On 2014-06-20 08:09:28 +0000, Martin said:

On Thu, 19 Jun 2014 20:38:56 +0100, sacha wrote:

On 2014-06-19 18:43:26 +0000, stuart noble said:

On 19/06/2014 15:07, Sacha wrote:
On 2014-06-18 16:47:57 +0000, stuart noble said:

On 18/06/2014 14:54, Martin wrote:
On Wed, 18 Jun 2014 12:57:03 +0100, Saxman
wrote:

On 17/06/2014 21:19, David Hill wrote:
At Aldi this afternoon they had Veg plants, tomato, peppers, chillies,
aubergines and I think cucumber plants in 9 inch pots at just £2.99
and very good plants


Their hanging baskets are very cheap.

One of the reasons that British growers struggle to make a living.


I thought the Dutch were the main reason for that?

And those hanging baskets look cheap, imo. There's a paucity of plants
in a green plastic bowl which the plants rarely fill or cover.

'One' of the reasons. Tesco sells plants, B&Q sells plants - many others
sell plants, sometimes badly looked after and of the bog standard type
but they're cheap, so... As one small nursery owner said to us "I don't
sell bread or paint so why are they allowed to sell plants?" I'm glad
to see there's a strong movement for supporting British cut flower
growers as opposed to buying foreign imports automatically. I hope more
gardeners support small nurseries because if they don't, an awful lot of
plants will be lost to the 'every day' gardener of the future.

I suppose the answer to that is nobody is stopping the nursery owner
selling bread or paint, or used cars for that matter. Sad state of
affairs I know but they call it the free market

Actually, we couldn't sell bread because there would be a million
hygiene rules attached; we couldn't sell paint because it's highly
inflammable etc. and as to used cars, 'change of use' probably wouldn't
allow it. We're only allowed a Tea Room because it's an adjunct to the
Nursery and "operates only when the Nursery is open". For example,
when we kept hens, I asked if we could use the eggs in the Tea Room.
No. We couldn't. But people who have their own hens can feed the eggs
to you at their B&B breakfasts

Are you sure that they can do it legally?
https://www.gov.uk/eggs-trade-regulations

I did ask the NFU at our local office and the girl there checked for
me. It's something to do with it being their own home, whereas we're
considered a 'catering establishment'. It's a minute change but an
important one.

but we can't give you a poached egg on
toast, or use them in cake making. However, we could sell them marked
as 'ungraded'! If anyone can make sense of the thinking behind all
that and tell me this country encourages small businesses......they
should be running the country with a large pair of scissors for all the
red tape.

The legislation was an attempt to control salmonella. There are exceptions for
very small businesses.

It's still a ridiculous way to do it, imo. Either way we could be
passing salmonella around, had that been an issue with our hens.
Whether we give it to people in cakes or sell it to them in boxes seems
immaterial!

--

Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.com
South Devon
www.helpforheroes.org.uk