The season is underway.....

......for me it is at any rate. I always like to see the passing of the 21st December as the shortest day. It's purely a psychological thing but the fact that the days are getting longer means it won't be long before we can be back in the garden.

Today I intend to pot up my shallots....3" square pots with some multi-purpose compost and the bulbs just nestled in to about a third of their depth. I shall water the pots before I place the bulbs in them and then leave them in a cold greenhouse, not watering again for as long as I can hold my nerve so that the roots go out in search of every drop of moisture. You can do this anytime from the middle of December, but I never find any problems by leaving them until now. They all seem to get harvested at the same time.

2010 marks the 50th anniversary of the National Vegetable Society so the Nationals at Dundee should be something special. I doubt I will be able to get there but Malvern should also have some excellent stuff too.

When I first started this blog I gave myself the brief of trying to explain things to newcomers and beginners to the show scene. I had been frustrated in the early days of my own attempts at showing and was not able to get clear information on how things were done. Medwyn's column in GN is excellent but I do find that he doesn't adequately explain the basics for a virgin shower to understand. There is a distinct lack of literature on the subject and I couldn't find anything much online, hence I started this blog. I couldn't resist using it to have a laugh along the way too, as well as the odd rant at life's little injustices.....especially traffic wardens the bastards.

So in 2010 I'd like to reiterate that if anyone has a question they'd like answering, no matter how daft they think it might sound then I will always get back to you with an answer and a photo if necessary. I have a few top, top growers in my contact list these days and to a man they always provide me with top quality advice when asked. I think most of them realise that the only way to keep the hobby alive is give of yourself freely.

Happy New Year fellow showers.

Soot water

My daughter's boyfriend has been knocking about an old fireplace in their new house and has managed to bag me up a sack full of soot. I thought a photo of some dirty old soot wouldn't be too inspiring so here is a better one!............





















Anyways, it's an ingredient that the great tomato grower Chalie Maisey recommends for giving tomatoes a deep red colour and also to keep the calyces looking freshly green. For the last few years my later tomatoes have been showing a yellowing calyx which can lead to downpointing at the highest level. As I say, this only tends to affect my toms later in the showing season and as Malvern is relatively late show I did notice this year that my fruits showed this fault against the winning ones which were all nice and green. Obviously the top growers must have some secret and I'm reliably informed soot is the answer. Here is set of my tomatoes from Sturton a couple of years ago (albeit a winning set) which is held the week after Malvern. The yellowing calyces are quite visible.

Apparently you put the soot in a hessian sack and immerse them in a water butt, using the resultant solution in turn with your usual feeds. I may experiment with 50% of my plants being fed with soot water and 50% not to see if there is really any discernible difference.

Ho, ho, ho!

A pal bumped into a man in a department store in Liverpool on Christmas Eve. All he could go on about was how he hates dressing up at this time of year in a ridiculous red outfit and embarrassing himself in front of thousands of people. My mate said "Look Mr. Gerrard, you chose to play for Liverpool".

This year's winners are........

Well it's the moment you've all been waiting for.....the 2nd annual Smithyveg awards. Just before anyone gets carried away I must state that these awards carry no trophy, no financial gain, no fancy presentation ceremony and indeed may cause other people never to speak to you again. For that I apologise. That's life.

The opening gong is the 'Winning at the first attempt (you spawny bastard) award' for winning a class by following my advice.

2nd prize goes to Paul Wlodarczak for his parsnips at his first ever show, which also helped him to most points. They'll be after you next year Paul!

1st prize goes to Dan Unsworth for winning with these Sweet Candles.

All the more galling as I had a disastrous year with them. The lucky sod. They were bloody good though.

I bet neither of them can do it again next year!?!

The next award is for the 'Stupidest grin whilst wearing an outrageously gay shirt'. There could only be one winner.....see second prize above!!!

I've introduced a special class this year entitled 'The git from Humberside award' which recognises high achievement in dahlia tuber mislabelling. It goes, of course, to Kev Broxholme of Derby who single-handedly managed to mis-label every tuber he gave me. It's a good job I managed a best in show with one of them. I hope you're not too disappointed with the thrashing the reds are gonna hand out to your boys the day after Boxing Day mate!

The coveted award for being the 'Greatest living veg grower and most fantastically complete human being' goes to Ian Stocks of Scotland. I have high hopes for the champion seed you have so graciously furnished me with!!! (A note for the rest of you to bear in mind for next year's awards......sending me free gifts goes a long way!)

However, on the flip side his good lady Linda ran off with the 'Did you feed those spuds with dust?' cup for somehow contriving to harvest a mere 3 tubers from a polypot, in the Avonbank challenge. http://www.avonbankgardenspotatochallenge.co.uk/ I think you'll all agree ...a brilliant effort.

The best veg I saw at a local show that I entered were Terry Leach's leeks at Leicester Show in August. And the best veg I saw anywhere have got to be Sherie Plumb's spuds at Malvern. Take your pick from any of the 6 winning entries she had that day. Incredible. I'll award myself a 'Highly Commended' for my winning spuds at Littleover which got a best in show.

I think you'll agree this was a close 2nd in the silliest smirk class!

Last year my wife won the award for the most gorgeous creature on Earth but, perhaps controversially, has had to settle for 2nd place this year behind Heidi. I know it's probably wrong but I still get the raging horn when I see this picture.

And finally, the award for 'Most monumental cock-up of 2009' goes to the National Vegetable Society....I would have been a bloody brilliant editor!

Merry Christmas everyone and a Happy New Year. I'll be back in 2010 with some serious stuff.

1725lbs World Record pumpkin

Never mind Heidi....more like Hindenberg! The world record for a pumpkin was broken in America this season at an amazing 1725lbs......that's 785kilos......or 123 stone.........or the weight of 386,400 Liverpool fan's brains! I've sold several packets of Heidi on ebay and will be advising the buyers in the New Year via email as part of the deal. Hopefully, they all be successful in breaking personal records next season, but I think we can all only dream about getting anywhere near this monster.

You can follow several growers diaries on the big pumpkins website:

http://www.bigpumpkins.com/

Alternatively, you can come down to earth and follow Dan and see if he makes a hash of things instead. I have to warn you.....he does have photos of himself on here so make sure you haven't eaten.

http://www.allotment-diary.co.uk/Giant-record-breaking-pumpkin.html

Ivor Mace

Derbyshire Horticultural Society have a new website (see links) and I would thoroughly recommend going to their annual lecture on March 11th.

http://www.derbyshirehorticulturalassociation.co.uk/p_Show.ikml

Ivor Mace (like Giggsy) is an absolute legend having been a national champion not only for his onions but also for roses, chrysanths, carnations and daffodils.

Quite right too

Were you watching Steven 'no titles' Gerrard? Or were you watching Zzzzzz Factor?

Bring on 2010

And so the time has come to assess and evaluate the season's successes and failures in order to plan for next year. One thing Mark Robert's talk reasserted and which I cannot stress enough is the need to plan your season well in advance and do as much preparation as you possibly can. Attention to detail is king where show veg are concerned and the very top growers go to extraordinary lengths during the season to make sure their veg is in tip-top condition. It also makes them very weird in many cases and not the sort of chap you'd want to get stuck in a lift with if you didn't share their hobby. I'm told the divorce rate among growers is quite high!

It's been a strange old year for me. During the course of it I've had the pleasure of meeting several followers of this blog and it's shown me that you are all a varied assortment of ball-scratching remedials and window lickers, but hey, I love you all.

My season got off to a bad start as I couldn't source any decent onion plants and I couldn't get any leek plants at all. Due to the state of the economy work got off to a disastrous start to the year meaning I was heavily involved in making upsetting redundancies. If I'm honest my heart wasn't into growing for the first few months of the year. Happily, we can now look forward to work in the New Year so I have renewed vigour and interest.

My main focus in 2010 will be trying to win a card in one of the main classes at the NVS Midlands Championships in September. I had a go of course in 2009 in a very low-key way and got a 2nd prize ticket in the novice class. I have a few ideas which classes I want to go for and will be revealing these in the New Year. One thing is for sure.....I shall be timing sowings so that I grow several beds of veg purely for this show. I'm thinking globe beetroot, stump carrots, french beans and tomatoes.

I shall have to improve on long carrots, stump carrots and parsnips and I plan to build enviromesh frames around all my drums and beds to keep off carrot fly, canker, willow aphid, pox and knob-rot.....all of which I seemed to be afflicted with this season. The sand in the drums will need a damned good sterilising first. Main successes in 2009 for me were marrows, shallots and potatoes. Looking back at some show photos I found this one of Sherie Plumbs winning dish of Kestrel at the 2007 National held at Malvern.

Compare this dish to my winning set of 5 at Sturton and I reckon I'm not a million miles away. You can bet that Sherie's dish would have been absolutely spotless however, so I need to work hard on that, but you do see plates of spuds at the top shows that show the odd blemish and they win cards so I reckon with hard work and attention to detail I have a chance of getting in the 'tickets'.

In search of brownie points

I've not been blogging much the past few weeks as I'm trying to avoid having a 'Tiger' done on me by decorating the house to keep the missus sweet! I find that a few weeks of intense DIY keeps me in credit for the following growing season....just!

However, tonight I did manage to get along to my local NVS district association to see an illustrated talk by Mark Roberts on staging collections at the highest level. Rest assured that all the tips I picked up will be divulged on here over the coming months.

Mark won the collection of 6 veg at the NVS National in 2007 after 3 years of trying when the common consensus is that it takes 10 years for most of the top growers to reach that accolade. And all that from a guy who hates gardening and doesn't grow veg to eat. He grows purely for the collection classes at the very top shows. Last year he had a power cut in February which meant he lost all of his onions and leeks one frosty night so he just didn't bother growing anything at all. He just lost interest.

I dunno....some people give up too easily!

Cabbage carnage

I found this photo on the t'interweb and it made my blood boil. If I had come back after judging to find my cabbages mutilated in such a way I would have thrown a monumental titfit and as you all know I'm a placid kind of fella. I know why this has been done but it is totally wrong. This subject was in the gardening press recently with some judges calling for every exhibit to be cut to check for various internal diseases. Can you imagine what a showbench would look like in the wake of such a ruling? Thankfully, the NVS is leading the way on this and is now advocating that not even beetroot should be cut as there simply is no need to check for internal white rings with today's modern varieties.

The way I see it is there is a clue in the word 'showbench'. It is a SHOW. The public come to see veg that has been grown to perfection. There may well be a bit of rot deep within that perfect onion you see marvelously presented but so what? You cannot see it so what's the problem? At that moment in time they are the best looking. In another month the rot may well have grown and rendered the bulb useless. At a beauty pageant the winning beauty queen is the best looking bird on that day. You don't cut her in half to see if she has the start of lung cancer or something and then award the title to the minger who came 2nd do you?

Today's brain teaser

Answer on the comments bit!

Waste not want not

Apparently, the Jeremy Vine radio show has been discussing the subject of urinating on your compost heap all week in the light of this story........

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/gardening-blog/2009/nov/13/composting-urine

I've actually been doing this for many years. I pee into an old watering can and then pour it onto my compost heap. This helps kick start the composting process.

However, a word of warning from past experience.....don't wait until the watering can is full. It can take several weeks to fill a standard watering can by which time it smells worse than Venus Williams' tampon.

Westminster Bridge

I love this.......In the mornings, these aptly-shaped shadows all point to the West side of the bridge, which is the side of the Houses of Parliament.



If anyone is interested I'm selling the spawn of Heidi on ebay.....rest assured anyone who has asked for some seed.....these will be in the post shortly!


http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Giant-pumpkin-seeds-variety-Heidi-from-the-Sugababes_W0QQitemZ250528501538QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_HomeGarden_Garden_PlantsSeedsBulbs_JN?hash=item3a54a98f22"

Sleepers

Surely with a name like Nidal Malik Hasan the yanks saw that one coming? It just goes to show we all have to be vigilant these days.

However, GREAT NEWS. I was speaking to a bloke over the road and got onto the subject of my hobby. Turns out he's very interested and also very rich and he would like to sponsor a huge flower and vegetable show next year with big prize money for all classes. He wants to get as many show growers and their families in one big indoor location at the same time and give us all a treat.

If anyone wants a schedule he can be emailed at Alifatwahbinladen@Aljazeerah.com

Should be a cracking day out!!!

Hallowe'en Heidi

You couldn't pay me to go to America. I hate their TV shows. Their reliance on therapy makes me piss my pants. But I absolutely love the American import that is Hallowe'en. The kids round here love it also and it was for this reason that I was to be found this afternoon carving my beloved 262lb Heidi into the shape of a hideous fiend. My thanks to Dan for the inspiration!

She was a bugger to start with but eventually things started to take shape.

All beautiful women have their ugly side.

Heidi feels peckish. The pumpkin she is eating must be 25lbs.

One final photo with my love interest of the summer!

My youngest daughter Rebecca and her alien friends seemed impressed!!!

Everlasting spuds

I've been experimenting with my spuds to see if I can save them from show to show. It's accepted that you can show things like onions and shallots in many shows, from August through to November and generally they tend to look better as they ripen. Marrows and pumpkins usually last several shows although you would have to take care transporting them. I have shown carrots on two different weekends but you do lose some colour and condition by the 2nd weekend.

I've always felt that spuds can only be shown once but got talking to a guy at Sturton who maintains he uses the same spuds throughout the growing season, by wrapping them individually in dry kitchen towelling after each show and storing them in a fridge. In fact, he pointed to a set at Sturton that had been out of the ground since early August and had been to several shows including Harrogate. By that time (3rd October) it was looking a bit rough at its base but it did manage a 2nd place (behind my fresher looking set). The potato in the photo was one of my winning set of white spuds from Sturton, the variety Winston, that I wrapped up and stored in the fridge. It's now 3 weeks since that show and I think it's looking pretty good and could certainly compete at local village level. I think if it's a single day show you could get away with it, but if the show is any longer than that then the spuds will start to go green quite quickly.

I shall certainly be trying this more and more next season. It will mean I can keep my better spuds for the more important shows and then show these same ones a week or more later at other shows, and also save me time as I won't have to scrub as many.

My best ever crop

T'is my eldest daughter Heather's 21st birthday today and we had 'a bit of a do' last night. She's the one in the middle, with her sisters Jennifer 19(right) and Rebecca 14 (left). I feel old.

Purple Puff

I was really taken when I saw this dahlia at Malvern.....until I saw the name. Being totally and utterly anti-all things remotely Quentin Crisp I can never ever grow this plant. What was the raiser thinking?

Celery rust

T'is a good job I'm not proud and only show my good stuff on this blog. I have many, many failures each season and by far the most pathetic of all my veg this season has been my celery. I only grow 5 plants in order to get a set of 2 for Sturton and did manage to get a 2nd (out of 2....the pair on the right!), but the quality was hopeless. Celery is a bog plant in the wild so it can take as much water as you can throw at it, and needs to be grown in good quality moisture retentive soil with added manure.

All was reasonably well until late August when once again they succumbed to celery rust disease. Within weeks the foliage was devastated and I had to take off the worst affected leaflets to make them reasonably ok to consider showing them. Asking around on the NVS forum I'm told Dithane 945 will combat this but you need to spray BEFORE you have the problem. Of course if the foliage suffers then the size suffers as a result so I didn't have very large specimens either. I've grown Red Star for the past 5 years (it's a Man Utd thing!) but I think I'll have a change next season and try Morning Star which seems to be the favoured variety on the NVS benches.

You didn't.....did you?

Did you really think I wasn't going to comment on Liverpool's calamity keeper being beaten by a deflected shot off a beachball last Saturday? He actually went to save the beachball! Hilarious! Man Utd are playing like idiots and yet we're still top of the league. Even more hilarious!


But none of this is quite as hilarious as our postal workers trying to convince us that carrying around a duffel bag with a few hundred letters and having to lift up a really heavy metal flap every 30 yards means they deserve more money, when our brave boys are fighting Osama Bin Bastard's murdering rag heads in Afghanistan and when the rest of us are doing more for less just to try and keep our jobs you moaning, lazy f*ckwits! I'd love to know the percentage of postal workers who have scouse tendencies.

Langdale layabout

Just got back from a long weekend in the Lakes with friends. Ticked off another 4 'Wainwrights'......Pike O'Blisco (that's me on the summit looking out over the Langdale valley), Crinkle Crags and Bow Fell on an awesome day of clear sunny weather on Saturday and then Dow Crag (I think!) on a shitty, misty, drizzly Sunday.

Now it's time to get down to the important business of getting next year's seed order sorted.

Beat by better beet

I usually pick up a few wins in the beetroot class but have only managed a couple of 2nds and a 3rd this season. Admittedly I didn't give them as much care and attention as I usually do, not thinning them out after germination, but I am usually able to clean up a reasonably matched set by scouring the corkiness from the shoulders. However, this year it wasn't to be and the quality of the round beet at Malvern made me realise I must up my game. The fact that the winning beet at Malvern were so obviously illegally oiled with something is neither here nor there! That's one for the conscience of the exhibitor!

Next season I plan to have ready some raised wooden beds made from 12" planks filled with good quality compost. This should allow me to tend to them better and be more easily able to draw compost over the shoulders to help prevent corky skin. I shall probably grow a whole raised bed like this purely with Malvern in mind. Most of the top growers grow Pablo these days instead of Red Ace. I tried Pablo a couple of seasons back and didn't get on with it. I may have to have another shot at it.

Storing 8oz onions

Whilst I've nailed the size and shape of my 8oz onions by measuring them regularly and pulling as soon as they get up to size, I suffered with some strange markings this season. They are a mixture of little black speckles and what look like tide marks and I think it's down to storing them in my garage. I'm sure the change in temperature between night and day causes condensation which affects the skin condition. I think I need to guarantee a more constant temperature to ensure more even ripening. At this point my wife no longer needs to read any further.

Next year I'm storing them in our bedroom!!!

Better quality shallots

Earlier this year I managed to get 12 of National Champion Dave Thornton's shallots (He fought like a bugger but I managed to get them off him eventually).

I grew them on this season alongside my own retained stock and the difference between them was quite striking. Whilst my own 'seed' actually grew bigger the shape was all over the place, so I have now totally discarded these to the kitchen pot.

I now have about 30 bulbs from the Thornton strain for replanting next season. The best of these have bought me 5 wins in the shallot classes this season (including this one at Sturton last weekend), which is amazing considering that prior to that I'd only ever won a total of 9 shows with shallots in 13 previous years. I didn't get them to grow huge, but they were classically 'flask' shaped with nice flat bottoms. Next season I will give them a more favourable planting position alongside one of my raised onions beds in the hope of getting bigger specimens.

The year of the fly!

There is a school of thought that says carrot fly can only fly about 18" off the ground. People who reckon that are about as deranged as Rafa Beneathus when he says Liverscum are going to win the Premiership (sorry Mark the Ciderman!).

I've always had the odd mark but this year has been my worst ever. As you can probably see from my Sturton set above I had it quite badly, which obviously prevents me from showing at the highest level, which is annoying as otherwise I had some fair sized and decent shaped carrots this season. Part of my problem was that I didn't scatter some of my highly toxic (and probably banned!) insecticide around the crowns during the weeks when I was bravely fighting death due to swine flu!

But really I need to be making sure the fly have no way of getting to them by erecting some form of physical barrier and to this end I have bought some enviromesh to cover my long carrots/stump carrots and parsnips. I shall spend the Winter months wisely by mackling together some form of wooden cover to go around my drums and beds to which I will staple the mesh. Hopefully, I won't then have to rely on my insecticides so much. Organic shock horror! I must be going soft!

In the meantime I have given the sand a bloody good drenching with some cheap bleach in order to kill off any eggs. Phew.....he's back!

Now all I have to do is to get my seed and I've been promised some top notch stuff from an unbeatable Scottish grower who shall of course be nameless, but whose wife is absolutely hopeless at growing spuds!

You've got to be shitting me?!?

Not veg related but this is starting to annoy me. One of the photography classes at Sturton was entitled 'Green Interest'. Of course there is a wide subject matter for such a title, and both myself and Leesa entered with brilliant photos, especially mine which was truly great. Anyway, the winner was this doctored piece of 'Okay yah' claptrap, a black and white photo which had a tiny piece of it digitally altered to green. Oh for f*ck's sake! The same thing happened last year. Am I mistaken in thinking that you click a button on your camera, you have the resulting shot developed (or downloaded these days!) and voila....THAT is a tossing photograph. To me a photograph is the same as what you shot. Did this person say to his daughter '"right darling, can you just turn black and white for a minute but you can leave your toy green". Photographists are such a bunch of pretentious knob jockeys.

Free seeds anyone?

I split open my best shaped Blyton Belle marrow today. It formed part of my equal fourth placed set at the Midland NVS Championships at Malvern (if the prize cards went down to 5th as they do in the National I have no doubt they would have come equal sixth!!!). Anyway, I have now extracted all the seeds and have a load to give away. If anyone would like half a dozen drop me a line and I'll post them to you. I already have one or two that I have promised some seeds to.

The marrow on the right is Blyton Motley. I'm not too sure about this one as it's a little too similar to Belle, although at Sturton Les Stothard reckoned I should persevere with it.

.

Sturton 2009

Well thank goodness for my spuds! I lost the cup for most points in veg for the first time in 8 years to Bill Croft who I noticed was amongst the cards at Harrogate. I'm not surprised as he put some very good stuff in at Sturton. However, thanks to my cacti, dahlias and a bonus 2nd place in the photograph section I did win the cup for most points in the whole show for the 6th time.

As far as my veg was concerned I ran up 4 wins out of the 6 spud classes (round/kidney/coloured kidney and 3 sets of 3) and was 2nd in the other two (white kidney and size&quality).

I was also chuffed to stage this set of Sir Alf Ramsey dahlias, which didn't win but got a 'highly commended'. They just needed to open out a bit more. I've never grown this variety before but was given a tuber by Kev Broxholme (aka git) and managed to have 4 blooms ready on the day, the 4th one going into my 2nd place winning entry in the one flower/1 veg class. I shall certainly be growing this one again as the blooms are absolutely show-stoppingly huge, as you can see when you compare it to my head which is very big in order to house my incredibly large brain.

And so that's it for another season. I could do one or two late shows but I've had enough for now. The garden is a mess and I want to get back on top of things and get a head start for next season. I've already started sieving my compost for the spuds next season......I'm using the same compost as I didn't get any blight this season, but this time I'm making sure I sieve out all the lumps in order to get more refined spuds hopefully.

I plan to pick and choose what classes I enter next season and not try and enter lots of classes in every show, with a view to putting my best stuff in at Malvern in my quest to win a red card at the highest level. I think I can do it. All in all I had a good season but getting swine flu at a critical time meant the garden ran away from me a bit. Not being able to get decent leek and onion plants in the Spring meant I was a little bit half-hearted with everything else, especially as the recession forced me to be involved in some very upsetting redundancies in February and March. My heart just wasn't in it like it usually is. But seeing my stuff against the very best at Malvern showed me I don't have an awful lot of improvement to make to be able to compete. I could really do with winning the lottery or, better still, if there is an anonymous millionaire follower of this blog who would like to cover my salary then please don't hesitate to contact me!

Scum

No excuses. No human rights wankers saying it's barbaric and has no place in our society. No Lord f*cking Longfords saying they can be reformed and we need to understand what made them do it. These disgusting, vile pigs need executing .....now! As long and painfully as possible!

Spud spouse swap shock!

Whilst I may have the odd debauched, pervy thought about Heidi (Sugababes), Marg Helgenberger, Jane Seymour, Margaret Thatcher (whaaaat?!?), Christine Bleakley et al, there really is only one woman in the world I would consider swapping my wife for……Sherie Plumb….and then only for a single growing season! Hopefully that way I’d be as good as her at growing spuds by the end of the season. The NVS has produced a DVD showing her 2007 growing season and it is quite an eye opener to see her dedication and the lengths she goes to in order to present the perfect platter of spuds.

For instance, she washes all her seed spuds and discards all those that have blemishes so as not to risk introducing any disease onto her plot. The feed she puts in seems an awful lot but then again she is the queen of spuds. 4 buckets of sieved peat with 16oz each of calcified seaweed and Vitax Q4, all well mixed. And that lot only does about 3 polybags!!! Winston only gets 12oz of each as these tend to get too big otherwise.

It was quite interesting also to see how quickly she cleans her spuds for the bench. They seem to take no more than 30-45 seconds or so. I've just done my first set of 5 Winston for Sturton at the weekend and it's taken me a good half hour and I'm still not happy with them. At this time of the season they seem to have a dirty sheen to them which takes some getting off. I need guidance. Waddya say Sherie? I'm not a bad bloke really!

Last knockings

It’s my final show of the year this Saturday in the village of Sturton in Lincolnshire. I’ve said before that it’s a small village with a big show and I think this is the 122nd annual show which is incredible when you think about it. My thoughts are with the show secretary Rebecca who lost her husband suddenly at the age of 52 in August.

I’ve entered 53 classes, not just in veg but also in dahlias, cacti and some photos! I think the pick of my veg will be my spuds. I emptied all my entries out of the compost they’re being stored in a week or so ago to have a look at them and was very pleased with the condition of them. Hopefully they’ll scrub up well and land me some wins in the 6 classes they have for spuds. I shall prepare half of them tonight as I think I shall need about 40 in all, which is too many to leave until tomorrow night.

After Saturday teatime it’ll be time to start ordering those seeds and thinking about next season. How the sands of time are swiftly falling through that hole!

Malvern 2009....Smithyveg enters at last!!! And gets a bloody nose!

Here are some of my Malvern exhibits from the weekend.

Quite how they judge the tomato class and come to a 1-2-3 is beyond me. I think 10 different judges would have arrived at different decisions, and I'm convinced my own humble entry (middle right....the ones spaced apart!) was far from out of contention. One problem I have at this time of year is the calyx turning yellow rather than looking fresh and green. Talking to Dave Thornton afterwards he reckoned that legendary tomato king Charlie Maisey's recommended feed of soot water will combat this. So if any of you have a small dispensible child that you can send up a chimney to get me some soot I would appreciate it.

Just for Dan's benefit here is the winning entry in the max. 1500g onions class. I've seen his onions on his 'allotment diary' and feel sure they would have walked this class and won the £1.3million prize money. Pity about that. Next year it's being reduced to 50 quid ! That's life!

This is an overview of the 8oz onions class, with my own set being 2nd up from the bottom RH side....again not disgraced. In a rare complimentary moment Dave said the uniformity on them was 'spot on'. I think he was feeling ill.

Why do I have to work with such idiots?

Someone I know VERY well works for an employer that is very ‘pc’ and sends her on all sorts of daft courses that are neither use nor ornament to man nor f*cking beast. Last week she said that from now on she would have to describe her working day as either ‘good’, ‘great’ or ‘brilliant’ in an effort to stay positive at all times. Negative thoughts have no place in her work environment. What bollocks.

I have adapted this method for my own place of work. It’s now either ‘shit’, ‘fucking shit’ or ‘I gonna shoot some useless overpaid c*nt in the middle of his face’."


p.s. I may be offline for some weeks as I will be busy fending off stupid grievance complaints against incompetent workshy ponces who start crying when Simon shouts at them for not doing their job properly!

Down but not out

As expected I didn't move any mountains at Malvern. I got a 3rd place in the Malvern Championships side for my trug (out of 3!) and 3rd out of 4 entries in the collection of onions. I picked up 2nd place in the novice class (out of 7 entries) in the NVS Midland Branch Championships with a set of 6 tomatoes, so I guess that counts as a start!

I got to the venue just after 5am having travelled down just after midnight and kipping in the car for a couple of hours just outside Malvern. Walking into the tent and seeing the likes of Allan Young, Andrew Jones and Sherie Plumb doing what they do best was a bit nerve racking and I nearly walked out when I saw the quality of some of the exhibits, but I snapped out of it and managed to stage my dozen or so entries, starting with two vases of dahlias to calm me down a bit. And know what? I was far from being disgraced. My 8oz onions and tomatoes in the main classes, despite not getting anywhere were certainly not out of place in such grand company.

Having done my staging and after a quick cuppa in the car I then walked the Malvern ridge in superb weather with amazing views in all directions. Until 8am I more or less had the hills to myself. After a quick trot round the RHS flower hall where there is another amazing Medwyn display I went to see the fruits (or otherwise)of my labour in the Harvest Pavillion. I'm now reassured that I can compete at this level. I certainly have the dedication, it's just the time needed to get my exhibits to the next level, not easy when you work full time and are competing against retired guys absolutely at the top of their game. I shall certainly be back next year older, wiser and hopefully a bit better.

Here we go!

It's just clicked past midnight, the car is loaded and I'm just about to set off for my first ever NVS show. Today isn't going to be about cards of any colour.....I certainly don't expect to win anything but I want to be able to compare my stuff with that of the top growers to see how far I yet have to go.

Having said that Leesa has prepared a blinding trug for me once again so you never know. I have entries in 8oz onions, tomatoes and marrows as well as some dahlias (and the trug!) in the Malvern Championship classes.

Wish me luck. As Dave Thornton said in an email to me earlier......you're gonna need it! The bastard!

Smithy's in print again!

Way haaaay!

I've had a letter printed in Garden News. I was responding to some pillock of a show judge who reckoned each exhibitor should offer up an extra specimen in each dish which would be tasted and marks awarded along with the usual size/condition/uniformity etc. There would be bits of cut or half eaten veg everywhere.

My brilliantly written letter went as follows:

‘The star letter in this week’s GN really misses the point about cutting show veg and is all the more disappointing as the author is a judge himself. The clue surely is in the word ‘SHOW’. We exhibitors put on a SHOW for the viewing public to enjoy and marvel at. They want to see large, perfectly grown vegetables, fruit and flowers, not a scene of carnage. He says judging is a subjective thing but he should know better than most that there are guidelines to follow, thanks to organisations such as the NVS and RHS. If he isn’t aware of these he shouldn’t be judging. Surely taste IS a subjective thing and can never be a reason for marking up a set of ill-matched tomatoes against a dish of perfectly round and uniform ones grown to the optimum by a top showman? Besides, as most shows organisers know the judges have barely enough time to make their decisions in time for the show to open let alone having to mess about tasting each and every entry. It is a ludicrous idea.’

However, I’m very disappointed with GN as they missed of the last sentence of my letter which was the best bit. I went on…..

‘It’s akin to the judges at the Miss World competition saying “she may well be the prettiest but is she any good in bed?”.’

For some infathomable reason GN felt they couldn’t print that bit! Although, I must admit now I’ve thought about it, it does sound like riveting TV!"

Lucky horseshoe?

Had a day off from showing yesterday and did the Snowdon Horseshoe......an 8 mile diarrhoea inducing scramble and walk across a 3000' skyline ridge taking in Crib Goch, Garnedd Ugain, Snowdon and Y Lliwedd. Every muscle in my body is aching today. Hopefully, it''ll bring me some good luck at the Malvern Show this weekend. I'm feeling nervous already.

Here I am having completed the horeshoe, with Crib Goch behind me.

And here is the view back to the highest part of Crib Goch. This picture doesn't do it justice really.....in places it's a foot wide and you have to hop down onto the side of the mountain and use the top of the ridge as a sort of handrail.....whilst trying to ignore the 1000'+ drop beneath your feet.

This is the view from the end of the ridge.....look carefully and you can see people on the LH side about to start the traverse. I must have been f***ing mad!

Vento

I was chuffed to win the class for '6 onions, to weigh no more than 3lbs total' class at Littleover.....basically 8oz onions. I'm intending to enter my best set of 5 at the NVS Branch Championships at Malvern and another set of 5 in the Malvern Championships. I've always thought my onions would have competed in the past...or at least not been out of place....so now is the time to put up or shut up and have a go at an altogether higher level.

The variety is Vento and I have 20 or so bulbs all the same diameter.....but you just try and get a matching set. Some are flat bottomed, some are more 'globey', some are darker and some have totally different patterns to the lines that travel down the bulb. And then of course you have the odd little inevitable blemish or spot that just niggles away and stops a good set being a perfect set.

This Wednesday evening I shall get all my bulbs on the kitchen table (no stupid remarks please Unsworth!) and select my best sets. I've noticed that some are wrinkling but having found an old Medwyn article I soaked one in hot water for a couple of minutes and the wrinkles have markedly improved. I shall take off the old raffia ties and re-tie them all neatly and make sure the tops are cut straight and clean.

I also have a box of Tasco that I lifted late and haven't used anywhere yet. These have been drying in sawdust and I had a quick look at them last weekend and they look promising also. These may yet come into the reckoning.

Then it's off to Malvern. I hope they don't look too out of place in amongst my heroes!

Back by popular demand

It seems my wife is getting more popular than me on this website, so here is her latest effort at arranging MY VEG in a winning trug at the recent Sutton Bonington Show. I've entered this class at Malvern so I shall have to be providing her with some of my best stuff to weave her magic next Friday night. Staging is overnight which is something I've never experienced before so I guess I'll set off around 11pm for the 90 mile drive and start staging around 4a.m.-ish after a kip in the car. After seeing how my miserable entries have fared with the judges I think I'll walk the whole Malvern ridge before heading home and going back again on the Sunday (exhibitors get free passes!).

Parsnip canker

Pinnacle is supposed to be one of the more canker resistant parsnip varieties but I’ve had it with a vengeance this season. Virtually every root I’ve pulled up has had it to some extent although I have managed to clean a lot of it off with the rough side of a scouring pad if it hasn’t gone too deep. According to Dave Thornton of the NVS it starts as yellow spots on the leaves and then the spores get washed into the growing medium and hence works its way into the root from the crown downwards. The only surefire way to combat it is to grow them under cover so it looks as if I shall have to erect some form of enviromesh barrier in time for next season. Some people suggest that it can be carried on the actual seed casing so I must try and soak them in a fungicide next season also.

I’ve won at Leicester, Seagrave, Sutton Bonington and Sileby but could never have considered showing them at a higher level as I could have last season. Perhaps I just got lucky last season, but I had toyed with the thought of showing parsnips at NVS Branch level this season. Maybe next year?"



My winning set at Sileby.....





...and Seagrave.