Fruit street hack

I spent a hugely enjoyable day walking around some fields near Kings Lynn today. I was asked to represent the National Vegetable Society at Thompson and Morgan's fruit press day held at R W Walpole's extensive fruit farm. David Allison the editor of the NVS quarterly magazine 'Simply Veg' was unable to attend so he asked me if I could step in.

What I know about fruit you can write on the back of a postcard so it was a bit weird to be amongst some of the foremost horticultural journalists in the country. But it was well worthwhile as I came home with a large doggybag full of fruit bushes and strawberry plants all ready for planting. I have to write a short piece on my visit for the NVS magazine so don't blink or you might well miss that one!

During a very pleasant lunch the person who plonked himself next to me was none other than ex-Gardener's World contributor Bob Flowerdew. It was with some trepidation as I think I've referred to him before on here as that 'organic ponytailed plonker', so I was preparing myself for a bit of a debate and maybe even a brawl. Luckily he doesn't subscribe to smithyveg.com so an incident was averted, but to be fair he was actually quite good fun.

Getting back to the plot tonight I think my tomatoes are virtually at death's door. The other night I thought I might have sussed out what I had done wrong. When I put manure in a trench below where the plants would grow it suddenly occurred to me that I had not watered it all prior to backfilling with the border soil. Consequently I thought perhaps my plants had thus got their roots into manure that was virtually dry and the problem was one of poor conductivity and the plants had become stressed. Therefore I whacked gallons of water into the bottomless pots to try and rectify my schoolboy error. After a couple of days of what I thought was improvement I now have to accept this hasn't worked and the plants will need to come up. I have several cuttings off Dave Thornton in a jar on a windowsill which I will pot up as soon as they have sent out roots. Oh how he loved giving me those. I'll never live it down.

Having said all this, several of you have mailed me saying you appear to be having very similar problems with your Cedrico, growing them in all manner of ways so there doesn't appear to be a common fault that I can put my finger on. Someone said it might be bad seed but I don't think that is the case as I planted out the strongest, healthiest plants I've ever had. Magnesium deficiency was another idea mooted but the leaf colour is nothing like that. I've had it in the past and a spray with epsom salts soon returns the colour to the plants.

It is annoying as I really did think tomatoes presented me with my best chance of getting into the tickets at the National. What's more they are always one of my banker veg for Top Tray collections.

Never mind....my parsnips 'Polar' are suddenly starting to grow well and are probably looking better than they have for a couple of years. I noticed some aphid activity yesterday so be on the lookout and spray as soon as you see them. I gave them a blast of garlic spray which is also a plant invigorator. I may yet be tempted to stage a set of 5 at Llangollen just for the hell of it.

And I put 12" cardboard collars onto my celery plants too. Whilst these are the healthiest, cleanest plants I've ever grown thanks to regular spayings of Decis and garlic spray they are quite small at the base and will need to bulk out a lot. The bottomless pots are really helping to keep the soil moist as the water is concentrated straight at the roots.

And i've been reasonably happy with my first ever attempt at growing 250g onions 'Vento' to maturity in the greenhouse in 7" pots. It ties up a lot of greenhouse space but means I should get a better skin finish and as I used sterilised bagged soil in the mix I won't get the white rot problems that I get in my veg plot soil. Canes and clips keep the foliage upright (I can assure you it's only the camera angle that makes them look as it they're leaning) and the protection of the greenhouse means they don't get buffeted by wind. As soon as these reach 83mm diameter I will get them up. After ripening I know they will be just under 250g in weight at that measurement.