♫ Don't let the bastards grind you down♪

I'm referring of course to the Scottish pea growing clan who have already started their dirty tricks campaign with their comments on my legume growing skills designed to undermine me and make me doubt my own brilliant horticultural expertise. You may well encounter such subterfuge at your own village shows when the local old boy who has won for many years will try and chip away at you with acerbic comments. You have to try and be thick skinned like me. Stupid is another word often used to describe me. When I say 'clan' I mean one bloke in particular who just happens to be current National champion and who Gob Almighty here has challenged to a pea growing duel in the Wild-West suburbs of Llangollen. Next year i'm thinking of challenging Peter Clark on blanch leeks, Graham Watson on long carrots and Sherie Plumb on spuds. I mean....how hard can it be?


During exchanges of banter i've mentioned to Mr. Ian Stocks of Scottishland that I've had a few problems with viruses on my peas. We've had an explosion of aphids down here and peas are one of their favourite dishes. Once they pierce the outer flesh of the pea leaves and start sucking the sap they can pass on all manner of weird foliage distorting viruses and I've had 4 plants out of my 22 that had good green colouring for the bottom 10" or so then went all pallid and sickly looking above that. I've had no alternative but to cut back to below this and try and grow a sideshoot from the green growth, but of course it's thrown out my timings and means I now have only 18 plants from which to get my 12 pods for the National. Still those plants are growing away very strongly and Mr. S tells me they are at height they should be.

He also says that he doesn't get aphid damage in the land of the tartan manskirt so things really are weighted against us southerners as they get mildew a lot later than us also. Talking of mildew, whilst the wife is out tonight I intend boiling up my special mare's tail brew (which has now dried out - see below) and start to spray up from the bottom of my plants in order to try and prevent mildew before it strikes. It means my dad may be seeing more of me as I raid his garden and the railway embankment next to him for shoots of this weed as each stew will only last a couple of weeks before I need to produce some more.

Last night I got my first email blight warning of the season for my area as there'd been a sustained period of warm humid weather (called the Smith Period!) creating the right conditions for the blight spores to start exploding into the atmosphere and dropping onto your spud foliage. Without further ado I mixed up some Dithane and gave all my potato leaves a good spraying which should protect them for the time being. Dithane has been taken off the market so after i've used my remaining two sachets i'll need to find an alternative product for next season and i'm informed that Bayer have produced one called 'Fruit and Veg Disease Control' so I may well look at that one. Remember to spray any outdoor tomatoes as these are in the same plant family as potatoes and will also get hit. Dithane gives the leaves this white powdery appearance.

Talking of tomatoes my replacement Cedrico plants in the greenhouse have really motored since being planted at the end of June so I'm more than confident of having some to defend my Malvern crown at least.

Whatever happens I'm probably the most incompetent tomato grower ever to win that class and I wish I'd bit the bullet earlier and replaced them as soon as I started getting problems. If I had I would probably have been able to get some in time for Llangollen although I did leave one plant that seemed to have recovered from its early chill and I may yet be able to get 4 fruits for the Millenium Class. You live and learn and I'll know not to even consider planting earlier than May Day from now on. This is how my greenhouse looked at the very same stage last year. It's enough to make you consider taking up stamp collecting.

My first sowing of Stenner runner beans are really romping away up my sturdy bean fence, with a second sowing now about a foot high timed for the later shows. After several years of rushed attempts at creating a more robust bean fence that has ultimately blown down or just not been up to the task I created this masterpiece of macklement using drilled wooden beams and steel rods, with inclined posts slotted into steel box section sleaves driven several feet into the ground. If this gets blown over now it will actually take a large chunk of the planet with it.

So proliferous are the flowers on these plants that I need to start looking into how to grow runner beans for show properly. I'm sure Mrs. Plumb and Mr. Maisey cut surplus beans from the trusses so any advice on this subject would be greatly appreciated. What I do know is that the ground needs to be kept moist at all times so each night I'm going up the row and watering these and the peas that are growing a couple of feet away from them. Both are planted into deep fertile soil above a trench of well rotted horse muck.

So the plants are growing, the pests and diseases are multiplying, the showdate is approaching and my esteemed adversaries all have the knowledge and experience. As Bonio Dogbiscuit would say ♫It's not a hiiiiill it's a mountaaaain......♫