Manchester United 2 Liverpool 0

Nowt to do with gardening but just couldn't help it...........Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeees!!!

An experiment that failed!

Space is at a premium in my garden. Although quite large it was laid out before I got into growing for showing and so my veg plot is quite small. I've gradually grabbed bits of land from the more 'ornamental' parts but I still need to plan my growing year carefully so that I know which bits of land are growing which crops year by year. Crop rotation is a must on any plot but more so on mine where I grow so intensively.

I've never been able to devote a decent patch of land to growing celery. They like a nice deep fertile trench erring on the boggy side if anything. But they are fickle creatures and can get something called heart rot if conditions are not to their liking. I've grown them before this year in a bed made from old paving slabs on end lined with old growing bags to keep moisture in. This season however I wanted to use that bed for growing more carrots (a rushed attempt in the end that also failed) and I hit upon the idea of growing celery in large builders buckets filled with well-rotted compost and a few added fertilsers. It looked promising at the start......as you can see I had the buckets lined up in a small space next to my conservatory which is reasonably shady. They grew slowly because of the spring and a late sowing so were never going to be particularly large. But just when they seemed to be coming on they succumbed once again to celery heart rot. I use pellets so I know slugs weren't a problem.......it's thought by some that they might sometimes be responsible for introducing it.

One thing I didn't do this year is dribble a solution of calcium nitrate into the heart once a week......some think this prevents heart rot but I did that last season and still suffered from it.

So next year it's back to the drawing board. It's worth growing them when you get it right because they can look impressive on the showbench as you can see from an entry above in 2004 when I did get it right !

SAD !

For a number of years around about now I've started to feel quite depressed at the dying of another growing year........Seasonally Affected Disorder (SAD) I think they call it!

This year I've decided to approach things in a different manner and treat this as the beginning of another growing year by using the next few months to make sure all my preparations are carried out fully. In hindsight I now think my last season didn't fulfil the early promise because my preparation wasn't as thorough as it should have been and that things simply ran out of steam. I was doing my root mixes at the last minute and not enjoying the buzz of sowing things. This meant other things were rushed....notably my bean fence.......and the plot couldn't last the rigours of British weather. Consequently, I was spending valuable time repairing and fixing instead of tending to the plants' needs.

I also need to get some organic matter into my veg beds. It's been a few years since I did and have relied on fertilisers too much. When you grow so intensively and in a confined space like I do then the soil will eventually run out of steam so to speak. The late, cold Spring, hot summer and wet September certainly found out my failings in that department this year.

Pics above are ones of my garden in May this year.......it's nice to look at photos you took earlier in the year when it's so grey and dreary outside.

That's it!

Show season is now over and it's time to assess your growing year and make plans for next season. I won most points in the veg section at Sturton but didn't do as well as in previous years. This was partly due to the fact that my produce wasn't up to the standard of previous years but also because there were several new exhibitors this year, all with excellent veg and flower exhibits. However, it was most welcome to have new competition and I shall certainly have to raise my game next year.

This season I won 62 classes, came 2nd in another 47 and 3rd in 32. This was down on last year confirming my suspicions that things weren't as good. There were successes, notably tomatoes with which I won at 5 out of the 7 shows I entered. But my carrots were very poor and I only managed one 3rd place all season with runner beans (finally, at Sturton!). I really need to make sure I have done a lot more preparation over the winter months and that all my support structures are ready and my compost mixes prepared in plenty of time.

Lessons are learnt every season. Just when you think you've cracked something a different problem comes along to challenge you. I've always been strong on carrots, but the late cold Spring killed my initial sowings, and followed by a scorching summer the second sowings didn't grow as well as they might have.

And whilst I was giving optimum attention to my tomatoes I was failing to give the proper care to my beans. Several work-related issues also conspired against me and meant I was often working late during the late Spring and into Summer, and having 3 teenage daughters that need 'taxi-ing' to various places on a daily basis doesn't help! Most of the guys I compete against are retired and presumably have more time to devote to their hobby, although I have encountered many more people this year who are of a similar age to myself if not younger. This is encouraging for the future.

One final problem I need to solve is that of tending the plot during my annual holiday. We always go away during July and although my mother-in-law does a stirling job it's not the same as being there yourself. I returned from holiday this year to find my cabbages infested with cabbage white caterpillars and already half-eaten. It had also been incredibly hot and everything had suffered. If I had been at home I could have watered more judiciously and protected against butterflies. Oh well!

Last show of the season

Tomorrow is my last show this season at the village of Sturton-by-Stow in Lincolnshire. As I said in the previous post it's been going over 119 years and is another well-run show organised by very nice people. They always make me feel very welcome, appreciating the fact that I have to travel over 50 miles in time to get there at 7.30 to start staging.

I have to be mega-organised for this one as I put in about 60 entries, so I have to get as much stuff ready in the days leading up to it as possible. I got up bright and early yesterday morning to pick a load of dahlias as heavy rain was forecast, which could have marked the blooms. My onions and shallots are all packed, my cacti top-dressed and the pots cleaned and my marrows cut. There are some jobs such as lifting the roots and cabbages which need to be done today otherwise they won't be as fresh as possible on the showbench. I've booked the afternoon off so that I can finish everything off and get the car loaded so that all I have to do in the morning is drive off.

The last job that I always leave as late as possible is washing the spuds. These have now been out of the ground stored in my garage in pots of peat for over 5 weeks now and will not be looking as fresh as they would have done a few weeks ago. Because of this they take a bit more 'scrubbing' and can show up bruises by tomorrow afternoon when the show is open to the public. This can cause some comments from people who cannot understand why mine have won. But what you have to bear in mind is that they probably were the best when they were judged. The judge cannot judge on what they might look like in 2 or 3 hours time. Similarly, you may see dahlias and chrysanths that are falling to pieces and yet they have a prize card against them. In those instances the exhibitor only just got away with it and staged his blooms at the last possible moments of their perfection before they started dropping petals. Seems unfair but that's 'showing' for you!

Pics above are one of me at a previous Sturton Show and one of my winning spud entries.

Cacti and Succulents

This weekend sees my last show of the season at a village in Lincolnshire. Although only a small village the show is quite a large concern and this will be the 119th annual show which is some going!

There are many classes including root and corn classes as it's a rural farming community. The large swedes and mangolds are quite amazing. I hadn't heard of or seen mangolds until I went here....they're like great ugly beetroot that are used as sheep feed (see pic above).

There are also several classes for cacti and succulents. I have started to acquire a few of these in the last couple of years and grow them in my conservatory where they require the minimum of attention. You just water and feed every couple of weeks in the summer and give them a dribble of water every month or so in the winter. Some of the choice specimens may require a little more cossetting but by and large they are trouble free, and the vast amount of different shapes and forms makes them very interesting I think.

One particular class at this weekend's show which was introduced last year was for a display of cacti or succulents in a space 20"x20". Now this allowed my creative side to 'kick in' and rather than just taking several pots of various cacti and plonking them down on the show bench I had a metal tray made at work that I could fill with sand or grit to hold the pots in place. The made the display quite different from the rest and earned me first prize. The only problem was it weighed a tonne and was a bugger to carry from the car. I wasn't even sure the benches would stand the weight. So this year I've modified it slightly by packing around the pots with polystyrene and putting a lyer of grit on top of that. It's much, much lighter as a result. The pic above is last years entry on the car park floor outside the show hall.