My season can now start....at last!

This weekend I finally finished the decorating tasks that Leesa had set me before Christmas. Tasks that had to be done before I dare set foot in the garden again! The decorating took a lot longer than it should have done as I lost my temper with a job and ending up creating another! Moral of this story? Never attempt to hang wallpaper when your football team is losing!

Anyhow, all that is now forgotten and I can get on with things. Because of the weather (we had another good covering of snow here last night) I don't think I would have been able to get out much anyway, but this weekend I did start to empty out and refill my parsnip drums. This may seem like a silly thing to do but is absolutely essential as the sand will otherwise become compacted and makes boring the holes very difficult. I have filled the metal beds that the drums are standing on, and the actual drums themselves to the absolute limit as I want the extra inches (don't we all?) on my parsnip roots this season. Every 6 inches or so of 'fill' I give the sand a good stir with a fork to break up any clumps of last year's core holes and give it a good drench with dilute bleach solution to kill off any pest and disease. I use a spirit level to make sure the drums are dead level.

I also set a couple of trays each of onion sets, Red Baron and Setton. Onions from sets is a popular class here in Leicestershire and I like to give them a head start in trays in the greenhouse rather than planting straight outside in March or April. I shall probably plant these up the allotment as I didn't get any onion white rot up there. I lost all of the sets I planted in the garden however.

Remembering last season, here is one of my Winston spuds and a not so good Kestrel, that have been in dry tissue in my fridge since my last show at the beginning of October. I want to explore possibilities of exhibiting some veg at more than one show, and I think the Winston could even be shown now at local level. For one day shows I will wrap my potatoes up in dry tissue and store them in the fridge for use at another show. I would only do this for local level showing, not regional or national level.

In the meantime just to show how late the season is I've had to bring my pots of show daffs into the greenhouse to bring them on. They should be much higher than this by now.