April 2012 Meeting.

The hall was a hive of activity at this meeting. Members have started to be booked in, to comply with Health & Safety regulations, so two ladies were doing this at the door and Gina was selling her raffle tickets, as usual. Soon after , the competition fuchsias arrived, this year they are "Walz Jubelteen", a pretty pinky/mauve upward facing variety. Instruction sheets were given out with them. They will be returned in August for judging, as Peter says, dead or alive!

David and Gwen Bendall selling a fuchsia to Kath Dawes

 Jean and Tim from Longhouse Plants were there with a lot of plants for sale. 

Tim also did a very interesting talk on plants in general, climate problems and how they affected his business, details about specific plants he had for sale, and also a question and answer session. Here are some of the plants they had bought:

A sunny Primrose.

An unusual Rhododendron

A lovely collection of plants for sale.

During the break several people took the opportunity to speak to Tim, we had our usual refreshments and the raffle was called.

Jean & Tim amid the plants.

Tim, Peter, Richard 
and Marion Travers

This blog is open to  everybody to contribute to, it would be great if more people did so. Just e-mail Peter (railtonspecial@live.com), or see Jeanette or Hilda at the club meetings or outings.
On the bottom right of the blog is a place to access older Blogs, just click it & you can see previous items.

I thought we might start a section on helpful tips. Here is the first one, from me:

When taking cuttings or pricking out seedlings, to save using so many plant labels, try using different coloured straws. Cut them into about 4 pieces each, put one piece into each pot or tray of seedlings, also one bit into the "mother" plant with the label, or ensure every different tray has at least one label with its' straw, or you won't know which is which! Here is my competition fuchsia which I took some cuttings from, to give you an idea:

The cuttings are draining, prior to being put into an unheated propagator. Note the straws. If you run out of different colours to use, different coloured straws can be combined.