. . . and the winner is . . .

'Stupice' (apparently pronounced 'stoo-peach-kay') , an early tomato from Eastern Europe.  This is the first tomato to (nearly) ripen this year, and the others are following.  We should have saleable quantities fairly soon.

How about the deeply ribbed 'Costoluto Genovese' . . .

and the incredible number of flowers on this truss of 'Millefleur'.  Looking forward to seeing this full of little yellow cherry tomatoes - apparently very tasty as well.

Meanwhile, one of our Chilli plants is producing, too!  Way ahead of all the others, and the Sweet Peppers haven't even started flowering yet!

Aubergines in flower now, so hopefully some fruit before too long,

and the first cucumbers are lengthening.

Watch out for this little fella - a tiny flower, soon to be followed by a miniature cucumber about an inch long.  Really crunchy and tasty.

The Monty Don Effect ! Sorry to Keep You Waiting . . .

Suddenly, soil blocking is being talked about!  Monty did an excellent job with his low-key presentation on BBC Gardeners World on 11th April, enough to give the nation's gardeners the idea.

Michael Ladbrooke invented the soil blockers many years ago, and we bought our first ones from him having searched high and low, before we had the internet.  We were impressed and, when we had the opportunity to start growing on a larger scale, soil blocking was the way to go for very many of our crops.  Just about the same time, Michael retired and passed the business on to Ladbrooke 98 Ltd, so we bought our Multi 12 from them.  Little did we realise . . .

. . . when we set up our 'Online Toolshop' in early 2005, it was primarily to make it a bit easier for other growers and gardeners to find the things we had such difficulty finding:-  Collinear Hoes, Wheelhoes and Oscillating Hoes from Glaser Engineering in Switzerland were the first, then the EarthWay Seeder in 2006 and Ladbrooke Soil Blockers in 2007.  A few more specialities have followed since then.

But back to the Soil Blockers!  We normally reckon to handle a few orders a week, but since April 11th the numbers have reached the hundreds and initially we felt like we were running as fast as we could and falling well behind.  Now we still have MANY orders to send out, but perhaps we are 'gaining on them' - we are processing more orders each day than are now coming in, though the BBC Gardeners World magazine is also out now and soil blocking is apparently featured in that as well, so the flow of orders may speed up again!

Soilblockers.com (aka Ladbrooke 98 Ltd) have been brilliant at sending us fresh stocks, and we are working our socks off to get these orders out - not much else has been going on in the Taylor household for the last 10 days!

But, if you are still waiting for your Soil Blocker order (or any other order from us), we would like to say SORRY FOR THE DELAY .  If your order is urgent for any reason, please get in touch and we will try to help.

Meanwhile, we will keep on processing those orders - keep 'em coming!

FeedBack on Soil Block Mixes, Please !

Calling all you keen Soil Block users out there . . .

We know you're there, probably just too busy getting all those blocks ready with this season's new plants - veggies, flowers or whatever - but can you spare a moment to share your experience of making soil blocks . . . PLEASE !  It will probably help LOTS of other gardeners.

Yes, we know that we give a recipe for mixing your own blocking mixes in our Soil Block Information Sheet, but many of you have probably taken a different route and either used a ready-made product from your local Garden Centre, or perhaps modified a ready-made mix by adding some loam, soil or garden compost.

If you have some good ideas which have worked for you, please email us or just add a comment below.  If we get enough feedback on this, we shall produce an extra information sheet to be sent to all future customers who buy Soil Blockers from us and also post a copy of it on our website.  We will be more than happy to quote contributors' names in the credits!

Without giving too much away, we understand that Soil Blocking may soon become even more popular as a certain well-known TV broadcaster seems likely to feature Soil Blockers in his weekly programme VERY SOON!

EarthWay Seeder Spring Offer

Spring seems to be on its way, and many of us are finding that the soil is drying out enough to think about getting those seeds in - at last!

We have always liked using our EarthWay Seeder, which has served us reliably since 1998.  We had to search high and low to get one back then, and that was the main reason we started selling tools - so that other people could find specialist tools like the EarthWay much more easily.

Now things are MUCH easier, and they are easier still until the end of April!  The UK and Europe importers for EarthWay have come up with a special 'bundle' offer which means that we can offer you:-


1  EarthWay Garden Seeder
1  Set of 6 Standard Seed Plates
1  Set of 5 Optional Seed Plates
1  Seed Plate Storage Case
1  Blank Seed Plate

 . . . for just £180.00 including delivery to your door (UK mainland)

Normal price for this package would be £239.00 delivered !

Follow this link to the special page of our website, where you can find more details and buy online.

And just one more tip - with rising postage costs, some of our prices will need to go up a little on March 31st, so it may be worth placing your order before then.  Email us if you would like to check current prices against the new ones!

Hello 2014 !

Just a little update for you as we move into the New Year . . .

JANUARY 2014 PRICE REDUCTIONS
You will see on the Blackberry Lane website that, thanks to improvements in the currency exchange rates, there have been some reductions in Glaser Tools prices.

Small savings on Glaser Hand Tool prices

but quite substantial reductions on Glaser Wheel Hoes and attachments.
Of course, we never know whether the exchange rates will go up or down, but we can be fairly confident that postage prices will rise at the beginning of April as usual, so this may be a good time to buy some of the larger items - in good time for Spring!

There is also a small reduction in the price of the Maxi 1 Soil Blocker.  This is simply a result of the Royal Mail increasing the maximum size of their 'Small Parcel', so this item returns to the price we were selling at before the size restriction was introduced!

Sadly, it's not all good news, though!  There have been some small rises in prices for EarthWay Seeders and accessories, though you will find the odd small reduction here as well.

For those of you who live in Devon or nearby, you may be interested to know that we are starting using SEER Rockdust on our land, and have now become stockists as well.  Here's our new Rockdust page.  We are NOT doing RockDust by mail order, though - see the link on our page to find a stockist near you!

 We are looking forward to the coming growing season and will be starting sowing seeds very soon.

Best wishes to you as we step into 2014 . . .

Row Marker Tubes are Here!

If the headline doesn't make any sense to you, please just look at our previous post!

We now have a stock of simple Row Marker Tubes to fit onto either of the Glaser Adjustable Rakes, enabling you to use your rake as a simple Row Marker.

The tubes come in sets of 6 and are made of hard white plastic.  They are fitted onto selected teeth of the rake.  You may want to adjust the rake angle to make it easier to pull the Marker Tubes through the soil.

Once again, the idea came from Eliot Coleman!

You will find both the rakes and the Row Marker Tubes on the Hand Tools page of our website.

A Few New Items For You

Towards the end of 2012, we started selling SeedSpoons and found that customers seemed to like them, so planned to order some more from Canada.  Then, out of the blue, we received an email which simply said "This notice is being sent to you as a retailer of Seedspoons.  Seedspoon production will cease on December 31, 2012 after 13 successful years.  All current stock has been depleted and no more orders will be accepted."

We still had some stock left, but meanwhile did some thinking.  Could we produce something similar?  A little investigating and experimenting, and 'OneSeeders' were born!

As well as offering 6 spoon sizes instead of only 4, we have taken the opportunity to colour-code them.

We don't pretend that they are a complete answer to sowing small seeds, but hopefully they may be some help!

Glaser Tools in Switzerland have always listed a 'Ladies' Cultivator' but we had never been able to find a picture of one.  When we asked about it, they said "We call it a tool for grandma to cultivate the soil of the flowerpots" and kindly offered to send us a sample.

Well, it arrived in mid-March with our next order, and very soon Val started using it to tackle weeds in tight spots like our rockery - it proved to be very much up to the task, so we decided to order some more and now sell them under the name of 'Crevice Cultivator' - 'Ladies' Cultivator' sounded a bit sexist!

We 'inherited' a Glaser 20-tooth aluminium rake when we took over some surplus stock, and offered it at a special price via this blog in December 2012.  The happy customer who bought it was so enthusiastic that we decided to buy a small stock of this rake and its smaller (and cheaper!) cousin with 18 teeth.  They are both very light and strong, but the unusual feature is that the angle of the tines can be easily adjusted by loosening just 2 bolts.  Useful for users of different heights, or for specific tasks.

We are following up another clever Eliot Coleman idea using these rakes.  He fits short lengths of hard plastic tube over selected tines and then draws the rake through well-tilled soil to mark out rows - and even across those lines to mark out a planting grid!

Watch this space and the Hand Tools page of our website, as they should be here soon.