Medwyn Williams
Hello. I'm Medwyn Williams – eleven times Gold medal winner at the Chelsea Flower Show, Past Chairman of the Royal Horticultural Society Fruit Vegetable and Herb Committee and President of the National Vegetable Society.
New growing Medium – F1S
I have managed to get Everris (Levington) to make up a Pallet for me of F1S, this is in the same ratio of sand to peat plus Coir as the F2S. The regular F1 product is what Ian Stocks uses in his carrot mix with the difference that he adds his own ratio of silver sand to it. I wonder if Ian reads this Blog if he would tell us what else, if anything, he adds to his short carrot mix and if this mix differs from the one he uses for his Long carrot mix. If there is sufficient interest out there, Everris are more than happy to have it made up for me but there would have to be a minimum run of pallets.
6 thoughts on “New growing Medium – F1S”
Medwyn This sounds interesting! I have used F1 plus my own silver sand for the last 6 years or so. I add 12 ounces of your calcified seaweed and 12 ounces of TEV4 to the full bag mix. However this year with the change in NPK I am a bit concerned that the phospates in particular are too low so will be adding 3 ounces of Superphosphates. I use this mix for both the long and short carrots and it seems to work.I spoke to Everris after giving a talk at your seminar re the NPK and they advocated foliar feeding with a Peters Professional High Phosphate feed. However I have never foliar fed any carrots – once they are in they don`t get anything else – so am a bit reluctant to do this full scale.Might try a few barrels foliar feeding to see.
Many thanks for that reply Ian. I hope to start getting my Sweet Candle carrots in tomorrow and will use the new F1S mixture with your added fertiliser recommendations. However I will revert to foliar feeding with the Peters Professional liquid feed with the NPK of 10+52+10 to increase the phosphate levels. I will see use my other mix with F2S in another bed just for comparison.
Hi Medwyn,
Not sure if Ian looks in to your blog or not, but I found Ian’s recipe on the NVS Website. I think it’s pretty up to date and i’m sure he won’t mind me posting it on here as it’s already on the NVS site for all to see.
1 75 litre bag of Levington F1,1 25 litre bag of silver sand,12 ounces of Vitax Q4 and 12 ounces of calcified seaweed(both ground finely in a coffee grinder). This year I also added some Nutrimate but in honesty I didn`t see any real difference. The Levington F1 is also put through a 6mm riddle as you will be amazed by the amount of rough stuff even in F1.
Medwyn has kindly sent me up 2 bags of the new F1S to try.I intend trying some long and stumps in it. It really does look very good stuff – i still put it through my fine riddle and only about half a cup of waste
was in it- so looks promising. Will keep you updated here on the progress. Apart from this trial i have some trial parsnips from Medwyn. The one marked TP3 was some of the biggest parsnip seed i have seen and has germinated really well and is moving along well- so will keep you updated on that as too
Lifted some stump carrots for the National Carrot Championship at Harrogate from the F1S mix.3 really good ones so the new mix seems to be ok- dont think at this stage there is a lot of difference but will see for later shows. The stumps had 16 points so thats a good set.
That’s good news Ian, lets hope the remainder you lift will be equally as good or better!