The results are in!

It's that time you've all been waiting for and maybe some have been dreading. The 2010 Smithyveg awards when I take on board all the insults and ridicule that some of you have thrown at me during the year and spit them back out with interest. There are also some serious awards reflecting what has been an excellent year for top class veg when the National Vegetable Society celebrated its 50th anniversary. I've said it before and i'll say it again....if you have any interest in growing veg to show standard or simply just improving your yield then the NVS is a must join society. Forget the National Allotment Society....that's for lefties, hippies and new age lesbian mothers wanting to know how to grow bean shoots, okra and gourds for sticking their josticks into.

Anyway...to business.

The shows at Malvern, Westminster and Derby pitched me against some of the country's best growers and there were some superb dishes to be seen. As usual Sherie Plumb was nearly unbeatable with potatoes but when she is it's very often as a result of poor judging. For that reason she comes third in the 'What the hell were you smoking when you judged that?' award. At Westminster she came second in the white potato class because her spuds were around 12oz each and not the 6-7oz optimum size as suggested by the NVS judges' guide. They were so far better than the second placed set in terms of quality, shape and uniformity it was totally embarrassing.

In 2nd place were Dave Thornton's 8oz onions that won at Westminster. Even he was amazed at the result and it denied a keen husband and wife grower a first red card at such a high level.

The winner this year, but of course, is the blind Uruguayan referee that denied England an equalising goal in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. The ball was so far over the line it was actually in Zimbabwe and had to get it's passport stamped on its way back into the stadium. If he had allowed it England would only have lost 4-2 and we wouldn't have felt nearly so humiliated! Still, it meant we could devote the rest of the year laughing at Andy Murray.

Best newcomer in 2010 has to be Ian Taylor of Nuneaton who had the audacity to beat me for most points at my local show in Seagrave. I say newcomer......he's that old he actually remembers cheering the troops off during the war. The Boer War!

For the next gong i'm going 'Back to The Future' for the Battle of Falkirk award for most scottish bodies lying around in a broken and defeated state! And the winner is 'Llangollen 2011', which will see the emergence of a brilliant and incredibly good-looking English pea grower who will leave the previously dominant scottish contingent crying into their Glenfiddichs!

The next award is the Garry Glitter "I love you love, you love me true love, I love you love me love" award for services to vegetable manlove. In second place this year are Dave Thornton and Medwyn Williams. Dave has appeared in Medwyn's Garden News column more times than every other grower combined, to the extent that I am now convinced that Dave must be Medwyn's secret love child.

But the winners this year by a country mile are Paul Bastow and Dan Unsworth for this unashamedly homo-erotic pose at Ingleton Show. When they die I may have them mounted....or perhaps just holding hands!

The next award is for the biggest 'looooooooser' in 2010. Sadly, perennial winners of this award Liverpool FC can no longer be considered as to become a loser you have to actually compete in the first place. So in 3rd position in 2010 is Gordon Brown who thankfully lost the general election in May but still managed to leave the country in such a financial fanny pickle it will take a generation to rectify. Thanks Gordon!

2nd biggest 'loser' in 2010 is the people of the United States of America, who in 2009 thought they were electing the most radical and forward thinking President ever in Barack Obama. Since his inauguaration he has done, as far as I can tell, absolutely nothing!

But the winner is the great Medwyn Williams, current Chairman of the NVS who came 2nd to me at Malvern in the tomato class. As he presented me with my trophy on that Saturday night in September he whispered "I'd better not bloody read about this on your website!" It was already on!

Never mind Medwyn, you also provided me with the best day out in 2010 when I joined the NVS North East Derby DA (NEDDA) along with Dave Thornton (NODDY) on their trip to see Medwyn's operation in May. It was amazing to see the scale of his greenhouses at Bangor University and his new polytunnel on Anglesey just a few days before he started harvesting everything for his Chelsea Flower Show display, where he won an 11th gold medal as well as best exhibit in the floral marquee. This trip narrowly pipped the Scottish Branch's seminar in November which I hope to be attending regularly from now on. Three excellent lectures plus the chance to buy stuff you can't buy in the garden centres near me made this well worth the 600 mile round trip. I don't get out much!

I always end this awards ceremony by announcing the premier award of the night, that of the most gorgeous creature on Earth. In the past it has been won by my wife in 2008 and last year by a 19 stone pumpkin. This year I have a dilemma as I cannot split two worthy contenders so I have decided to make them both joint winners!!

First up is my first grandchild Oscar born on November 24th. Like his grandad he is just about perfect in every way although we recently found out that he is probably deaf bless him, so he will have a few life obstacles in his way but nothing that cannot be overcome. On the plus side however, he will never know what it's like to have to listen to a woman's nagging!

Then of course there were my 6 winning tomatoes from Malvern in September, six perfect, ruby red orbs that made me into the most unbearably smug man in the Midlands. Ladies and gentlemen, raise your glasses to Oscar and.....errr, my tomatoes that I may or may not have mentioned before, ad infinitum.

There isn't time to go into detail but there were several other minor awards presented tonight, among them the 'Not Bad at Growing Shallots I suppose' award (David Thornton), the Mussolini "I'll support whoever is the biggest" award' (Gareth Cameron) and the 'Most Handsome National Pea judge and the cheque is in the post' award (John Trim). Pot leek grower Bob Plant won the 'Person who sends me the most debauched, sickening and quite frankly outrageous joke texts of a sexual nature' award....please keep them coming Bob. And finally Mark Perry won the title of 'Most haunted look of abject horror' when he realised I had won tomatoes at Malvern and he would have a year of unending smugness to contend with. Your turn next year Mark?

It just remains for me to wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. I'll be back soon enough talking more bollocks and passing on as many tips as I can to help you all gain those elusive red cards at whatever level you choose to show at.

Merry f***ing Christmas everyone!

'Beeting' death once more

Regular readers of my humble blog will recall how I bravely hauled myself from the precipice of certain death in 2009 when I contracted swine flu. Well, i'm fairly sure i've got it again and have spent the last 3 days in bed with nigh-on identical symptons. I didn't think you could get it more than once but i'm told you can but my body will have built up antibodies from the first attack. Doesn't bloody feel like it!!! Good job my body is made from girders!

However, I'm feeling a little better now on what is an important day psychologically. From now the days are getting longer and growers are itching to get things going. However, a look out of the window from my sick bed tells me to forget all about any ideas for planting and sowing. Whilst the country is blanketed in thick snow and places like Heathrow are at a standstill here in Leicestershire we've escaped the recent flurries but the landscape has been bleached white by deep frosts.

At the start of the month I drove up to Nelson in Lancashire to collect 24 'Pendle Improved' blanch leek plants from Dave Metcalfe. These have been put into a hastily erected growing chamber under a grolamp in my garage but because I have been unable to get down to the garage for several days these have dried out and suffered a check. Ho-hum. 30 quid down the drain it would appear.

I am in no rush to get my onions sown in this weather but I shall try and get a sowing done towards the end of the month. I grew some seed supplied by Scottish grower Ian Stocks last year and whilst it was a late February sowing and they therefore didn't attain great size I was please with their shape and shall be having a better 'go' with them this year. I'm never after huge....just a couple of pounds or more with good shape and uniformity.

My shallots will go into 3" pots in early January. Last year I never saw any shoots until mid-February because of freezing weather early in the year so I see no reason sowing on the shortest day as used to be advocated. I had my best ever year for shallots and will be hoping to stage a set at next year's National.

Leaving all this aside, I think i'm better off concentrating on summer crops if i'm to have any chance of getting a ticket at Llangollen. Tomatoes will be a must but I'm always struggling to get enough fruits ripe by early August. It isn't quite as simply as merely sowing early. However, I know if I can get my timings right I'll have a real chance.

I shall also be giving cucumbers a real go with a few changes to my greenhouse set-up in mind after listening to Charlie Maisey a few weeks ago. French beans are another crop I'm sure I could grow to a high standard and despite general disdain from my NVS pals north of the border peas as well. I've often grown good peas in the past but it's rare that you will see them exhibited around my neck of the woods past the middle of August due to mildew attack. Because of the effort involved in growing potatoes to show standard I will probably grow less spuds and give the land over to growing quality peas up 8' canes instead. At this point in time my aim is merely to stage a set that doesn't look out of place in such exalted company. If I didn't genuinely think I could do it I wouldn't bother but thanks to tips picked up at the Scottish Branch seminar lecture by former National Champion Ian Simpson and the not insignificant ridicule coming my way from the scottish tribe that has stirred my determination then who knows? Anything in life is possible. I mean, who'd have thought someone who can't sing would have won X-Factor? Again! (Please tell me Matt Cardle had barbed wire round his bollocks! It's the only thing that can explain how someone can sing that badly....although not why so many of the Nation voted for him!).

Although there isn't a class for globe beetroot at the National I will be looking for a set of 4 for a class known as the Millennium Class. This is a real forward thinking class introduced by the NVS a few years ago (errrr 2000-ish i'm guessing?) requiring 5 plates of veg, namely 4 tomatoes, 4 potatoes, 4 stump carrots, 4 250g onions and 4 globe beet. I'd always had a good record with globe beet locally but when you visit an NVS show you soon see that you're not even in the same ball park. There you will invariably find blemish free roots, with little corkiness around the shoulder and long thin tap roots sometimes 8-12" in length.

I'd heard that several growers will grow globe beet in bore holes much as you would you long carrots and parsnips but to me that seemed a lot of hard work for a 15 pointer 'minor' veg. I needed an easier method to suit my means so last year I experimented with several half barrels and an old galvanised water tank that I filled with sieved compost from my compost heap. To prevent weed seeds coming up from the homemade stuff I put a few inches of bagged compost on top of this. This was only mildly successful as I still got quite a few weeds coming up. A top dressing of high nitrogen fertiliser was applied a week or two before sowing as beet need quite a lot of nitrogen surprisingly.

As you can see the raised growing area makes it easier to tend the plants and to draw compost around the shoulders which helps prevent corkiness. A scattering of slug pellets is a must as I find slugs tend to take a bite out of many roots grown in the ground.

The result for me was my best ever shaped roots and that nice thin tap root the judges seem to go for. If you compare my second prize winning set from Derby below, which were grown in this way....

......to a set grown in the ground (below) it isn't hard to see the difference in quality. Those roots grown in the ground tend to have a little swelling at the top of the tap root and of course it's a lot harder to get a long tap root out of the ground which is invariably baked hard by the end of the summer.

For NVS shows I shall make sure I take more care extracting the beet from the compost to get as long a tap root up as possible by reaching down into the growing media as far as I can and snapping the root off at the very bottom if possible.

Globe beet should reach optimum tennis ball size 15 weeks from sowing by due to the vagaries of the British summer this varied from 7 to 20 weeks for me last season! I had some the size of grapefruits and others like radishes all from the same sowings!!! Therefore it's best to have as many drums and raised beds as you can possibly get your hands on to give you as much choice come show day.

A-Maisey-ing

Went to North Mids DA meeting on Monday night to listen to the great welshman Charlie Maisey give a talk on growing tomatoes and cucumbers for show. Charlie is walking proof that as you get older you can more or less say or do what you like and everyone will laugh but I know he's ruffled a few feathers over the years.

He was well known for pushing the boundaries of the schedule so that he couldn't actually get disqualified but made sure his exhibits were presented at their best. He would display his tomatoes on cloth with curtain rings underneath them whilst everyone else's fruits were rolling around on paper plates. If the schedule doesn't say you can't do it then he couldn't be shown a 'NAS' ticket and he undoubtedly scored a few wins with his trademark presentation as judges came to recognise it.

These days most big NVS shows have specially made boards that you have to display on so it is now far more of an even playing field. However, it has to be said he does grow exceedingly good tomatoes but I was quite happy to realise that I knew 99% of what he had to say. However, one piece of advice that he was quite adamant about and which i'm happy to pass on here, is that if your show is staged in a large marquee rather than a building then do NOT stage your toms overnight. This struck a cord with me as Malvern is obviously held in a huge marquee and I didn't put my set in until just before judging, totally by chance as it was the last thing I got out of the car. Charlie reckons those fruits staged overnight in a marquee (it doesn't happen in buildings) are always marked down on condition as they become softer and the calyces look less fresh. Whether that had a bearing on my win in Malvern I don't know but what I do know is it gives me a pathetic excuse for showing my winning set again here. The tomatoes at Malvern were actually judged by Charlie as well!

Another good tip (and one that I did know) was to ALWAYS water your tomato plants with tepid water. Wherever possible I try and keep a couple of full watering cans in the greenhouse so that when I come to water in the evening they are at the ambient temperature of the greenhouse.

After the break Charlie touched on cucumbers and this was a bit more enlightening for me and will lead to me growing my cuc's a totally different way this year. More on this later in the season but it means I have to build some tables to fit my greenhouse so it's another job on the list. Charles has also won the National with runner beans a record 8 times I believe, at a time when you needed 18 pods rather than the 15 you need now. He gave a packet of his Stenner strain of bean up for the DA raffle, a strain that Sherie Plumb and Andrew Jones now use to win with at National Shows now that Charlie has given up competitive showing. And guess who won said packet of beans? Yup.....you guessed correctly, the old Loughborough gobshite himself. However, as one of the nation's worst runner bean growers I don't think Mrs. Plumb needs worry about me just yet. I can only dream about getting a dish of runner beans like this for now.

The snow has mostly gone from these parts but on the drive back from the DA I just had to pull over and take a photo of the temperature recorded on my car's dash. I know colder temperatures have been recorded in Britain but -13 is something I have never seen before. I just hope a lot of pests and beasties have been severely depleted and that next season will get off to a flyer as a result. Somehow I doubt it. They are more resilient than we think.

New kids on the blog....

What an awful few days for the nation........this snow is ok for kids needing a few days off school but for businesses in the midst of a recession it's the last thing we need. It also aint much fun for BMW drivers, quite possibly the worst car ever made for driving on snow. Don't they have f***ing snow in Germany? It's like trying to get an eel into a hole at times.

Here is a view of our factory yard. Not a great depth of snow but temperatures down to -9 mean the ice is treacherous.











It's obviously a quiet time of the year for me with any seed sowing at least a month away. However, in the next couple of weeks I need to collect my Pendle Improved leeks from Dave Metcalfe and will have to set up some form of growing chamber in my garage. This will also mean making sure my grolamp is working properly. More on that soon. I noticed a couple of days ago that the three long carrots I set down for seed in the greenhouse have started to send up fresh green leaves from the centre in spite of the cold weather, so they appear to be happy where they are.



In the last few days I've been told about three new bloggers and I have no hesitation in mentioning and linking to them here. First off is Darren, an experienced allotment gardener from Wiltshire who has decided to have a go at growing for show next season. His first aim is to try and beat his secretive local allotment champion which I can totally relate to. When I first started there was an abundance of people like this in my area who would not give you the steam off their piss if you asked them. They are the ones who moan about no new blood coming into the 'game' and yet they won't divulge their techniques, mixes and tips for love nor money. When you do start beating them it really winds them up which is huge fun believe me.

http://blickys.blogspot.com/


Adam Greathead is only 20 but has been showing for some time and appears to have a great showing future ahead of him. As I've said to both Darren and Adam you have to make regular postings to get the benefit of your blog in subsequent years so that you can look back and see what you've done well or badly. I always try and put the bad stuff on, not just for my own benefit but to show those less experienced that even those with several years knowledge under their belts can still cock up spectacularly from time to time.

http://babyface-growandshow.blogspot.com/


And finally it gives me great pleasure to advertise that my carrot and pea mentor Ian Stocks from chilly Scotland has also started a blog. If anyone wants to know how to grow long and stump carrots in particular then this will be the blog for you to follow next season. He also knows a thing or two about peas and is current National Champion, and will spend the next few months polishing the trophy in readiness for handing it over to me at Llangollen in August!

http://carrotgrower.blogspot.com/



With more snow forecast there won't be many postings during December so I will spend the next few weeks putting the final touches to my annual Smithyveg awards, to be announced on Christmas Eve amid much fanfare ......well, whilst I'm supping a pint of Newcastle Brown and munching on the wife's mince pies (that one wins best euphemism!). I already know there are one or two of you out there who should be very, very nervous!


In the meantime here is the latest pic of my gorgeous new grandson. I think you'll agree he's looking more and more like me every day!

This damned recession is affecting us all!

"Suicide Bombers to go on Strike"

Muslim suicide bombers in Britain are set to begin a three-day strike on Monday in a dispute over the number of virgins they are entitled to in the afterlife. Emergency talks with Al Qaeda have so far failed to produce an agreement.

The unrest began last Tuesday when Al Qaeda announced that the number of virgins a suicide bomber would receive after his death will be cut by 15% this February, from 72 to only 60. The rationale for the cut was the increase in recent years of the number of suicide bombings and a subsequent shortage of virgins in the afterlife.

The suicide bomber's union, the British Organisation of Occupational Martyrs (BOOM) responded with a statement that this was unacceptable to its members and immediately balloted for strike action.

General Secretary Abdullah Amir told the press, "Our members are literally working themselves to death in the cause of Jihad. We don't ask for much in return, and to be treated like this is like a kick in the teeth."

Speaking from his shed in Tipton in the West Midlands, in which he currently resides, Al Qaeda chief executive Osama bin Laden explained, "We sympathize with our workers concerns, but Al Qaeda is simply not in a position to meet their demands. They are simply not accepting the realities of modern-day Jihad in a competitive marketplace.

"Thanks to Western depravity there is now a chronic shortage of virgins in the afterlife. It's a straight choice between reducing expenditure and laying people off. "I don't like cutting wages but I'd hate to have to tell 3,000 of my staff that they won't be able to blow themselves up."
Spokespersons for the Union in the north east of England, Ireland, Wales and the entire Australian continent & of course United States and Canada stated that the strike would not affect their operations, as "there are no virgins in their areas anyway."

Apparently the drop in the number of suicide bombings has been put down to the emergence of Scottish singing star Susan Boyle - now that Muslims know what an actual virgin looks like they are not so keen on going to paradise.