RIP Davy

Very sorry to hear of the death just now of Davy Jones, the lead singer of the '60's band the Monkees. Their songs seem to be the soundtrack of my childhood. And Daydream Believer should be the theme tune of anyone aspiring to vegetable glory!

BBC....thanks, but no thanks.

From time to time I've been approached via this blog by various sections of the media asking if I'd be interested in participating in tv programmes or pieces in books and newspapers. I've always declined as I've never yet seen a tv programme that doesn't make show growers out to be some half-witted species of sub-human origin. Nor have I ever read any well-balanced literature on the subject.

Today, someone purporting to be from the BBC left a message on here asking if I had any interesting stories to tell, and would I be interested in having a chat? I deleted the message immediately. However, I have since discovered that this person of indeterminate gender has posted on every blog going. After one of you contacted him/her it appears they're only interested in tales of shock and intrigue, sabotage and fisticuffs. In other words nothing of a positive nature whatsoever, and this so-called documentary, docusoap, true-life story or whatever they end up calling it will show some shaven-headed, pot-bellied, tattooed-to-buggery, monosyllabic, north-eastern leek grower with a garden full of pot leeks being guarded by a couple of rottweilers because "las yaer bevore t'show, al may leeks git slit like. Its was hort brekkin man".

When they say they want to make a positive film about the health benefits of growing veg for show, the friendships we make, the rivalry with cameraderie, the charity work a lot of us do, the bringing together of communities....then I might be interested in talking to them. Until then...go fuck yourselves.

Shallot of progress

As I expected my shallots have spurted into growth after the cold snap in January. The foliage is an inch and a half tall and after last year's problems with white tip i've taken the precaution of giving them a spray with Folicur which is a preventative fungicide.

I've got them in bigger pots than usual as I don't want them to become too pot bound before planting out in April. Dave Thornton gets huge shallots and he puts this down to having strong plants to plant out, plants that have carried on growing to give a smooth transition once planted out into fertile soil.

It was once a school of thought that shallots don't need a lot of feed but in truth it's a balancing act with early season nitrogen, which you need to give strong tops to produce large bulbs come harvest time. Dave works 'hydro-complex' into the soil a week or two before planting which gives some nitrogen as well as have high levels of phosphate for root production and potash for ripening later in the season. I cannot source this product so I'll put a double dusting of Q4 down with a bit of dried blood for extra nitrogen.

GREAT NEWS!

Spring has sprung! Noticed several trees starting into blossom on the drive to work this morning.

My ribs that I snapped clean in half are on the mend.

My parsnip drums are filled and good to go.

My first batch of seeds are sown (4 lots of peppers)

I've looked at the remaining fixtures and calculated that Manchester United will win the League by 7 points.

Apparently i'm prone to exaggeration

Setton their way

I must admit i'm enjoying the relaxed start to the season. Because i'm taking a break from showing in late August/early September my first show will probably be Harrogate in mid-September, so i'm in no rush whatsoever to get any seeds sown yet. I do have a few Vento on the go but that's it so far.

After slipping whilst emptying my sand barrels last weekend and bringing my not insubstantial weight to bear on a few ribs against the rim of one of the drums, i've taken it slowly this weekend as i'm still walking around like a pregnant duck. So I got several trays of onion set 'Setton' away, a variety I like and which I bought from JBA Potatoes!

Although these are in the cold greenhouse for now I'll watch the nighttime weather forecast and bring them indoors if low temperatures are predicted. Sets have been 'stopped' once in their life already so any check in growth will definitely cause them to bolt to seed during the season.

They are just in 24 cell-trays in multi-purpose compost and a sprinkle of Q4.

Happy Birthday a la Bastow

By a weird quirk of Nature Saturday marks the birthday of Paul Bastow, exactly a week after that of his Northern bedmate Dan. After the digraceful torrent of abuse I received from last week's attempts to wish Dan a happy birthday I'm still feeling a little raw and very tentative about doing the same this week, but I shall carry on regardless. I think deep down i'm just too nice.

What can I say about Paul that I haven't already said, the man with the face of a Saint.......a Saint Bernard. He's so old he farts dust. He's like a Christmas tie...loud and useless. He has a face for radio, a voice for mime and a body you could grow tomatoes off. As you can see, Paul always looks as if he got dressed in front of an aeroplane propellor.

On Shrove Tuesday in 1960 Paul's parents were asked if they knew any good tossers as there was a shortage for their local pancake race. Therefore they decided to make one of their own, but Paul arrived late, some two weeks after Shrove Tuesday 1961. However, he was so ugly the hospital insisted his incubator had tinted windows. Scientists showed a huge interest in him during his early years as it became apparent he was living proof that evolution can go in reverse.


When he was a young man Paul tried a number of different chat up lines on women with little success. In the end he tried 'do you think this handkerchief smells of chloroform?' Actually, I'm only assuming this, since 'force' is the only reasonable explanation as to how he could have persuaded his lovely wife Linda to marry him. I've met her a few times and she seems very intelligent so there's no way she could possibly have looked across a crowded dance floor one night in the late 70's and thought 'phwoooooar, he's gorgeous!". Let's be honest about it....Paul fell out of the ugly tree and his face hit every branch on the way down.


Paul loves a good night out, and is a frequent visitor to his local YMCA, especially fancy dress nights when he invariably goes dressed as a red indian. Here he is pictured with Dan at the Huddersfield branch of the Blue Oyster Club.

Paul is one of the North's leading suppliers of felching tube, as can be seen from this photo of his van loaded up for another delivery.

Here he is accepting an award from the North West Gay Traders' Association as leading supplier of homo-erotic veg such as this one below.

He recently introduced a new range of veg shaped anal dildos for the discerning gentleman and naughtily uses his blog to advertise how best to wank them off to get them started.

He's so dumb he once backed his loaded van into a car boot sale...and sold his engine. I've tried to help him out with growing advice over the years, and I've done my best but unfortunately Paul couldn't pour water out of a boot with the instructions on the heel. He has an intellect matched only by his garden tools. He still thinks Cheerios are doughnut seeds.

When it comes to show veg Paul has delusions of adequacy. Being a Leeds United fan he has always been used to disappointment. However, Paul has always grown superb spring onions.

He exhibited at Harrogate last season but in truth he is out of his depth in a puddle. If you visit Harrogate this year and you see two men talking and one of them looks bored....Paul is the other one!

I'm not saying that Paul is partial to a drink or three, but on his last birthday, with just one breath, he lit all the candles on his birthday cake!

Paul loves to talk whenever I meet him. In fact every time he opens his mouth he has a wonderful ability to continually confirm what I think of him. If you stand next to him you can actually hear the sea. As you can see from the next photo, these days he has more chins than a Chinese phone book. He's the only man I know whose car seat has stretch marks. In fact he's so big he could sell shade.

If you ask him for a penny for his thoughts you'll get change. Whilst some men drink from the fountain of knowledge, Paul just gargles. And i'm not the only one who finds his veg funny!

Happy Birthday Paul. When I think of all the people I respect the most you're right there......serving them drinks.

Not so steep learning curve

I started growing to show on a local level when I was 30 years old. At that time I was the youngest in my area by about 403 years and I have to admit I came up against a stony wall of silence when I tried finding out information from my fellow competitors, most of them dyed in the wool, grizzled old bastards who wouldn't give you the steam off their piss unless you paid for it. I recall asking one gladioli grower (who actually wrote for Garden News at the time) are you 'Mike Oxsmells' who writes for GN? He looked up at me over his glasses, issued a stout 'yes' and just ignored me. What a twat. On another occasion I enquired as to how a grower had achieved such a clean skin finish on his spuds. 'I grow them in peat' and that was it! I guess they didn't want some smooth-faced upstart coming along and gatecrashing the established order. They had earned their local celebrity and wouldn't give up their little secrets and concoctions to someone who had the audacity to actually ask them for advice! I could easily have given up, especially as I was just picking up a few place cards here and there and I couldn't understand how they could grow the same varieties to a much superior standard than I was achieving. However, I've always been a tenacious little tosspot and I did make friends with one of the top growers in my area, a guy I actually worked with, but even he could be an awkward twat at times and would take great delight in giving me snippets of information and leaving important details out for me to stumble upon myself by trial and error.

But I didn't get downhearted. Mainly because I enjoyed the banter at staging times as established growers tried the usual put-downs on each other (put-downs I now use myself) and I loved the smell of a marquee over newly-cut grass as the exhibits started to roll in. I would clap in admiration at presentation time as the usual suspects went to shake hands with the local dignitary, feigning embarrassment at their achievement. Eventually I started to win a few trophies myself and it was me that became one of the local 'superstars' and I spent the whole afternoon answering questions from members of the public and other growers who were just starting out themselves. (see gorgeous fresh-faced pic of me below from 1998!) I always remembered my early struggles to glean information out of other competitors and would try and answer all questions with as much knowledge as I had to hand at the time, even drawing sketches of oil drums and trying to show how holes are bored in sand etc. I realise now how little I actually knew at that time. Although this is a great hobby, sadly there aren't thousands of people wanting to become the king of their local patch so those that do need to be encouraged and helped along the way as much as possible...at least those that want to learn and will listen!

The point i'm trying to make is that when I started out there was very little written information I could turn to, the internet didn't exist and so the only time I could ask people would be at the actual show when it was invariably too late. If I had a problem I could only wait until showtime and hope that one of my fellow exhibitors would be kind enough to help me out. When I joined the NVS in the mid-90's they had a boring A5 bulletin that was sent to you each quarter and was about as much use as a chocolate teapot. I terminated my membership before the Millennium and carried on blissfully showing at local level, and gradually winning more and more. I always devoured each weekly Medwyn column in GN but i've said it before and I'd say it to his face, sometimes he doesn't quite explain things as clearly as I think he should for beginners to grasp, although of course he only has a limited amount of space and has to appeal to the more experienced growers also.

After yearly visits to Malvern I was still acutely aware that I still had huge strides to make and eventually I re-joined the NVS in 2003, but it wasn't until I joined their online forum in 2007 that I really started to motor in terms of the quality of produce I was benching. When I look back at some of my exhibits from just 3 or 4 years ago they don't come close to the stuff I grew last season, which in itself still has some way to go before I can start claiming tickets at the highest level, but the point is I AM improving little by little which is all you can really expect to do. I can log on to the NVS forum if I've experienced a new problem and get advice within a few hours and start solving the problem more or less immediately rather than having to wait until showtime as I did in the old days.

I was one of the first bloggers but now there are many of us doing it and there are lots of tips and snippets of information to be picked up from reading other people's experiences. This has lead to several growers fast-tracking their learning curve and I think we'll be seeing quite a few new faces winning at the highest level in the next few seasons, as illustrated by Owain Roberts winning the coloured spud class at last year's Llangollen National. Power to the people and the new technology at our fingertips but there's nothing like first hand advice so don't be afraid to ask at whatever show you are at. The NVS is all about education and helping growers achieve the most out of their produce so if you see a top NVS grower at a show approach him/her and ask them a question and I bet you the majority of them will be more than willing to give you their time. Those that don't.....wankers.

Sunday workout

At last, a cracking weekend weatherwise meant I could complete the long overdue task of emptying out and refilling the parsnip drums.

This was not before I'd made a robust 'spacer' to raise the drums up by an extra 6" on previous years. Thanks to Health & Safety a local building firm has to bin any scaffold planks that are remotely sub-standard so a friend who works for them secured me several lengths. After cutting to size I wrapped each one in old compost bags that were stapled to it, then nailed them together and mounted the drums on them, the spacer planks resting across the metal frame beneath. These should last me several years now they're protected from the elements, and I have a minimum 5' depth of potential root length.

It really does stretch your stomach muscles emptying out each drum after a Winter of excess, the sand being put into old builder's dumpy bags before the drums are refilled from those bags once more. I use a metal scoop that I had made especially for this task many years ago, and it certainly helps get the sand out of the lower reaches of the drum. I only have 7 drums, which is more than enough for me. I dread to think of the labour involved by those growers who have many more such drums to fill. They must be mad.

I left the sand stacked well above the top of the drum as you can see, but believe me these will need topping up within a couple of weeks. I intend to do my mixes in early March, in order to have the holes bored by mid-March. Only at this point will I set some seed indoors on damp tissue for chitting.

Time now to soak my aging muscles in a hot bath before a few bevvies whilst watching Top Gear. A perfect end to a productive day.

Happy Birthday Dan the Man

I thought I'd mark a special occasion that will occur tomorrow, that of the birthday of one of my blogging buddies and who i'm happy to call a friend. Right...that's the niceties out of the way, let's start the pisstaking!


What can I say about Dan that I haven't already said? Dan Unsworth is 49 tomorrow, and if he isn't, then he sure fucking looks it. He had a troubled upbringing in life. The day he was born his parents ran away from home. I wouldn't say Dan is unique exactly....I've seen plenty of people like him before but I did have to pay an admission fee. He's one of those rare men who can light up a room.......as soon as he walks out of it. He's the kind of man you'd want to use as a blueprint....to build an idiot! Actually he isn't stupid...he's just possessed by a retarded ghost. He also has a physics degree, which I think you'll agree is absolutely essential for throwing clay pots all day. He is listed in Who's Who as What the Fuck?

A little known fact is that Dan was actually first choice for the Patrick Swayze role in Ghost.

That was until Demi Moore saw a photo of him and told the Director to fuck off.

But he stuck at the acting profession for a while and made his fortune in the 80's with his role as the honey monster in the sugar poofs adverts, the producers preferring him to established actors of the time as they didn't have to spend money on expensive make-up.

After an unfortunate accident in the 90's involving electricity, a swimming pool and a faulty sex toy Dan had to have a brain transplant. Unfortunately the brain rejected him, so the doctors advised him to pursue a hobby that any twat can do. He chose growing exhibition vegetables and started his very prolific allotment blog, writing under the assumption that if he keeps talking one day he'll say something intelligent. In 2010 Dan grew this near 10lb onion. To avoid confusion Dan is the one wearing a watch.

A deeply thoughtful man, Dan has always sought to avoid the mistakes of his parents by using birth control. He has many friends.

Although they only got back in touch in recent years, Dan and Paul Bastow actually went to the same school together as this photo shows.

In his local area he has a bit of a reputation with the females and is known as The Ladykiller. They take one look at him and die of shock! His favourite chat up line is 'why don't you slip into something more comfortable?' They always do....a coma!

He once answered an ad on a Dating site from a woman who said she had a huge pussy.

He wasn't falling for that again, so his following date was with a woman who said she had a very wet pussy.

Apart from growing onions he has other interests and hobbies, including coarse fishing. To avoid confusion Dan is the one with the hat.

He dreams of going to America where the fishing is a different class altogether.

He also likes a bit of proper photography and recently snapped this superb pic of a robin outside his bathroom window.

Quite what he did to produce the startled look on the robin's face doesn't bear thinking about but it just goes to show that Dan has a huge interest in Nature ......in spite of what it did to him.

In recent years Dan has tried to grow some monster veg and last season managed to cultivate this huge marrow. To avoid confusion Dan is not the green one. (Although people who meet him often end up green!)

Recently he made history when Facebook went to court for the first time ever to try to force him to withdraw his page on the grounds his face was frightening mass murderers. A little unfair, as when he walks into a room people suddenly feel the urge to clap....their hands over their eyes. No-one messes with Dan. At well over 6' tall he has the perfect weapon against muggers.....his face!

After a spate of late night flashing incidents the local council recently insisted that Dan be securely boxed up each night.

Anyways, I'm sure all of you will join me in wishing Dan a happy birthday for tomorrow and I hope you like the knuckle protectors I've sent you. They should help protect them when they drag on the floor.

(I hope this teaches anyone never to put embarrasing photos on Facebook, as I WILL steal them)

Edible Garden Show 2012

You may be interested in the following event at Stoneleigh Park near Coventry running from Friday 16th to Sunday 18th March.

http://www.theediblegardenshow.co.uk/

It's a bit like Gardeners' World Live but totally dedicated to edible crops and livestock.

I will be manning the National Vegetable Society stand on Saturday and Sunday with the NVS' pet babboon David Thornton. Hope to see some of you there.

So close!

So there I was last night, tracking a second hand (cement) compost and fertiliser mixer on Ebay. 30 seconds to go and it was only up to 36 quid, so I prepared my £40.01 offer (tactics!) and counted to 20 before I clicked 'bid'. Bloody thing went up to 70 quid in a split-nanosecond. How the fuck do they do that?

England expects

For once southern and middle England are getting the worst of the British weather. On the day Scotland finally shook off their allergy to the try line, I attempted to re-commence the sand emptying for my parsnip drums yesterday but was met with a loud clang as my metal scoop met rock-solid frozen resistance. Therefore I will just have to hope that a thaw comes soon and I can get the task completed this coming weekend as I really need to give the sand time to settle and level. As I mentioned in a recent post it will sink over a couple of weeks and this photo shows just how much, as the sand in the one drum I did manage to get completed a couple of weeks ago has sunk this much from actually being heaped above the top of the drum. I need to get the rest done quickly so that I can top them up before hole boring and seed sowing in March.

I have made some deep wooden 'spacers' which I have lined in heavy duty plastic (old compost bags turned inside out) and which should therefore last several years. Last year I had shallower spacers which did the job but they developed some strange fungi growing out of them towards the end of the season as the rotting process commenced. This way I've given myself an extra few inches of potential root length and taken steps to keep them dry and stop this happening.

My shallots are at virtual standstill in the current big freeze, being as they are in a cold greenhouse with absolutely no heating. But shallots really don't mind and as soon as we get a thaw and some sunshine they'll be away. Although there is very little in the way of green tops I know they are all well rooted as a tug on the necks of some meets firm resistance.

And finally my thanks to Harry Redknapp who has given me the name of a very good lawyer in my fight against HMRC. To show that every cloud has a silver lining Harry is now favourite to become the new England footy boss although apparently Gary Glitter has now thrown his hat into the ring after finding out that two of England's players are called Young and Bent. In a surprise move Dan Unsworth and Paul Bastow are also considering applying by forming a coalition of football bosses along with their northern pals Ben Twilly, Len Tover and Doug McCockin.

Jet 5

If it can do this to my thumb and several fingers imagine what it'll do to any canker or lurking beasties in the sand drums. Fucking hurts!

There's one Colborn every minute!

This bloke is really starting to annoy me now. Not only does he have a really stupid purple beard but a few weeks ago he gave advice in the Q&A section of Garden News that carrot fly cannot go above 2 foot off the ground. I wish it wasn't as it would save lots of hard work but this advice is totally, completely and utterly WRONG. Anyone who grows carrots in drums up to 5' or more off the ground knows this is untrue. I have suffered damage from these little bastards before, sometimes quite severe infestations and now I take steps accordingly, covering them with elaborate eniromesh frames and applying Phorate granules around the crowns as an extra precaution. I was compelled to write to GN with this information, imploring them not to give out this advice in future. I assumed they would publish my letter as it was quite brilliantly written, mixing sound horticultural advice with wit and not a small amount of sarcasm. They obviously binned it.

Well, in this week's edition feck me if he isn't giving out the same sodding useless advice once again. Let's be right, Nigel Colborn has probably forgotten more about gardening than I'll ever know but it is annoying when so-called garden celebs trot out these urban myths. Presumably someone said it once upon a time and ever since then it has been accepted as fact. It ranks alongside other gems such as scab is passed on from seed spuds, marigold roots kill bindweed, crushed eggshells deter slugs, Ian Stocks smiles, Dan Unsworth and Paul Bastow aren't northern sausage chewers, Dickie Walton takes photographs that cannot be laughed at, Liverpool FC have a robust racial policy and tax inspectors are human beings.

To reiterate once again......CARROT FLY are perfectly capable of flying ABOVE 2' and Nigel Colborn should be kicked in the nicky-nacky-noos if he ever says otherwise again.

Picture of Dorian/grey time for Scottish rugger

After the England Rugby team quite magnificently turned up in Scotland's back yard and trounced them at the weekend, my thoughts have turned to doing a similar thing at Malvern in September with peas. Whilst I shall be attempting to grow the variety everyone has to beat, namely Show Perfection, if I'm being honest I have as much chance of benching peas at a late September Show as coming across a tax collector with an eye socket you don't want to stick a knife into.




Therefore, I have purchased a packet of the variety Dorian which I have grown before and which Ian Simpson reckons is very mildew resistant. It has absolutely no chance of winning tickets at a National but my main aim is simply to get a set onto the benches so I'm probably going to give this one a go. Dan grew it last season and he was picking fresh pods with 10 peas in well into September just by letting them grow naturally with no tying to canes or pinching out the tendrils etc. so it may be worth a shot. If any breeder manages to cross this variety with Show Perfection the mildew problems of that particular variety might become a thing of the past for anyone south of Glasgow with an aversion to smiling and who doesn't own a beard the size of a badger's arse.

Last weekend we had several inches of snow meaning the sand emptying of the parsnip drums came to a complete standstill. With several nights of freezing weather forecast I am now well behind compared to last year but as the National was in late August and this year it's the very last weekend in September I'm not too worried. The first decent weather weekend means I shall have to get cracked on and complete the task so that the sand has time to settle. Invariably you have to top the barrels up with more sand and I have known the surface drop by up to 6" so you need to have the job done several weeks before you bore your holes. If you bore your holes straight after filling then the bore holes get distorted as the sand drops and gives you roots with a bit of a kink in them, although they are uniform kinks nonetheless. Believe me, it's happened to me!



As long as I'm in a position to bore my holes by mid-March I'll be happy. As I chit my seed indoors I will be placing seed that has already germinated by late March and green leaves are generally showing by early April, bang on target. Sowing in situ, very often in very cold weather means the seed can just sit there doing nothing for several weeks. Chitting buys you up to 4 weeks in my opinion and takes the worry out of wondering whether your seed has simply rotted off. I need to buy the compost and fertilisers for the mixes in the next couple of weeks so I can be getting on with them. However, my attempts to buy a cheap concrete mixer for the task off ebay has failed. Even the shittiest, most caked-up, second-hand mixers are fetching big money and seeing as my friendly taxman has decided it would be hilarious to extract all of my money from my wallet via my rectal passage I shall have to make do with mixing by hand again this season.

Little things.....

......please little people with little minds. I can't begin to explain how much i'm pleased with this. Within three days of sowing my Vento were popping up in the cell trays where I sowed 2 seeds per compartment. After last year's germination problems due to the coated seeds i'm really glad Medwyn took everyone's concerns on board and insisted on uncoated seeds. Vento is a superb onion and I missed not having it available to show last season.

I'll thin to one in due course as I intend to grow in these trays until the plants are much bigger, rather than pricking out at the crook stage. There are 3 reasons for me doing it this way this year.

1) I am a lazy bastard
2) I am a lazy bastard
and
3) I am a lazy bastard

We're off and running.

Pipe down

My sincere commiserations to anyone who has ever been fucked over by HMRC as I appear to have been done, and in particular the piece-of-shit wankers at the Stoke on Trent office. Despite my employer giving the tax office all the relevant information by the required date each and every year they miscalculated my tax to the extent that they say I now owe them several thousand pounds going back to 2008-2009. They do not seem to understand the concept of 'sorry' and 'we'll give you planty of time to pay it back seeing as it's our total fuck-up', preferring instead 'where is it you little bastard, give it to us or we'll send the heavies round'. Nor do they take very kindly to 'fuck off you morons'....in hindsight, perhaps not the wisest end to a telephone conversation i've ever come up with!


Anyway, before I get sent to prison I suppose I'd better tell you what i've been up to on the plot. Very little if truth be told. I've started emptying out the sand barrels for the parsnips but it's taking longer than it should because I'm making even deeper wooden spacers and lining these with plastic sheeting so they last longer. It also gives me another 6" depth but my drums are now quite high and what with me being a dwarf means the hole boring should be fun. I also need to get a longer crowbar to do the boring. This photo shows the wooden spacers from last season....I'm using 10" wide scaffold planking this year.

I've also laid down plans to grow a few more long carrots in pipes in the greenhouse. I tried this method with just 8 tubes last season as an experiment really and I ended up pulling some heavy specimens although after about 18" down there were quite large side shoots going off everywhere. I decided this was probably due to a lack of water from mid-July onwards when I lost interest in them a little bit. However, it persuaded me that I really want to try and perfect this method for when i'm older, as emptying out and refilling several tonnes of sand each year is getting harder and harder to contemplate, let alone do. A builder friend has acquired me some more one meter sections of 6" diameter plastic tubing (can't afford to pay for anything now!), and has promised more to come so I hope to be growing about 28 in total in this small section at the end of one greenhouse thus.

This isn't ideal in many ways. Ideally I'd want them going round the edge of the greenhouse in single file to make watering easier. As it is I'll have to reach the back ones through the mass of foliage once they're all growing away well. It also means I can't pick and choose which one to pull come show time...the ones at the front will have to come up first whether I like it or not so getting a matching set may take more 'pulls' but we shall see. I've made the front board at the bottom removable so if necessary I can excavate the thin tap root at the bottom first and get as much as that up as I can. I shan't be getting too clever with the mix as it is mainly an exercise to try and master the watering. Last year I used sieved peat from the previous season's potato bags mixed 3 parts to one part vermiculite and a handful of Q4 and calcified seasweed per pipe, all mixed separately as it does take several litres to fill each one, far more than you would need for a borehole in sand. That's another drawback. Swings and roundabouts I think they call it. Which is roughly how I'm considering paying my tax bill.

How shall we fuck off?

I'm starting to feel like Graham Chapman in Monty Python's Life of Brian, when he opens the window stark bollock naked to be greeted by his throng of followers. I didn't realise so many people loved me so much, but judging by the amount of messages i've been getting maybe I was wrong to stop blogging so suddenly. I didn't realise how detrimentally it would affect your lives so I apologise for that.

Therefore, I have taken the monumental decision to resume blogging very shortly. In the meantime can you all fuck off and let me have a few more days peace? I thank you.