Problems with wind

In response to a fellow blogger Dickie Nine Inch (he likes those fairground mirrors that distort everything) from Kent who is having trouble keeping his onions erect in high winds, this is a perennial problem and you need to take precautions when growing onions outside if you want to harvest nice symmetrical bulbs that aren't lop-sided. If the neck of the onion is blown over it effectively ceases to grow thereafter, as the soft tissue inside the stem will undoubtedly have been damaged. You have a couple of options but both necessitate supporting your foliage.

This season I've tried growing some of my onions for the 250g class in the greenhouse in pots. This gives you the advantage of not suffering from wind damage at all but I was still finding the weight of the foliage pulls the bulb over to one side and a cane a green clip is required to keep things growing gun-barrel straight upwards. So far I'm having mixed success with this method and need to give it some more thought. My Vento are very slow to start bulbing up and I think the foliage isn't big enough to get them even up to the 250g size. I also tried some red onions this way but they were a total waste of time. The foliage looked good but I ended up with bulbs barely golf ball size. No doubt it's to do with the mix, but as it was a last minute decision as an experiment I filled each pot with equal parts compost, soil and vermiculite with some Vitax Q4 and Nutrimate. I shall have to take some more guidance because as a method it undoubtedly has merit, and has the added advantage of there being no chance I will suffer from white rot as I used was sterilised bagged soil.

But the majority of my onions for the 250g classes are still growing away in a raised bed outside, most of them the mysterious variety 'Frisco' which seems to be doing ok so far. I have had white rot in this bed in the past and despite sterilising with Basamid I have lost a couple already I noticed yesterday. I also support these plants with a small green cane and clip and despite some quite high winds blowing through the Smithyveg plot in recent days they all remain upright and proud, and therefore still growing away!

I had a call last week from the NVS legend of this class, Ron McFarlane who in his day was unbeatable with the variety Toughball. He was very surprised when I told him I had not yet harvested my 250g onions as his had been up a week, but then he is about 150 miles further south-west from me in Wales. It is quite surprising and enlightening to talk to different growers around the country to hear tales of vegetables being way advanced to mine but then I had to remind myself that I have always started my showing from the end of August and very rarely entered shows earlier than that. My timings are all worked out accordingly. The last couple of years I have entered a village show in early July and grown a few crops specifically for it but this has been unusual. As far as i'm concerned my 250g onions have always started to bulb up from around now and I've started harvesting them when they reach size from the end of July and into August. It means the skin finish is not very ripe for the early shows but they soon improve during early to mid-September and I managed a 3rd at Westminster in early October and also at Derby in late October.

I may well be tempted to enter at Bakewell Show on the 4th August but there will be no way I shall have any onions ready for that. If i'm going to start extending my showing season I shall have to think about the way I grow my onions and this can only be improved by giving them better growing conditions at the front end of the season, namely more warmth and light.


It's about this time of the year that everything on the plot looks near enough spot-on. Thanks to my NVS membership I'm able to take advantage of cut price offers on insecticides and fungicides that you simply cannot buy in the garden centres and the foliage on my crops is looking truly exceptional as a result.

Most years at this time I go on holiday and it's therefore about now that things start to get out of hand as I rely on someone else to do watering duties. There really is no substitute for being on hand yourself to spot things as they start to go wrong or better still act to prevent things going wrong. However, this year we're not going away on holiday as instead I've decided to work through my holiday entitlement in order to pay more tax so that the teachers can retire at 55 on a mega-pension bless 'em. The butterflies keep flitting over my brassicas but because they've been sprayed regularly with Decis they really don't seem to like it and i'm struggling to find the usual clusters of eggs under the leaves. I'm only finding the odd single egg instead. Does anyone know how Decis works?


There's been a real explosion of aphids in the country and Leicestershire is no exception. One of my pea plants is a strange mix of clean green growth for the bottom 10" then a mottled, twisty yellow growth above that which I'm assuming is as a result of a virus passed on by aphids sucking the sap.

I've asked for advice on this from National pea champion Ian Stocks whose title I will be taking in a few weeks time but had no reply yet as i'm tempted to cut the virussy bit off and grow a side shoot up the cane from the good green bit. I can only assume he doesn't want to tell me how to beat him so I will act under my own intuition...always a dangerous thing I find.