Speaker: Gerald Stratford – Local veg expert
Subject: Vegetable growing workshop/Q&A.
This was a very special evening with our local expert Gerald Stratford who regaled us with his stories of a new-found media career – and so much more.
He had an audience of 50+ members and guests fully engaged with his expert advice, answering a myriad of questions to help us understand better the do’s and don’ts of growing our vegetables.
There is no denying that Gerald is our own Milton-under-Wychwood celebrity. He amazed us with stories of his unexpected rise to fame in retirement, from “going viral with his spuds” in the spring of 2020 to his current status as worldwide go-to big veg expert, Gucci model, friend of David Beckham among many others, and much-followed social media influencer.
What shone through Gerald’s talk was his love of growing things and his commitment to encouraging everyone to share his passion and simple pleasure in gardening.
He answered questions from the audience including a request to recommend effective and appropriate composts, a common dilemma for many gardeners these days, as peat-based products are phased out.
Gerald talked about good composts he has sourced, his methods for making his own magic mixes and the products he buys to feed and fortify his prizewinning vegetables. These included standard feeds such as liquid seaweed but also more unusual products like volcanic ash and mealworm extract.
Any latecomers entering the hall would have seen the audience passing around tubs of soil, rubbing it through their fingers and sniffing it knowledgeably and wondered just what was going on……
Gerald reminds us all how being down-to-earth has a star quality all of its own!
See Gerald on Instagram here and on Twitter here!
Here’s how Gerald answered a question in an interview for Eater Magazine (USA) ( more here )
Do you have any gardening tips for beginners?
Never, ever get frustrated. If things aren’t going as you planned, stop. Go and do something totally different and then come back to it with renewed vigour. So if I dig in the garden, I don’t spend two hours doing the same thing — just 20 minutes, and then go and do something else in the garden for another 20 minutes, and then something else for 20 minutes, because you will be using different parts of your body for different jobs. Don’t get frustrated, because that’s when you make mistakes. Treat life in general like that, I think.