The idea had come whilst Mike was sowing vegetable seeds in trays with his then two small children. He was pondering the way that Cornish farmers produced thousands of cauliflower plug plants ready to be planted out in fields when the timing was right and he realised that the same system would be an excellent way of making it easy and affordable for people to grow their own vegetables at home.
A few polytunnels later, Mike began sowing seeds in bulk and selling ready-to-plant organic veg plugs to home growers who didn’t have the time or space for dealing with fiddly seeds. The plants were a hit!
Year after year, the business kept growing. Since launching in 2006, the company has moved from a 2-acre smallholding into a 125-acre farm with over 20 large polytunnels, some massive rainwater tanks for irrigation and an ever-expanding team, all dedicated to the task of growing and shipping millions of plug plants each year.
Mike has several bees in his bonnet when it comes to what Rocket Gardens does and stands for. Some of the things at the top of his list include:
Also important to Mike is to make the farmland nature-friendly. Over the past few years he has turned several fields over to wildflowers and meadows designed to feed birds, butterflies and bees. This gave him the idea for selling wildflower plug plants came, which have proved to be one of our most popular products.
This year, his big mission is to find ways to ship the plants even faster, so that we can get more customers planted up for spring earlier in the season. He’s also got a big project underway to improve the rainwater irrigation systems as long, dry spells seem to be becoming increasingly common and we need to be able to keep plants alive and well through the summer months.
