♫Starting a landslide in my ego.....♫

There's very little you can do from now on to affect the colour of card you're going to get (if any) come show day. There are still a few weeks to go now until my main show season although i may well be tempted to have a go at Bakewell on Wednesday depending on how well my grandson Oscar's 6 hour hour cochlear implant operation goes on Tuesday. Otherwise I will have to wait until Llangollen and it now becomes a time of stress and self-doubt not knowing how good your long roots and potatoes are going to turn out. But this is a 'place' we all have to go through in order to get to a better place. It's a bit like Aberdeen in that respect.

There is a lot of growth to be done yet on things like beans and cucumbers. My Carmen cus are starting to stretch out across the greenhouse and are being tied to the horizontal wires above my head as they go.

I've been picking off any fruits forming in the first three feet of main stem, and have now left my first fruit to carry on growing. It's a nice straight looking fruit growing at the right position in the leaf axil so should hang down and grow away unhindered. This will probably be up to size in three weeks but may keep for Llangollen. I have three plants at 3' long and another couple at a foot or so for later shows.

My onions have been a bit of a disaster this season, starting with my non-germination problems in January with Vento. In the end I managed to get some Vento plants and grew some in 7" pots in the greenhouse. The first ones are now approaching 3.25" dia. so I press any split skins down to the compost surface so the first complete skin will ripen in the sun and any ribbing will disappear.

With my large onions in mind for next season I have plans to acquire my dad's 10'x7' greenhouse and have earmarked a spot in the garden to locate it. I will never be able to grow decent onions whilst i'm growing them next to and in amongst other crops so I have decided to dedicate some proper growing space to them. All I have to do now is convince my dad he doesn't need the greenhouse anymore and that he should let me have it!

I have now decided to stop watering the Casablanca potatoes growing in bags in the bed in the foreground as they have been in for 13 weeks. This will ensure that the lenticals on the potatoes will shut down and hopefully I won't get compost trapped in the pores which show up as black dots and are impossible to wash out. In a week I will cut the haulms back and indeed they have already started to go yellow indicating to me that it is time to think about getting them up. I will then cover the bags with polythene to make sure no rain can get at them. I'm a little trepidacious about my spuds as I've had a fiddle in the compost in the bags and have been struggling to locate any decent sized tubers. I just hope they're in there somewhere.

And my Blyton Belle marrows planted against stout supports have now got their roots down and started to grow, meaning I can soon start tying them into the post. I'll let them go up for a couple of feet then let them run horizontally so that the fruits hang down. They were all planted on a good dollop of wet horse manure.

I'm very pleased with how my Evening Star celery are progressing. Although the sticks are still a bit narrow i'm sure they'll start to bulk out soon. The foliage is very large and clean and I have the best part of two months growth until I intend to show any, possibly at Malvern and Harrogate. I sowed these on February 20th and with the amount of feed and water they have had I would have hoped for bulkier plants by now but it has been a case of slow and steady growth so hopefully this will pay off in the end. A former National champion says I have nothing to worry about so that's good enough for me.