I started my career in horticulture over 45 years ago as an apprentice gardener on a Parks department and my old boss used to say, “you feed the soil, and the soil feeds the plants”. A healthy soil means a healthy garden and that snippet of information is something I continually pass on to people through my writing, radio, talks at flower shows and through my gardening videos and podcasts.

Creating a garden is always exciting and when we started to develop our new Lincolnshire garden in 2023 the first thing I did was to get the soil in good condition. To do this I used the organic mulch, fertiliser and conditioner, which we spread a few inches thick on the new beds and borders and forked it in. The addition of the soil conditioner greatly improved the structure of the soil, adding valuable nutrients, helping with drainage and also aiding moisture retention in dry weather. All of which helped the new planting to become established.

In our new vegetable garden, I needed extra soil for the raised beds and there I used several bulk bags of the Raised Bed Mix, which contains some of the mulch to increase the organic matter content. The results that first year were amazing and now in the second year the growth and quality of the produce is equally as good.

In my greenhouse I have used both the All Purpose and Tomato liquid plant food with very good results. Strong green growth & flowers on ornamental plants and plenty of fruits on tomatoes, cucumbers and aubergines.

Last autumn I also trialled a few bags of the PlantGrow Multi-purpose peat free compost. Having already trialled several other peat-free composts as part of my role as Chair of an RHS plant committee, I was very impressed with how it performed. The texture of the compost is similar to peat in that it has both good drainage and moisture retention properties, essential for healthy growth. Foliage houseplants, pelargoniums and newly potted herbaceous perennials all made strong root systems and healthy growth. I didn’t conduct a scientific trail, just a simple growing trial and all the plants in PlantGrow multipurpose compost grew very well and didn’t require additional feeding as much as other peat free composts.

The fact that all the PlantGrow products are chemical free, made from natural products, have a low carbon footprint and are sustainable, ticks lots of boxes for me. Even more important is they actually do what it says on the label!

Martin Fish.