Ssssh....

Well less than a week since I sowed them and my Cedrico tomato seeds have germinated, along with some cabbages and brussels. I was going to give brassicas a miss this year as they were a bit of a failure again last season. Despite being netted over the cabbage whites still got in and managed to ejaculate their satanic spawn over the plants. This season I have got hold of some Decis insecticide which is a systemic so hopefully the caterpillars won't materialise but i'll also put netting over the plants to stop the butterflies. Last season I experimented with growing the cabbages in large bottomless pots set above the ground in the hope that it would aid air circulation underneath the plants and deter slugs which always seem to decimate the lower leaves that invariably come into contact with the soil surface. All appeared to be going well until mid-July when we went on holiday and other crops were demanding my full attention. The heavy heads also made the pots tilt because the roots obviously hadn't penetrated through the pots into the soil below and so all in all it was a bit of a waste of time and i'm back at square one, although I do think the idea had some merit. I shall try planting direct into the soil this season but through some sort of membrane that keeps the leaves off the soil.

On Tuesday i'm hoping to get up to Cumbria again for a day's walking in the Lake District followed by another talk on long carrots at Westmoreland DA given by Scottish carrot growing legend (his own words) Ian Stocks. Bearing in mind his reign as National pea champion will come to an end at Llangollen he's relying on doing well with his carrots this year so I will be all ears and with notebook in hand. This weekend I shall be finishing the filling of the sand in my long carrot drums so they have time to settle before the mid-April sowing dates. After that I shall turn my attention to setting up a few drums for a crack at some long beet. After taking advice from a scottish grower Paul McLeod these will be filled with a sand and compost mix rather than pure sand. As I was left with a dumpy bag full of compost from my spud bags that I could not re-use for spuds because they were all scabbed up last season, I wll used this compost in my long beet drums. You still have to bore holes and fill it with mix (more on this at the time) but because long beet must be given lots more water you need a growing medium that is a lot less free draining.

In the meantime, NVS legend and National Championship judge John Trim has been giving a masterclass on how he would judge the pea class at Llangollen in August. He should certainly be able to select my winning set with his eyes closed!