USEFUL GARDENING PRODUCTS FOR GOLFERS
By Clodagh and Dick Authors of ‘Your Garden in Spain’
Each October Spain’s major gardening professional trade show Iberflora is held at the Valencia Exhibition Halls La Feria. It’s the show case for the revamped and new gardening products of Spanish and International companies looking for distributors and agents and also of plants on offer for sale to Spanish garden centres and contractors and for export also for overseas growers wanting to sell into Spain.
We visit the show looking for ideas for our readers in this case golfers who have little time for gardening but want the garden to be beautiful and productive. This years show was rather smaller than in earlier years due to the economic conditions so there was less to see and there was less innovation but it was easier to walk round and find exhibitors with time to talk. The most useful products from your point of view are described below. Some can already be found in the more forward thinking garden centres and horticultural shops and for others you will need to wait until next spring.
1. Water Butts – Do you collect rain water for your plants? If not a water butt would be useful and today they can enhance the appearance of a terrace or patio. Have a look at the products of Garantia/Graf on
www.grafiberica.com. We have never seen such a collection. Graf’s collection includes plastic butts disguised as Roman columns, wine fermenting sizes earthenware jars and stone planters with plants growing on top. They are not yet available in many garden centre but we were told that you can order direct via
info@grafiberica.com or 972-913767.
2. Genuine Eco Grow Bags – Remember those grow bags you loved to use in England for growing a few tomato plants to enjoy after the round of golf. Well Flora Guard are launching them in Spain and they should start to be seen in garden centres by the end of the year. Look out for their red bags specially prepared for fruit vegetables such as tomatoes peppers and aubergines and the green bags developed for the growing of leaf vegetables such as lettuces Swiss chard (acelga) and herbs.
2. Neudorff Eco garden products.
We mentioned Neudorff’s ecological snail killer in an earlier article. Well that was on their stand but most importantly so were the other products that are now being sold into retail outlets. The products that appealed to us were as follows.
• Pasta de Poda – an ecological sealant for the bare cuts when you prune large branches and trunks of trees and large shrubs to prevent fungal spores from entering the wounds and causing rot to set in. The idea of the product is not new but it is now in a handy tube with a hard plastic brush action applicator on the end so you do not need to use and throw a way a paint brush each time you do some pruning.
• Fertilizante Coniferas – an ecological fertilizer to strengthen and darken the green of your aging conifer hedge. We have already applied some as there is much new growth after the autumn rains.
• Repelente Spray de Perros y Gatos – a combined spray for keeping pet and feral cats and dogs of your flower beds and pots and for spraying the gate posts to deter passing dogs and inhibit the entry of cats. Unfortunately it requires a weekly treatment.
• Nuevo Fertilizante Huerta y Jardín – an eco fertilizer available in 2.5 kilo plastic sacks. Very handy for fertilizing vegetables growing in containers as well as enriching potting composts when planting flowering plants in containers and a half yearly topping up.
• Fertilizante Tomates – at last in Spain a genuine ecological tomato fertilizer to feed your terrace tomatoes.
If one looks at the German catalogue of Neudorff they have plenty of other new products for launch in the Spanish market in the coming years – they set up as the manufacturer of ecological agricultural products in 1854.
3. Long spout fine spray watering can – we have been looking for this for a long time in Spain and we found one at Iberflora manufactured by Ebert and distributed by Decora Life Garden Products.
4. Self watering window boxes - We noted that Egbert also make a range of window boxes with built in self watering water reservoirs.
5. Potting composts – as usual many companies offered new improved mixes for potting composts. The ones you will probably find are Flora Guard, Biot and Compo
6. Earth retaining organic matting – if you have an earth bank that is difficult to stabilise or wish to stop the erosion of the banks of a natural pond it would be worth investigating the range of natural fibre matting manufactured by Bon Terra Iberica
www.bonterraiberica.com.
7. Creatively pruned olive trees – several stands had creatively pruned olive trees for architectural purposes rather than high yields of fruit. Shapes included thin columns, low spreading and Japanese bonsai effects with wide spreading branches and occasional platforms of tightly trimmed leaves. We plan to have a go with one of our olive trees. Bougainvilleas can also be pruned in the same ways.
8. Fiskars ergonomic pruners – again Fiskars demonstrated their useful range of Secateurs long pruners and saws. Just the thing for you post Christmas winter cut back as well as your topiary efforts with an olive tree. By the way chapter 6.9 in our book ‘Your Garden in Spain – From planning to planting and maintenance’ tells you what to do during the winter cutback for various types of plants.
In the meantime the Christmas present buying season has arrived and this year cost saving presents will be much appreciated. So why not go for the books ‘Growing Healthy Vegetables in Spain’ , ‘ Growing Healthy Fruit in Spain’ and ‘Your Garden in Spain’ and enable the recipients to live not only less expensively but also healthier in 2009. You will find them in bookshops and Carrefour and for convenience if inland they can be purchased by mail order on 952-485838,
www.santanabooks.com or
www.gardeninginspain.com.
© Clodagh and Dick Handscombe
www.gardeninginspain.com November 2009.
