Enjoy the fall
01.08.2023 - 14:37 / gardenerstips.co.uk / hortoris
It is interesting to see how gardening adverts have changed with the horticultural industry and modern developments. Yet a top fruit business has in some ways stayed the same.
We are all pleased to see Ken Muir’s specialist fruit business is still on the go although Ken himself died in 2011 at the age of 85. This advert in The Garden October 1976 was placed when his mail order business was 10 years old. Ken Muir was famous for starting the Pick Your Own trend and supplying strawberries to Marks And Spencer. Unfortunately I can find no trace of Oldfield Nurseries – they claim an admiral slogan that we can take to heart ‘We are NOT a garden Center - We grow what we sell.’ Is it another case of use it or loose it?
Are weather vanes as popular now as they were? We get modern weather forecasts via all sorts of media but gardeners need to understand local conditions and what impacts on their own micro climates so there is a place for wind vanes.
Landsman bookshops suffered the fate of other specialist bookshops when information became a cheap commodity on the internet. This coincided with a drop in the number of students studying horticulture and farming. They lasted another 32 years after this advert running a mobile bookshop which visited major agricultural and horticultural shows but then liquidation followed.
Andrews Lawn Edgers LTD are not ‘ALE and hearty’ either! The Vintage Horticultural and Garden Machinery Club reports ALE ‘sold many items including the Spintrim lawn edger, Billy Goat vacuum, Bluebird scarifier and the Cyclone spreader’ they have the adverts to proove it. I like the thought of Jenny the generator for the garden.
When I interviewed for my last job, the panel asked me how I would cope in a situation where there was more work on my desk than I had time to do. The theoretical answers to that question are easy – prioritise, ask for help, get stuck in. When you’re faced with an overwhelming situation then it’s easy to forget the theory and to spend more time worrying about how you’re going to get everything done than doing anything useful.
Header image: Geoff Caddick/EPA
NBC News has made a lovely short video about NASA’s Plant Processing Lab at the Kennedy Space Center. Joshua Johnson reports on how NASA scientists are researching how to grow plants in space to make long-term space travel sustainable, and how research partners at the University of Florida are growing plants in soil from the Moon.
In August this year, I talked about a new experiment that ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet was about to start on International Space Station (ISS). “Graines d’Eklo” involved a specially-designed growing capsule, containing its own light source and a growing medium made of coir (coconut fibre) and vermiculite with a slow-release fertiliser.
Collaborative post
Explore the best Cold Tolerant Indoor Plants that thrive in chilly conditions. These hardy houseplants bring nature’s charm to your cozy spaces!
Since Doris blew our expectations for a “windy day” away, here in London the demand for fence panels at our office skyrocketed: Seeing the destruction it has caused we feel slightly obligated to talk some fences, moderate winds and hurricanes.
Georg Arends was a German nurseryman who bred many perennial plants. His business was successful until the second world war and has been regenerated to be one of the oldest in Europe. It still remains within the Arends family.
Garden designer Alison Jenkins in her Somerset smallholding
“Like the week in Lake Wobegon, it’s been mostly quiet,” says Ellen. “For the most part, the birds have stopped singing.” Turning their attention away from establishing territories, finding mates and having families—what the songs were mostly about—they’ve shifted focus. “Some birds even lose the ability to sing after the breeding season is over,” she adds (learn more about that in this BirdNote show and transcript).In the Q&A that follows, Ellen’s answers contain green links to audio files from BirdNote’s archive that you won’t want to miss. A recap of earlier stories in our series is at the bottom of the page, along with information on how to get BirdNote daily.the midsummer bird q&a with ellen blackstoneQ. So what are the birds doing as we enter midsummer?A. Many birds–wrens, robins, and others–may raise more than one brood in a breeding season. Depending on what part of the country you call h
IT’S A QUESTION I DON’T HAVE AN ANSWER FOR, but maybe you can help: What’s the best way to keep track of gardening records—a format or tactic that can grow with the garden? Is it index cards; spreadsheets on the computer; a series of actual journals, such as the popular moleskine notebooks? Forum member KK asked the other day, and maybe you have the secret to record-keeping success.