Grow Your Own Magazine

I always enter the competitions and giveaways every month, but have just noticed when I went to the competition (on the home page) today that although the blurb started with "February is a good time to" and was to win Felco pruning tools, when I got to the bottom of the entry form the closing date was given as December 9th 2007. Completed it and entered anyway, but it does make you wonder, doesn't it? There was no competition last month, by the way. Do any of the administrators know if the closing date was a typing error?

I've noticed the competition online being "a bit hit & miss" a couple of times - closing date for the month before or not updated at all... I usually do an entry anyway but I'd quite like to see a list of winners each month too, if that could be organised, so we all know we're not wasting our time ?

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Sarah

“Tell me one last thing,” said Harry. “Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?”
“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”

I'll ask Admin... to be honest I haven't looked at the comps for a little while myself

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Shortie

"There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children; one of these is roots, the other wings" - Hodding Carter

Thanks Shortie. My feelings are if you don't enter you definitely won't win anything so I always have a go, but if the closing date is actually before the comp appears on the site it seems pointless.

i always have a go.

Once won a prize from Gardens Monthly though.
Paper entry not on-line.

Those prizes really do get won - there's a separate company which does all the data handling which is why the paper entries aren't sent to the GYO office address. The winners are selected at random by the magazine staff. I think Gardens Monthly use the same system.

Updating the closing date on the website is easily forgotten though...

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Resistance is fertile

Good info Paul. Do you have inside information or is this just how things work in general.

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From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

Paul was Editor of GYO a while back Alice.

As for the prizes, I dont think any grape has won a prize yet. I once won a saw bench from a wood working magazine but have never won anything gardening related.

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Kindest regards, David.

http://pigletsplots.blogspot.com/
updated - Sunday 19th at 2100hrs

[quote=pigletwillie;164551]Paul was Editor of GYO a while back Alice.

As for the prizes, I dont think any grape has won a prize yet.

I am so sorry but you are wrong!!
Some months ago I received one of the second prizes ( don't remember which competition )......a fantastic packet of cabbage seeds....Wooowww!!
Don Vincenzo

Lol,

ok Don, I dont think a grape has won a major prize---- or have they???

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Kindest regards, David.

http://pigletsplots.blogspot.com/
updated - Sunday 19th at 2100hrs

Alice as I am sure you are an avid reader of GYO each month, as i am, You must have temporarily forgotton he is in it each week doing the Allotment feature, he's the one I think has the groovy blue shed, Its by the sea I think.

Can you imagine...being paid to work on your allotment. jammy..


Although I do have issue with him over the naughty picture on page 23 of the FEB issue. Fork stored upside down, outwards...face height. Tut Tut.

I once won some granualar worming preperation from a cat magazine.
I did enter the comp... but the cat spat out all the food in a huff.

I won a book! Only time I've every won anything!

the GYO competitions are open to the general public as well, on website such as Loquax - The UK Competitions Portal
so the odds of a Grape winning are vastly reduced

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~ What do I think of Western civilisation? I think it would be a very good idea ~ Gandhi

Oh!! I assumed that cos they're on our site they were just for us. Never mind, I'll still keep entering.

I won a year's subscription to G.Y.O.'s sister magazine 'Move To The Country' a while ago, I think that was through the forum site though not the magazine page. It's a lovely magazine with lots of different features on downsizing, moving to the country, growing your own, recipes, livestock, housing etc. It did have lots of fairly cheap 'country cottage' type houses in it at first & we even went to look at a few in Wales but none were suitable & the prices seemed to rise every issue. I didn't carry on the subscription afterwards though because it was quite expensive & just made me feel really bad that we couldn't actually afford to 'move to the country'!

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Into every life a little rain must fall.

There are all sorts of laws relating to competitions and as Two Sheds rightly points out, they have to be open to the general public.

The way it works with comps is that the edit team get to choose winners for the Letters Page or anything that is chosen on merit, but the prize-draw-type prizes are all allocated completely randomly - if the staff of the mags got to choose then bias could slip in as we could end up sending prizes to all the people that we happen to think sound nice because they said they like the features we wrote!

It's surprising how rarely anyone gets in touch to say thanks for their prizes, but deliveries are recorded so we know that they do arrive. Every so often someone does write in and says they were chuffed with a prize and it makes our day, so I'm really pleased to hear that Sue liked Move to the Country.

That is a very good point though about prizes just for the website - we'll get our heads together at this end and see if we can cook something up!!!!!

If anyone else has any suggestions on improving the website, I'm all ears, so keep 'em coming!

Aha! I've been rumbled... Regarding that fork, in my defence the prongs are right up against the roof of the shed - so no chance of pronging yerself! Health and safety gone mad, I tell ya.

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Resistance is fertile

Thanks Jeannine and Paul! The competition date was incorrect and I've quickly stormed in and changed it. The correct date is 1st February 2008. Sometimes we may accidently forget to change the entry date, please don't let this put you off entering in the future. If the competition is online and you enter, your entry will be processed.

Dave

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Why not check out our other great titles?
Great British Food
Let's Grow Veg

Thanks Dave, I entered anyway. Let's hope it's an omen and I win something/anything. If I do I will certainly post a thankyou.

No worries paul, so the feature is done on your own plot..the pictures etc..?

Its my Fave bit of the mag. After the freebies of course.

Ah, bless you. It is mostly done on my allotments, with a few generic photos thrown in when the weather isn't up to photography!

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Resistance is fertile