On Wednesday evening I went to a laugh-a-minute talk at North Derby DA given by John Smiles on the highs and lows of his showing year last season. We all have to accept we'll have many lows during the season and take them in our stride. John certainly looks at life from a 'pint half full' perspective and entertained us for over an hour. North Derby has some excellent speakers coming up including John Branham next month and Sherie Plumb in the autumn.
Thanks to the Royal Wedding we have two long gardening weekends to catch upon all those hundreds of jobs that need doing if we're to be in the cards come show season. Today I managed to get the Mantis on the patch of land i'll be putting my potato bags in the next few weeks. Last weekend I got 70 Sweet Candle stump carrots under the enviromesh covered raised bed.....
....and today I got another 28 in this smaller (but much deeper) bed. These are all with Malvern in mind at the end of September.
Thinking realistically, if I'm to realise my ambition of getting a ticket at National level my best chance will probably be with tomatoes. My first batch of Cedrico have grown very strongly and i'll be looking to get these planted next weekend.
With my various tomato feeds in mind I cut a load of comfrey leaves today and immersed them in water. In a few weeks time I'll drain off the stew and bottle it up ready for use in the summer as a weak potash feed. I shall do the same with some nettle leaves (for nitrogen) later this week.
After a slow start i'm now pleased with my leeks. They are nice and clean and at the size I like to plant out. I'll prepare the bed this week with a good few handfuls of blood, fish and bone plus some seaweed meal and plant them out a couple of weeks later.
The Casablanca spuds that I planted in buckets for a July show are well up. These buckets are now outside but can easily be taken back inside overnight if frost is forecast. Next weekend I hope to be bagging up the Casablanca for the main show season but I really had to get some on the go to see if all the fuss about them is justified, having never grown them before myself.
In the greenhouse these stump rooted carrots 'Caradec' growing in pipes standing on the border soil will soon need thinning. I set 3 stations in each pipe as I felt there was room to support three. I'm hoping these 'Gringo' shaped roots will give me a decent set of four for the Millenium Class at Llangollen. I have 42 to choose from. I have wrapped some silver tin foil around the black pipes to deflect light and hopefully stop them overheating or drying out.
Tomorrow I'm hoping to get a couple of drums of long beet up and running. There are peppers to be pricked out, weeds to be dug up and burned, an enviromesh frame to be made for my long carrots etc etc. I'm a long way off from thinking about my peas for Llangollen but i'm just wondering whether Man Utd's brilliant summer signing and yesterday's match winner Javier Hernandez is a good omen. His nickname is 'Little Pea'. Spooky eh Mr Stocks?
5 comments:
That's not a tomato plant, it's a bloody tomato tree lol
I would kill for one like that
Who do you want me to kill :)
Really needed the extra days to keep up with the jobs, bloody BBQs keep getting in the way though!
put a bit of dryed blood on your trench befour you plant out
Hi Smithy
How high is the Enviro mesh box you have put over your carrots, I want to get on with building one when my mesh arrives.
Dave
Mine are 20" but go higher if you can David. The leaves in mine touch the mesh at the top when fully grown and get a bit constricted.
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