♫Holding on to every little thing so tightly.....♫

I enjoy tying shallots. I find it quite therapeutic. A well tied set of shallots can be elevated above the competition. I very often see a set of excellent shallots spoiled by bad tying so I like to take my time doing mine and make sure that they are all tied in exactly the same way, at the same height and cut all the same.

Today I started doing my pickling shallots as the tops have now dried out and you don't want to be leaving this very fiddly job until the last minute. I have a method that involves no knots which is a bit difficult to explain, but I do find it leaves a nice finish. These will stay in place for the entire show season, as I don't take them off and re-tie between shows as is often recommended. I simply don't have the time or inclination.

I need a set of 15 for Llangollen and I'll try and do a couple a day, with some spares which I will then store in boxes of vermiculite. At this point I won't take off the last of the loose skins as I believe these keep the first whole skin below them to continue ripening. To take it all off now will expose an unripe skin that never fully ripens.

This is now my template for all my other picklers, and I will use a digital vernier to check all the others are tied the same.

I have some nice uniform 'exhibition' shallots with nice round profiles. They aren't the biggest you will see but I got mine up in the first week of June rather than get tempted to wait for them to get bigger. I've heard stories of some growers having some humungous shallots which if they stay round would make them phenomenal, but the first NVS show has been and gone and the winning shallots looked to be a similar size to mine so I'll be entering Llangollen confident they won't look out of place.

I've only lost three to going 'pregnant' this year whereas I lost a couple of dozen at least last season so I may well continue to get them up sooner than is recommended in future, i.e. the longest day.

This is how they look when they go double and means they are useless for show, but i'd still have no hesitation about planting these next season. I've taken the loose skins right off this one so you can see what I mean about the bottoms being unripe as yet.

Whilst watering my runner beans this afternoon I noticed this bean fairly low down. It was a good 16" long, ramrod straight and still growing with no sign of bean bulge. I'd love to stage a set at Llangollen but getting 15 beans to match is a real tall order. Still stranger things have happened and runner beans is one of the poorer supported classes in NVS shows mainly because of the amazing beans staged by Sherie Plumb and Andrew Jones who tend to dominate. Someone somewhere has got to come forward and try and give them a challenge.

And in response to the request from Mr S here are my pea plants. I've had a few flowers appear already and was tempted to remove them but the current national champion advised me to leave them be. I'm not very happy with how these plants are looking so I'm a bit dubious about my chances of taking a set to bench at Llangollen. Still, one good thing.....the marestail brew seems to be working as I have no mildew as yet!

My grandson Oscar will be having his cochlear implant operation on Tuesday so as a little treat tonight I let him have some of my Guinness.

He should sleep well tonight!