On 14/5/07 11:57, in article
, "La Puce"
wrote:

On 14 May, 11:18, Sacha wrote:
Same here, Charlie. But we do use peat based compost for just about
everything, because we find non-peat just doesn't do the job well enough.

What, not making any profits you mean.



If you had ever learned something about business and having to make a
profit, you might be a bit more realistic. As it is, you've made a bloody
fool of yourself yet again and hair-trigger finger, as ever on the keyboard,
you couldn't wait to tear into me. In your fervour, you don't stop to
think about several idiocies you've uttered or that you don't run a
profit-making business, so do not have to concern yourself with your
abilities to do so - or not. Getting your salary from public money must be
one of the easiest ways to keep a roof over your head.

Charlie has given you an excellent rundown on the issue but how very
unsurprising to see that having attempted to tear my husband's business to
shreds and basically, accused him of sheer greed, you now say that "perhaps
I was getting muddled there in my thoughts." What, *again*?

I must admit your jumping on the bandwagon ravings and the utter crap you
posted when responding to Charlie, do make me wonder if you could actually
earn a living in business. Your remarks about peat compost grown plants
struggling when they're planted out are simply incredible. The plants you
describe struggle, if at all, because they're forced under heat as well as
glass. NONE of our plants receive this treatment.
Some plants sold in mass outlets are not grown in peat at all because the
growers use the cheapest possible medium - *that's* where you should be
looking at this 'greed' you yammer on about. What the end user will pay the
grower. Such plants are all too often grown down to a price and not up to a
standard.

They are often grown in rubbish that has low nutrients and yes, many do die
as a result. You should know this but no, you don't, so you rush in with
assumptions and accusations about plants and a nursery you actually know
nothing about because, despite your disclaimer, you saw it as a chance to
tear into me. In effect, you know nothing about the nursery business at all.
Your remark about "if you are an amateur you just wouldn't know" is
breathtaking. You ARE an amateur! Your ignorance is heroic in its scope.
But no doubt, in your immense conceit, you, who faff around on an allotment
and in a pocket handkerchief garden, think you know more than a man who has
been running an extremely successful and really quite well-known nursery,
with a high reputation, for 25 years. Before that, he learned more about
tomato, cucumber and lettuce growing than you've ever heard of, but Puce The
Expert certainly isn't going to miss an opportunity to do me and mine down
if she can help it.

In the meantime, you carry on fannying around with comfrey and bits of old
egg shell on your 'lotty' and the grown ups will feed their families and put
generations of nurserymen's experience to good use with their own hard work
on a 6 acre establishment, which is not funded by multi-million pound
grants. That's what pays your salary and for your trips around UK, not your
ability to run a business and turn a profit on high quality goods - but
public money.

As to your smug little lecture about using chemicals etc., my husband was a
pioneer of biological controls in plant growing. He was using such methods
back in the 1950s and uses them here, today, now and always. We use no
pesticides. As a consequence, both nursery and garden are alive with birds,
our grand daughter has just been thrilled skinny to be shown a blackbird
sitting on a nest in a potted Lavatera in one of the polytunnels and other
birds are in Fuchsias and other shrubs growing in another greenhouse;
sparrows are nesting in the eaves of the house and thrushes are in a
clematis on the front house wall. Hedgehogs inhabit the garden and just
this morning, a dog fox was trotting past the big compost heap.

So enjoy your jollies (which are not paid for out of your pocket) driving
that gas-guzzling, fumes emitting Big Red Bus around the country and perhaps
one day you will learn a bit about growing good plants. Funny how things are
different when it's expedient for *you*, isn't it?



--
Sacha
http://www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
(remove weeds from address)
Devon County Show 17-19 May
http://www.devoncountyshow.co.uk/