Special Offer - Mini 4s and Mini 5s - ALL GONE!

Back in April, when we had an enormous rush for Soil Blockers (Thanks, Monty!), the manufacturers were hard pressed to keep us supplied with enough Mini 4s and Mini 5s to keep up with demand, and we were working day and night to get those orders out.

We survived and, as far as we know, everyone got their Soil Blockers OK.  And the orders keep on coming in, so perhaps all those earlier customers are telling their friends . . .

Well, here's a bonus for those of you who have NOT yet bought a Mini 4 or Mini 5 and would like to save some cash.

In the rush of deliveries from the manufacturers, the carriers got a little careless and a total of 10 blockers were damaged - seven Mini 4s and three Mini 5s.  The first picture shows you the worst one.  Definitely not usable!

But here is the same Mini 4 after a little 'surgery'.  As with any operation, there are a few scars, but we are pleased to say that the patient has made a full recovery and should be able to live a fully active life.

If you would like to buy one of these 'unbent' Soil Blockers, we are offering them at £10.00 including UK postage, and of course we will include the usual sets of both long and short Seed Pins, as we do with normal undamaged Blockers.

You won't be able to buy these off our website, so please just email us and we shall send you a PayPal invoice for £10.00.  (Or phone us and send a cheque or bank credit transfer.)

All gone now (19th Oct 2014)

. . . 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!