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.