In This Issue
'Love the Plot' goes live at Ally Pally with great results
New Percy Thrower's Wyevale honours UK's first celebrity gardener
Cold weather takes shine off Mother's Day sales
GCA announces new area chairmen with one still to fill
Lighting shines as gardeners prepare to get active...
PM's chef at Chequers makes Easter Egg for Garden Re-Leaf Day
Bucktons pigeon range flies out at PATS
App puts Kelkay customer service at stockists' fingertips
Wyevale is unique glue's first garden centre listing
La Hacienda’s new showroom kick starts thriving year
There's still time to run your Greenfingers Garden Re‐Leaf Quiz
Wyevale Garden Centres faced with petition over Raglan
Landscape Director - Yorkshire and the Humber
Retail Operations Manager - East Sussex
Nursery Supervisor - West Midlands
Garden Centre Manager - East Sussex
Motorists parking without permission at garden centre blocked in by compost bags
Compost and top soil sales given a boost
Yankee Candles worth hundreds of pounds stolen from Rosebank
Young tomato plants dominate veg sales
Planting Magic garden centre tour for Charlie
Gardening Which? compost tests throw up another crop of surprises
Wickes list Dansand No Weed patio joint filler
Mr Fothergill appoint new salesman for A1 corridor
Bestsellers Top 50 charts every week
Buy your subscription to GTN Bestsellers
Situations Vacant
Landscape Director - Yorkshire and the Humber
£50,000 to £80,000 pa
Read more»
Retail Operations Manager - East Sussex
£38,000 to £44,000 pa
Read more»
Nursery Supervisor - West Midlands
£20,000 to £22,000 pa
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Garden Centre Manager - East Sussex
£25,000 to £28,000 pa
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Contact us with your news.  Email neil.pope@tgcmc.co.uk, or trevor.pfeiffer@tgcmc.co.uk or call the GTN News team on 01733 775700

 


Gardening Which? compost tests throw up another crop of surprises
 

Which? Gardening magazine’s annual growing media survey is well-known for springing a few surprises – and this year’s is no exception.

Biggest of all is that Westland’s peat-based Jack’s Magic All Purpose compost achieved the highest test score in the category for composts for seed raising, beating five specialist seed composts as well as other multi-purpose rivals.

The Jack’s Magic score was 73%, and earned a Best Buy recommendation, along with three others on 70% - Levington Original Multipurpose, B&Q’s Verve Multipurpose Peat-free and Westland Multipurpose with John Innes.

Westland’s Gro-Sure Seed & Cuttings Compost scored just 20% in the trials and was tagged a ‘Don’t Buy’, along with Homebase John Innes No 1 Seedling Compost and Waitrose & Alan Titchmarsh Peat-free Compost.

For raising young plants, Miracle-Gro All Purpose Enriched Compost (50% peat) scored an emphatic victory with 95%. In second place was Verve MP Peat-free on 88%. Ironically, Verve Sowing & Cutting Compost scored better (by 2%) in this category than it did for seed sowing. Ten products received ‘Don’t Buy’ advice

For plants in container, there were three Best Buys, with FertileFibre’s coir-based MP Compost leading the pack on 86%, closely followed by Melcourt’s peat-free Sylvagrow on 84%. The third was Levington Original MP (80% peat). Carbon Gold’s Gro-Char All Purpose (peat-free) emerged the best of the rest, on 69%. There were nine ‘Don’t Buy’s.

The seed raising trials were on tomato and pansy seeds; raising young plants on basil seedlings and pelargonium young plants. For containers plants, a patio potato crop was assessed, plus the vigour and flowering of begonias.

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