As far as impressive settings go, the one we found ourselves working in during the bank holiday weekend at the Eastnor Castle Chilli Festival takes some beating! Sure it’s more of an eccentric person’s stately home than a genuine medieval fortress, but even still, the thing looked and felt very cool.
On the 6th and 7th of May stalls selling everything from sauces to sausages were set out in the castle courtyard, circling around a performance area that various different entertainers used… well, entertainingly over both of the days. Educational cooking demonstrations and continuous live music also added a little bit extra to the event.
Understandably a lot of the people who attended the festival came with the intention of sampling edible goods – and we couldn’t really blame them! The overpowering smells and aromas emanating from nearby chilli-based food makers had us hungry from the off!
Yet little time could be spent drooling over the exciting, unusual and undeniably tempting products on show or gawping at the fantastic parts of the building that towered over us. We had a job to do!
The presence of a hydroponics equipment retailer at the event generated a pleasing amount of interest, with visitors commenting that the GroWell stand offered an intriguing insight into the future of gardening and the “grow your own revolution”. When it hit home just how affordable, flexible and fun the hobby of raising plants often proves to be, we saw peoples faces change to reflect the realisation that they could get involved too!
Having reviewed the findings of past festivals and exhibitions, we again altered our display to better demonstrate the advantages of hydroponics and indoor gardening. With a renewed focus on showing products in action, the GroWell stall featured no less than four grow set ups! Each one was housed in a smart intermediate BudBox tent and included a T5HO Sunblaster Propagation Light, T5 Propagation Grow Light or Sun Mate Grow CFL Reflector and Eco-Light. These lights are already quite popular amongst chilli growers and definitely helped us get the attention of numerous passers by.
To promote the latest breakthrough product in indoor gardening, we had several plants growing from the phenomenal new Rhizo-Pots. Some onlookers refused to believe that these low priced, lightweight, fibrous items delivered results… until they noticed the evidence right in front of their eyes!
Despite the soaking everyone endured on the Monday morning, the very first Eastnor Castle Chilli Festival went down as a success in our book. There’s certainly room for improvement but it nevertheless attracted a good crowd and had some decent exhibitors. We are enjoying introducing the concept of hydroponics and indoor gardening to a section of dedicated growers who never knew it existed before and plan on doing so for the foreseeable!
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