The AGRAME is in town.

Howdy,

Welcome to my Dubai based hobbyist vegetable gardening blog.

The AgraME exhibition in on for two more day ( April 2-4 ) at the Dubai World Trade Centre Exhibition Halls.  I went on the opening day to have a look around but did not find much of interest to me.  But for you hard core country boys & girls that love the smell of hay and like to nibble on livestock feed you will feel right at home.  There is a bit of everything down there if you just want to have a look around.  It is in Hall 6&7.  This is what I did find interesting however.

There was a Jebel Ali Free Zone based irrigation company called Fitco Industries(London) Limited.  They have a pressure regular, drippers and some irrigation timers for home use that look the business (see below) and will be looking at their stuff closer when it comes time to install my drip system.

Click on photos to enlarge

Then at the AGRITECH stand they are showing off their hydrophonic systems.  What caught my eye was the Strawberry system (see below). It is a small unit to just show people what and how it can be done but at the same time I thought there could be an opporunity to home hobbyist to grow them at home using a similiar system.  They are also showing other vegetables and herbs that can be grown the same way. 

Another product by GreenMasters MiddleEast (based in  Fujairah's Free Zone)  is an organic biodegradable additive liquid you put into your irrigation water to help save water called Greenfain WP3.  I have the literature and I spoke to them about using it at home for my garden but I must admit I still need to get my head around this product.  It sounds great but I will need to look into a bit more.  Perhaps a blog on it in the summer.

Then there are a couple of companies selling UAE made fertilizer both organic and chemical.  Both companies  Al Dahra Organic Fertilizer and  Emirates Bio Fertilizer Factory are based in Al Ain, UAE.  Emirates Bio Fertilizer produces both organic and chemical fertilizer and of the organic it comes in both liquid and non-liquid forms.  The Al Dahra Organic Fertilizer comes from there farms and is cow or chicken manure, a mixture of the two and another that is a mixture of several fertilizers that is much easier on the nose than the other ones.  Let's not pretend that organic fertilizer is not ... how shall I put this ... AROMATIC!!!  Plus it attracts the flies!!!  Putting it into the ground is ok both into containers/pots is another matter ( the brown smelly liquid coming out the bottom of the pot after watering is not a nice things) , so the less it smells the better chance it might make it into my garden.

The basic problem with these two companies and many of the others at the exhibition is that they are not interested in selling to the home gardener but rather in bulk to the farmers who will buy alot of it.  They sell their fertilizers in 25kg bags so if you do not use all of it right away you have some nice aromatic fertilizer smelling up the yard and giving the flies a place to hang out.  Also, if you want to buy some, you have to go to Al Ain to get it as it is not available to buy in Dubai or perhaps even Abu Dhabi.  I spoke to them about this but I am not sure it sunk in.

So as I said earlier, there is not much of anything at the exhibition for the home gardener but if you just want to have a look around and listen to some of the forum and seminar speakers then by all means head on down there and sniff a bit hay and nibble on some delicious horse feed!

Thanks for stopping by!

Charles