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!
Tuesday, 22 April 2014
Wednesday, 2 April 2014
FeedBack on Soil Block Mixes, Please !
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!
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