UK seed firm pays record amount for single giant pumpkin seed and offers it to home gardeners for free!

• Hopes pinned on £1,250 seed that could bring world record pumpkin weight to UK shores for the first time.

A bidding war at the Giant Pumpkin Commonwealth World Conference has led to a record payout for a single pumpkin seed. British seed and young plant supplier Thompson & Morgan went head to head against the world’s pumpkin growing elite in a move to see the world record pumpkin weight brought to UK shores in 2016.

A standard packet of every-day pumpkin seed retails for as little as 99p for 10 seeds, but the chance to own potentially world record-breaking seed doesn’t come along often and attracts worldwide attention. More than 80 delegates from 11 countries attended the three day event (26-28Feb) at Pinetops Nurseries, Lymington, Hampshire – the first time the event has been held in the UK.

Giant pumpkin seed compared to normal size pumpkin seeds

The attendance list read as a who’s-who of the pumpkin world and included the five best international pumpkin growers (all record breakers) alongside the UK’s very own specialists – Ian and Stuart Paton. The Hampshire twins have consistently upped the UK record weight in 40 years of growing, and even briefly held the European Record in 2014 until the world record was smashed in Switzerland.

Thompson & Morgan has long been the sponsor for the official UK Giant Pumpkin weigh in, held each October at The Autumn Pumpkin Festival, Netley Park, Southampton. Over the years it has paid out thousands of pounds for UK and European record breakers, but has never had to hand out the top £10,000 prize for a world record breaker.

The world’s most expensive pumpkin seed comes packed with inbuilt genetics from the current world record holder – a mammoth 2,323 lb (1054kg) specimen produced by Swiss grower Beni Meier in 2014. At its peak of growth the giant piled on a staggering 44lbs of weight per day – stand and look for long enough and you could see it swelling with your own eyes. To keep up with the growth rate, the plant needed 150 gallons of fertilised water every day – equivalent to five average capacity household baths.

Bidding for the giant seed remained frantic until the £700 mark, it then fell down to just two interested parties; Thompson & Morgan Horticultural Director Paul Hansord and Eddie Zaychkowski a phone bidder, calling in from Edmonton, Canada. The £1,250 selling price surpasses the previous £1,171 record price set in 2010.

Paul Hansord with giant pumpkin seeds

Paul Hansord said: “The UK is home to some of the most passionate and dedicated pumpkin growers. Sadly none have been lucky enough to break the world record. To do that you need to start out with the best quality seed. Our pay out for the Swiss seed may seem a high price to pay, but it will boost the genetics of UK plants moving forward and give us the best chance of seeing the world title brought to the UK for the first time.”

You’d think that the seed specialist would want to keep a close eye on the growing of the pumpkin, but Mr Hansord is now seeking interest from UK veg growers willing to take on the seed and attempt to break the world record in their own gardens this summer.

He said: “We’re looking for someone with the passion, dedication and time to produce a giant specimen. The main season of care falls when we are all hands on deck with our mail order plant despatches. While we don’t have the time to look after the plant ourselves, we have all the tips and specialist knowledge to pass on to the chosen grower to give them the best success with the seed”.

To register your interest write to Paul, detailing where the plant will be grown and why you should be chosen to grow the seed:

Paul Hansord
Giant Pumpkin Seed
Thompson & Morgan
Poplar Lane
Ipswich
Suffolk
IP8 5EU

Or email pressoffice@thompson-morgan.com

The resulting pumpkin will need to be entered for the weigh-in at the Autumn Pumpkin Festival, Netley Park, Southampton, 8^th October [2016 dates not advertised online, PH to confirm]

Kris Collins

Kris Collins works as Thompson & Morgan’s quality control manager, making sure customers new and old are kept up to date on the latest plant developments and company news via a wide range of media sources. He trained in London’s Royal Parks and has spent more than a decade writing for UK gardening publications before joining the team at Thompson & Morgan.

It’s been a long while since I managed to write things down – moving house kind of got in the way and last summer was spent trying to unpack boxes and tame a rather wild garden. Now that things are slowly getting straight I have had a chance to divert my attention to playing with indoor planting.

Being a lover of gadgets and fun things, I stumbled upon a website from China and after a bit of surfing and buying some very silly things, I came across these:

Obviously these stirred my curiosity and creative bones, and I decided to take the plunge and buy them. Three of the connecting ones and one each of the others (the whole lot came to less than £15!). I had a bit of trepidation about ordering fragile glass items from the other side of the world but my philosophy tends to be “if it works, great, if it doesn’t it’s a lesson learned!”

3 weeks later and I had purchased my plants, succulents https://www.thompson-morgan.com/houseplants mainly, a colleague had also suggested I try planting in aqua beads rather than soil as it would look nicer and perhaps a bit more modern. The packages arrived, all in one piece and looks amazing! I really felt quite excited about putting everything together for my soilless indoor experiment.

Here are the ingredients…

And so to work:

First thing was to gently wash away the soil from all of the plants’ roots, this was done by soaking them first and a careful rinse which removed most of it followed by a more meticulous picking away of any leftover lumps of compost which left me with this:

I decided to start with the large jar, on the basis that it would be the easiest and less fiddly to do, so I dropped a couple of handfuls of the hydrated aqua beads in, they are extremely slippery when at their full size and behave like toy rubber balls so if you drop one it could go anywhere, several of mine did! Once they’d been levelled off I started to place my plants, taller ones at the back and smaller at the front, hopefully I’ll get the desired effect once they start to grow. It was a case of position the plants, hold them and gently slide the roots into the mass of jelly like beads. Once they were all planted however it looked slightly anaemic and needed a bit of depth. The best solution I came up with was to sprinkle some aquarium gravel around the plants (I have fish tanks so not a problem) and this looked loads better and I was pleased with the result.

The hanging glass balls were, as I suspected, slightly more tricky to assemble, but worth it, I used a dessert spoon to put enough water beads in and did the same with the plants too as my fat fingers wouldn’t fit in.

And so I had planted them all up, and considering how cheap the glassware was, I am really happy with them all!

I’ll feed them once a month with a liquid feed direct into the beads which will probably dye them a blue colour, hopefully this will make them look interesting too. I’m looking forward to seeing how they develop and really hoping that some of the plants will start to trail out of the openings for the full effect to be complete.  The next project is going to be a miniature garden in an outdoor pot. Time to start collecting bits and pieces for that!

Graham.

Graham Ward

I’ve been gardening for as long as I can remember, my first earliest memory being planting seeds in my Grandfather’s prestige flower bed and having a prize lettuce growing there, which he proudly left to show everyone.

Since then, gaining knowledge and experience from both my Grandfather and my Father, I’ve continued to garden, both as a hobby and later on as a professional gardener and landscaper for 12 years. I love all aspects of it, from the design and build, to the planting out of summer borders with plants you’ve either grown from seed or raised from plugs. Unusual varieties always catch my eye and I’m keen to try growing them, even if sometimes it means learning from my mistakes.

Thompson & Morgan is moving into its peak supply season with a spring in its step having swept the board at the Great British Growing awards for a second consecutive year.

The UK’s largest horticultural mail order supplier took four top gongs, all nominated and voted for by the gardening public. There’s no industry back slapping here, the accolades have all come about through high customer satisfaction levels and a quality range of grow your own essentials, offered via the best website in the business.

Grow Your Own British Growing Awards 2016

The nation’s army of grow-your-own gardeners voted the Suffolk business Best Online Retailer over big players in the market including the world’s largest internet retailer Amazon.

Its range of fruit and vegetable seeds was voted best in the business, as was its plug plant offering. Known and respected for bringing more new varieties to the UK than any other plant retailer, its exclusive dual-cropping Tomtato® plant scooped the Most Innovative Gardening Product Award, having taken the Best New Veg Growing Product award in 2015.

T&M Winner of: Plug Plant Range, Most Innovative Growing Product – Tomtato®

Thompson & Morgan Horticultural Director, Paul Hansord said: “Our products and services win us multiple industry awards each season, and it’s always good to be recognised by our peers, but nothing beats a nod from our customers. To be rated so highly by the great British gardening public is a true testament to all the hard work and effort the T&M teams puts in to ensure we have the best range of products that give gardeners the results they are looking for.”

Thompson & Morgan will be at the Edible Garden Show (Stoneleigh Park, 11-13 March) to collect awards for:

• Best Fruit and Veg Seed Range
• Best Plug Plant Range
• Best Online Retailer
• Most Innovative Growing Product – Tomtato®

Kris Collins

Kris Collins works as Thompson & Morgan’s quality control manager, making sure customers new and old are kept up to date on the latest plant developments and company news via a wide range of media sources. He trained in London’s Royal Parks and has spent more than a decade writing for UK gardening publications before joining the team at Thompson & Morgan.

Dear Gardeners,

Firstly, I would like to apologise for this blog been later than intended. I could say it was down to my gastro-flu bug, or I could blame the weather, either way it has kept me out of the greenhouse for weeks. I was reading over last February’s blog and gardening diary, and in terms of planting I am about a week behind. Last year I was tending to my indoor onions that seemed to take forever to grow, but were well worth the wait. My potatoes were in their grow bags, and I was waiting for some of my seeds to germinate.

This year my Potato ‘Charlotte’ have been growing their funny little tails in my tin cupboard next to the sink as opposed to on top of the wardrobe in egg cartons. The reason why they were in the cupboard is because I took them out of my fridge salad drawer where I had been keeping them from last year to warm up, and I put them in the cupboard in a bowl, then accidentally forgot about them, it was only when we were looking for a tin of tuna that we rediscovered them!

Potato ‘Charlotte’

The weather here in Pembrokeshire has been awful – day after day of rain. We also got hit badly by Storm Imogen at the start of the month, and it came at the worst possible time. We were due to take a relative who had been staying here back to London on the Monday morning, and stay a few days with them ,as we wanted to beat the early morning traffic we set the alarm for stupid o clock and went to bed early. Unfortunately the wind was howling, around midnight, and the thunder woke us up. As a precaution we set the mobile phone alarm in case our electricity went off. We never really got back to sleep properly and when dawn came round we were dismayed to find that the storm was getting worse. We were just finishing our breakfast when Mark causally announced that he was surprised the greenhouses was still standing. To be honest so was I. We had checked the local radio announcements and they said that the Cleddau Bridge was close to all vehicles as the winds had been recorded at 95 MPH meaning we would have to go the long way round to reach the motorway and when the bridge is closed it cuts the county in half, so anyone going from Pembroke Dock to Haverfordwest and vice versa would face a 30 mile detour. Then suddenly crash. I looked at Mark, “What was that?” I asked. Another crash and splatter, the unmistakeable sound of the greenhouses exploding. It was still too dark to see anything, and as we placed the relative in her car seat, we drove away wondering just what we would come home too.

Greenhouse & Garden Damage

On the way to London, I text mum and Rachel to ask if it was safe later in the week, could they see how much damage was done, part of me wanted to know, part of me was dreading it. Rachel, unfortunately wasn’t able to check, but mums text said, it doesn’t look too bad. I think she was being optimistic as we lost 14 panes of glass and the door had popped out out of its frame, meaning that the plants had very little protection from the elements when we were away.

When we got back Mark managed to put the door back in, remarkably the glass that had popped out of it lay on the grass undamaged. We also had some spare panes from when the large greenhouse was delivered last year, so that saved a lot of money. We salvaged a piece of glass that was broken at the corners, useless for the part it had come out of but perfect for a missing triangular bit if the glazier was willing to cut it for us. We phoned our usual glazier and got no reply, so we tried a new one who said the older one was no longer in business. The new glazier was more than happy to cut the spare glass for us, he said his supplies were a bit low as everyone was calling on him. We ended up having to buy only 8 sheets at £35 so it wasn’t too expensive. Frustratingly the wind and rain meant it took another few days before it was safe enough for Mark to go out into the garden to install them.

What’s left after Storm Imogen!

As for the plants, well, I have only have 2 Sweet peas left after my September sowing. The geranium is kaput and the pepper is too. The Aloe Vera’s are perfect, the money tree and spider plant are thriving. Unbelievably there is a planter of spring bulbs in bloom, including a purple Anenome. The Yarrows and Californian Poppies were battered, wind burnt, and totally dried out, but they are resilient and they appear to be making a bit of a comeback. The Nigella sort of looks ok, and I appear to have a dandelion in another pot, which I did definitely not plant. The mystery plant that I thought was a tomato seedling is beginning to look more like a hollyhock. My begonias have finally died back, so I can now remove the tubers and get ready to plant them in fresh compost towards the end of March.

I said in my January blog that I had lots of seeds so plant and that I had bought my compost, but for some reason I was reluctant to do so, and for once my laziness has paid off, as I would have lost the lot in the storm. Besides, as the last two years have shown, we get better days in autumn then we do in spring, and so long as everything gets underway in the next two weeks it should be okay.

Seed Packets & Cosmos ‘Sensation Mixed’

One type of seed I a really looking forward to growing was kindly sent to me by Jean Willis, and this is the Chilli ‘Cayennetta’ it can be sown in Feb March and April. Mark wants to make some sweet chilli sauce. I don’t particularly love hot peppers, so I will be trying the Pepper ‘Sweet Boneta’ sauce instead. Luckily she also sent me these too.

I had some free Cosmos seeds from a magazine, and as it’s the year of the Cosmos, I definitely have to grow these. The mix is called Summer Sensation and they come in pink, carmine and white, again they are T&M seeds so I know they will be reliable.

Hopefully, March will be more productive for me, I would be interested to know if any readers were affected by the winter storms, and if like me, you are still behind with your greenhouse or gardening tasks.

Until then, Happy Gardening,

Love

Amanda.

Amanda Davies

My name is Amanda and I live in Pembrokeshire with my fiancé and our garden is approximately 116 meters square. I want to share with you my love for gardening and the reasons behind it, from the good to the bad and ugly. I want to do this for my own personal pleasure. If you would like to take the journey with me then please read my blogs and share with me your gardening stories.

Fertiliser choice is the key factor in improving sweetness and flavour

When Thompson & Morgan assessed over 140 tomato varieties at its Suffolk trial grounds last summer, the aim was to gauge the plants against indoor and outdoor growing conditions. What they weren’t expecting was to hit on a simple way of vastly boosting the sweetness and flavour of home-grown tomatoes.

One aspect of the trial compared the results of different plant feeds on Tomato ‘Sweet Aperitif’. In terms of health, vigour and yield, incredicrop® stood out as the best feed for tomatoes. A single application of this season-long feed at planting time led to the best plants both in a greenhouse setting and out in the field. This was all set to be a key message at an end-of-trial event attended by gardening press, bloggers and industry figures.

Tomato ‘Sweet Aperitif’ and incredicrop®

John Burrows, director of ProVeg Seeds – a major UK trade supplier of tomato seeds and plants, attended the event with his Brix meter in hand, ready to test the sweetness levels of each variety. While passing the fertiliser trial patch, fruits of Sweet Aperitif grown with incredicrop® and another market leading fertiliser were tested – with amazing results! Fruits grown with incredicrop® registered at 12.4 Brix against a level of 10.1 from those grown with the market leader.

A taste test by those present confirmed the finding. Even organic growers among them, normally reluctant to use manufactured fertilisers, had to admit that using incredicrop® made fruits sweeter.

John Burrows and Paul Hansord – Brix Testing Tomatoes

T&M horticultural Director, Paul Hansord, said: “We already know Sweet Aperitif is the sweetest red cherry on the market, the first to consistently score over 10 on the Brix scale. We couldn’t believe the sucrose levels could be boosted even further. The findings add to an already impressive list of benefits for incredicrop®, setting it well ahead of other feed options on the market. Brix levels for Sweet Aperitif were unchanged by other feeds. Our exclusive vegetable fertiliser not only encourages stronger and healthier plants with impressive yields – the produce will also taste better.”

Notes to editors

What are Brix Levels? The Brix score for any fruit or vegetable is the number of grams of sucrose per 100 grams of solution (specifically the juice from a tomato in this study).  Higher brix means better flavour and better nutrient value and is an indication that plants have been grown in a healthy soil, with sufficient nutrients and water. The measure is used widely by commercial growers but the equipment needed for testing is costly and is not a viable option for most home growers.

How does incredicrop® work?
This controlled slow-release feed utilises Double Nitrogen Technology to promote vigorous green growth and bumper crops – a single application at planting time will support strong healthy growth for 7+ months. Nitrogen is released in two phases in perfect sync with plant needs, avoiding wastage, which is often a problem with other fertilisers. Part of the nitrogen is stabilised to gradually break down over the first eight weeks to kick-start plants into piling on growth. The second part is released through polymer coated granules that deliver less or more nutrients depending on temperature and moisture levels, again matching plant needs for optimum flowering and cropping. (£12.99 for 750g tub)
Available from www.thompson-morgan.com or call 0844 573 1818

Kris Collins

Kris Collins works as Thompson & Morgan’s quality control manager, making sure customers new and old are kept up to date on the latest plant developments and company news via a wide range of media sources. He trained in London’s Royal Parks and has spent more than a decade writing for UK gardening publications before joining the team at Thompson & Morgan.

We all need a drink of water and birds are no different. During the cold months water can be scarce; so it is our job to make sure that our native and visiting birds get the water and food they need. We have been encroaching on their patch for so long now that it is time for us to step up and help these poor birdies out!

Blue tit, Robin and Blackbird

So what can we do? The best way to help the birds to enjoy a fresh drink of water is to keep a bird bath in the garden all year round. It will need to have shallow sloping sides approximately 2.5cm to 10cm (1” to 4”), so that different species can enjoy drinking and having a bath! The surface needs to be rough so the birds can hold on with their claws, but the aesthetics of the bird bath are more to please us than the birds, who won’t mind if it is an old bowl. At Thompson & Morgan we are always concerned about wildlife and the impact that we all have on them, so we have a range of bird baths to please you and the birds.

Thompson & Morgan Birdbath

The type of bird bath you have and the varieties of vegetation around it will determine the types of birds you get visiting. When birds are bathing they do get rather preoccupied and excited so it is most important to make sure they are not vulnerable to cats or other pets. The birds will need clear visibility as they bathe, and planting bushes and trees nearby will provide vital cover when they feel alarmed or scared. After bathing birds like to preen so bushes and trees will also provide a place to do this, and the higher off the ground the safer they will feel. Adding a thick layer of clippings from thorny vegetation, such as rose bushes or pyracantha, underneath the bird bath will help keep your pets away.

Try placing the bird bath around the garden to find the ideal spot. You may be lucky enough to see parent birds bringing their babies for a drink after they have fledged. The parent birds will want to show their babies where the water is. Birds can drink a large amount of water so keep it topped up regularly.

You can encourage more species of birds with a bird bath than you can with a feeder, so this is another reason to bring one into the garden. Birds such as wrens, and waxwings that eat insects and fruit don’t usually visit feeders so a bird bath will encourage these species to visit your garden. Bird baths can attract all kinds of birds including bluebirds, robins, warblers and thrushes, and you may even get an owl fly in at dawn when they are thirsty for a drink. Having the bird bath in sight of your window means you will be able to see your visitoring birds and you can enjoy watching them enjoy themselves in the bird bath.

Do take note that during droughts birds try and drink from water barrels and drinking troughs, and unfortunately many die from drowning. We recommend keeping your water containers under a lid which should encourage the birds to use the bird bath instead.

If you would like to find out more visit the RSPB who have lots of information on helping birds through the seasons.

Wendie Alexander

I have worked for Thompson & Morgan for nearly four years. In that time I have learnt lots about gardening, but consider myself very much a novice. I have started growing veg on a colleague’s allotment and also growing windowsill seeds such as Salad Leaves and Rocket. I love gaining more knowledge about horticulture and am lucky enough to work here.