♫ Baby slow down, the end is not as fun as the start ♪

For the next few weeks I'm going to be using lines from U2 songs as my post headings, without doubt the World's best ever band when they stick to music and not all that saving Aung San Suu Kyi shite. If she's daft enough to take on a military dictatorship on her tod that's her problem!

But this lyric highlights how you should be feeling about your plot at this stage of the season. Too many of us want the shows to come around when you should be sitting back and reflecting on your hard work and admiring the tapestry you've painted. Show time marks an end to your season and in many ways is quite a sad time, especially if you haven't done as well as you'd hoped. But at the beginning of the season everyone is equal and the bare ground is full of promise and you can imagine your trophy shelves straining under the weight come September. So enjoy the next month or so before the shows start.

Looking around this morning as I walked the plot with cuppa in hand I had to agree with myself that overall my stuff looks better than it ever has done, testament to the advice I get from fellow growers on the NVS forum. I'm struggling to find any blemishes on my Brigadier cabbages but I need them to start hearting up now. I'm hoping to take a pair of these to Malvern with me.

My celery are now on 21" cardboard collars and the individual stalks are now starting to put on a bit of bulk. Again I may well be tempted to stage a brace at Malvern for comparison purposes and then at Westminster a few days later. No-one really grows celery round here for local shows but if you've got a good pair of 'sticks' you can put these in the any other veg class and they'll take a lot of beating.

My roots continue to grow well with amazing tops, from my Sweet Candle stumps that are bursting out of the enviromesh.....

....to my parsnips 'Polar' which I'm getting more and more pleased about. This year i've supported the heavy foliage with pea sticks and string as it can rub against the tops of the drums in high winds and last year several leaves were slice leaves right off, so i'm working on the principal that more leaves = bigger roots.

When Dave T visited me a couple of weeks ago he said he's never seen long beet foliage as big as mine at the end of the season let alone early July. These are actually forcing themselves out of the growing media which i'm told is quite normal for long beet so i'm topping the drums up with compost to stop the shoulders going corky. Again I may be tempted to stage a set of three at Malvern as there are never that many entries and I may have an outside chance of getting a ticket if the bottoms are anywhere near as good as the tops.

My Pendle blanch leeks are now on 19" collars and are by far the best leeks I've ever had at this point in the season. Considering how I struggled to get fairly puny plants through November and December in the coldest weather ever experienced around here in a makeshift growing chamber I reckon i've done bloody well with these. I thought I absolutely had to lose some if not all to going to seed but so far all is good.

So everything in the veg garden is looking pretty good even if I say so myself.

This year I'm even growing a few vegetables in amongst this long border near the house where I grow dahlias and other flowers for various vase classes at local shows. There is sweetcorn 'Miracle' although I've had to spray against rust in the last few days and they do seem to be responding. I also have some butternut squashes trailing along the ground, broad beans, parsley, kohl rabi and swiss chard (burnt Roger Federer).

And this is the view back down the garden. Our cats no longer come into the house since the dog tried to eat them both. And before Bill Oddie starts bleating we do leave the shed open for them at night!

So, when all is good sit back and smell the flowers........such as these lilies, which were supposed to be September flowering. Salesmen eh? Scumbags. I'll end today's post on another U2 lyric. Life should be fragrant, rooftop to the basement.