I'm so happy I don't care if my onions die!

My head hurts!

Had a few drinkypoos last night!

Heavy weight carrots

At Sturton Show there is a class for the heaviest carrot so I always like to try and grow a small patch of carrots purely for weight alone. It won't matter how forked or flea bitten they look so long as they are heavy but you do need to grow a variety that has the capacity to grow large and the variety I grow is one called 'Zino'. I sowed some seeds a few weeks ago in a pot in the greenhouse to get off to a head start and this weekend I transplanted them (yes transplanting carrots!) into the soil. But first you need to cut the bottom inch or so off the tap root. This encourages the carrot to fork and the more forked roots you have the more likelihood of getting a good weighty specimen. I also enriched the soil with some superphosphates, potash, seaweed meal, lime and hoof and horn

That's shallot Chelsea...but long carrots are a concern

At last we've had a weekend of decent weather meaning I've been able to spend two whole days in the garden (after watching Man Utd lull Chelski into a false sense of security yesterday of course). I've planted my leeks, the first of my potatoes (Kestrel), onion sets Stuttgarter Stanfield and sown my first batch of stump carrots (Sweet Candle). However, one worry is that my long carrots sown a fortnight ago are still showing no sign of life. Checking back in last year's diary they were through in about 11 days so they should be well through by now. I can only guess that the cold nights we've had have delayed them so I'll give them another 3 or 4 days then re-sow with fresh seed.

I've also thinned my shallots down to 2 per cluster which is about a week earlier than I've managed to get this done before and will hopefully allow the two remaining shallots to make optimum size. It's quite a fiddly job and requires a lot of patience. The outer skins have to be stripped back and the 3 or 4 bulblets carefully separated, The 1 or 2 that you want to discard are carefully snapped away from the base plate, usually leaving two that were opposite to each other rather than two that were side by side. This way the remaining two will have the most room to grow as large as possible. They will look a bit sorry for themselves for a day or two but will soon start to perk up and harden and they will be given a watering of phostrogen in a week or two. The 'thinnings' that I take out are dibbled into the soil next to the pots and these usually grow a little, giving me a lot of smaller shallots to use in the pickling classes.

The pics show the 3 stages of the thinning process.

Leeks raring to go

I've got another batch of good looking leeks that will soon be ready for planting. At the moment I'm hardening them off during the day and any mild nights with a view to planting them this week in one of my long, raised wooden beds. I'll plant them a little deeper than usual (say a couple of inches) as this is supposed to help prevent the base bulbing (according to Medwyn).

After planting I'll give them a good watering with Miracle Gro and put a stout cane next to each one that will help support the barrel as it grows. This season I want to keep an even closer eye out for the dreaded leek moth caterpillar as it can soon strip the leaves to a pitiful state. I've tried sprays in the past but I don't think they're too successful and the best method is to try and catch them before they do too much damage. The little bugger's are about 1/2" long and bright green, and tend to hide deep in the 'V' of the fresh unfurling leaf flags coming from the centre of the plant.

Parsnips all through

Despite the freezing nights in late march and early April all of my parsnips in the drums have successfully popped through the surface of the compost, proving the value of pre-chitting the seed indoors. Some stations have had two come through so in the next week or two I will select the best one and cut the other away at soil level. Your should never pull it out as it may have got tangled up with the one you are leaving and you could end up disturbing that one and stop it from growing straight down.

All my drums have a pane of glass over them so I need to make sure I keep the sand and compost surface moist until the plants are growing away strongly. At the moment the weather is so cold that there is no need to water. When the plants are about 4" high they will be nudging the glass and so the glass will be removed....usually towards the end of May for me. At that point the leaves are quite lush and therefore a perfect meal for greenfly so I'll need to keep an eye out and have the spray gun handy.

Large onions planted

Last weekend I got my 'large' onions in. I say that in inverted commas as I only managed to get them to a couple of pounds each last year but that was still progress on previous years when I was lucky if I got them to over a pound. I'm only growing 20 in the raised beds in my two greenhouses which have had plenty of well rotted horse manure dug into them. Prior to that I also applied some Basamid soil sterilent in the hope of killing off any remaining white rot spores which I've been plagued with for years. I did it last year and whilst it seemed to improve things I still lost about half of them. I'm hoping to get the onions harvested by the beginning of August at the very latest, as they seemed to succumb to white rot about that time last year. After planting I watered the onions well and then left them for a week before watering again as I want the roots to grow strong and search for the moisture.

The white labels you see in the photo are marking where I will plant my tomato plants during mid-May. Hopefully, the onions will have done most of their growing before the tomato plants get too big and block out the sun too much. When you have limited growing space like me you have to plan things carefully.

A miserable weekend......

Due to the rain & cold I've not got as much done this weekend as I would have liked but I have managed to get all my log carrots sown. As well as having 24 stations in the raised slab bed I also have another 22 in 4 drums which should give me plenty to choose from.

As I've really squeezed them in this season I needed to make sure that when I bored each hole I wasn't disturbing the stations around them which is easily done as the sand moves. The way I've combatted that this year is by 'coring out' a plug of sand using a length of plastic drainpipe to a depth of about 2', and then finishing off the hole with the steel bar. This method certainly seems to have helped get me evenly spaced stations and means I don't push the displaced sand towards neighbouring stations.

The photo shows the sequence of coring out the hole with the plastic drainpipe followed by boring out with a stout metal rod. The pink bucket holds about 2 litres of the compost mix and is enough to fill 1 hole.

Any takers?

ARSENAL F.C.
End of Season Dinner Dance

Starter
Egg on Face
Seasoned Hash
Frogs legs (past their best)
Spanish Surprise (well beaten)

Main course
Humble Pie
Chump Chops
French (has) Beans
Manager's Beef (not rare)
Catch of the Day - (gutted)
NB: everything is imported, nothing is home grown.


Dessert
Sour Grapes (may be hard to swallow)
Fruitless Tarts
Raspberry Fools
Hard Cheese


Drinks
Bitter
Little Spirit
French Whine
Cabernet Empty 2008
Champagne - sorry none ordered
STRICTLY NO DOUBLES OR TREBLES

NB: drinks should be consumed from glasses as there will be no cups this year.

Guests are asked not to get HAMMERED


Guest speaker:
Steven Gerrard & Rafa Benitez - "What it's like to win the European Cup"


Please note that the club’s European Tour for the season 2008-09 is not guaranteed.

Long carrots sown

This weekend I've managed to sow my long carrots, 24 stations in the raised slab bed that I've grown my parsnips in previously and 10 in two small drums, 5 in each. These are probably a bit too closely spaced for top quality exhibits but needs must for me as I don't have acres of polytunnels. I will be interested to see if changing my parsnips and long carrots around will make any difference. My thinking was that growing the parsnips in less cramped conditions will give the foliage more space to grow and hopefully lend more weight to the roots below. As carrot foliage is more 'willowy' I think they won't mind growing so close together as much....we shall see. In any case I'd prefer my carrots to be better quality and more uniform than in previous years so I've deliberately made the bore holes slightly smaller in diameter. My winning set at Hathern last year (see pic) was probably my best set in terms of uniformity and quality although I did stage bigger carrots during the season.

Each bore hole 'station' has had half a dozen or so seeds sown in a cluster in the middle. When the seedlings are an inch or so high I will cut away all but two and leave them to grow on for another week or so before finally cutting one away to leave the strongest looking seedling. When I cut the surplus I will dust the top of the bore hole with forate to deter carrot fly.

All 35 of my parsnips came through but one has since died off and will need re-sowing soon.

Brrrrrr !

28 of my 35 parsnips are now through. The snow overnight prevented me from sowing my long carrots today so I'll have to do it during the week now the nights are lighter.

Parsnips through!

Seed leaves have broken the surface on 4 of my 35 parsnips stations today........hopefully the other 31 will be following on!