Gardener's World Live Report - Part 1

Last night, I couldn't sleep. I was like a child at Christmas. I just kept thinking 'I'm going to Gardener's World tomorrow, I'm going to Gardener's World tomorrow etc.' I think we were both so excited.

We were up early this morning and left home at about 7:45 am to make sure we were amongst the first throught the barrier and in to the event. I'm going to do this report in three parts. This one now is about all the amazing and fun things that we bought (because that's what yo uare all really interested in) and then tomorrow morning will be a feature on the show gardens (including our own rankings) and then finally tomorrow afternoon/evening you will get all of the rest!

There are so many problems with this event. The first problem is that you spend a lot of money on gardening products, and then secondly they add the Good Food Show to the event too. Therefore you spend a lot more money in the Good Food Show. The third problem, which is a genuine problem is that you buy so much stuff and then you soon realise that one more piece of straw will break the camel's (your) back, therefore everybody buys a £12 trolley and you are constantly getting hacked with it. (We bought 3 tubtrugs to carry things in, they will have a use after today!)

Well here is what we bought. Quite an array of useful bits and bobs...

I mentioned in a previous post about how we are rapidly preparing for winter. We scoured all of the great seed offers available and bought loads of seeds, you can just about see them laid down on the table above. When it come to seed buying, I have a real addiction and don't know when to stop. I think 'that one looks good, and that one, that'll do too', then you have more seeds than you realise to add to your already massive seed collection. Oh well. I love it. I discovered a few great varieties too which look like they are ideal for smaller plots and gardens. The whole list of seeds is as follows....

Vegetable and Fruit Seeds
Courgette - Zucchini
Cauliflower - Igloo
Kale - Dwarf Green Curled
Turnip - Oasis
Aubergine - Orlando F1 Hybrid
Strawberry - Woodland
Climing Bean - Blauhilde
Sweetcorn - Hark F1 Hybrid
Brussel Sprouts - Brilliant F1 Hybrid
Swiss Chard - Bright Lights
Swede - Brora
Broad Bean - Aqua Dulch Claudice
Courgette - Foleil F1 Hybrid
Tomato - Gardener's Light
Lettuce - Little Gem
Brocolli - Purple Sprouting

Flower seeds
Mixed Wildflowers
Dwarf Topalino

The ones that are in bold have already been sown in to pots! How good are we! We got home about 4:45pm and we were in the garden until about 7:30. So much to do today, and even more to do tomorrow.

We also bought a great book about allotments called 'The allotment source book' by Caroline Foley, but in general it looks like a great book about growing your own (more reading...)  for only £5 too. It was marked up at £20 originally. We both love an impulse buy and bargain!

In the photo you can see the lovely planter we bought. It was very 'rustique' and we have filled it with potting compost and scattered various herb seeds. It will look great as a mini herb garden.

Amy also bought a fat ball maker for making our own fatballs for the birds.

Here are the 'growing' things we bought...

You can just about recognise a few of the things we bought.

The last few years at Gardener's World they have had a 'plant swap' stall, where you take a plant you don't want or need and swap it for one of the others that somebody else has brought in. This time, they changed it a bit. So you donated your plants to Children in Need and then if you wanted one of the other plants you simply donated what you thought it was worth to charity. From this tent we bought three sweetcorn plants that are very well established. Remember our sweetcorn failure when we planted the seeds earlier in the year. We also got a butternut squash plant that was at the top of our shopping list before hand anyway.

Well. The sweetcorn have been transported in to their final growing position too...

......in the large yellow tubtrug next to the rhubarb. We have had such great success with growing the courgettes in a tubtrug that we had no hesitation putting the sweetcorn in one too. Well we did have 3 brand new tubtrugs to use up too...

One of my favourite buys was this georgeous 'Filius Blue' pepper plant. The plant is full of small sized chilli peppers with the most indulgent purple colour, however they apparently turn red as they finally turn ripe.

Amy is very busy in the background labelling all the plants. We bought some funky yellow plant labels and we have now labelled everything.. and have abruptly ran out of labels for future use.

Look at the purple flowers too. This is a really ornamental type, it certainly brings some lovely colour to the veg patch especially with new tubtrugs and the yellow labels...

Simply georgeous!

I mentioned earlier that we bought the butternut squash plant, well Amy was intrigued when she saw a Turk's Turban squash in the show gardens... so we bought one of those too! The area that used to be where the eglu sat has been raised up with some well rotted home made compost and some multi purpose compost from left over bits from one place and another. The two squash plants are planted here, and are waiting to be joined by the pumpkin plants which I am going to leave for a little bit longer in the greenhouse...

We can't wait for our own squash to grow.



We bought plenty of delicious food at the Good Food Show but I'll put that all in part 3.

We've had the most amazing day, and I hope you've enjoyed reading about what be bought!

Part 2 will be up at 9am tomorrow (sharp!).

Thanks for reading.

Martin