Page 54 - Simply Vegetables Spring 2023

The Scottish Branch Seminar
November 2022 saw the highly anticipated return of the Scottish Branch Seminar after covid causing the cancellation of 2020 and ‘21 and boy, did we return with a bang, what a fantastic day.
Early morning, there was a buzz around the Pentland Science Park, whilst tea and coffee and lots of chatting was on the go, our wonderful trade stands were opening up after having done a great job setting
up on the Friday afternoon organised by Gavin Thomson of Premier Hydroponics. CTS (Clydeside Trading Society) had done a fantastic job of handling everyone’s pre orders and were ready for the day and our committee were beavering away setting up the sales table, manning the door, providing refreshments and displaying the raffle prizes. Prior to the main event, we had our continual PowerPoint slides on the go showing our Scone Place event from earlier in the year along with our annual garden visit to Gordon Castle, Peter Fitch’s and Hoss Martin’s gardens, whilst people took their seats for the day.
We were delighted that our Chairman, Ian Stocks, was able to open the Seminar, welcoming our members (old & new) and our visitors from other branches who had travelled a fair distance. This included our National Chair, Sandra Hall and also a special welcome to our new National Vice Chair, Raymond Higgins who had flown in from Ireland. This was Raymond’s first visit to our Scottish Branch Seminar and he thoroughly enjoyed his day.
Our First speaker needed no introduction, albeit this was his first
ever talk. Niall Currie from Rothesay, winner of five red tickets at the National Championships, gave us a great talk
on how he grows and shows Large Exhibition Onions. Niall provided a detailed, enthusiastic, inspiring talk and sharing every detail from selecting onions for going to seed right through to that winning red ticket.
Following on from Niall was myself, where I gave some Power Point presentations, firstly on the Scottish Branch Championships that had been held at Larbert secondly, the National Championships that had been held at Malvern and lastly “The Scots abroad”. This gave the audience photos and details of the winning exhibits plus entries by our Scottish Branch members for each class plus shared information on varieties and trends of veg types.
Lunch Time, and time to visit the Atrium and enjoy exploring the trade stands,
and buying some bargains, from seed potatoes and leek plants through to a
The busy Atrium
David Metcalfe – leeks talk
wide array of products available. Our Trade companies were fantastic and they all contributed to wonderful goodie bags for our attendees..... This was so appreciated. So a major thankyou go to Jono from Autopots, Gareth from Ecothrive, Merlin of BioBizz, Jonathan from Growth Technology, Mat from Terra Aquatica, Peter from Grow Genius plus Canna, DNA Mills, Bio Nova and Moonshine and of course Gareth
from Premier Hydroponics and David from
Jim Pearson’s broad beans
Clydeside Trading Society (CTS). Hopefully I have got everyone, it was such a busy cauldron of activity.
During lunch time, our raffle ticket sellers were busy bees as not only did we have our Main raffle plus large hampers raffle and rather expensive wine, we
also so generously received, a Maxigrow Daylight 480w LED Light, four Autopot
4 Pot System’s , two Autopot 4 Pot XL System’s and two highlight Horticulture
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