You got away with that one Smithy

I got a surprising 2nd out of 12 dishes in the coloured potato class at Leicester. Surprising when you saw them on the public viewing on Monday that is, because they looked truly awful due to the amount of scrubbing I had to do to get them looking half decent. When I staged them on the Sunday morning I can assure you they looked pretty good and I wish now I'd taken a photo to show how they can deteriorate on a two day show. (A certain top NVS lady grower's prize winning spuds are often decidely ropey a day after judging by all accounts !). The judge can only make a decision based on what he sees and not what they may look like tomorrow.

You often see a similar thing with dahlias. A bloom can often look perfect at judging but may have lost most of its petals by day two and the viewing public can be confused as to why it has won. Still, after my terrible few weeks with spuds I'm happy to accept this card.

Sheer show madness!

I got Leesa to take this photo to illustrate the lengths I (and others) go to in our quest to win a red card or 6. After the final whistle at Leicester there's a mad dash to get all your stuff back off the various benches ready for loading back into the car. I always commandeer a section of table where my collection was exhibited which is handy for the exit door. And it's surprising just how much stuff you take.

There were 6 parsnips, a dozen or so carrots, two sets of shallots, two plates of beet, two sets of french beans etc etc.Throw in a few cacti and it's little wonder that i'm totally shagged out by the end of the day. I started preparing everything for Hathern and Leicester on Friday evening, took all day Saturday and some of first thing Sunday morning. That's not including the onion and shallot tying that went on in the days leading up to the show. And I shall be doing this now every weekend until early October, plus one more at the end of October. Madness.

Leicester Show 2010

I'm a lot happier tonight. Only 6 red cards at Leicester today but a couple of trophies, including one for best veg (parsnips) means it was all ultimately worthwhile. All the best growers in the county show here so any card is hard to win and therefore worth something.





They looked a bit scabby after two days on the tables but did it for me again at Leicester. I got best in show with Pinnacle a couple of seasons ago too.












My other success was in the collection of 6 where I deservedly beat my new buddy Ian Taylor who has now vowed to rub my nose in it next season. A fiver says he can't!

Special mention again for my good lady Leesa. Yesterday was our 23rd wedding anniversary and she got up early to put together my winning basket of veg for the 4th year running. More photos in the next few days.

Hathern Show 2010

A poor weekend. My long carrots were as forked as my stumps and I had to pull 20 to get this set for Leicester. An even poorer set of two for Hathern came unplaced.

The Pinnacle parsnips cleaned up quite well in the bath. I had two sets of three for Leicester, one in the collection class that I'm quite hopeful about. I was unplaced at Hathern where the judges always go for some huge un-uniform roots that are quite pitted. Most of my roots had some canker damage but I find that it can be rubbed off for these early shows as it's usually only just on the surface. In a couple of weeks it will have gone a lot deeper and be impossible to hide. I am going to have to find something to combat this next season.

My useless potatoes did manage 2nd but I would be ashamed to show these at a higher level show.

A bonus 2nd place for my disappointingly poor Sweet Candle. Great skin finish but poor form and I'd had to carefully slice off a couple of fairly large side roots that the judge would have noted.

In the 'any other veg' my mexican mouse melons were a talking point.

Only entry in the shallots but they would have taken some beating.

1st and 2nd for globe beet in a hotly contested class.

Got a pleasantly surprising bonus 2nd for this vase of 2 gladioli.

For some reason that the organisers couldn't explain my entry in the Master Gardener class never got judged. The flowers weren't great but it should have got a 2nd at least. Instead 2nd place went to 3 tiny sets of scabby veg and a flower arrangement!!! Not even a vase of flowers so that should strictly have been disqualified. However, in view of the weekend's disappointments it was par for the course. I didn't make a big fuss as I've always said the day I get upset by a judge's decision is the day I give it all up. Judges are human beings at the end of the day and can make mistakes like the rest of us. Blind twat.

But at least I managed best exhibit with these tomatoes that were a little on the small side but perfectly formed. A nice little NVS medal made the day's tribulations worthwhile

A chance at last to show off the Midland's soppiest grin. 6 red cards and three trophies wasn't a bad haul but I'm peeved about my roots and potatoes. I would have walked these classes in previous seasons. I'm going to have to seek some advice as to why my carrots were so poor this season.

On now to see the results at Leicester this afternoon where the standard of competition is even higher. All in all I may have to rethink my ambitions for places like Malvern.

Candle in the bin Part II

My show growing pal Mark Roberts says this hobby is life ruining. I wouldn't quite go that far but it's been another disastrous night as I pulled one forked Sweet Candle after another. I'm at a loss as to what's caused this and I had no idea things would be this bad when I started pulling tonight. The shoulders of every single root were superb and the skin condition is excellent but 75% were unshowable. Last year's disaster was down to pest damage but there were no such issues this year as the enviromesh kept carrot fly at bay.



It's not total doom and gloom as I did manage to salvage these specimens to make a few sets for the weekend shows. My wife and kids dread this time of year as they are unable to take a bath until the roots are washed.





A big plus however is that I seem to have some exceptional globe beet with nice colour and long tap roots that are perfectly central. They're a little on the flattish side but are still the best I've grown for a few years and I have high hopes. Still gutted about those carrots though! I may go and chuck some cats in a wheelie bin to make myself feel better!

Don't look Ethel!

Anyone glancing in at the kitchen window of Smithyveg Towers tonight would have seen yours truly stood at the kitchen sink apparently wanking off a potato. With my first shows this weekend I had a go at cleaning up a set of 5 Winston for the white potato class at Leicester on Sunday. Heavily scabbed up I have managed to clean them to an acceptable standard that may get a place card. However, it did take an awful lot of hard rubbing that had the sweat pouring out of me and made it look as if I was appearing in a cheap porn film. You really do have to press them into your body and rub vigorously with plenty of clean running water for lubrication. I'd normally do my spuds the night before a show but I knew these would take ages so I did them tonight. As you can see from the photo they're not brilliant and the locations of the scabs are evident but hey....it's an entry.






Tonight I also emptied out a dozen bags of a variety I thought was Harmony, a white skinned spud. However, it has pink splashes and is patently not Harmony. A case of mislabelling at the garden centre on this one. Unlike my Winston and Kestrel it is not scabbed up and I have some reasonably good sized tubers. Therefore I shall be able to enter them in the coloured classes at the weekend shows. I think they could be Osprey.

TC says...."What's all the fuss about?"

"I've been living in a f***ing bin for years".

Countdown.

Well the time is almost upon me when I can find out whether months of hard work has been a waste of time or not. I already know I have decent shallots and 8oz onions, and my runner and french beans should be ok also. But it's the things you can't yet see that will intrigue until the day before the show when you pull them. I'm talking of course about my long and stump carrots and parsnips. Two years ago I pulled some cracking Pinnacle parsnips that got best in show at Leicester. The skin finish was superb but I'd had no idea from the state of the foliage that they would be as good. Last year my parsnips foliage looked amazing but I pulled roots that were riddled with canker. This year? I can't decide. The foliage is reasonable but certainly not great. Parsnips bury themselves right down so I can't tell how big the shoulders are and I don't want to root about as this is a way of letting the canker spores get to the root a lot quicker....if there are any.

I'm semi-concerned about my Sweet Candle stumps as they haven't started forcing themselves up yet to expose the shoulders.....a sure sign that the stump end has formed.....despite being in the ground for over 20 weeks now. Dave Thornton said his were the same. I'm banking on the fact that I used a lot of vermiculite in my bore hole mix and hopefully this makes the compost more spongy and 'gives'. In the past I've suffered with a strange rippling near the stump and I think this may be down to compaction. When you pull your roots you notice that the compost is fairly solid a few inches down, and I'm hoping the vermiculite has stopped this happening. It may also have stopped the roots forcing themselves up. I shall soon be finding out. I need 13 stumps for this weekend's shows.

Ester's in the lead....

....not a lot of difference between the two pumpkins but this one is slightly bigger I reckon. Still two weeks to the first show requiring the 'heaviest pumpkin' so this should be around about last year's effort of 262lbs with a bit of luck. I can just about lift it a few inches by myself so there's a fair old weight there already. Great fun.

Long beetroots and long radishes

Mixed views on the long beetroot at the moment. The variety is Cheltenham Green Top which you never see on the benches at the big shows. Most growers go for Regar but I've always found it twists like a corkscrew for me. I prefer the skin finish on CGT. I've also suffered a bit with leaf miner which will affect the final size. The shoulders are about 2" diameter at the moment but I'm growing these with a view to pulling for the RHS Westminster show in October so they have plenty of time to swell out.



Next to the beet i'm growing some long Mooli radish again for Westminster. I grew some last year but found that they force themselves several inches out of the compost, flop to one side and the shoulders go green and manky as a result. When I visited Medwyns in May he was growing some for Chelsea and he said he sowed them several inches down from the top of the pipes, and that if you top up the compost as the shoulders start to emerge from the surface then it stops this happening.

Runners up?

When you go to a National Show you see runner beans you can only dream of growing. Sherie Plumb and Andrew Jones grow 'Stenner' beans so long and fresh looking you wonder how they do it. Well, now so have I, albeit, a week before my first shows. I've picked 3 beans 19 inches long and there isn't a bean bulge in sight. I've wrapped these 3 in a towel secured against a wooden batten and stored them in our fridge. They fit diagonally.....just! Hopefull they will last a week this way but I have plenty of other beans 14 to 15 inches so it's just a matter of waiting for these to catch up. The well rotted cow muck in the bean trench has certainly helped but ultimately you need the correct variety of bean. Enorma is the best variety for local showing and if you are growing this then I'd concentrate on getting a good set of beans 12 to 14 inches. If there is any bean bulge whatsoever don't bother showing it as the bean will not snap cleanly. Most judges will snap one of your beans to assess freshness, and a bulgy bean will always be stringy.

Yesterday I visited a few local shows trying to drum up business for the NVS, but I also shot over to Notts to view the Notts DA show where my arch rival and buddy Dave Thornton was showing. It was an opportunity to see his produce in view of our little wager. The bastard had the biggest, most superb looking shallots you'll ever see in your life. He's a nailed on cert for National shallot champion again I'd say. How the hell does he get them so big? I've grown my best ever at 2" diameter but his dwarf mine. I f*cking hate him!

There weren't many potato entries and those that were there were quite small. The stump carrot class was only reasonable, the skin finish leaving some room for improvement. I'm starting to worry about mine now. I haven't seen a good stump carrot dish anywhere yet.

Has the World gone mad?

My middle daughter announced yesterday that she was looking after a friend's pets whilst he went on holiday. Nothing strange in that I thought until they turned up. A dog? A cat? A hamster? A goldfish? Nope.....a huge bloody great snail and a couple of smaller ones.

I spend half my life trying to kill them in my garden and now my daughter is feeding one in my house! I give up!

I wish I could blame my woes on snails at the moment. Last night I emptied out my Kestrel spuds and they're even more scabby than my Winstons. They look like Keith Richard's cock after a 60 gig European tour. I informed Dave Thornton of this today. After he had stopped laughing he did admit to me that a lot of members in the North Derby DA were reporting the same at a recent meeting so I am in good company. The probable cause he feels is dry compost at tuber initiation, which is when the foliage is about a foot high. Thinking back, that was probably late June for me when it was really hot here in the Midlands. I obviously didn't give the bags enough water.

Not a problem as such but an issue with my tomatoes. A week to go to my first show and i'm struggling to get them ripe despite hanging bananas up. They are starting to go but I won't have a great selection for the first couple of shows. Some of the trusses are so heavy i'm also having to support them with string tied to the horizontal supports to stop the truss breaking off.

One success story this season is my courgettes. I've grown them in cordon fashion, tying to a stout pole as the grow and cutting off the lower foliage as they go yellow. The air circulation helps stop mildew and towards the end of the season the fruits are borne clear of the foliage and easy to pick at the top of the plant. I shall certainly be trying this method again.

Northern rat'oles......I'm saying nowt! LOL

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3102460/Invasion-of-the-giant-rats-in-Bradford.html

Cock a looky at my leeky

Not shown my Pendle leeks on here in a while. I'd bought two batches from different sources and the later purchased batch went to seed in early July leaving me just 12. Of these 2 went to seed in early August and 2 more succumbed to maggots as the base.

On the whole, and considering I haven't really given them any attention, I'm very pleased with the ones I have left although I have suffered quite a bit with leek moth nibbling the flags. Next season I really will have to erect an enviromesh framework over the raised beds. If I can keep the foliage cleaner I reckon I can grow leeks to a pretty high standard. As it is I shall only be exhibiting at local level with leeks this season. Because I have persuaded a few local shows to reduce the leek class from 3 to 2, it means I can enter 3 or 4 shows with quality specimens.

In the Spring I did give the beds a really good sprinkling of blood, fish and bone (half a box per bed) plus an ample scattering of seaweed meal a couple of weeks before planting, remembering that leeks need a good amount of nitrogen early on.

Solving the scab

It's not a widely known fact, but a fact nonetheless, that a highly intelligent mind can sometimes be blind to something that should be bleeding obvious and it needs someone with a far inferior intellect to point it out to you. Indeed, sometimes it merely requires a cerebrum the size of an amoeba to make you aware of it.

Anyway, I digress. Back to veg. I'm indebted to Dan Unsworth for questioning whether the scabby skin finish on my Winston spuds could be down to the fact that I watered them from a tap. Being in a hard water area it could be that this, coupled with the fact that we exhibitors use a lot of calcified seaweed has done for my spuds this season. I know Ian Stocks in Scotland has suffered the same problem and today Dave Thornton emailed me to say every single one of his Winston were scabbed up too (tee hee!). Meanwhile Dan has not watered his Winston as he doesn't have mains water on his allotment and his spuds seem top notch. He was a lucky first timer last season with his Sweet Candles so maybe it's the same this year with his potatoes. Maybe not. Maybe there is something in it.

Scientifically, the lads on the NVS forum say that the scab causing organism is suppressed at a pH of 5.3 and under so if you water with hard water you're possibly going to raise the pH. Also, it can stay in the soil/compost so if you're a cheapskate like me and you re-use the compost you increase the likelihood of getting it next season. Any scab on your seed potatoes should be cut out before planting.

So, a decision has to be made. My wife can stop reading from this bit now. Next season I shall be using seaweed meal instead and getting fresh bags of compost in at huge expense to the Smithyveg household.

Minnie and Ester put on weight.

As I suspected the first pumpkin Dawn that stopped growing had gone soft at the base so I cut her off the middle plant tonight. She is now destined for pumpkin cake. Other small pumpkins have formed on this plant so one of these will be allowed to grow on.


However, the pumpkins on the two other plants, Minnie and Ester, have now overtaken Dawn so tonight I took the opportunity to get them off the ground onto a wooden board with a couple of old compost bags between. This extra padding will stop stones puncturing the flesh and allowing rot to get in. I could just about lift them to do this so not a moment too soon. Whether they will be as big as Heidi last year at 262lbs only time will tell but the daily growth is noticeable. It was this time last year that Heidi really took off so we shall see. I am leaving a couple of grapefruit sized fruits on each plant at any one time to act as 'buffers'.


The idea is that these smaller fruits stop all the sap going into the big fruit, as too much 'pressure' can cause them to burst open. However, you don't want these buffer fruit to grow too big and take too much away from the one you intend to show. I cut these smaller fruits before they get to football size so it's a bit of a balancing act.

Preparation is key

So, the countdown to show season has begun. Many shows have already taken place but the main season is from late August through September. After all your hard work the crunch time will soon be upon you and there's very little you can do now to change the way your stuff is growing. But there are things you can do to change the way it looks on the benches. It's worth taking time tying and trimming your onions. A nice neat raffia tie can make ordinary onions and shallots look better than they are. Acquaint yourself with your show's rules so that you know exactly what is expected and don't make last minute mistakes. If in any doubt ask someone who knows. And remember size really isn't everything. Concentrate on uniformity and quality.

Think about how and when you're going to harvest your stuff. It's no use getting up on show day and doing it then. Potatoes can be washed up to a couple of nights before and stored dry in some kitchen towelling in the dark...say a biscuit tin. I pull my beetroot 2 days before and soak in buckets of water after cleaning. Runner beans can be picked up to 5 or 6 days before once they reach the length you need. Store against a wooden batten in damp cloths in a cool dark place. Carrots and parsnips should be pulled the day before, cleaned and wrapped in cloths (wet for carrots and dry for parsnips) and boxed up ready for loading. On the day of the show you just want to load everything up and go, using tick lists to make sure you have all your show paraphernalia such as Top Tray boards, scissors, dishes of sand for shallots, paper plates and so forth. Sit down with your schedule a week before the show and work out exactly what you will need and get it all together, preferably in a box.

Tonight I visited Burbage Show to see what my fellow local competitors are benching and to catch up with old friends. It was a very good show but I'm not being big headed when I say I would have walked off with a fair few red cards I reckon. However, my new best friend Ian Taylor won best in show with a cracking plate of Winston that put my scabby specimens to shame. One point of concern for me was that I noticed there were quite a few rough specimens of Sweet Candle. Skin finish has never been a problem for me so I hope my own roots don't look like that.

I also had a chat with Mark Roberts who won the collection of 6 at the NVS National in 2007 held at Malvern. It was a superb display that made me goggle-eyed, his celery in particular being truly exceptional. He's had a bad year or two but is hoping to return with a vengeance next season. Nice fella and I hope to be visiting his garden in the Spring to pick up some more top tips.

Footy's back!

Had a visit to the Smithyveg estate Thursday evening from Paul Bastow (no jokes please, the guy's had enough misery in life having a name like that and living in Yorkshire.....see link on right to his blog). It was good to be able to advise a fellow grower with a few tips for his upcoming local show and I'm sure from his undoubted enthusiasm we'll be seeing his name in the cards at a much higher level in the not too distant future. Just a pity he's a Yorkshireman and from a Leeds United supporter's loins but hey ho. The plastic white rose of Yorkshire that he presented me with has come in very useful as a beer mat for my tea mug! Man U have always been on top!

With that in mind the Premiership season starts again today. I'm pretty sure the super reds will triumph again if we can have less injuries than last season and Rooney starts playing properly again. Bit worried about Liverpool now that that Spanish joke has gone and they've made a couple of decent signings in the close season.....a Japanese midfielder called Nikamota and the Italian defender Robatelli.

Bean better

I went to town on my runner bean supports this year, using strong wooden supports and washing line cord to make sure there was no way the fence could collapse as has happened to me the last couple of seasons. However, I only had a dozen or so beans germinate meaning that I have huge gaps in the row and it all looks a bit silly. The variety is Blyton Sabre and I think the problem is that the seeds are just so large they take up so much water and rot before the first leaves and roots can escape the seed casing.


I must say though that I do have some wonderful looking beans, up to 20" long and showing no bean bulge. This weekend I shall take off all beans larger than 2 or 3 inches long. These should then be perfect size for my first shows in a couple of weeks time.

Blyton Sabre isn't commercially available but some seeds were given to me by Les Stothard the raiser of the Blyton Belle Marrow. He went to great pains to tell me not to thin the trusses under any circumstances as the beans will simply be too long if I did that. I can believe it.

The demise of Dawn

Popped up the allotment tonight and the pumpkin I named Dawn appears to have stopped growing which is a shame. However, the good news is that I have even bigger pumpkins now on my other two plants which were only grapefruit size a couple of nights ago. I have named these two Ester (Hall....see BT ads) and Minnie (Driver). They are on much bigger plants so should now have plenty of fuel to grow big very fast.

I got all my Vento onions for the 250g class up a couple of nights ago. A very mixed bag but I managed to salvage a dozen or so at about 7-8oz. After stripping back all split skins you should be left with an unsplit green skin. If it's brown take this skin off also. I have changed my method of storing this year. After washing and drying I am merely wrapping each bulb in a sheet of newspaper rather than leaving them to stand on beds of sawdust. Apparently, a top showman I heard of used to do this so I'm giving it a try.

Hopefully my wife has now lost interest with this post if she started reading it.....I shall be storing them somewhere in the house for more constant temperatures. Last year I had some skin markings on my ripened bulbs which I put down to condensation from being stored in the garage.

Weeeee are the chaaaaampions...........

This was a good weekend. United won a trophy (albeit the minor Community Shield) against Chelsea 3-1 and yesterday I collected the 3 trophies I won at a show back in July. I had left them with the organisers as they keep them to get them engraved. This is always a nice touch I find and it is good to see your name on a piece of silverware. More shows should do this but I guess it can be an unnecessary expense. Still, it's a nice feeling to start cluttering up the trophy shelf again. Liverpool and Arsenal can only dream of that!



I spent most of today pottering and tweaking, or as my wife likes to call it....fannying about. At this time of the season there's not a lot more you can do but keep things ticking over as most of the hard work should have been done. On the NVS website some of the lads are posting photos from their shows so you can get an idea of what quality is going to be put on the benches in the next few weeks.

My Cedrico tomatoes are growing pretty well. Because I wanted to have plenty to choose from at Malvern at the end of September I sowed them later than usual, with the result that I have lots of green fruits and my first shows only 3 weeks away. With this in mind I placed 3 ripe bananas below 3 of the oldest plants in order for the ethylene gases to rise up and encourage the lower fruits to start ripening. This really does work.



The photo below shows how I water them. I water into the inverted plastic bottles that are buried well down between the pots so that the water gets straight to the roots. Feeding is done into the pots where the plants are growing, although I will feed into the pop bottles from now on to keep the soil surface as dry as possible. Tomatoes like it hot and dry and any moisture can cause mildew on the fruits so it's important to water carefully and not splash about.



I'm being told that Sweet Candle is growing amazingly well for just about everyone so the big shows should be quite a sight at the stump carrot section. The foliage on my plants is almost bursting out of the enviromesh, and the shoulders are absolutely huge. If they are the same size all the way down I can't wait to harvest them. I gave the foliage a quick spray with epsom salts which I'm told can enhance the colour of the root. This bed of 24 carrots was grown specifically with Malvern in mind and I am prepared to pull the whole lot to get a set of 3.



Mixed fortunes with my long carrots but this bed has improved dramatically in the last month or so. You never know.....I may yet have some quality specimens under here.

After harvesting my Winston spuds (pile of shite) I filled these pots with the old growing medium and a few added nutrients, and sowed a couple with radishes and 3 with turnips. The radishes will be ready in 4 weeks and will be used as gap fillers in my trugs. The turnips should be ready in 10 weeks or so and can be entered in 'any other veg' classes, useful in later shows. The rest of the pots are spare Kestrel potatoes that should give me some new spuds on Christmas Day.

My celery has had to fend for itself but is doing reasonably well. I intend to put a polythene cover round them soon as I shan't be showing these until October and the cold nights can soon make them look a bit limpid.

In the raised bed I grew my pickling shallots harvested in June, then some lettuce for the July show (I didn't win!) I am now growing these 'Prince' french beans. These should be cropping well in time for Sutton Bonington and may last until Malvern.

The NVS is 50 !

http://www.nvsuk.org.uk/







This year the NVS is celebrating it's 50th year and a special DVD has been produced free to all members. You also get a glossy magazine every quarter which I think is on a par with Kitchen Garden and will only get better. I've already had one letter published and have been told I have another one that will be in the October issue on the subject of starting your own show. I shall also be penning a piece on my little wager with NVS National Secretary Dave Thornton. If I beat him (highly unlikely) it will be a long chapter but if I lose (very likely at this point in time) it will be a paragraph. In code. And invisible ink!



Membership of the NVS costs £14 for individuals but is going up to £17 next year, but I would still thoroughly recommend it. The magazines alone are worth that and you also get the chance to attend talks run by local district associations. With this in mind I'm hoping to form a Leicestershire DA so that I don't have so far to travel to my nearest one. Dave Thornton and the great collection grower John Branham have already offered to do talks if I can get it off the ground. The only problem is that Leicestershire currently only has about 10 members so I shall be trying to recruit new members at the upcoming shows by leaving some posters lying around the benches.



In the meantime try and get along to an NVS show and marvel at the quality of the veg on display. The Southern branch championships held as part of the New Forest Show has already been and gone but there is still the Welsh, the Northern (17th to 19th at Harrogate) and the Midlands (at Malvern). The 'biggie' is the National held at Dundee on the 3rd to the 5th September. There are sure to be some good exhibits this special year and I wish I could attend but alas I am committed to other shows.

Burying my sorrows in Dawn!

I shall try and take my mind off the spud disaster today by popping up the allotment to see how Dawn is getting on. You should start to see daily differences to the size of your pumpkin now.

And if you thought my pumpkin Heidi last year was big (262lbs) take a look at how Simon (cool name!) McMinnis's is getting on by clicking on his grower's diary below. Growing in a polytunnel helps admittedly, but 400+lbs already is still going some.


http://www.bigpumpkins.com/Diary/DiaryView.asp?season=2010&grower=51148&action=L

Disaster!

Never mind the global economic crisis, the floods in Pakistan or Wayne Rooney playing like Simon Smith.....this is a real disaster. I had this afternoon off and as it was raining I decided to empty out my 22 bags of Winston spuds. What a huge disappointment.

As you can see from the photos they have got more scabs on them than a whore's septum. I knew I was in trouble as soon as I emptied the first bag as the compost was just too dry. I barely managed to scrape together a few plates for showing at local level. The better ones came from the few bags that were reasonably moist. Getting a plate good enough to show at Malvern is out of the question. Some of the surface blemishes may rub off but they won't look great, but at local level they may well get me the odd place card if I can clean them up to a respectable level. The problem is they'll need quite a bit of vigorous scrubbing to get them looking half decent which is ok for a one day show. After two days they'll start to resemble a plate of badly bruised bollocks.

I think the problem is that Winston is such a beast of a potato, growing so vigorously and quickly it just literally sucks the moisture out the compost. Coupled with the heat of May and June and lack of any rain to note it has been impossible to get enough water into the bags. It even caused a lot of the tubers to split so we'll have to eat these first.

As usual, I had a few monsters despite leaving every single shoot on the seed tubers.

So, I have a large sack full of spuds for the kitchen. They may not be good enough to show but they'll be perfectly edible. A lot of people reckon Winston is tasteless but I love it roasted. Bloody good job really!

I'm hoping this is purely a problem with this variety. I had the same problem with the Winston that I grew for the early show a few weeks ago. Thankfully, the Kestrel seemed to stand up to the heat and water shortage a lot better so I'm hoping the same is going to be true of the rest of my varieties. I have about 50 bags to harvest in the coming weeks so I hope I haven't wasted all that effort. If so I'm going to be exhausting my vocabulary of swear words and will be looking for some new ones.

Salad days!

Strange things are a-happening! I sowed this batch of Pablo beet with a view to pulling the whole lot up for Malvern, exactly 15 weeks from the show date. However, the majority of them have reached size in a matter of a few short weeks. And this is a variety that I have struggled to get more than golf ball size in the past! The old water tank was filled with sieved compost in order to be able to pull beet with a nice long single tap root. Looks like my local shows are going to have to suffice as I'm sure they won't hold until the end of September.





I've not shown my parsnips on here for a while after growing a little disillusioned with them early on. However, I must say the foliage has really grown well in the last few weeks and I could be in for a few decent sets. I can't see any evidence of yellow spot (canker) so fingers crossed. I had a few stations non-germinate so resowed with another variety. I made sure I marked these ones with a label so I don't get them mixed up when pulling.





And remember the mystery veg correctly guessed by Dan? It has gone absolutely bozwonk. Mexican sour gherkins, mouse melons, sour cucumber.....call them what you will but this bizarre crop is growing out of control and throwing up dozens of tiny little fruits. It's a nice crunchy sour cucumber taste and a welcome change in salads. I should have plenty of these to fill the gaps in my trug displays.

Fiddle-de-di!

Or to put it another way......f************************************ck!

I thought I'd got on top of onion white rot but my 3 biggest onions succumbed to it yesterday. It really is heart breaking and I'm going to have to make some decisions later this year. I think I shall have to resort to growing it in large pots filled with bought-in sterilised top soil and added nutrients. An expensive option but I appear to have little choice. I shall not be exhibiting any big onions this season.

At times like this you need to focus on the good stuff, and my Sweet Candle stumps certainly fall into that category. The photo below doesn't do them justice as they are absolutely huge at the top, several inches around. If they carry their weight all the way down I can't wait to see what they look like. I hope they're not too big although I think they will not swell out much more but will now be starting to form the stump end and will need to make sure they don't force themselves upwards and out of the sand as a result.

I have no way of knowing as yet but I hope to have some decent Winston spuds in the bags. These are in my garage having had the tops cut down a few days ago. I shall be emptying them out and putting them into sets in a week or so. You need to give them at least 7 days for the skins to harden. However, a sneaky fondle deep within the peat of a few bags has told me I have several good sized tubers to look forward to. I just hope I won't suffer from too much scabby skins which rendered my early plantings for the July show at Keyworth unshowable.

Meanwhile the rest of my spuds (Kestrel, Maxine,Blue Belle, Camelot and Harmony) have plenty of fresh looking green tops on them and will be another 2 or 3 weeks before I can get these up in the same manner.