Each year the gardening industry launches new products that will grace garden centre shelves during the next growing season. At Glee, an annual trade show, innovative new products rub shoulders with tried and tested gear that’s been updated with new improvements. Here’s our pick of the new gardening kit for 2018, spotted at this year’s show.
RHS-endorsed Gold Leaf gardening gloves have a legion of loyal fans, who will no doubt approve of the latest addition to the Gold Leaf range, the RHS Collection. The deerskin leather gloves come embellished with a beautiful flower on the back. Choose from poppy, rose or iris. The new gloves cost £14.99 per pair and will be in garden centres from November.
Scooping an award for Best New Product at the show, the I-Glo Decking Disc is a truly innovative way to bring areas of decking to life at night. It prevents slips and helps highlight the edges of steps and paths in the dark. The anti-slip discs are set into the decking by drilling a recess so the disc is flush with the surface. During the day their photo-luminescent technology is charged by sunlight. At night they glow brightly without the need for power. It’s a great alternative to LED lighting, at a fraction of the cost – tubes of 10 units cost between £37.50 and £39.95.
Also helping to light the garden after dark are The Solar Centre’s new TrueFlame Solar Torch Lights. Automatic, wireless and completely solar powered, these lights are the first to produce a lighting effect that looks and moves just like a real-life flickering flame. They’re also able to work year-round, with a power-saving mode that reduces the light’s brightness in favour of a longer run-time. The lights cost £24.99.
Add a taste of Italy to next year’s vegetable garden with Blumen’s new range of flavourful Italian vegetable seeds for the UK market. A vast range of Italian tomatoes includes ribbed Italian beefsteaks such as ‘Costoluto Fiorentino’, ‘Marmande Precocissimo’ and ‘Pantano Romanesco’, meaty plum tomatoes and prolific cherry toms. Priced at £3.99 per pack, all are Italian bred F1 seed with good resistance to disease. There’s a huge range of chilli peppers too, and novelties, such as a red Brussels sprout, chickpeas and turnip tops, or cima di rapa. Vegetable seed starts at £2.99, and will be available from January 2018.
Among the other exciting new plants at the show was Senecio ‘Angel Wings’, its large soft-as-velvet leaves making a striking statement in silver-grey. Perfect for containers, it can be grown indoors or outside and reaches around 25cm in height and spread. Look out for it in garden centres next year. Watch also for Morus ‘Mojo Berry’ – that’s the commercial name that has been given to the dwarf mulberry that won Plant of the Year at the Chelsea Flower Show in 2017 marketed as ‘Charlotte Russe’.
If you love orchids but are put off by a perception that they’re difficult to grow, Westland have taken the worry away with the introduction of their new Orchid Water. Now, all you have to do to give orchids all the water and nutrition they need is pour on two capfuls of this purified water and nutrient blend once a week. No more risk of over or under watering and the right quantity of fertiliser to keep orchids blooming for longer.
Resolva Pro is the firm’s newest weedkiller, a fast-acting glyphosate-based weedkiller with a patented formulation that ensures a highly effective uptake of the chemical by the weed, resulting in faster results and overall control. Look out for Westland’s new tomato fertiliser too: Big Tom. The feed contains a wetting agent, enabling the compost to hold onto more water and nutrients and delivering a long-lasting boost to tomato plants. It contains plant growth stimulants for increased root growth and nutrient transport around the plant, and 20% more magnesium and iron, to combat common shortfalls of these nutrients in containers. The result is vigorous plants with enhanced yields of tasty fruit.
Burgon & Ball’s new Wonder Weed Puller will make short work of removing weeds from lawns. Designed to be used standing up, it takes the backache out of lawn weeding – a simple twist and pull action lifts lawn weeds such as dandelions and plantain, which are swiftly disposed of with the satisfying weed ejection mechanism. In fact, it won the Tools and Machinery category in the show’s New Product Awards. The Wonder Weed Puller costs £19.99 and will be in stores from mid-November.
Neudorff’s new nematode range is set to revolutionise sales of this biological control product (nematodes are tiny worms that parasitise common garden pests). Until now, nematodes have needed to be kept refrigerated, making it hard for garden centres to stock them. Neudorff’s new non-refrigerated nematodes can be stored on garden centre shelves for up to six months, making them readily accessible to gardeners. The range includes nematodes to treat lawn pests – chafer grubs and leatherjackets – and vine weevils. The globe-shaped packaging contains individual soluble bio-pouches that can be dropped straight into a watering can, or Neudorff’s special NemaSprayer. The nematodes cost between £14.99 and £29.99 and the NemaSprayer is £13.99.
The company also launches a new organic slug control product, Sluggo Ultra, which is twice the strength and gives double the coverage compared to regular Sluggo. 300g packs start at £2.99.
Job done is a new range of tough weedkillers that comprises solutions for most weedy garden situations. Based on the same professional weedkiller that’s used to kill weeds along railway lines, which has now been approved for consumer use, Job done is highly effective on tough weeds and prevents their regrowth. See results in 24 hours on nightmare weeds such as brambles, thistles and nettles. The range also include a Job done weedkiller for paths, with residual action that prevents regrowth for three months, one for killing moss and another for lawn weeds. A 1 litre ready-to-use spray costs £4.99, 3 litres is £14.99.
Baby Bio’s new Orchid Gift Pack could be the ideal present for green-fingered friends – a bottle of Baby Bio Orchid Food comes with a pretty pink mister as well as an orchid care guide for £9.99.
Gardena’s new hose trolleys now come with frost protection, removing the worry about hoses freezing during winter, and taking away the need to put your hoses away in cold weather. The sturdy AquaRoll trolleys have an anti-drip device that stops water leaking while you’re rolling and unrolling the hose and moving the trolley around, while their large wheels make moving the trolleys easy and a new Kick&Stand function keeps them stable. Prices start at £49.99 for a trolley that takes a 40m long garden hose to £119.99 for one that will accommodate a 100m hose, and £109.99 for a wall-mounted box.
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