For those of you who are awaiting an order of spring plants, here’s a little update from us so that you know what to expect this coming spring!
Growing naturally with the seasons…
One of the many wonderful things about running Rocket Gardens from our organic farm in South Cornwall is that we have the earliest growing season on the UK mainland. This means that we can grow our plants without the need to continuously burn oil, gas or other fossil fuels to heat our growing areas.
This is a slightly different approach to large plant nurseries, which tend to grow their plant using artificial heat so that they can be delivered at the end of March. Growing with the seasons, using natural light levels and warmth, means that our plants are usually ready to ship from late April onwards. This is a better time for home gardeners, as by late April the risks of late frosts have more or less passed, the soil has warmed and the plants are more likely to thrive.
We are sowing!
Our team on the farm are busy getting the polytunnels up and running with newly sown seeds. We expect to have the first plants ready to ship from late April onwards. We’ve been busy over the winter speeding up our packing processes and extending our growing and packing areas so that we can ship more plants even faster this year.
We will keep you posted over the coming weeks so that you have an idea of when to expect your plants. Last year we shipped the majority of pre-orders between late April and mid May, and we expect to achieve the same again this year.
Shipping your plants
We use DPD next day service to ship your organic vegetable and herb plants. We’ve used DPD for many years as we’ve found them to offer the most reliable service with best customer service if problems do occur. DPD are also the most sustainable courier that we have been able to find – they have a 100% carbon neutral parcel delivery service across Europe.
On very rare occasions some deliveries are mishandled or delayed and the plants can arrive damaged. If this happens, all you need to do is contact us and we will get things sorted out for you so that you can get growing.
Zero Plastics
This year we’ve continued with our drive to keep all of our packaging and plant pots 100% plastic free. It has been really important to us to find an alternative to the non-recyclable black plastic pots and trays that are so often presented as solutions to garden centres and plant growers like us.
This is what we have achieved so far:
- Plants are sent in biodegradable plant punnets. These can be used as a tray to hold your plants in prior to planting out. They can be added to your compost pile, or kept for useful trays when it comes to harvesting your crops – they are the perfect size for a crop of strawberries or tomatoes!
- The punnet sleeves can be turned into brassica collars to keep off cabbage root fly. Just cut them into a round disk and cut a slit into the middle. Alternatively, you can recycle or compost them.
- Wormcast organic fertiliser is supplied in reusable hessian sacks (ideal for storing your harvested potatoes).
- Our traditional wooden planters are strong recycled potato chitting trays that have been repurposed for years of future growing.
- You will see that we have cut back on a lot of the other gardening products that we sell. It will take us a little while but we will be building a range of useful plastic-free gardening products over the coming seasons.