditions and ensure that our plants are as healthy as possible using only organic methods.
Installation of flood benches
By the end of August, we will have timber flood benches installed throughout the nursery. These will ensure that the plants are hydrated from the bottom of the pots (currently we use overhead irrigation to water the plants, which is great early in the season but once we get to summer and the pots are full of leaf and flowers, it gets harder to get the droplets to permeate down to the roots.)
The flood benches will also catch the rainwater, so during periods of heavy rain they will gather rainwater that we can then use during any periods of dry weather. Not only will this reduce our water bills, but it also means that the plants will get a better source of hydration, as rainwater is always better than tap water (unless watering seeds when we always use tap or bottled water).
To date we have flood benches installed in a quarter of the nursery and there has been a noticeable improvement in quality in the plants located on them already.
An added advantage is it is far less back breaking to reach these plants when we are making up orders or getting ready for shows and events.
Another benefit which is even more significant than protecting our ageing backs is that the higher up the plant, the further slugs and snails must move to get to them. Also, being higher up, it is easier for us to spot any that do reach the heady heights of the flood benches and move them straight to the chicken coop!
This year, like everyone else, we have seen a massive increase in mollusc activity, so anything that we can do to protect the nursery is a huge benefit. We will also install copper tape around the bottom of the flood benches; literally every little bit of help we can get to keep our plants as healthy as possible is welcomed! Being organic here on the nursery does put us at a disadvantage at times to those nurseries that are mixing in chemicals to keep the slugs at bay, but we believe that the latter presents too great a cost both to the environment and your health.
A new peat free soil – Rocket Grow
The second development that we are working on at the nursery is the introduction of a new peat free soil. Previously, we could not find an effective enough medium to work with, certainly not one that aligns with our ethics. However, at the beginning of July, we started using Rocket Grow and we are already seeing positive results.
Rocket Grow is 100% made in the UK which gets a big tick from us, as many of the peat free mixes on the market contain a huge amount of coir which has been shipped from the other side of the world. We just don’t see the logic in removing peat from the soil, only to replace it with something that has a huge carbon footprint.
We had also previously struggled to find a product that was fully organic and peat free and the ones that we had tried were - in our opinion - like dust and with no substance to them. Rocket Grow is the opposite; it smells of the country and your hands are filthy afterwards (so use gloves if you don’t like dirty hands!)
We have used the product with herbs, shrubs and perennials and seeing good results across the board. Root growth is fast and healthy and, so far, the pots have not dried out during the days of blazing sun (I know, they have been very few and far between, but we only needed one day of hot weather for the previous products we were trialling to dehydrate).
The next stage for us will be to see how the plants do long term and over the winter period so we will keep you posted!
Fingers crossed that winter 2024/5 will be a much more positive one for us, especially given these two exciting innovations for us here at John Cullen Gardens.