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!