What you looking at?

My Cleistocactus Straussii has grown eyes and a nose. Actually flower spikes, it will be interesting to see what the blooms look like as it has not flowered before. Cacti really are bizarre plants and more interesting than you might think.



Meanwhile my shallots are going great guns. I've already picked 10 pickling shallots over the course of the last 5 days as they've reached the 30mm mark. The exhibition shallots (below) are the biggest they've ever been at this stage and seem to be growing visibly in size each day. It's now going to be a case of closely observing the plants over the next 2 or 3 weeks as they need to be harvested towards the middle of the month. You don't want to leave them too long as they can go out of shape. Medwyn reckons you need to look at the new shoots coming from the crown. If these are still emerging you can leave to grow on but if no new shoots are visible you probably need to harvest. Having said that I'm hoping I can harvest over a week or so as they reach a size I have settled on.....48mm diameter. Ideally you don't want any water getting at them from the middle of the month as this can also cause them to go double as secondary growth starts inside the bulb.



These shallots come from Dave Thornton's National winning strain. I won 5 local shows last season after only ever having won that many shows in total in previous years. If I can get anywhere near his National winning set from last year I'll be a very happy man. I visited Dave's allotment after the Medwyn visit a few weeks ago and was pleased to see that his plants were inferior to mine.....in my eyes at any rate! No doubt the big git has some secrets he's not telling me but here's to dreams!

Nearly June!!!!

Where is all the time going? It's the end of May and things are starting to gather pace as I juggle everything that needs to be done. Tonight I erected a barrier around my cabbages with this green netting acquired from building site skips. You may think it would stop sufficient light getting through but I've used it very successfully in the past and if anything the cabbages are a much deeper green colour, and of course it stops pigeons and butterflies.

The spuds in the middle beds are Winston.



The jury is out on the experiment to grow potatoes in buckets for a July show.
I'm not sure there is enough time for the tubers to form in time.



This old water tank has been filled with sieved compost from my compost heap. This week I will be sowing some Pablo beet with Malvern Show in mind (in 15 weeks time). The depth of nice friable material will, I hope, give me clean specimens with long tap roots.



My onions in the first greenhouse are growing well. A 'cage'of string around each plant keeps the foliage growing upright.



In the second greenhouse more onions are growing as well as the first of my Cederico tomatoes.



Carrots for the early show (a Nantes type) are 8" tall. Again I'm not sure they'll make size in time. This dull, cold weather has set everything back.

Including my long carrots for the autumn shows. I had good germination but the seedlings have sat still for several weeks. These really do have a long, long way to go.

I now have most of my spuds in. Winston (not in this shot), Kestrel, Blue Belle, Maxine, Harmony and Camelot. I ran out of polypots and used old compost bags turned inside out. You get much more compost in these so each bag gets three tubers. You also have to remember to put more fertiliser in the botom.

Thinning the stumps

I thinned my stump carrots Sweet Candle today. I ought to have done this a week ago really as the plants were a little on the large side but I think I've got away with it. You decide which one you want to keep in each station then pull the others out one by one, pulling sideways and out at an angle of roughly 45 degrees......slowly and carefully! I used to cut them at sand surface level, but it's felt you can be leaving problems behind by doing this. There is plant material left in the bore hole with the potential for rotting. Most of the top NVS boys do it this way so it's good enough for me.







I was happy to find all the discards had nice long tap roots, with not a single corkscrew or multi-root among them. . Unless I'm very unlucky, my remaining roots should all be the same.






The thinned out station. Take the time also to pull up any weeds that can harbour pests. A sprinkle of insecticide around the crown (I use forate) and the enviromesh cover is pulled back over the bed. It's now in the lap of the Gods

Thanks for ruining my life America (I think!)

I don't usually watch American TV shows but for the past 6 years myself and Leesa have been hooked on the drama 'Lost'. We got up at 4.30am yesterday to watch the final 2 episodes which were being simultaneously broadcast across the States. Whilst it was a cracking ending, it left us completely confused all day and even now I keep trying to work out the many intricacies of an infuriating 6 years. Because of this I now have to snap out of it and focus on some 'definites'.

1) After yesterday's inept performance we must accept that England have absolutely no chance of winning the World Cup. Nil. None. Nul. Zilch. FA.
2) My youngest daughter was 15 yesterday. Happy Birthday for yesterday Bex.
3) The presenters on the Chelsea Flower Show (including the great Alan Titch) talk an absolute hunk of hogwash. Guys.....wake up! Those gardens are totally shite. Show us the f*cking flowers and shut up. The great Medwyn won a gold medal and the President's Award for best floral exhibit. Will we get to see a bit about that? Will we f*ck!

4) My parsnips have the first signs of canker. They start as yellow spots or fleckles on the leaves. B*ll*cks!

5) I am sunburnt. In May!!!!

Measure for measure

This hot weather is making planting out virtually impossible as I've spent the whole weekend filling water butts and watering the plot. Even the roots growing in sand have needed watering.....not surprising really given that sand is so free draining. I have even lost one long beetroot and a couple of parsnip seedlings look decidedly frazzled......but they were growing under a pane of glass I'd forgotten to remove before this scorching weather came along.

An essential job is to keep shallots watered, albeit with a potash feed to aid ripening. I also dish out the soil around the base of the clumps. This serves two purposes....it allows the shallots to swell downwards as well as other directions and should lead to better shaped, rounded bulbs. The second purpose is you can ferret out any small stones that could puncture the skin as it swells. You can see my smithyveg non-patented metal gauge ready to hand. The prongs are 48mm apart which is the diameter I am going for this season for no other reason than I wasn't able to accurately get to 50mm on our works' bandsaw!

I was more successful with the 30mm pickling shallot gauge however. Not so far for some of these to go now! I intend to harvest the individual bulblets as soon as the reach size rather than harvesting them all at the same time, in order to give me more uniformity in my selections.

The whole bed of shallots is looking goooooood! My Vento 8oz onions have now been planted next to the shallots. And the plastic tubes are for more carrots.....I'll just fill with some sieved soil and a few nutrients and sow a 'Favourite' variety for a local show in October. A bit slap dash but.....

I intend to keep all of these Sweet Candle in my enviromesh protected frame on standby for Malvern and Westminster!

Time for a pea

26.5deg C here yesterday. Phewy! I'm off on an organised trip to Harlow Carr gardens in Harrogate today so just enough time to make sure everything is well watered before I set off. One crop I need to keep constantly moist are these peas that I'm growing for an early show in July. The seed originates from a show winning strain grown north of the border and I grew some good pods last season but was unable to exhibit a single dish anywhere. The reason for this is that it's virtually impossible to show peas beyond August anywhere south of Leeds because of mildew which is more prevalent late in the season. This is a shame but is one of the reasons peas are a 20 pointer veg. If you see them on the benches late in the season it's usually in the any other veg class and more often than not they will win.

To get the biggest pods (not quantity) you tie them to 8' canes as they grow, taking off all the tendrils and cutting back any side shoots to the first leaf. Pick off all flowers until about 28 days before your show.

Long beet and celery time

Here is a photo of the celery from Medwyns polytunnel a couple of weeks ago. They weren't huge specimens but what struck you was how clean the foliage was by being grown indoors. With this in mind I intend to construct an enviromesh frame over my plants this season as I have sufered from celery rust the past couple of years quite late in the season. Once it gets hold it overtakes the plants very quickly and promising looking specimens were soon rendered useless for showing.

It has touched 24deg C today so I took the opportunity to get my celery plants outside to harden off in readiness for planting out next week sometime.

I'm having a go at long beet this season and after some delay all the seedlings have now popped through. I'm growing them in long tubes set on top of some drums of finely sieved homemade compost, which in turn is set on a metal frame filled with finely sieved topsoil, giving me a total depth of about 5 foot. I only have 8 pipes but I only really need a set of two for the RHS Westminster Show in October.

High ambition to be growing a crop for the first time for such a prestigious event but I am ambitious if not stupid. The pipes are filled to a couple of inches below the rim so that I can top up as the shoulders swell. This way they won't become exposed and get corky.

The raised wooden bed behind the tubes has my pickling shallots in. I stand on a raised duck board to tend them so saving strain on the smithyveg backbone. I have also made myself a 30mm metal gauge at work and will be taking bulblets off the main clumps as and when they reach NVS pickling shallot size.

A good time to bury uncomfortable news

I hate retired people! And people who own their own businesses so they can nip out whenever they want to tend their plots! Lucky bastards! This time of year is just so busy and I have so much to catch up on and the weekends go so damned quickly. I have managed to get all my large onions in the greenhouse borders. I say 'large' .....these plants came from a fellow grower a couple of weeks ago and I'm hoping to be able to get them to a couple of pounds or so. I've grown this strain in the past and they are a nice shape. The pots behind the onions are bottomless ones and are marking where my tomatoes will be planted. Not an ideal situation growing things so close together, but it has worked ok for me in the past. I'll plant the first batch of tomatoes (Cederico) along the far end (this weekend) which is the south facing side....that way the onions get maximum sunlight as the east and west facing sides won't be planted up for another 3 weeks or so yet. The onions will have been harvested before these get too big and block out the light completely.


These are the shallot thinnings that I replanted in a shady spot (actually one of my celery beds).
As I said at the time, these will root and make reasonable pickling shallots. I bury them quite deep, an inch or so to stop them rocking about.


I also managed to plant my blanch leeks, Pendle Improved. Again I recently got these plants from a fellow grower who has facilities I don't yet have. Some may call it cheating but I maintain the work really starts now, 'pulling' the plants up and blanching them as they grow. Keeping rust at bay whilst growing them outside as I do is also a huge challenge.



And I've also started to take a few dahlia cuttings. As it has been so cold my kitchen window cill has been doubling up as a propagating bench.

So all in all good progress but much remains to be done. I have two varieties of potato to get in, carrots and parsnips to thin out, enviromesh frames to make, tomatoes to be planted and staked, and a couple of hundred 8oz. onions to plant up the allotment. Like I say.....I hate retired people!

I wish I had more time to be able to compete with them, as I was really hoping to get more established this season and become one of the new kids on the block.....one of a crop of really handsome young growers who could challenge the established order of old farts who have been winning the big shows for years. Hopefully I'll have plenty of time to beat them in future years because as I said.....I'm dead young. So that's about all the news for now. Oh, and I'm going to be a grandad.

Me and my useless fat gob!

I've had my first disaster of the season! After I'd visited Medwyns last week I took a quick detour to Dave Thornton's allotment to see how his shallots were faring. Bearing in mind we have a small wager going on depending on how we perform at 3 shows we both enter I was gratified to see his shallots weren't as good as mine appeared to be. His were fine but I don't think his foliage was as good as mine, as mine were all standing up dead straight and erect, with fresh long leaves and his showed a bit of die back on the tips which he reckoned was wind scorch. I subsequently gave him standard Smithyveg pisstaking fare.

Anyway, today I noticed one of my plants had completely collapsed. I gave Dan (Allotment Diary) some of my bulbs last year and he mentioned a few weeks ago that one of his plants had suddenly rotted off. I put it down to the fact that he's a useless northern idiot but now one of mine has gone the same way, so something more sinister is affoot. I don't usually have problems with my shallots in growth, losing one or two in store from time to time, so this is a first for me. I find that although shallots are alliums they don't suffer from white rot like onions as they're usually harvested earlier in the season.

If it's just the one clump then it's not so bad so I'll be keeping a close watch on the other plants. I will dig up the affected plantlets and dispose of them. The area of soil they were growing in will be disinfected.

Pictures from Medwyns

At last we located the lead to the camera allowing me to download the photos from last week's visit to Medwyns. Here is the great man telling us about his onions in the huge greenhouse he rents at Bangor University.

Blanch and pot leeks all lined up in 30litre pots

There are plants everywhere, all coming to perfection in time for Chelsea next weekend, some 40 odd varieties in all. All these plants are growing on the benches, in large pots or Link-a-bord beds.

Then it was onto Anglesey and the field he eventually wants to re-locate his entire operation to. Now that's what you call a polytunnel!

There was a long run of old drainage pipes in which he was growing his long carrots and parsnips for the autumn shows. They were smaller than mine though!

Dave Thornton pretends he knows how to grow peas.

There was much excitement when Medwyn dug up a single tuber of the potato Casablanca from 15 haulms grown for Chelsea. It was a superb looking spud and should be a real challenge to Winston in future.

As well as having a fantastic set up he has this view on sunny days....Mount Snowdon. What a day!

Watch out for those frosts

At this time of year it can be quite frustrating when you have a greenhouse full of plants and you want to start hardening off and planting out. A couple of weeks ago I'd put several trays of various plants outside with a view to hardening them off in readiness for planting. However, the last 3 nights have seen temperatures in the Midlands plummet so I've been bringing plants back into the greenhouse (things like onions and brassicas) or going even further and bringing more tender veg indoors overnight.....lettuce, pumpkins, french beans, peppers etc. It's a bit of a ball-ache but worth it for the peace of mind.

So you really do have to keep an eye on those overnight weather forecasts. There would be nothing worse than putting in all the effort to get your tomato plants looking like this....

......and waking up to find several pots of green snot in the morning.

Another very tender crop is celery and I have 10 plants of Evening Star in their final pots. A crop that requires plenty of nitrogen I have already given the beds where I intend to grow them a dressing of Vitax Q4 plus ammonium nitrate, in anticipation for planting out at the end of the month. I've never managed to grow good celery before but I've got a few plans in mind and intend to give them more attention this year with a view to showing a few at the end of the show season.

A different way with cabbages

At the recent talk from Clive Bevan he said that he grew his giant cabbages in large bottomless pots set into the soil. The idea is that the lower leaves are kept up off the main body of soil and are therefore out of reach of slugs.

It also allows better air circulation beneath the plants and because the lower leaves aren't actually resting on the soil they won't rot off and spread to other leaves. With all this in mind I have set these pot rings into the bed I'm going to grow my cabbages this season. I will tamp down the soil inside them so they're rock hard and plant into this during the next few days. The varieties I'm growing are Brigadier (green) and Red Drumhead.

I shall have to make sure I water more regularly than usual so that they don't go short once established, and I will also be covering all the plants with a cover of some form to keep butterflies off. A few weeks ago I gave this bed a good dose of general fertiliser with added seaweed meal. I will foliar spray during the season once the plants are well rooted.

Visit to Medwyns

Right.....that's enough of being totally and utterly right about the two faced knobsharks currently clinging to power by their fingernails.

Yesterday I went on lovely day to Bangor....as the song goes. To be precise it was a coach trip organised by North East Derbyshire NVS DA to Medwyn William's greenhouse at Bangor University to see his veg prior to being harvested and prepared for Chelsea. It was a real eye opener and show veg on a grand scale although he is ably assisted these days by his son and daughter-in-law among others. His onions weren't as big as he would have hoped so I shall be interested to see how big they get in the next couple of weeks prior to the Show.

After a couple of hours at Bangor we then went onto Anglesey (with tour guide commentary from the great man himself) to the field where he grows his brassicas. He also has an enormous polytunnel where he had his potatoes in raised Link-a-bord beds. The haulms had been cut down as the skins need 10+ days to harden up being grown so early in the year. He did dig up one tuber of the new white variety Casablanca whilst we were there and I must say it's going to be one to look out for. It will be giving Winston a run for its money before too long I feel sure.

As soon as I can find the lead to our digital camera I shall download a few photos of a marvellous day out.

Tonight's weather forecast

The recent shower of shit that has prevailed over the British Isles (13 years and counting) will continue overnight but will disappear by morning, when brighter spells should follow.

First spuds bagged

I planted 24 bags of Winston spuds last weekend in large flexible polypots. Using sieved compost the idea is to grow your spuds in a sterile growing medium with added nutrients so that the potatoes come out clean as a whistle with no scab. I put a couple of inches of compost in the bag and then a handful of both Vitax Q4 and calcified seaweed, and give it all a good stir.



A couple more inches of compost is put on top of this and the seed spud placed into this layer.



The bags are filled with more compost and then planted into trenches into which I worked some manure. On top of this I gave a good scattering of slug pellets. Soil is drawn around the outside of the bags to keep them in place. And that's about it. As the compost sinks I'll top up until no more can fit in the bags, by which time the haulms should be up.

This method worked very well for me last season. I believe by putting the nutrients below the seed spud, as the new tubers swell their skins don't come into contact with it and you don't risk marking the skins. The roots will use up the feed and then work through the bottom of the bag and into the manure outside the bag. Winston takes about 12 weeks to grow to maturity, and as it is a variety that can grow very large I didn't bother rubbing off any shoots.

For spuds that are shy to grow very large I will reduce to 2 shoots. Maxine is an example of one I find hard to get decent size on. I will also put a handful and a half of the two feeds. Not very scientific I know but you have to do what works for you.


Meanwhile, my experiment to get some spuds for a July show is progressing slowly. The foliage is up but doesn't seem to be growing very quickly. I'm bringing these pots in and out of the greenhouse depending on the weather forecast, and it is a bit of a ball-ache.

Am I the only one who's spotted the similarity?

Mandelson.........

The child catcher. Spooky eh?

'Splitting' shallots

You have to be very dedicated (or indeed a sad pr*ck like me) to want to grow shallots to show standard. They will of course split naturally of their own devices but to get the very best shaped bulbs I believe you have to help them along a little bit and thin them out. I do this as soon as the outer skin casing on the parent bulb starts to split, and for me this was last weekend. Here is one of my large exhibition shallots prior to thinning.

Here is the same bulb looking from above....you can see there are actually 6 or 7 bulblets.

I carefully peel the old flesh from around these small bulbs and snap out the surplus bulblets to leave 4 that are growing in opposite directions in order to maximise their potential size. I try to get as much flesh stripped from the clump as this will only rot otherwise. Here is the thinned clump from above. In the past I have thinned down to 2 or 3 but Dave Thornton (who gave me the original stock) is adamant I should leave 4.

I'm left with many small, flat-sided thinnings that you can use in omelettes. I prefer to replant these in a shady spot and I do find that they root and grow away and can become reasonable pickling shallots with a bit of luck.

Here is my bed with all the shallots thinned down. They sulk for a day or two but soon prick up and grow away strongly with a top dressing of dried blood. I think this is the earliest I have ever done this, despite the late start my shallots had getting green tops. The remaining bulblets are now all strong looking so I'm hopeful of getting some good quality exhibits this season.