AutoPot are now coming towards the end of the Farm Trials which began in April this year. In the last six months we have seen bumper crops in Thai chillies, a variety of tomatoes, aubergines, cucumbers, melons and sweet peppers. The trial of 120 2Pot trays resulted in an abundance of produce which was then sold locally with all proceeds donated to Little Growers. The trials have acted as a show site for customers and clients of AutoPot to show that commercially as well as domestically the systems offer huge success with all crop varieties. The trials this year surpassed all previous trial results, truly demonstrating the vast ability and capacity the AutoPot systems have when growing crops of all kinds.


All produce was weighed before being sold by Little Growers, raising a great £540.00.
After the weigh-ins over the last 6 months the trials gained the following amazing results:

Cucumbers: This is a 3-4 month crop, harvesting began after the 6th week and continued for a further 8 weeks.

Thai Chillies: The Chillies were potted up into the 8.5ltr pots in April, the growth was incredible however we only started picking in the first week of August 2010 and finished picking on the 20th October 2010. We therefore only had 2½ months of harvesting. Unfortunately we do not have environmental control in the greenhouse at the farm. If we did I would expect to see a huge increase in production. Never the less we produced spectacular results in the growing window that we have in the UK.

Sungold Tomato: This is my personal favourite when it come to Tomatoes, the small cherry tomatoes are full of flavour. Sungold as it shows is not commercially grown as the yields required can not be achieved due to the size of the tomato. However the plants produced huge amounts of fruit, with picking starting in mid June and lasting until mid October.

Sparta Tomato: This is an F1 variety red in colour and medium sized. Generally without environmental control the weights to be expected per sq meter are between 15kg-25kg….Using the 2Pot Extension Kits we managed to produce 19.5 kg per sq meter….not bad considering the little amount of effort we applied. Personally I would expect to yield around 30 kg per sq meter if more time and effort is put into the crop. However we have clearly proved that not only do the AutoPot systems work, they save water and produce excellent crops. The harvesting duration was over a 4 month period…If we had had 2-3 more months of warmth and sunshine I am confident that the system would have produced a great deal more tomatoes.

Don't you just love the UK weather….