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!