Making the beds

Before my trip up to dribble at the Lake District and Ian Simpson's fantastic carrots I managed to start emptying my long carrot bed and to put on another layer of scaffold boards. Whilst I won't win any awards for the quality of my carpentry this now gives me a good 5' of growing depth and I also stapled a plastic sheet to the inside of the boards to help prevent the sand from drying out too much. I think the wood may have absorbed some of the moisture in the beds and contributed to my fanging problem last season. I have a wooden framework with enviromesh attached which goes over this bed to deter carrot fly, and indeed last season I didn't suffer a single fly hole on this bed as a result of the frame. I can actually get 24 boreholes in this bed as I believe carrots can stand closer spacing than parsnips what with their foliage being much more loose and 'willowy'.

I also have this makeshift bed with metal drums that I shall have to re-use this season for more long carrots. These will be exposed to the elements for now but I will use a mixture of Phorate granules and garlic sprays and see if these actually work without an enviromesh barrier. Dave Thornton's long carrots are all outdoors with no protection and he did ok last season (winning the National) so it must be possible.

In the next few weeks I will be making a further bed with drums to grow some long beetroot having been supplied with some seed from a Scottish champion. I grew one magnificent specimen of Cheltenham Greentop last season in a drum where i'd had a carrot station not germinate so I want to have a crack and see if I can't get a set of 5 for Llangollen. A tall order for someone who has hardly ever grown long beet but i've been given some tips from Paul McLeod of the NVS so I'll have a go. The variety I'll be growing is Regar. The drums will be filled with a mix of sand/compost/sterilised soil and the boreholes bored into that. This is because long beet need plenty of water and if you grew them in pure sand it would be a lot harder to give them sufficient moisture.

And this weekend I shall be sowing my first batch of Cedrico tomatoes in order to have the fruits ripe in time for Llangollen at the end of August. Last season I geared my toms entirely for Malvern at the end of September which meant I was struggling to get fruits ripe for the late August/early September shows, so they need to go in a month earlier this year. A second batch will be sown mid-March as last year.

You need to make good use of every weekend from now on to get as much preparation done as you possibly can, unless you're retired and can go out onto the plot whenever you can, in which case.....I hate you!