The leek that I set away at the end of October for pip production next year has grown away steadily and is now looking like this.
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Seed leek
I shall be fetching my Pendle leeks from Northern chuff chewer Paul Bastow tomorrow as he was good enough to fetch them from Dave Metcalfe for me before Christmas. Hopefully he hasn't killed them out of spite for Manchester United's brilliant holiday form.
The leek that I set away at the end of October for pip production next year has grown away steadily and is now looking like this.
The leek that I set away at the end of October for pip production next year has grown away steadily and is now looking like this.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Abacus adds up
This year i've grown my best ever sprouts, the variety 'Abacus', even managing to win at Derby with them in late October.
They hold firm on the stalks and I was able to harvest a large bowl on Christmas morning, still leaving plenty for several more Winter roasts to come. They also turned out to be the tastiest sprouts i've ever had.
I planted them in firmed soil back in April, having given the ground a nitrogen top dressing a couple of weeks before. The plants were regularly tied to a cane and given 3 or 4 sprays with Decis during the season. I never had any problems with caterpillars as a result. I'll certainly be growing Abacus again this season. Now we've gone past the shortest day I can quite happily say that we are into 'this season'.
They hold firm on the stalks and I was able to harvest a large bowl on Christmas morning, still leaving plenty for several more Winter roasts to come. They also turned out to be the tastiest sprouts i've ever had.
I planted them in firmed soil back in April, having given the ground a nitrogen top dressing a couple of weeks before. The plants were regularly tied to a cane and given 3 or 4 sprays with Decis during the season. I never had any problems with caterpillars as a result. I'll certainly be growing Abacus again this season. Now we've gone past the shortest day I can quite happily say that we are into 'this season'.
Saturday, December 24, 2011
The 2011 BBC* Veg Personality of the Year Awards
* Bullshit Blogger Champion
Yes folks….it’s Christmas Eve and that can only mean one thing to the discerning veg showman, the annual Smithyveg Awards Ceremony, where a coveted gong can set up a grower for everlasting National fame or infamy. So switch off your phones, bolt all the doors and windows, kick off your shoes, pour yourself a stiff one (or handle one if that’s how you roll!) and sit back as I reveal this year’s runners and riders, losers and schmoozers, winners and sinners.
We start off with one of the more prestigious awards of the evening, that of Luckiest Bastard of 2011, and this year it goes to Medwyn who won tomatoes at Llangollen (below). If I hadn’t made such a monumental balls-up with my own plants, setting them away too soon, I WOULD have won this class myself. As it is I shall just have to make do with winning at Malvern next season …..along with peas of course.
Now to Bum of the Year! For most of 2011 it looked as if Pippa Middleton would walk this one as teenage boys across the land did trouser tent impressions at the sight of her perfectly formed posh padding. But then there was a late entry, a different type of ‘bum’ entirely as NVS stalwart John Trim gave this faultless performance of contented sozzlement, pickled as he often is from the inside out !
That’s also because he also wins the award for best pickled onions 2011 (see http://www.smithyveg.blogspot.com/2011/09/problem-solving-on-daily-basis.html). I have now made several bottles to JT’s brilliant recipe. Believe me these are the sweetest tasting pickles you’ll ever throw down your throat and the perfect accompaniment to your Christmas cheese and biscuit board as you browse the 2012 seed catalogues in front of a log fire. Well done John!
The next award is the best joke or wind-up in 2011. I’ve awarded myself a 3rd in this category for a brilliant piece of improvisation at the Edible Garden Show back in March. As part of the team on the NVS stand at Stoneleigh Park I was introducing my colleagues to a potential new member. “This is David Thornton, National Secretary. This is David Allison, National Editor and I’m Simon Smith, National Disgrace.” Everyone laughed nervously, probably because it isn’t far from the truth!!!
I was very definitely the butt of the joke for the 2nd placed winner, David Thornton, when he advised back in early Summer that the yellowing on the tips of my potatoes meant they had wet crack and my spuds would be dead within a fortnight. Distraught I googled ‘wet crack’ at work to see if they could be salvaged. The list of pornographic websites that flashed up on my screen set off that many alarm bells in the IT Dept that they thought a fucking fire engine had gone past. Bastard.
But the ‘winner’ has to be Messrs Stocks/Cameron/Taylor (et al) for their audacious wheeze of getting Medwyn Williams to present me with a wooden spoon at Llangollen for services to gobby non-achievement. Rest assured, there will be justifiable retribution upon the main protagonists later on in this awards ceremony!
Bonus of 2011 was seeing how much my good lady enjoyed being at Llangollen, after dreading it beforehand, thanks mainly to the ladies of the NVS who I have now termed the WAGS! Whilst I was talking veg they were all cackling away ripping their menfolk to bits so my thanks to Linda, Jean, Jacquie, Sarah, Unni and Fiona for making Leesa very welcome. Along with their menfolk you’re friends for life! And that’s as gooey as I’m gonna get!
There were some monumental cock-ups in 2011. Contenders include Paul Bastow for entering 8oz onions in a 250g class and getting NAS’d for being too heavy (tosser), Frank Taylor for failing to put an exhibitor ticket next to an entry (tit), and myself for daring to take on the might of the Scottish Pea Growing Mafiosi (what an arsehole....I’ve agreed to do the same in 2012!). But there really could only be one winner of Biggest Cock-Up 2011, and it goes to David Thornton for travelling all the way to Llangollen and forgetting to take his tomatoes after having droned on to me all the previous week that he thought he was in with a good shout of winning. There are many ways of displaying tomatoes to their utmost effect, but the last time I checked ‘in a box, in a greenhouse, in Derby’ wasn’t one of them! I’m only upset that I couldn’t witness first hand the sight of his face as it dawned on him what he’d done. Apparently it was pure poetry. So well done Dave, 2011 Dipshit of the Year.
In this PC world in which we live in, we have to be ridiculously careful about what we say and how we say it, especially in the work environment. For this reason I spend large parts of my working day with my mouth well and truly shut. That way I don’t get into any trouble, and I can then use my humble blog to rant to my heart’s content. Therefore, my Hero of 2011 is Jeremy Clarkson who suggested in November that striking teachers and civil servants (f***ing paper shufflers) should be lined up and shot. I’m a bit of a do-gooder at heart (no, really!) so I would actually have them ordered to do a proper day’s work first of all to see if they can change their ways. Send them down a pit, or tell them to get up at 3am to do a milk round. Milk some cows at 7am on a Winter’s morning. Put them on the front line in Afghanistan, or stacking shelves for a pittance in Tescos. That should make them realise how overpaid and mollycoddled they really are. And if they didn’t….THEN I’d shoot the twats. In the bollocks and tits first then in the head.
A deserved winner of the Biggest Exaggeration Award is Pretentious Photographist Richard Walton of Surrey who spent all year referring to himself in correspondence to me as Dickie Nine Inch. He reminds me of a pal whose wife actually threw him out for measuring his own cock, unusual but a poor reason to cite in divorce papers I think you’ll agree? For the record it was the roughly same length as her sister’s throat.
The award for Biggest Bastard took a lot of deliberating over, as 2011 was a vintage year for complete tossers, so I decided to award 5 placings.
In 5th position was the referee who sent off a Welsh player in the semi-finals of the Rugby World Cup back in October for a powder puff tackle on one of the French players. I don’t normally follow Wales but as the opponents were the soap dodging garlic eaters and my wife has watered down Welsh blood I found myself touting for them. It was a shocking decision.
4th biggest bastard goes to the holier-than-thou idiot who thought it would be a good idea to prevent me from putting up for election to the ‘board’ of a charity because I swear a bit. Well hush my mouth vicar. Despite his apparent outrage he also showed that he must visit my blog on a regular basis. Perhaps he secretly enjoys it? All he succeeded in doing was preventing that charity from benefitting from my enthusiasm and huge brain full of brilliantly spiffing ideas. So well done on your award and all I’ll say is let he who is without sin……..
In 3rd place are the faceless bueaucrats who have decided that we gardeners are the spawn of Satan and who will be making sure that we can no longer use peat from 2020 in order to protect our peat bogs from extermination. In the course of my countryside ambulations I have often strolled into or across a peat bog (photo of one such below). Believe me, they are the most miserable, slimy, pox infested shat’oles you will ever visit and quite why anyone would ever see fit to protect them is f***ing beyond me. It could be a thriving industry employing hundreds and Mother Nature would soon move into to colonise the nakedness created on the landscape. But no….we are going to have to use composts with roughly the same nutrient content as the dust from a witch’s titsack.
In 2nd place are the increasing amount of toilet scum, very often so-called fellow exhibitors who frequent the end of our shows and who swipe the fruits of our labours. At the Llangollen National last August, Raffles would have been proud of the way one of Andrew Jones’ onions was snaffled as the call came up to collect your veg. There were also instances of stolen veg at Scottish Branch and Harrogate although thankfully Malvern took steps this season and cordoned off the aisles so that only exhibitors could gain access. Way to go. Be warned though…..we’re all getting increasingly pissed off and will be more vigilant from now on. Perpetrators will be named and shamed in future, no matter what your previous standing in the world of showing might be.
But the Bastards of the Year 2011 are the traffic cops who have nothing better to do than point their stupid little Star Wars guns at otherwise law abiding citizens who might have the misfortune to creep above the speed limit in a moment of absent-mindedness, and in particular the officious turd in a van outside Llanberis on April 30th of this year. Presumably he was pissed off at not being at home for the Royal Wedding so thanks for ruining what was otherwise a brilliant walking weekend. Thanks to you I now drive with my eyes on my speedometer again rather than the road ahead. How safe is that? I hope someone buttf*cks you with your own truncheon one day. Still, my license looks very colourful thanks to all the pretty letters and numbers scrawled upon it by various of Her Majesty’s Constabularies.
Next up is the ‘I Wish I’d Grown Those F*ckers’ Award, for the exhibits that I really wished had been mine. In 3rd position are Ian Stocks winning stump carrots at the Llangollen National. I was very proud of mine as I’d staged them and could see they were better than the few sets being staged around me, so I really thought I was in with a shout of a ticket. However, when the Stocksmeister uncovered his it showed me how much further I had to go.
In 2nd place were Ian Simpson’s long carrots as part of his tap root set at Harrogate. The same carrots won the individual class at Malvern a week later.
But the exhibit I really coveted above all else were Eric Craik’s winning set of 5 leeks at Llangollen. The foliage was so lush and green and the shafts were so absolutely gun barrel straight that many folk (including myself) thought they should have got best in show.
Reigning National pea champion Ian Simpson of Scottishland wins ‘Most Gullible Person Award’, narrowly pipping myself over the wet-crack affair! He admitted to me at Llangollen that at one point during the year he was genuinely worried that I was a contender because of all the boasting I was doing about winning peas at the National. He obviously didn’t know me very well, but is now sleeping peacefully each night knowing what he does now, that I am a gobby buffoon who generally talks a good game but who cannot grow exhibition peas to save his life. Or can I????
Last year I introduced the Gary Glitter ‘I love you love, you love me true love, I love you love me love’ award for services to vegetable bum banditry. Last year Paul Bastow and Dan Unsworth won it. Unsurprisingly, they’ve pulled it off for the second year running, although this year they did have some help this time around from their new and incredibly good looking dwarf boyfriend. Thanks for crouching for the photo lads. (Wankers)
To be fair one of my best moments of 2011 was seeing my Northern blogging pals win prizes in the NVS Northern Branch Championships at Harrogate. Dan got a 2nd in the 1.5kg onion class after I’d been on at him for a couple of years to have a go at a higher level. Paul got 4th in the very popular 250g onion class and could possibly have got better, the bizarre lighting at Harrogate doing the judges no favours whatsoever.
I decided to reintroduce the Best Newcomer Award (f*** me a serious award!) after some new names and faces made the breakthrough in 2011. There were many new young exhibitors who had great successes (I use the word ‘young’ in its most outrageously broad sense in some cases) such as Marcus Powell, John Ellis, Darren Blick, Mark Perry, Helen Vincent, Ray Ingram (told you it was broad!) and of course my perennial sparring partners Dan Unsworth and Paul Bastow. But the gong has got to go to Owain Roberts fromCeredigeeon Sheridogbone Cerrydiggeryknob a little village in North Wales who entered his first ever National at Llangollen and won the coloured spuds, beating the usually unbeatable Sherie Plumb. A cracking lad, he also won tickets in the other three spud classes and therefore won the Banksian Medal for most prize money in the process. He only looks as if he’s about 12 so it’s nice to see people so young (and nearly as handsome as me!) coming into the game and helping to ensure the future of our hobby. Follow Owain’s blog (if you can speak Welsh!) on http://garddiadur.blogspot.com/
This leads us into the Most Disappointing Moment of 2011. For most of the year it was the week in June when I was forced to pull up all my tomato plants and start again, and I suddenly realised I had no chance of getting a set of tomatoes benched at the Llangollen National after my success at Malvern the previous year. But this was surpassed when we witnessed the RHS throwing 60% of the exhibits displayed at the Westminster Show into a skip, including large onions and leeks. They reckoned ALL the produce left at the end of the show was given away to charity. It really left a bitter taste in my mouth and their half-hearted attempts at explaining themselves after I complained only compounded my annoyance. All that dedication and hard work thrown into a rubbish bin when 99% of it was still perfectly edible. It narrowly pipped the moment when I realised my suggestion to the NVS to have a 'best body' class at the National wasn't going to be adopted. I feel sure I'd have won although it has been suggested in some quarters that my dibber wasn't long enough.
The next award is the Camera Never Lies award, one that I’ve introduced for the first time this year to prove that not only am I still the best looking NVS male member, but that in general we veg showers weren’t built to be put in front of a lens, and indeed in many instances shouldn’t be allowed out during daylight.
In 3rd position is Gareth Cameron, snapped here having actually won something in the after show raffle at Malvern although you’d never know from the photo. He looks like he might be smiling but having personally witnessed how much he drank that night I can assure you it was wind. Gareth is now doing the after-dinner speaking circuit as Jim Bowen’s stunt double. Currently inseparable from his old mucker Ronnie Jackson I think someone should tell them that you don’t get anything for two in a bed in this game!
In 2nd place is Frank Taylor from Aberdeen. Although he is posing here having won his local DA collection, a magnificent achievement in anyone’s book, he still manages to give a faultless study in abject misery. He looks as if he’s lost a tenner and found an empty haggis bladder.
But the winner is 2011 National stump carrot champion and 2012 pea runner up Ian Stocks. I’m reliably informed that ‘smiling’ is number 653 on his list of things to do each day. Despite being snapped having helped JBA win a gold medal at Gardening Scotland he quite superbly succeeds in replicating the face of a bulldog licking piss off a poked wasp.
Ian Stocks is the night’s second double award winner as he also wins the Anne Frank Award for most abrupt ending to a diary or blog. He started off great with regular entries but there hasn’t been a single posting on his Carrot Grower website since February. I reckon he’s solely to blame for my crap long carrots in 2011 as I was eagerly waiting the next instalments and didn’t know what to do next. Come on Ian….stop coiffuring that beard and get writing!
Best Achievement in 2011 was a difficult one to decide, as there were so many momentous events and milestones during the year. In 4th place are Manchester United who won their 19th League title, surpassing the haul of the Liverscum that had stood since I were but a snip of a lad. I didn’t believe it could happen in my lifetime.
3rd place goes to yours truly for winning the inaugural Bullshit Bloggers Challenge at Harrogate despite months of cruel jibes about my height and quality of my produce. He who laughs last, laughs a long, long time with bragging rights to boot. Looks like it’s going to be a permanent fixture on the Bloggers’ calendar so I look forward to crossing swords with the Northern Knuckle Shufflers for many years to come.
2nd place goes to Ed Milliband, a man so devoid of any discernible personality that he has managed single-handedly to make Labour unelectable even in the worst recession in living memory. Thank f***!
But there could only be one winner. In the 1980’s the record weight for an onion stood at around 5lbs. It rose steadily over the years and stood at 16 ½ lbs in 2005 until in September Peter Glazebrook smashed it by nearly a pound and a half to take it to 17lbs 15 ½ oz.
I visited Peter’s garden in July and you didn’t need to be Einstein to see that he was probably going to do it as I reckon his onions were already then nudging the record. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer bloke and his wife also makes a mean fruit cake.
Talking of fruit cakes, the award for the Sorest Loser in 2011 (and it gives me no great pleasure to make this announcement) has to go to my wife who even now is insisting that my winning fruit cake at Seagrave Show was burnt. Leesa managed only a 3rd despite having the whole day off beforehand, whereas mine was thrown together quite magnificently at 9pm the night before and may or may not have been a little….shall we say ….‘tinted’?
We all need to learn that the judge’s decision is final and it does us no credit whatsoever if we keep moaning about a result that hasn’t gone our way. Dave Thornton ran her close, coming in 2nd AND 3rd for whineing like a trapped cat about his shallots only coming 4th and 3rd at Harrogate and Malvern respectively. Put another record on Dave!
If it’s any consolation to my wife, this year I’ve decided to award the medal for Most Impossible Man to Live With to …..MYSELF. Quite how she puts up with me is anyone’s guess but next year she’ll have been doing it for 25 years so I must have a certain ‘Je ne sais quoi’! I guess living with me is like white water rafting as the Men Behaving Badly would say? And living with a perfectly conditioned natural athlete like this does have its perks. Know what?….I reckon I should have won Bum of the Year!
A new award this year is that of Funniest Man. Many people make me laugh. Ed Milliband makes me laugh a lot when he talks simply because he sounds like Wallace of Wallace and Gromit fame. Dave Thornton has me in stitches when he moans about his shallots not winning at Harrogate, a seemingly annual event these days. And I like listening to the chap I work with on the phone to his many women friends as he juggles his hilarious love life, his mind working overtime as he tries to remember what he’s told each one in the past. But the biggest laughs I had this year were listening to cauliflower king Jim Pearson’s various stories whilst on a boat trip along the Llangollen canal. All the more remarkable as I couldn’t understand a single thing he was saying with his broad Glaswegian accent. I wish I had a photo of him but I couldn't keep the camera still long enough as I was laughing so much!
I’d like to end the Awards on a very positive note with the Most Helpful Man in 2011 or any other year come to mention it. Since I joined the NVS online forum I’ve received an enormous amount of help from one guy in particular, a grower from Scotland called Paul McLeod. Thanks to him I’ve grown my best ever celery and long beet. He always has time for anyone else and is very generous with seeds and other ‘stuff’, is a stalwart of Scottish Branch and in my opinion should be given an NVS Gold Medal never mind a silver medal. Thank you Paul…you’re a star!
So that’s it, 2011 will soon be gone, a momentous year full of drama, intrigue and history changing World events. The year in which Osama Bin Bastard and Colonel Gadaffi Duck finally got their just desserts, when I made the leap to National level showing and passed the NVS Judges Exam, when Medwyn Williams got a lucky break after I stuffed up my tomatoes, a year when the World’s tallest and most miserable leprechaun was found alive and well and dwelling in Yorkshire…
….and when three growers in particular put themselves very much in the frame for a Smithyveg Award EVERY year for many years to come!
So what does 2012 have in store? It promises to be truly momentous. It is of course the year the Olympics will come to Britain, something we won’t see again in our lifetime or our children’s probably. The Queen, God bless her, will be celebrating 60 years on the throne. It will also be the year that a bald, fat English dwarf finally conquers the Scottish pea growers at Malvern.
So all that remains now is for me to wish a very Merry Christmas from all in the Smithyveg household to everyone who has been daft enough to follow this blog during 2011. You lot really need to get out more.
A special thanks to Frank and Jean, Paul B and Linda, Ian S and Linda, Paul W and Linda, Gareth and Jacquie, Dickie four point 2 Inch, Helen V and Geoffo who have been asking after Oscar during his various trials and tribulations. It's been a real tough year for him but he seems to be doing fine now.
Yes folks….it’s Christmas Eve and that can only mean one thing to the discerning veg showman, the annual Smithyveg Awards Ceremony, where a coveted gong can set up a grower for everlasting National fame or infamy. So switch off your phones, bolt all the doors and windows, kick off your shoes, pour yourself a stiff one (or handle one if that’s how you roll!) and sit back as I reveal this year’s runners and riders, losers and schmoozers, winners and sinners.
We start off with one of the more prestigious awards of the evening, that of Luckiest Bastard of 2011, and this year it goes to Medwyn who won tomatoes at Llangollen (below). If I hadn’t made such a monumental balls-up with my own plants, setting them away too soon, I WOULD have won this class myself. As it is I shall just have to make do with winning at Malvern next season …..along with peas of course.
Now to Bum of the Year! For most of 2011 it looked as if Pippa Middleton would walk this one as teenage boys across the land did trouser tent impressions at the sight of her perfectly formed posh padding. But then there was a late entry, a different type of ‘bum’ entirely as NVS stalwart John Trim gave this faultless performance of contented sozzlement, pickled as he often is from the inside out !
That’s also because he also wins the award for best pickled onions 2011 (see http://www.smithyveg.blogspot.com/2011/09/problem-solving-on-daily-basis.html). I have now made several bottles to JT’s brilliant recipe. Believe me these are the sweetest tasting pickles you’ll ever throw down your throat and the perfect accompaniment to your Christmas cheese and biscuit board as you browse the 2012 seed catalogues in front of a log fire. Well done John!
The next award is the best joke or wind-up in 2011. I’ve awarded myself a 3rd in this category for a brilliant piece of improvisation at the Edible Garden Show back in March. As part of the team on the NVS stand at Stoneleigh Park I was introducing my colleagues to a potential new member. “This is David Thornton, National Secretary. This is David Allison, National Editor and I’m Simon Smith, National Disgrace.” Everyone laughed nervously, probably because it isn’t far from the truth!!!
I was very definitely the butt of the joke for the 2nd placed winner, David Thornton, when he advised back in early Summer that the yellowing on the tips of my potatoes meant they had wet crack and my spuds would be dead within a fortnight. Distraught I googled ‘wet crack’ at work to see if they could be salvaged. The list of pornographic websites that flashed up on my screen set off that many alarm bells in the IT Dept that they thought a fucking fire engine had gone past. Bastard.
But the ‘winner’ has to be Messrs Stocks/Cameron/Taylor (et al) for their audacious wheeze of getting Medwyn Williams to present me with a wooden spoon at Llangollen for services to gobby non-achievement. Rest assured, there will be justifiable retribution upon the main protagonists later on in this awards ceremony!
Bonus of 2011 was seeing how much my good lady enjoyed being at Llangollen, after dreading it beforehand, thanks mainly to the ladies of the NVS who I have now termed the WAGS! Whilst I was talking veg they were all cackling away ripping their menfolk to bits so my thanks to Linda, Jean, Jacquie, Sarah, Unni and Fiona for making Leesa very welcome. Along with their menfolk you’re friends for life! And that’s as gooey as I’m gonna get!
There were some monumental cock-ups in 2011. Contenders include Paul Bastow for entering 8oz onions in a 250g class and getting NAS’d for being too heavy (tosser), Frank Taylor for failing to put an exhibitor ticket next to an entry (tit), and myself for daring to take on the might of the Scottish Pea Growing Mafiosi (what an arsehole....I’ve agreed to do the same in 2012!). But there really could only be one winner of Biggest Cock-Up 2011, and it goes to David Thornton for travelling all the way to Llangollen and forgetting to take his tomatoes after having droned on to me all the previous week that he thought he was in with a good shout of winning. There are many ways of displaying tomatoes to their utmost effect, but the last time I checked ‘in a box, in a greenhouse, in Derby’ wasn’t one of them! I’m only upset that I couldn’t witness first hand the sight of his face as it dawned on him what he’d done. Apparently it was pure poetry. So well done Dave, 2011 Dipshit of the Year.
In this PC world in which we live in, we have to be ridiculously careful about what we say and how we say it, especially in the work environment. For this reason I spend large parts of my working day with my mouth well and truly shut. That way I don’t get into any trouble, and I can then use my humble blog to rant to my heart’s content. Therefore, my Hero of 2011 is Jeremy Clarkson who suggested in November that striking teachers and civil servants (f***ing paper shufflers) should be lined up and shot. I’m a bit of a do-gooder at heart (no, really!) so I would actually have them ordered to do a proper day’s work first of all to see if they can change their ways. Send them down a pit, or tell them to get up at 3am to do a milk round. Milk some cows at 7am on a Winter’s morning. Put them on the front line in Afghanistan, or stacking shelves for a pittance in Tescos. That should make them realise how overpaid and mollycoddled they really are. And if they didn’t….THEN I’d shoot the twats. In the bollocks and tits first then in the head.
A deserved winner of the Biggest Exaggeration Award is Pretentious Photographist Richard Walton of Surrey who spent all year referring to himself in correspondence to me as Dickie Nine Inch. He reminds me of a pal whose wife actually threw him out for measuring his own cock, unusual but a poor reason to cite in divorce papers I think you’ll agree? For the record it was the roughly same length as her sister’s throat.
The award for Biggest Bastard took a lot of deliberating over, as 2011 was a vintage year for complete tossers, so I decided to award 5 placings.
In 5th position was the referee who sent off a Welsh player in the semi-finals of the Rugby World Cup back in October for a powder puff tackle on one of the French players. I don’t normally follow Wales but as the opponents were the soap dodging garlic eaters and my wife has watered down Welsh blood I found myself touting for them. It was a shocking decision.
4th biggest bastard goes to the holier-than-thou idiot who thought it would be a good idea to prevent me from putting up for election to the ‘board’ of a charity because I swear a bit. Well hush my mouth vicar. Despite his apparent outrage he also showed that he must visit my blog on a regular basis. Perhaps he secretly enjoys it? All he succeeded in doing was preventing that charity from benefitting from my enthusiasm and huge brain full of brilliantly spiffing ideas. So well done on your award and all I’ll say is let he who is without sin……..
In 3rd place are the faceless bueaucrats who have decided that we gardeners are the spawn of Satan and who will be making sure that we can no longer use peat from 2020 in order to protect our peat bogs from extermination. In the course of my countryside ambulations I have often strolled into or across a peat bog (photo of one such below). Believe me, they are the most miserable, slimy, pox infested shat’oles you will ever visit and quite why anyone would ever see fit to protect them is f***ing beyond me. It could be a thriving industry employing hundreds and Mother Nature would soon move into to colonise the nakedness created on the landscape. But no….we are going to have to use composts with roughly the same nutrient content as the dust from a witch’s titsack.
In 2nd place are the increasing amount of toilet scum, very often so-called fellow exhibitors who frequent the end of our shows and who swipe the fruits of our labours. At the Llangollen National last August, Raffles would have been proud of the way one of Andrew Jones’ onions was snaffled as the call came up to collect your veg. There were also instances of stolen veg at Scottish Branch and Harrogate although thankfully Malvern took steps this season and cordoned off the aisles so that only exhibitors could gain access. Way to go. Be warned though…..we’re all getting increasingly pissed off and will be more vigilant from now on. Perpetrators will be named and shamed in future, no matter what your previous standing in the world of showing might be.
But the Bastards of the Year 2011 are the traffic cops who have nothing better to do than point their stupid little Star Wars guns at otherwise law abiding citizens who might have the misfortune to creep above the speed limit in a moment of absent-mindedness, and in particular the officious turd in a van outside Llanberis on April 30th of this year. Presumably he was pissed off at not being at home for the Royal Wedding so thanks for ruining what was otherwise a brilliant walking weekend. Thanks to you I now drive with my eyes on my speedometer again rather than the road ahead. How safe is that? I hope someone buttf*cks you with your own truncheon one day. Still, my license looks very colourful thanks to all the pretty letters and numbers scrawled upon it by various of Her Majesty’s Constabularies.
Next up is the ‘I Wish I’d Grown Those F*ckers’ Award, for the exhibits that I really wished had been mine. In 3rd position are Ian Stocks winning stump carrots at the Llangollen National. I was very proud of mine as I’d staged them and could see they were better than the few sets being staged around me, so I really thought I was in with a shout of a ticket. However, when the Stocksmeister uncovered his it showed me how much further I had to go.
In 2nd place were Ian Simpson’s long carrots as part of his tap root set at Harrogate. The same carrots won the individual class at Malvern a week later.
But the exhibit I really coveted above all else were Eric Craik’s winning set of 5 leeks at Llangollen. The foliage was so lush and green and the shafts were so absolutely gun barrel straight that many folk (including myself) thought they should have got best in show.
Reigning National pea champion Ian Simpson of Scottishland wins ‘Most Gullible Person Award’, narrowly pipping myself over the wet-crack affair! He admitted to me at Llangollen that at one point during the year he was genuinely worried that I was a contender because of all the boasting I was doing about winning peas at the National. He obviously didn’t know me very well, but is now sleeping peacefully each night knowing what he does now, that I am a gobby buffoon who generally talks a good game but who cannot grow exhibition peas to save his life. Or can I????
Last year I introduced the Gary Glitter ‘I love you love, you love me true love, I love you love me love’ award for services to vegetable bum banditry. Last year Paul Bastow and Dan Unsworth won it. Unsurprisingly, they’ve pulled it off for the second year running, although this year they did have some help this time around from their new and incredibly good looking dwarf boyfriend. Thanks for crouching for the photo lads. (Wankers)
To be fair one of my best moments of 2011 was seeing my Northern blogging pals win prizes in the NVS Northern Branch Championships at Harrogate. Dan got a 2nd in the 1.5kg onion class after I’d been on at him for a couple of years to have a go at a higher level. Paul got 4th in the very popular 250g onion class and could possibly have got better, the bizarre lighting at Harrogate doing the judges no favours whatsoever.
I decided to reintroduce the Best Newcomer Award (f*** me a serious award!) after some new names and faces made the breakthrough in 2011. There were many new young exhibitors who had great successes (I use the word ‘young’ in its most outrageously broad sense in some cases) such as Marcus Powell, John Ellis, Darren Blick, Mark Perry, Helen Vincent, Ray Ingram (told you it was broad!) and of course my perennial sparring partners Dan Unsworth and Paul Bastow. But the gong has got to go to Owain Roberts from
This leads us into the Most Disappointing Moment of 2011. For most of the year it was the week in June when I was forced to pull up all my tomato plants and start again, and I suddenly realised I had no chance of getting a set of tomatoes benched at the Llangollen National after my success at Malvern the previous year. But this was surpassed when we witnessed the RHS throwing 60% of the exhibits displayed at the Westminster Show into a skip, including large onions and leeks. They reckoned ALL the produce left at the end of the show was given away to charity. It really left a bitter taste in my mouth and their half-hearted attempts at explaining themselves after I complained only compounded my annoyance. All that dedication and hard work thrown into a rubbish bin when 99% of it was still perfectly edible. It narrowly pipped the moment when I realised my suggestion to the NVS to have a 'best body' class at the National wasn't going to be adopted. I feel sure I'd have won although it has been suggested in some quarters that my dibber wasn't long enough.
The next award is the Camera Never Lies award, one that I’ve introduced for the first time this year to prove that not only am I still the best looking NVS male member, but that in general we veg showers weren’t built to be put in front of a lens, and indeed in many instances shouldn’t be allowed out during daylight.
In 3rd position is Gareth Cameron, snapped here having actually won something in the after show raffle at Malvern although you’d never know from the photo. He looks like he might be smiling but having personally witnessed how much he drank that night I can assure you it was wind. Gareth is now doing the after-dinner speaking circuit as Jim Bowen’s stunt double. Currently inseparable from his old mucker Ronnie Jackson I think someone should tell them that you don’t get anything for two in a bed in this game!
In 2nd place is Frank Taylor from Aberdeen. Although he is posing here having won his local DA collection, a magnificent achievement in anyone’s book, he still manages to give a faultless study in abject misery. He looks as if he’s lost a tenner and found an empty haggis bladder.
But the winner is 2011 National stump carrot champion and 2012 pea runner up Ian Stocks. I’m reliably informed that ‘smiling’ is number 653 on his list of things to do each day. Despite being snapped having helped JBA win a gold medal at Gardening Scotland he quite superbly succeeds in replicating the face of a bulldog licking piss off a poked wasp.
(That’ll teach you sods for giving me a wooden spoon!!)
Ian Stocks is the night’s second double award winner as he also wins the Anne Frank Award for most abrupt ending to a diary or blog. He started off great with regular entries but there hasn’t been a single posting on his Carrot Grower website since February. I reckon he’s solely to blame for my crap long carrots in 2011 as I was eagerly waiting the next instalments and didn’t know what to do next. Come on Ian….stop coiffuring that beard and get writing!
Best Achievement in 2011 was a difficult one to decide, as there were so many momentous events and milestones during the year. In 4th place are Manchester United who won their 19th League title, surpassing the haul of the Liverscum that had stood since I were but a snip of a lad. I didn’t believe it could happen in my lifetime.
3rd place goes to yours truly for winning the inaugural Bullshit Bloggers Challenge at Harrogate despite months of cruel jibes about my height and quality of my produce. He who laughs last, laughs a long, long time with bragging rights to boot. Looks like it’s going to be a permanent fixture on the Bloggers’ calendar so I look forward to crossing swords with the Northern Knuckle Shufflers for many years to come.
2nd place goes to Ed Milliband, a man so devoid of any discernible personality that he has managed single-handedly to make Labour unelectable even in the worst recession in living memory. Thank f***!
But there could only be one winner. In the 1980’s the record weight for an onion stood at around 5lbs. It rose steadily over the years and stood at 16 ½ lbs in 2005 until in September Peter Glazebrook smashed it by nearly a pound and a half to take it to 17lbs 15 ½ oz.
I visited Peter’s garden in July and you didn’t need to be Einstein to see that he was probably going to do it as I reckon his onions were already then nudging the record. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer bloke and his wife also makes a mean fruit cake.
Talking of fruit cakes, the award for the Sorest Loser in 2011 (and it gives me no great pleasure to make this announcement) has to go to my wife who even now is insisting that my winning fruit cake at Seagrave Show was burnt. Leesa managed only a 3rd despite having the whole day off beforehand, whereas mine was thrown together quite magnificently at 9pm the night before and may or may not have been a little….shall we say ….‘tinted’?
We all need to learn that the judge’s decision is final and it does us no credit whatsoever if we keep moaning about a result that hasn’t gone our way. Dave Thornton ran her close, coming in 2nd AND 3rd for whineing like a trapped cat about his shallots only coming 4th and 3rd at Harrogate and Malvern respectively. Put another record on Dave!
If it’s any consolation to my wife, this year I’ve decided to award the medal for Most Impossible Man to Live With to …..MYSELF. Quite how she puts up with me is anyone’s guess but next year she’ll have been doing it for 25 years so I must have a certain ‘Je ne sais quoi’! I guess living with me is like white water rafting as the Men Behaving Badly would say? And living with a perfectly conditioned natural athlete like this does have its perks. Know what?….I reckon I should have won Bum of the Year!
A new award this year is that of Funniest Man. Many people make me laugh. Ed Milliband makes me laugh a lot when he talks simply because he sounds like Wallace of Wallace and Gromit fame. Dave Thornton has me in stitches when he moans about his shallots not winning at Harrogate, a seemingly annual event these days. And I like listening to the chap I work with on the phone to his many women friends as he juggles his hilarious love life, his mind working overtime as he tries to remember what he’s told each one in the past. But the biggest laughs I had this year were listening to cauliflower king Jim Pearson’s various stories whilst on a boat trip along the Llangollen canal. All the more remarkable as I couldn’t understand a single thing he was saying with his broad Glaswegian accent. I wish I had a photo of him but I couldn't keep the camera still long enough as I was laughing so much!
I’d like to end the Awards on a very positive note with the Most Helpful Man in 2011 or any other year come to mention it. Since I joined the NVS online forum I’ve received an enormous amount of help from one guy in particular, a grower from Scotland called Paul McLeod. Thanks to him I’ve grown my best ever celery and long beet. He always has time for anyone else and is very generous with seeds and other ‘stuff’, is a stalwart of Scottish Branch and in my opinion should be given an NVS Gold Medal never mind a silver medal. Thank you Paul…you’re a star!
So that’s it, 2011 will soon be gone, a momentous year full of drama, intrigue and history changing World events. The year in which Osama Bin Bastard and Colonel Gadaffi Duck finally got their just desserts, when I made the leap to National level showing and passed the NVS Judges Exam, when Medwyn Williams got a lucky break after I stuffed up my tomatoes, a year when the World’s tallest and most miserable leprechaun was found alive and well and dwelling in Yorkshire…
….and when three growers in particular put themselves very much in the frame for a Smithyveg Award EVERY year for many years to come!
So what does 2012 have in store? It promises to be truly momentous. It is of course the year the Olympics will come to Britain, something we won’t see again in our lifetime or our children’s probably. The Queen, God bless her, will be celebrating 60 years on the throne. It will also be the year that a bald, fat English dwarf finally conquers the Scottish pea growers at Malvern.
So all that remains now is for me to wish a very Merry Christmas from all in the Smithyveg household to everyone who has been daft enough to follow this blog during 2011. You lot really need to get out more.
A special thanks to Frank and Jean, Paul B and Linda, Ian S and Linda, Paul W and Linda, Gareth and Jacquie, Dickie four point 2 Inch, Helen V and Geoffo who have been asking after Oscar during his various trials and tribulations. It's been a real tough year for him but he seems to be doing fine now.
That’s all folks!
Friday, December 23, 2011
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Bastard!
When I had a text the other day from Dan asking me for my home address so he could send me my Christmas pressie I was quite excited. What could it be? Onion seeds from his Harrogate 2nd prize winning strain? A special limited edition hand thrown pot from Ingleton Pottery. Or a hand-knitted willy warmer with I LOVE DAN embroidered into it that stretched to I LOVE DANDELION AND BURDOCK when I had an erection? He asked me to promise to post a photo of it on the blog when it came.
It arrived today! C*nt!
It arrived today! C*nt!
I remember this!
How times have changed....This was originally shown on BBC TV back in the 1970's. Ronnie Barker could say all this without a snigger, though God knows after how many takes.
The irony is, BBC received not one complaint.
This is the story of Rindercella and her sugly isters. (written on a faulty typewriter)
Rindercella and her sugly isters lived in a marge lansion. Rindercella worked very hard frubbing sloors, emptying poss pits, and shivelling shot.
At the end of the day, she was knucking fackered. The sugly isters were right bugly astards.. One was called Mary Hinge, and the other was called Betty Swallocks; they were really forrible huckers; they had fetty sweet and fatty swannies.
The sugly isters had tickets to go to the ball, but the cotton runts would not let Rindercella go.
Suddenly there was a bucking fang, and her gairy fodmother appeared. Her name was Shairy Hithole and she was a light rucking fesbian. She turned a pumpkin and six mite wice into a hucking cuge farriage with six dandy ronkeys who had buge hollocks and dig bicks. The gairy fodmother told Rindercella to be back by dimnlight otherwise, there would be a cucking falamity.
At the ball, Rindercella was dancing with the prandsome hince when suddenly the clock struck twelve. "Mist all chucking frighty!!!" said Rindercella, and she ran out tripping barse overollocks, so dropping her slass glipper.
The very next day, the prandsome hince knocked on Rindercella's door and the sugly isters let him in.. Suddenly, Betty Swallocks lifted her leg and let off a fig bart. "Who's fust jarted?" asked the prandsome hince. "Blame that fugly ucker over there!!" said Mary Hinge.
When the stinking brown cloud had lifted, he tried the slass glipper on both the sugly isters without success and their feet stucking funk.
Betty Swallocks was ducking fisgusted and gave the prandsome hince a knack in the kickers.This was not difficult as he had bucking fuge halls and a hig bard on. He tried the slass glipper on Rindercella and it fitted pucking ferfectly.
Rindercella and the prandsome hince were married. The pransome hince lived his life in lucking fuxury, and Rindercella lived hers with a follen swanny!
The irony is, BBC received not one complaint.
This is the story of Rindercella and her sugly isters. (written on a faulty typewriter)
Rindercella and her sugly isters lived in a marge lansion. Rindercella worked very hard frubbing sloors, emptying poss pits, and shivelling shot.
At the end of the day, she was knucking fackered. The sugly isters were right bugly astards.. One was called Mary Hinge, and the other was called Betty Swallocks; they were really forrible huckers; they had fetty sweet and fatty swannies.
The sugly isters had tickets to go to the ball, but the cotton runts would not let Rindercella go.
Suddenly there was a bucking fang, and her gairy fodmother appeared. Her name was Shairy Hithole and she was a light rucking fesbian. She turned a pumpkin and six mite wice into a hucking cuge farriage with six dandy ronkeys who had buge hollocks and dig bicks. The gairy fodmother told Rindercella to be back by dimnlight otherwise, there would be a cucking falamity.
At the ball, Rindercella was dancing with the prandsome hince when suddenly the clock struck twelve. "Mist all chucking frighty!!!" said Rindercella, and she ran out tripping barse overollocks, so dropping her slass glipper.
The very next day, the prandsome hince knocked on Rindercella's door and the sugly isters let him in.. Suddenly, Betty Swallocks lifted her leg and let off a fig bart. "Who's fust jarted?" asked the prandsome hince. "Blame that fugly ucker over there!!" said Mary Hinge.
When the stinking brown cloud had lifted, he tried the slass glipper on both the sugly isters without success and their feet stucking funk.
Betty Swallocks was ducking fisgusted and gave the prandsome hince a knack in the kickers.This was not difficult as he had bucking fuge halls and a hig bard on. He tried the slass glipper on Rindercella and it fitted pucking ferfectly.
Rindercella and the prandsome hince were married. The pransome hince lived his life in lucking fuxury, and Rindercella lived hers with a follen swanny!
Monday, December 19, 2011
Crap Cryptic Christmas Quiz
For those of you not on the NVS forum some idiot came up with this quiz. Whoever it is has a truly brilliant brain far in excess of any pea grower from cooler climes.
There are 19 veg and one herb to find. A word of warning.....some answers are so cringeworthy they'll make you curse!
1)Burnt Roger Federer
2)Regret the hook
3)Hit the map
4)Staffordshire town known for drugs
5)Blooming Lassie
6)Latin dance without the final vowel is a bit dubious
7)My dad's vasectomy
8)Foot blister isn't sour
9)A wall mounted room heater....sort of!
10)I can't believe it aint head tennis
11)Chicken red-carded in farmyard football match for unsporting play
12)Boom boom
13)Jewish teacher is also a miner
14)Rusty Limousine
15)Produces Bond films
16)Garfunkel strangled in the Holy Land
17)Blowing up your family with air
18)Ryan Giggs has got goals for the last 20 years
19)Corroded Fiat panda
20)Wow...the Red Arrows!
There are 19 veg and one herb to find. A word of warning.....some answers are so cringeworthy they'll make you curse!
1)Burnt Roger Federer
2)Regret the hook
3)Hit the map
4)Staffordshire town known for drugs
5)Blooming Lassie
6)Latin dance without the final vowel is a bit dubious
7)My dad's vasectomy
8)Foot blister isn't sour
9)A wall mounted room heater....sort of!
10)I can't believe it aint head tennis
11)Chicken red-carded in farmyard football match for unsporting play
12)Boom boom
13)Jewish teacher is also a miner
14)Rusty Limousine
15)Produces Bond films
16)Garfunkel strangled in the Holy Land
17)Blowing up your family with air
18)Ryan Giggs has got goals for the last 20 years
19)Corroded Fiat panda
20)Wow...the Red Arrows!
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Friday, December 16, 2011
Thursday, December 15, 2011
The not-so-magic powder
I can probably admit to this now but a few years ago myself and a highly respected NVS member who shall remain nameless, were convinced that a certain spud specialist must have been treating his/her show potatoes with some product that made his/her spuds shine out on the show bench. This was because at the end of a three day show his/her spuds looked as bad as, if not worse than everyone else's exhibits. In our infinite wisdom we decided that the product being employed was something called 'Dry White' which is used in fish and chip shops to keep the buckets of chopped up chips nice and white before they're fried. As my boss also owns a chip shop I duly purloined some of said substance and underwent a series of not very scientific tests to see if they made any difference on my own spuds.
I washed and prepped some Winston and Kestrel spuds, doing one of each in the normal way with no treatment (on the right), and one of each was dipped in the Dry White solution overnight (on the left). The spuds in the background were a plate of Kestrel I'd got best in show with the previous weekend. There was no discernible difference as far as I could tell after a day or two, but after three days the Kestrel that had been dipped in the 'magic mix' looked absolutely horrendous, and actually the photo doesn't do justice to just how manky it looked. In fact, coloured spuds in general reacted very badly and some Maxine that I had used in one of my first trugs at Malvern reacted really badly and displayed all manner of strange callouses after a couple of days in the marquee. They were probably burn marks and I was quite glad to get the trug away at the end of the Sunday afternoon as I was quite embarrassed about them.
What this illustrates is that we all seek to find that elusive secret or substance that we are convinced our competitors must know and we don't, when in fact their success is probably just down to hard work, dedication and a bit of extra know-how. I've asked various people about this exhibitor's spuds and at the end of the day I think they just wash the skins to within an inch of their lives at the last possible minute so that when benched they generally look the best. However, that much 'polishing' has to come at a price, and this can show up as a truly shocking skin finish by the end of the second day. If it's a three day show the visiting public will be scratching their heads wondering why there's a red card against a set of green spuds with purple bruising that are barely fit to grace the rubbish bin.
I'm reminded of this because at the weekend I found a jamjar of powder and couldn't remember what it was (always label things!!!) so I popped the lid off and had a sniff to see if I could recognise it. I cannot begin to describe the searing pain that assaulted my nostrils at that moment in time, pain that when straight to the back of my eyelids and then down to my throat so violently it felt like my head was being chopped up with scissors from the inside. It was the Dry White powder of course but something had happened to it in the two years it had been in storage in my garage to make it so unpleasant. Just remember, every time you buy a bag of chips you're eating some of that bloody stuff. And be very careful what you sniff!
Anyway....to cut a long story short, Sherie Plumb is NOT using Dry White or any other foreign substance. And my eyeballs are still f*cking hurting!
I washed and prepped some Winston and Kestrel spuds, doing one of each in the normal way with no treatment (on the right), and one of each was dipped in the Dry White solution overnight (on the left). The spuds in the background were a plate of Kestrel I'd got best in show with the previous weekend. There was no discernible difference as far as I could tell after a day or two, but after three days the Kestrel that had been dipped in the 'magic mix' looked absolutely horrendous, and actually the photo doesn't do justice to just how manky it looked. In fact, coloured spuds in general reacted very badly and some Maxine that I had used in one of my first trugs at Malvern reacted really badly and displayed all manner of strange callouses after a couple of days in the marquee. They were probably burn marks and I was quite glad to get the trug away at the end of the Sunday afternoon as I was quite embarrassed about them.
What this illustrates is that we all seek to find that elusive secret or substance that we are convinced our competitors must know and we don't, when in fact their success is probably just down to hard work, dedication and a bit of extra know-how. I've asked various people about this exhibitor's spuds and at the end of the day I think they just wash the skins to within an inch of their lives at the last possible minute so that when benched they generally look the best. However, that much 'polishing' has to come at a price, and this can show up as a truly shocking skin finish by the end of the second day. If it's a three day show the visiting public will be scratching their heads wondering why there's a red card against a set of green spuds with purple bruising that are barely fit to grace the rubbish bin.
I'm reminded of this because at the weekend I found a jamjar of powder and couldn't remember what it was (always label things!!!) so I popped the lid off and had a sniff to see if I could recognise it. I cannot begin to describe the searing pain that assaulted my nostrils at that moment in time, pain that when straight to the back of my eyelids and then down to my throat so violently it felt like my head was being chopped up with scissors from the inside. It was the Dry White powder of course but something had happened to it in the two years it had been in storage in my garage to make it so unpleasant. Just remember, every time you buy a bag of chips you're eating some of that bloody stuff. And be very careful what you sniff!
Anyway....to cut a long story short, Sherie Plumb is NOT using Dry White or any other foreign substance. And my eyeballs are still f*cking hurting!
Saturday, December 10, 2011
A good job nailed
That's the tomato greenhouse cleared of last year's disaster crop, with the borders being rotavated over and everything given a thorough drenching of Jeyes Fluid inside and out. I'll be giving the soil a good old regular drenching over the Winter with buckets of rainwater as it was a little on the dry side. To be honest I can't remember the last time I watered the plants. Failure to do this leads to a build up of salts which affects the conductivity of the soil and the plants will struggle to take up nutrients next year as a result.
I also need to change a few panes of glass for which i'm tracking a few lots on ebay.
I'm glad I got this job done as it will be a while before I can get back into the garden now as the holiday party and relative visiting season kicks into gear. I'm out with the boys tonight and fully expect to be hugging a bucket and nursing a brainache tomorrow.
I also need to change a few panes of glass for which i'm tracking a few lots on ebay.
I'm glad I got this job done as it will be a while before I can get back into the garden now as the holiday party and relative visiting season kicks into gear. I'm out with the boys tonight and fully expect to be hugging a bucket and nursing a brainache tomorrow.
Thursday, December 08, 2011
EU crisis explained
This arrived to me from Mr Bastow via Dickie Nine Inch. I think it explains the crisis in simple terms.
Tuesday, December 06, 2011
The season has started.....but not in my garden!
As many of you are aware I have always been strong on getting a woman to do something for you if you can get away with it. This is why I get Leesa to construct my trugs and then take the glory if I win. If I don't it's her fault. With this process in mind I've got a fellow NVS member Helen Vincent growing me some onions through the dark winter months whilst I take it easy. When I sat my NVS Judges Exam in October I visited Helen at her large garden in the New Forest and was able to witness her first attempt onions. I believe she won all the local shows she entered with them and i'm not surprised as she would have been in the tickets with them at National level in my opinion. They were a superb, classic flask-shape, beautifully ripened and bang on 1.5kg. For a first attempt they were quite awesome, and as I staged Dave Thornton's onions at Malvern where he got 2nd I know they were way ahead of his. He also got 5th at Llangollen, hence my confidence they'd compete at the National. She grew them in large pots so this is a method I will be employing myself, along with a bit more know-how on compost mixes and nutrients. More on this next year. If I'm going to get a set of three for a large collection I need a bit more than just a 'bit of compost in a pot'!
I need to set up my leek growing chamber in the garage in preparation for the leek seedlings I'll be collecting from Dave Metcalfe before too long. This is nothing more than a few wooden boards, lined with tin foil, with some green builders netting over them. A single grolight is suspended above them, one I bought off the internet several years ago and I have no idea what the make is. I shall post a photo of it all this weekend to show how disgracefully home made it really is. The thing is, after last season I can say with confidence that it actually works for me. This year I staged my leeks at Harrogate, Malvern, Westminster (where I placed 3rd below....got 30 quid for that!) and Derby alongside some of the country's best and I was scoring quite highly and certainly not there just to make up the numbers.
My leek plants are only kept ticking over during Winter so I don't want huge, lush plants that need larger, more elaborate growing chambers and heating systems. I plant out smallish plants but once they get their feet into my fertile raised beds I find they soon catch up and my girth is on a par with most of the growers I've competed against, although of course they have the genetic make up to grow large. I still think this is pretty good when you consider that all my leeks are grown on outdoors, although i'm thinking of putting some form of wind protection up next season as I do tend to get a few ripped flags if there are any high winds which would be pretty disastrous if it was close to showtime. Also, I gave my leeks very little TLC last season, bordering on total neglect at times, and as I want to stage a collection of 6 at Malvern I shall be going to town a lot more with them in 2012.
When I was at the Scottish seminar JBA were showing a bag of this compost specially formulated for growing on onions and leeks and I must admit it was pretty good looking stuff.
If you're thinking of ordering some go onto the JBA website to the following link:
http://www.jbaseedpotatoes.co.uk/maincrop/leek-and-onion-mix-p431.html
There is also a ready mixed potato compost available that will save an awful lot of messing about come Spring time.
http://www.jbaseedpotatoes.co.uk/maincrop/exhibition-potato-compost-p424.html
I need to set up my leek growing chamber in the garage in preparation for the leek seedlings I'll be collecting from Dave Metcalfe before too long. This is nothing more than a few wooden boards, lined with tin foil, with some green builders netting over them. A single grolight is suspended above them, one I bought off the internet several years ago and I have no idea what the make is. I shall post a photo of it all this weekend to show how disgracefully home made it really is. The thing is, after last season I can say with confidence that it actually works for me. This year I staged my leeks at Harrogate, Malvern, Westminster (where I placed 3rd below....got 30 quid for that!) and Derby alongside some of the country's best and I was scoring quite highly and certainly not there just to make up the numbers.
When I was at the Scottish seminar JBA were showing a bag of this compost specially formulated for growing on onions and leeks and I must admit it was pretty good looking stuff.
If you're thinking of ordering some go onto the JBA website to the following link:
http://www.jbaseedpotatoes.co.uk/maincrop/leek-and-onion-mix-p431.html
There is also a ready mixed potato compost available that will save an awful lot of messing about come Spring time.
http://www.jbaseedpotatoes.co.uk/maincrop/exhibition-potato-compost-p424.html
Sunday, December 04, 2011
The season starts here
For the past few years i've regarded this time of year as the start of a new season in order to combat any depression over the shorter days and longer nights. With this in mind I've made a start on tidying up the garden and getting things more organised in the potting shed (my garage....more on this in a later posting).
After a couple of huge bonfires i've disposed of the last of the debris from the two large trees that I had felled a few weeks ago, as well as a load of other rubbish knocking around the garden. I can now see the wood for the trees as it were.
Despite the first frost of the other day the dahlia tubers showed no sign of going to sleep but I got them up anyways, cut the central stalk back to 6" and the tubers are now drying out in the garage, upside down to allow all surplus moisture to drain away. I always take great care with my labelling, tying a label to each tuber with thin gauge wire.
Next weekend I shall turn my attention to getting my tomato greenhouse emptied and thoroughly sterilised with Jeyes Fluid. After this year's tomato fiasco I want to make sure I stage tomatoes at Malvern next year so a scrupulous clean up, inside and out is called for, as I have a little bit of mould on several split fruits. I lost interest in the crop after accepting I would not be staging any tomatoes at Llangollen, otherwise the plants would have been managed a lot better than this.
After a couple of huge bonfires i've disposed of the last of the debris from the two large trees that I had felled a few weeks ago, as well as a load of other rubbish knocking around the garden. I can now see the wood for the trees as it were.
Despite the first frost of the other day the dahlia tubers showed no sign of going to sleep but I got them up anyways, cut the central stalk back to 6" and the tubers are now drying out in the garage, upside down to allow all surplus moisture to drain away. I always take great care with my labelling, tying a label to each tuber with thin gauge wire.
Next weekend I shall turn my attention to getting my tomato greenhouse emptied and thoroughly sterilised with Jeyes Fluid. After this year's tomato fiasco I want to make sure I stage tomatoes at Malvern next year so a scrupulous clean up, inside and out is called for, as I have a little bit of mould on several split fruits. I lost interest in the crop after accepting I would not be staging any tomatoes at Llangollen, otherwise the plants would have been managed a lot better than this.
Friday, December 02, 2011
Botrytis blues
According to numerous reports I've received, up and down the country it has been a really bad year for allium diseases, especially during the late ripening process in the ground or in storage. The main culprit is a fungus called botrytis, although there are several types of botrytis that act in slightly different ways. You may know them commonly as grey mould or neck rot. Botrytis leaf blight, or leaf blast (below) is a less common fungus, and certainly not one I've witnessed personally.
The important things to know are that the spores overwinter on infected garden detritus and leaf tissue. It can also store on dirt piles in storage sheds and there are reports it can survive on seeds for 3 years and then transmit to the emerging seedlings. As well as spreading through the soil via the mycellium, spores can also be spread on the wind so as you can see there is a wide scope for being affected at some point or other, even in greenhouses.
The best time (or worst depending on your viewpoint) for infection is during cool, moist, humid conditions which for us in the UK is during mid to late summer when we're thinking of getting our onions up. With the cool summer we've just had you can see why botrytis infections have gone through the roof this year. The botrytis will enter the onion through the tiniest of wounds in the skin or leaves, or via the succulent necks after the tops have been removed.
There are a number of things we can do to minimise losses apparently. First of all consider immersing your seed in a suitable fungicide prior to sowing. For this purpose I have acquired some Rovral fungicide and will be doing this to my seed next season for the first time. If growing in the greenhouse, make sure everything is scrupulously clean and with this in mind I will be giving everything a good spraying and drenching with Jet 5. I'm reliably informed that another, cheaper product called Red Label will also do a good job. Failing that, try a solution of cheap bleach, and add a dash of bleach to your water butts to kill any pathogens lurking in the water.
During the season make sure that you remove all weeds from the greenhouse borders and edges, or from the outside beds. Any onion debris infected or otherwise should be cleared and disposed off, although not on the compost heap. Do not apply nitrogen in the mid to late season of the onion's growth, as this will delay ripening and increases the likelihood of storage losses as the tissue will be too soft and therefore susceptible. Do not water 2 to 3 weeks before lifting and apply a late spraying of fungicide (Rovral) just before lifting when it's not raining or rain is forecast. When actually lifting take extra special care not to damage the onion's tissue, and consider letting the foliage die back naturally rather than cutting as is advocated by most of us in the showing game these days. I've always cut the tops off which I think should be fine if you're ripening off in the house but if you're leaving them in a garage, shed or other outhouse then it may be advantageous to leave the foliage on to dry out and die back naturally. Cool, dry conditions with good airflow are best for storing onions. Ivor Mace has his in a spare bedroom I believe.
It has been a disastrous year for storing shallots for much the same reason. I know of one grower who binned several hundred shallots that all went rotten with botrytis, and I myself have also had to discard about 60% of my crop. After a few 'giveaways' I only have 15 bulbs left for replanting. Dave Thornton reckons he suffers very few losses and the precaution he takes is to scrape the base plate of the bulb so that it is moist. This is then dipped in a Rovral solution to the recommended manufacturer's rate and he is convinced this is why he gets very few rotten bulbs, so I will be doing that to my remaining shallots this weekend hopefully. Another problem with my staged shallots this year was a marked purple tinge to the ripened skins, which I have also suffered from time to time in the past. DT informs me that this is a fungus called 'psytocyanin' and is the result of fluctuating storage temperatures between night and daytime. As I store mine outside on a wire rack I can see that this would certainly have been the case this season, the night-time temperatures this year in June/July resembling much cooler climes. I shall be taking steps to store them in the greenhouse next season to see if I can improve this, as you will certainly be marked down on condition because of it.
Although leeks are also alliums of course, they do not seem to be affected by botrytis as far as I can tell.
The important things to know are that the spores overwinter on infected garden detritus and leaf tissue. It can also store on dirt piles in storage sheds and there are reports it can survive on seeds for 3 years and then transmit to the emerging seedlings. As well as spreading through the soil via the mycellium, spores can also be spread on the wind so as you can see there is a wide scope for being affected at some point or other, even in greenhouses.
The best time (or worst depending on your viewpoint) for infection is during cool, moist, humid conditions which for us in the UK is during mid to late summer when we're thinking of getting our onions up. With the cool summer we've just had you can see why botrytis infections have gone through the roof this year. The botrytis will enter the onion through the tiniest of wounds in the skin or leaves, or via the succulent necks after the tops have been removed.
There are a number of things we can do to minimise losses apparently. First of all consider immersing your seed in a suitable fungicide prior to sowing. For this purpose I have acquired some Rovral fungicide and will be doing this to my seed next season for the first time. If growing in the greenhouse, make sure everything is scrupulously clean and with this in mind I will be giving everything a good spraying and drenching with Jet 5. I'm reliably informed that another, cheaper product called Red Label will also do a good job. Failing that, try a solution of cheap bleach, and add a dash of bleach to your water butts to kill any pathogens lurking in the water.
During the season make sure that you remove all weeds from the greenhouse borders and edges, or from the outside beds. Any onion debris infected or otherwise should be cleared and disposed off, although not on the compost heap. Do not apply nitrogen in the mid to late season of the onion's growth, as this will delay ripening and increases the likelihood of storage losses as the tissue will be too soft and therefore susceptible. Do not water 2 to 3 weeks before lifting and apply a late spraying of fungicide (Rovral) just before lifting when it's not raining or rain is forecast. When actually lifting take extra special care not to damage the onion's tissue, and consider letting the foliage die back naturally rather than cutting as is advocated by most of us in the showing game these days. I've always cut the tops off which I think should be fine if you're ripening off in the house but if you're leaving them in a garage, shed or other outhouse then it may be advantageous to leave the foliage on to dry out and die back naturally. Cool, dry conditions with good airflow are best for storing onions. Ivor Mace has his in a spare bedroom I believe.
It has been a disastrous year for storing shallots for much the same reason. I know of one grower who binned several hundred shallots that all went rotten with botrytis, and I myself have also had to discard about 60% of my crop. After a few 'giveaways' I only have 15 bulbs left for replanting. Dave Thornton reckons he suffers very few losses and the precaution he takes is to scrape the base plate of the bulb so that it is moist. This is then dipped in a Rovral solution to the recommended manufacturer's rate and he is convinced this is why he gets very few rotten bulbs, so I will be doing that to my remaining shallots this weekend hopefully. Another problem with my staged shallots this year was a marked purple tinge to the ripened skins, which I have also suffered from time to time in the past. DT informs me that this is a fungus called 'psytocyanin' and is the result of fluctuating storage temperatures between night and daytime. As I store mine outside on a wire rack I can see that this would certainly have been the case this season, the night-time temperatures this year in June/July resembling much cooler climes. I shall be taking steps to store them in the greenhouse next season to see if I can improve this, as you will certainly be marked down on condition because of it.
Although leeks are also alliums of course, they do not seem to be affected by botrytis as far as I can tell.
Thursday, December 01, 2011
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Cauli wobbles
Jim Pearson's talk on caulis at the recent Scottish Branch seminar was refreshing in as much he didn't reveal any great secrets to growing good caulis. Jim doesn't have soil analyses done, doesn't spray with any chemicals such as Decis, and doesn't believe in counting back so many days from a show for a sowing date as he believe this makes no odds whatsoever, and makes four sowings per year on 25th April, 5th May, 15th May and 25th May. As Jim has won the National more than anyone else with caulis i'm not going to argue with that. He prepares trenches in the Autumn and lines them with home made compost from his compost bins. Once he runs out of compost he uses kitchen waste, backfills the trenches and by the time Spring comes around everything has rotted down and added fertility and structure to the soil. He also adds a sprinkling of blood, fish and bone a few weeks before planting and a handful of Levington Organic Blend Farmyard Manure. In mid-February he will lime the whole plot and leave for the rain to wash it in.
As i'm not going to grow any white spuds next season I will have spare land enough to get about 4 rows of caulis in, at a 2'x2' spacing. Jim grows 179 caulis and when asked why 179, he replies because he hasn't the room to grow 180! I'm hoping to get my trenches prepared this weekend with a view to allowing the winter frosts (we still haven't had one!) to break everything down in the next few months before planting. One thing I will be doing is cutting some DPC material into 4" squares with a slit to the centre to act as barriers to cabbage root fly. Jim goes one step further, by cutting squares of carpet with another slit which he lays on top of the DPC with the slit at 90 degrees to each other, in effect giving him double the barrier. There is a chunk of leftover carpet in my loft that I have earmarked for this purpose.
There were several other tips which I made a note of and will be divulging next season at the requisite times. I've never managed to stage a good set of caulis and assumed my soil has always been wrong for them, and gave up growing them about 4 years ago, but this is a simplistic view so i'll be giving them another go in 2011. I may need a set of three for my Malvern collection but one thing's for sure.....I won't be anywhere near Jim's winning set from Dundee in 2010.
As i'm not going to grow any white spuds next season I will have spare land enough to get about 4 rows of caulis in, at a 2'x2' spacing. Jim grows 179 caulis and when asked why 179, he replies because he hasn't the room to grow 180! I'm hoping to get my trenches prepared this weekend with a view to allowing the winter frosts (we still haven't had one!) to break everything down in the next few months before planting. One thing I will be doing is cutting some DPC material into 4" squares with a slit to the centre to act as barriers to cabbage root fly. Jim goes one step further, by cutting squares of carpet with another slit which he lays on top of the DPC with the slit at 90 degrees to each other, in effect giving him double the barrier. There is a chunk of leftover carpet in my loft that I have earmarked for this purpose.
There were several other tips which I made a note of and will be divulging next season at the requisite times. I've never managed to stage a good set of caulis and assumed my soil has always been wrong for them, and gave up growing them about 4 years ago, but this is a simplistic view so i'll be giving them another go in 2011. I may need a set of three for my Malvern collection but one thing's for sure.....I won't be anywhere near Jim's winning set from Dundee in 2010.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
The Basil Fawlty of the world of pottery!
Just imagine for a moment, the barrage of swear words that came out of Monsieur Unsworth's mouth when his parents unveiled his costume for their latest market stall.
Would you buy a pot from this man? Would you even approach without bursting into tears? Hilarious or what? This made my weekend!
Would you buy a pot from this man? Would you even approach without bursting into tears? Hilarious or what? This made my weekend!
Mess
There's a magical hour or so, for me around 2pm on the 3rd Saturday in July, when you realise everything is either planted, sown or growing as it should do. When you can wander round the plot, cup of tea in hand, smugness personified. All your tools are where they should be. There are no weeds. Plant supports are in place. Grass borders are edged perfectly. The car is shiny. Even the dog is clean.
I don't know what causes it but a blue touch paper is then lit and your garden goes off like a firework explosion, and you never get it back under control, as Nature goes on an orgy of production. Once show season starts you've got no chance, and it will be several months before you find the secateurs you used for cutting a marrow before the first show. My lawn edging shears usually surface from a pile of potato peat around mid-April and i've got more trowels waiting to be rediscovered that i've buried over the years than B&Q have got on display.
In short my garden is an utter disgrace at this time of year. It does cross my mind to lay the whole lot down to lawn or a top dressing of concrete, but then I can see parsnips, leeks, beetroot, turnips and tomatoes waiting to be picked, with plenty of spuds and onions in store and realise why I do it..
And as we haven't even come close to a frost the dahlias are still blooming. Maybe I'll start the big tidy up next weekend!
I don't know what causes it but a blue touch paper is then lit and your garden goes off like a firework explosion, and you never get it back under control, as Nature goes on an orgy of production. Once show season starts you've got no chance, and it will be several months before you find the secateurs you used for cutting a marrow before the first show. My lawn edging shears usually surface from a pile of potato peat around mid-April and i've got more trowels waiting to be rediscovered that i've buried over the years than B&Q have got on display.
In short my garden is an utter disgrace at this time of year. It does cross my mind to lay the whole lot down to lawn or a top dressing of concrete, but then I can see parsnips, leeks, beetroot, turnips and tomatoes waiting to be picked, with plenty of spuds and onions in store and realise why I do it..
And as we haven't even come close to a frost the dahlias are still blooming. Maybe I'll start the big tidy up next weekend!
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