Here we are at the end of another year, a busy year, a Gold year for us with our first ever RHS gold medals and a year, not without it's difficulties.
The year started off with snow, frost and all manner of weather problems but eventually the plants grew and generally performed well. We added yet more lines to our seed collection and started to build a collection of plants for propagation purposes.
We wil start 2012 with a Potato day on the 14th January, a week earlier than usual. This event at a new location too, in Bridport. In fact for 2012 we have 17 potato events, more than ever before and have probably had to turn down another 5. The demand for 'grow your own' continues to grow and with the present economic gloom and the increase in prices of food generally seems to be a way of saving money for a lot of families. However increasingly families are turning to growing fruit and vegetables in order to know where their food has come from and how it has been treated.
So I will finish with a few words of advice, grow what you like and grow things you cannot buy easily. In my next blog I will give some ideas!

Friday and Saturday 7th & 8th October are our Fruit Open Days and guess what, the weather is on the change. always happens for our days but am sure it won't affect people coming, it almost seems to encourage them. We have loads of excellent fruit trees, lovely Agapanthus, and a whole lot more to tempt you to buy. It is a great time to plant as the soil is still warm, we have had some rain and plants will get some root down before the winter.
We are open 10.00am - 3.00 pm both days

Gold medals are like London Buses, non for years then three come along.

We have won another RHS Gold Medal at the London Harvest Show for our exhibit 'The Village Show'. Fantastic end to the show season.

We were lucky enough to be awarded a Gold Medal and won 'Best Creative Display' Wow!!!!!!

Hi, tis already September, well almost, and it seems more like we are fully into autumn. Summer has never really happened this year and this is reflected in the way the plants have grown, some massively producing enormous amounts of new growth and some have sulked with the lack of warm summer sun. Still that is what gardening is all about, successes and failures.

Enough of that, I want to introduce a new team member to the Pennard Nurseries family. George, has been a friend for the last few years and you may well have seen him at Chelsea and Hampton Court on our stand. He is now joining us to help with keeping various aspects of the web site current and one of those will be this blog. As many of you know I find it difficult to write this regularly and George with his background in botany will be able to keep you up to date with hints and tips as well as with what's going on at Pennard Plants.

The idea will be to give a monthly 'what to do' especially with vegetables as well as snapshots of what we are doing.

George will also write a regular (4 times a year) newsletter so if you would like to subscribe to this please let us have your e mail.

Enjoy the early autumn! as I view bucketing rain.

We just finished Taunton Flower Show, Silver-Gilt for Agapanthus, Silver for the Vegetables. Chris is fitting in the Hyde Hall August Plant Fare (12 to 14 August). We are taking along the full “Growing Old” seed collection and will have a selection of herbs and fruit. Hopefully we will have a few surprises ready at the nursery in time to pop them on the lorry. The Zingabar mioga is one to look out for, the hardy ‘Ginger’ much prized in Japan has edible flowers.
By the way, have you thought about what you could be planting this month – time to plant seed of spring cabbages and winter radish. Don’t forget it is not too late for sowing salads, prepare beds for sowing spring cabbage seed. Any spare patch could be sown with one of the green manure mixes if you have no plans for another crop. You could sow mustard at any time but the special Autumn/Winter Mix would be good.
It’s time to harvest 2nd early potatoes, look out for blight on the tomatoes and potatoes don’t let the spores linger. So far this year we haven’t had a problem.
Feed plants in containers, we now stock and recommend ‘Shropshire Seaweed Growth Enhancer’, available in 1 litre bottles to make up to 50 litres of feed. We are already using it in the nursery and it will be on our site soon.
Agapanthus need feeding too whilst they are flowering, use our Agapanthus Food every 3 weeks for strong blooms next year. Available on the web site.

I know, I am terrible at keeping this blog up to date, apologies but if I can invent 25 hour days then i might just have time. What with shows, the nursery (yes we do actually grow plants too), and our new retail store at Kilver Court in Shepton Mallet time just dissappears.
However - coming soon - a new member of the team will be responsible for this blog, the new Newsletter (don't worry we will not bombard you with info, just 4 times a year and we need your e mail address if you would like to receive) and certain other 'site' related items.
New to the site will be the courses and information leaflets you can down load.
Off this weekend, well I say 'off', that just means no shows, but plants still need watering, chickens still need to be let out etc etc.

We have just received a Gold Medal for our display of a 'Dig for Victory' garden at BBC Gardeners' World Live. We are delighted that we have received this award at the show we started the business at 10 years ago.

Thank you to all the public who have sent congratulations and favourable comments about the exhibit.

The recipes shown on the stand will be available here shortly.