GrowVeg.com Press Information
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (25th April 2008)
Britain’s Favourite Garden Vegetables 2008
GrowVeg.com – the innovative garden planning website for growing your own fruit and vegetables – has announced the top vegetables being grown in gardens and allotments in the UK this year. Based on plans produced by over 1,600 UK gardeners some interesting trends have emerged.
Beans beat the usual contenders of peas and potatoes to the top spot with 85% of gardeners planning to include them in their vegetable plots. Peas were next in line with 70% of gardeners choosing them, followed closely by carrots at 68%. Carrots are particularly surprising given the difficulties in growing them on heavier clay-based soils and in adequately protecting them from pests such as carrot fly.
Traditional favourite Potatoes came in at only fourth place, being grown in 67% of gardens, closely followed by onions.
A surprising 50% of gardeners plan to include beetroot, rapidly growing in popularity due to its proven health benefits and status as a ‘superfood.’ It is also remarkably easy to grow and is rarely affected by common garden pests.
The top ten vegetables in UK gardeners’ plans produced using the GrowVeg.com Garden Planning Tool are:
Beans |
85% |
Peas |
70% |
Carrot |
68% |
Potatoes |
67% |
Onion |
64% |
Beetroot |
50% |
Leek |
49% |
Parsnip |
47% |
Courgette |
46% |
Garlic |
46% |
More and more people are including fruit and vegetables in their gardens as they experience the superior taste and health benefits of home grown food. But growing vegetables has traditionally needed more experience than picking out plants from a garden centre. Many crops need to be grown from seed, spaced correctly and ‘rotated’ in groups to prevent the build-up of pests or loss of soil nutrients.
UK-based website GrowVeg.com, which launched five months ago, was developed to make planning a vegetable plot as simple as dragging-and-dropping vegetable symbols onto a plan. The website features a unique system showing which crops benefit from being grown together and how to space them, allowing personalised plans to be produced in minutes. Gardeners can be automatically emailed reminders about when to sow and plant out the vegetables they are growing and the website also contains a wealth of articles to make growing-your-own fresh produce simple and enjoyable.
ENDS
Notes to Editor:
For more information on GrowVeg.com please contact:
Jeremy Dore
Creator of GrowVeg.com
(Full contact details available by email - just use our Contact Form.)
In the survey each vegetable was counted once per gardener, regardless of whether it occurred in different plans for the year (such as an allotment and garden vegetable plot). Although GrowVeg.com reaches an international audience, only garden plans from the UK were surveyed.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (1st February 2008)
The Perfect Easter Gift for Gardeners
GrowVeg.com – the innovative garden planning website for growing your own fruit and vegetables – has come up with the perfect Easter gift for gardening friends and family: Subscription Gift Vouchers which give the gardener a perfectly planned vegetable patch.
More and more people are including fruit and vegetables in their gardens as they experience the superior taste and health benefits of home grown food. But growing vegetables has traditionally needed more experience than picking out plants from a garden centre. Many crops need to be grown from seed, spaced correctly and ‘rotated’ in groups to prevent the build-up of pests or loss of soil nutrients.
With Easter falling early in 2008 it is the perfect time to plan the garden. A GrowVeg.com subscription makes the process simple and enjoyable. Each Gift Voucher allows the gardener to build a personalised interactive plan of their garden using the unique Garden Planning Tool. Gardeners simply sketch out their growing space, then add vegetables to it by clicking and dropping them onto the area. An intuitive colour-coded circle around each plant shows how much space it requires and which crops to keep together. Plants can easily be rearranged by dragging them into another location until the perfect layout is achieved.
Once the vegetable patch is planned, GrowVeg.com will send email reminders twice a month listing which vegetables need sowing or planting out. A complete list of plants and their spacing can quickly be printed, giving a useful summary of what to buy and when to plant and harvest. There is plenty of information on the likes and dislikes of each vegetable, including which plants to sow together and how much water, feeding and maintenance they require.
Gift vouchers are available for one or two year subscriptions to the Garden Planning Tool, costing just £15 and £25 respectively. Vouchers are sent in an exclusive GrowVeg.com card or by email with a personalised message to the recipient. With a perfectly planned vegetable patch a GrowVeg.com Gift Certificate is sure to be remembered right through the year!
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ENDS
Notes to Editor:
For more information on GrowVeg.com please contact:
Jeremy Dore
Creator of GrowVeg.com
(Full contact details available by email - just use our Contact Form.)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (7th November 2007)
The Virtual Gardener Has Arrived
This month sees the launch of GrowVeg.com: an innovative garden planning website for growing your own fruit and vegetables.
GrowVeg.com takes the headache out of planning your vegetable plot by enabling you to create personalised interactive garden designs.
Previously gardeners have had to consult books and re-work complicated plans to ensure that vegetables from different crop families were spaced correctly and ‘rotated’ to different parts of the garden each year to prevent build up of disease or depletion of nutrients in the soil. GrowVeg.com provides all this information visually, making the process simple and enjoyable. It will even e-mail you to remind you when to sow and plant out the crops you are growing this year!
Each vegetable on the plan has a coloured circle around it indicating both the space it requires and the plant family it belongs to. By dragging out a row of plants they are automatically spaced correctly and the website calculates how many of each variety you should plant for maximum growth. The colour-coding shows which vegetables you should grow together and which you should keep apart.
The website even remembers where you have previously planted different vegetables over the past five years. When planning your garden for the next season it shows you where to let the soil rest and which vegetables need to be moved to a different place. Areas to avoid for a particular crop family flash in red to indicate that you should choose somewhere else.
GrowVeg.com has been in development for two years and features a highly-effective user-friendly interface. It was designed with both the amateur and more serious gardener in mind and despite its simplicity of use contains features that will make it a valuable time-saving tool for gardeners of all levels.
In addition to the interactive Garden Planning Tool, the site has a number of well written ‘GrowGuide’ articles on everything from keeping your plants pest-free to gardening with children. The ‘GrowBlog’ section contains topical news and comments for budding kitchen gardeners with new content added regularly.
GrowVeg.com offers a free 30-day trial of the Garden Planning Tool together with all the features of the site so it’s worth logging on and checking it out for yourself.
ENDS
Notes to Editor:
For more information on GrowVeg.com please contact:
Jeremy Dore
Creator of GrowVeg.com
(Full contact details available by email - just use our Contact Form.)