Noah more rain please!

This weekend has been a most frustrating one as i've taken to doing what I can outside in between running back indoors to escape torrential rain. There is standing water on large areas of the garden but as nothing is planted apart from shallots in raised beds no damage is currently being done.

One task I managed to do in the dry of the greenhouse was to make sure all the onions were straightened by gently pushing them sideways and packing compost under them and by ensuring the foliage was tied up to the supporting canes to encourage upward growth to keep them erect. They all have at least 9 leaves and are swelling nicely although they could now do with some sun. A spray with Maxicrop a few days ago seems to have greened them up after I'd noticed a few yellow tips. Northern onion Goddess Dan advised a nutrient imbalance and that a nitrogen blast might be in order. He sure knows his onions, which certainly require a finer balancing act in terms of what to give when than most other vegetables.

The long carrots in the pipes in the greenhouse have started to germinate, but I have been forced to put panes of glass over the outdoor carrot frames, as water was collecting on the enviromesh then dropping as large drips onto the surface of the compost in the bore holes. I was concerned the seed might be disturbed or the small seedlings damaged.

140,000

Yes, that's the number of page views of this blog that has been reached during the course of today, which apparently makes me the 19,879th most read blog in the whole wide World! However, I find it incredible that there are 19,878 more interesting blogs than mine! Gutted! However, I have to admit my ranking has improved considerably since I titivated some of my headings with sexual connotations! Apparently the promise of Jennifer Lopez with her baby slurpers out is more appealing than my parsnips!

On that very subject, after a fortnight since sowing (seemed longer this season!) my first parsnips broke through the surface yesterday. I shall be keeping a close eye on the other stations and taking off the glass panes as soon as they are through. I left these on last season and some got scorched in hot weather, although there seems little chance of that happening at the moment. We've had so much rain recently I think I'll soon be developing webbed feet.....just like Yorkshiremen. I suppose they go with their webbed fingers and bingo wings.

Can he fix it?

As many of you are all too acutely aware, sometimes the magnificence of my intelligence simply knows no beginning. For several years i've been fighting a losing battle against white rot on my plot. I've tried applications of Basamid on sections of my soil where this is viable, such as the greenhouse borders and raised beds where I grow the long leeks and 250g onions. It's a rigmarole as the soil has to be a certain temperature and you have to cover it with polythene so the gases don't escape. However, this has only met with limited success and I still lose about 40% of my crop. This year I've decided to grow celery in the long bed where I usually grow 250g onions, so this meant I had to find somewhere else to grow them. To apply this very toxic substance on the garden in general is unrealistic so I have fashioned these rather fetching shallow planters out of old planks that I've stapled black plastic sheeting to. This has given me some quite nice looking, portable planters that are currently helping to hold down the tarpaulin on the next batch of land where I want to prevent a load of shrubs, weeds and grass from photosynthesising over the summer and thus kill it all, freeing up even more veg growing land next season.
These are Red Barion....

....and these are Setton.

I have filled them with a layer of sieved rough shite (compost and bagged topsoil) from my carrot and parsnip compost mixes, with a scattering of sulphate of potash and Tev04, then some M3 for planting into. There should be absolutely no chance of these onions getting white rot now! However, I have so many onions in trays ready for planting out as I'd decided I needed to grow more so that the 40% lossage meant I still had plenty to choose from, so I still need to make a few more planters. Luckily a friend is able to purloin several planks for me from a local building firm. Health and Safety means builders are no longer allowed to step on a scaffold board with the slightest split....thankfully for me! I still have 5 trays of Setton and 4 trays of Vento to plant out....some of these may have to take their chances in the soil! As long as I can make a decent set of 4 for the Malvern Millennium Class out of that lot i'll be happy.



I don't know if it's the impending holiday urging me into action, or Spring that puts an extra bounce in your step but I do feel in the mood to get jobs done at the moment, even small household maintenance jobs seem only minor inconveniences. Our bath water has been running painfully slowly down the plughole for several years and with 3 daughters and a wife that have dyed and titivated their barnets ad infinitum our plughole is always clogged up with hair (well they can't blame me!). We got some stuff that you poured down the plughole that was supposed to 'eat' hair but it didn't improve matters so I decided drastic action was required. Off came the bath panel and the U-bend was duly disconnected, although not before the very obviously hazardous chemical came spilling out over my bare arm causing pain like a rat had clamped onto it! Upon up-ending the U-bend a disgusting gloop of semi-solid material splatted into the handbasin. I called the clan upstairs to view this putrid pile of fur and fuzz in order to show them what their years of hair paranoia had produced and sent them back downstairs with a flea in their ears for causing me to endure such a disgusting task. However, when they'd left I did a closer inspection and realised that there ma-a-a-a-a-y also have been several long carrot and parsnip 'hairs', various lumps of compost and vermiculite from when I wash my roots in the bath each show season! I think I got away with it though. I daren't contemplate the kitchen sink where I wash my spuds!



And I've been on tenterhooks the past few days waiting to see what those Yorkshire bastards were going to do with a passport photo of me from 30 years ago that my eldest daughter naughtily posted on Facebook. I can't stand the suspense anymore so I may as well grasp the nettle and plonk it on here. Big hair was the in-thing in those days and I blocked some plugholes in my time with that thatch. As you can see there is some 4 stone or so that Leesa isn't married to! Rest assured the photos of me in my punk rock days will never, ever, ever see the light of day again!

Candles lit

I finished off a bed off 44 Sweet Candle tonight having done another bed of 28 yesterday. I chose to bore the holes having realised my best roots came from bored holes last season. I always do the holes first and then fill them all in one go. By gently rotating the metal rod slowly I find that there is little if any disturbance of neighbouring holes, and if there is any distortion I can simply put the rod back in the hole and open it out. Once I'm happy with all the holes being roughly the same depth and diameter I start filling them all.

I use a metal funnel to fill the holes and can zip through them in no time at all, gently firming the top of the compost with the back of my hand and adding more if necessary so it's level with the sand surface. I used to prod every now and again with a cane to avoid air pockets as recommended by Medwyn, but to be honest life is too short and I can't be f***ed anymore. I didn't do it last year and there was no difference as far as I could tell. A 3" tube is placed over each hole, pushed into the sand slightly, which will concentrate water to the borehole and prevent fanging, and also allows me to find the centre if I need to re-sow a station that doesn't germinate.

My mix this season is the same one that served me so well last;

Two buckets of sieved compost (B&Q Verve)

Half a bucket of medium grade vermiculite

A quarter bucket of sieved sand

A handful of Tev04 passed through a flour sieve

A handful of calcified seaweed passed through a flour sieve

It has been a bit of a rushed affair this season and to be honest I haven't taken that much care over it, so I don't know if I'll match last season's efforts when National champion Ian Stocks felt I was unlucky not to get a ticket myself (my set below). In fact his exact words were "Simon, you are the greatest grower of your age and i'm absolutely shitting myself for future Nationals". I may have dreamt that though.

Onion update

Just a quick update on my onions which have really settled in nicely since being planted into 12" pots. They have all pretty much straightened up by supporting them at intervals with plastic clips up the canes. This encourages upward growth and stops the plant leaning to one side.

These are without doubt the best i've had at this stage of the season (thanks again Helen!) so i'm hopeful of getting some 3 pounders. One slight worry is that a few weed seedlings have emerged. Easily picked off but i'm assuming they would have come from the sieved soil I included in the potting mix. If that is the case microwaving obviously did not kill them, so has it also failed to kill any white rot residues? I asked Dave T and he thinks the weed seeds could have been in the M3. Anyone else had that problem?

Niort so fast!

I haven't planted my pickling shallots out yet, and I don't think I'm going to either. At a talk I attended last year given by Dave Thornton on shallots (heard it several times but went along to boost the numbers and make sure everyone else stayed awake by prodding them occasionally with a shit-covered stick!), top grower Geoff Butterworth mentioned that he leaves his picklers in the pots all the way to harvest time. He basically starves them so that they stay small, and several other growers in the room nodded in appreciation as if this was a common practice. Therefore they'll be staying in these trays (I have two trays of 20) more or less neglected.

I must say it does seem to make a bit of sense. If they are planted out into half-decent compost in the first place then I guess there's no reason why they should not last until June with a bit of supplementary foliar feeding if required. When planted into a bed containing soil they probably get a boost and put on a growth spirt at the time you don't really want them to. I harvested several bulbs at 27mm last year and after experiences of previous years I expected them to come up to the 30mm diameter mark once the foliage had died back into the bulb and rounded it up. In actuality the majority went over the 30mm mark and I was unable to make a set anywhere, which was hugely frustrating as I had some very good looking bulbs at 31-32mm! This tells me that I simply had too much good, lush, foliage to die back into the bulbs, so I'm wondering whether leaving them in the pots will solve this. I can also bring the trays into the greenhouse during early June to start the ripening process by stopping any water getting to them. It will also help prevent any from rotting as I shall also give a Rovral spray about the same time once they have started to dry off.

Below is a photo of Sherie Plumb's winning set from last year's National, all superbly well ripened, identical in size and nicely tied.

Attention turns this weekend to getting some stump carrots sown, and the pressure is really on now as we've booked to go away on a cheap deal in a couple of weeks time to sunnier climes (won't be telling Leesa where until we get to the airport....but rest assured dear they say Azerbaijan is lovely in Springtime!). This is something we have never done before, going away at a critical time in the growing year but seeing as the kids are now all grown up and can feed and water themselves (but not my plants usually!) then we thought what the heck, let's start to relax and forget all about them for a week. Our phone's will be turned off, the suntan lotion will be out and all thoughts of show veg will be on hold for a week. I shall have to rely on my unreliable daughters to keep an eye on everything in the greenhouses, so you will excuse me if I wish for a week of rain and dull weather in GB. That way my plants might get through the inevitable week of neglect they will endure.

One thing I think worthy of mention for the sake of posterity if nothing else, they had a practice run in Loughborough today for when the Olympic torch officially comes through in July. There were helicopters in the sky, television cameras, hundreds of rozzers whizzing about and shit. As Team GB will be based in the town that will be made famous as the birthplace of the 2012 National Pea Champion, it feels quite an honour that we're going to be witnessing this and I certainly won't be seeing it again in my lifetime. There's less than a hundred days to go till the big event kicks off and I must say I'm looking forward to watching it all on TV. I'm glad I didn't bother applying for tickets in view of the ticketing fiasco but I still think we should all be proud we are hosting the Greatest Show on Earth. Actually, the second greatest show....obviously the Greatest will be the 2012 Malvern Cake-Off!

My grandad is a genius!

On the day after the Midlands went into official drought mode, the heavens opened and the path alongside my long carrots is now under 3" of H2O! Perhaps Severn Trent might rethink the situation seeing as the rain is set to stay beyond the weekend? Just a suggestion!

Seeing as outdoor work is at a standstill I thought I may as well pot on my tomatoes 'Cedrico' and 'Sungold'. Fairplay to Shelley Seeds, they advised 14 seeds on the packet, but 15 seedlings came up! I make that a 107% germination rate. Beat that!

I planted into 3" square pots in M3, burying the plants up to the seed leaves, as new roots will sprout from the stem below them, making for stronger plants. These have gone straight to my greenhouse for now. One advantage of biblical weather is that the night time temperatures tend to be ok. It's when the skies are clear that you will get trouble, and I shall certainly learn from last year's cock-up and bring them indoors if anything close to 2 or 3 degrees overnight is forecast. These won't get planted out into permanent positions until the end of May. Oscar seems happy that I won't make the same mistake twice!

What an F2S-ing doddle!

I managed to get my long carrots sown yesterday and I have to say how much easier the task was than usual. This was because I adopted Ian Simpson's simple mix which is 4 gallons of F2S and 3oz of calcified seaweed. I believe this was originally a Graeme Watson mix, but it was much easier than measuring out several little lots of superphosphates, sulphate of potash, lime, Q4, rat's blood, spider's testacles and minced bat wings. I couldn't actually get any F2S and my compost stockist advised me that the Levington rep had secretly told him it would be cheaper to mix your own, simply adding silver sand to some F2, such was the crazy mark-up they put on F2S. I couldn't find out what the ratio was, so I guessed and went with 4:1 which looked about right, nice and open so that it crunched when you squeezed a handful. I must say also that there isn't a great deal of waste when you sieve F2, I was hardly throwing anything away and it did look like very good stuff.



However, this year I'm not growing many long carrots as I'm treating it as an experimental season trying to get back on track with them. Therefore I will only have these 3 drums of 7, and if I get a decent set out of it for Harrogate and/or Malvern it will be a bonus. If I don't I won't beat myself up over it, as I would rather concentrate on parsnips which I think I can grow well enough to stage to National standard. I didn't empty these drums out because quite simply I couldn't be arsed, so I was pleased that it didn't take an awful lot more effort than usual coring out a plug of sand then finishing off by boring with an 8' crowbar. I had expected the sand to be compacted like concrete.

I'm also growing 28 pipes of long carrots in the greenhouse as a trial to see if it's feasible to grow them this way in future, as the thought of emptying and refilling drums forever more is starting to weigh heavy on my mind. 21 pipes are filled with a mix of old spud peat and silver sand with added Tev04 and calcified seaweed. The 7 front pipes are the Ian Simpson mix with vermiculite added. Like I say, all experimental and the key will undoubtedly be down to the watering. This method is ok to a point, in that it can be done in the dry and doesn't involve shifting untold tonnes of heavy sand during the cold days of January and February, but it does take 5 times more mix to fill a pipe than it does a bore hole. You pays your money and you takes your choice I guess.

Next weekend I will be turning my attention to stump carrots, and I'm hoping to grow more than usual as I really did have some corkers last season. Checking back in my diary I realised that my best ones by far last season, (and those I staged at Llangollen were among them) , came from the 50% 'tight' holes that I'd bored complete. They were straighter and more uniform and required less pullings to get a matching set, whereas the 50% in the same bed that I'd 'cored' were a bit of a mixed bag I have to say. Therefore the plastic downpipe will be put back into storage for another year and I'll be getting my metal bar going again. It doesn't take that long as you're only boring about 2' of sand at knee height (yes, even for me!!!) so I can quickly rattle off a bed of 50. The biggest problem is making sure the hole you've just done doesn't collapse as I do grow them quite close, about 8" centre to centre. I bore all the holes first rather than boring one then filling. By going slowly at first I find you can get 3" diameter at the top without too much disturbance to neighbouring holes. Any that do get a little distorted can quickly get another rotation with the crowbar, and this way I can ensure all holes are nice and straight with no kinks that will transfer as a kinked carrot come harvest time.


I'm going to be mainly growing Sweet Candle in two beds but I have decided to try Caradec in a 3rd bed having grown some of this variety in pipes in the greenhouse last season. Because of this it went a little long and 'corksrewed' slightly as it went in search of mositure but the skin finish was superb and the stump ends were excellent. We all need to keep trying different methods and different varieties to freshen things up, and you never know but I might hit on something that will take over the mantle from Sweet Candle. Who knows, someone may even be daft enough one day to try some carrot seed that they bought off some backstreet Mustapha on their holidays in say, oh I dunno, Turkey for instance? Too much booze in the sun does strange things to the mind!


Meanwhile in deepest, darkest Yorkshire strange colours in the sky have been keeping the local rednecks amused.

Different points of view

Anyone who has had daughters will realise that something truly awful happens to them once they reach 13. They may look angelic, but in truth they become absolute swampmonsters when it comes to keeping their rooms clean. My three in particular have dredged the depths of human penicillin farming. We once had a shortage of cups and glasses in the house before a party and I kid you not, but 29 receptacles of various sizes miraculously appeared from my youngest's room alone! They were not just in the obvious places such as the windowsill or under the bed....there were several hidden away in drawers!

For these reasons I have not ventured into their slums at the back of our house for several years, but for the past few days Leesa has been fumigating and redecorating our youngest's (Rebecca....or as we prefer to call her, our favourite) and today I had to venture in to perform a bit of manly decorating that she couldn't manage.

The result was I saw a view from the top of the garden that I had all but forgotten about! It will probably be some years before I see it again!

Ring the changes and get involved

Any time from now the schedules will be dropping onto your door mats. No doubt you'll browse through them, make a mental note about the classes you intend to enter and maybe have a moan about one or two things that have been altered (or haven't!) before filing them away somewhere until you need them. In the past I've had a dig at certain committees and organisations, but I think it's important we all need to acknowledge the debt of gratitude we owe these people and especially the organisers of our village, allotment and town shows.

Many of these guys don't actually grow to show themselves, but keep the show going out of a sense of civic duty. They might have been roped in to help several years earlier and somehow found themselves running things after others dropped out of helping...or even died! So before you start having a go at folk put yourself in their shoes, try and ascertain their circumstances and if you're still not happy about things then offer to help out yourself!

Helping out doesn't have to be too onerous. It can just mean giving your advice at a couple of Winter meetings about schedule content and wording. If you are a seasoned exhibitor, maybe even a qualified judge, what can be more pleasant than an hour over a pint or two in a local pub suggesting a few changes to an old established schedule that hasn't been changed in decades? Most of us are very busy preparing our entries in the days leading up to the show but the tables don't get set out on their own so why not offer to help for an hour the night before, or get there an hour early to see if anything needs doing? And in the show aftermath try not to be too quick to get away, as the hall will need clearing and many hands will soon make light work of putting away tables, vases, cloths and sweeping the floors.

So, don't be a prick and start creating trouble at your local hort soc show as you will soon get a name for yourself as a bit of a menace. More importantly, the organisers might start to believe it's not worth the hassle of constantly getting it in the neck from you and close the show altogether. As many of these events are non-profit making events for charitable causes the less fortunate would also lose out.

Having said all this i'm now going to make my annual plea for show schedule makers to freshen things up on a regular basis, by trying new classes or looking at changing existing ones slightly. For years several local shows in my area had cauliflower and pot leek classes on the schedules. Gradually, fewer and fewer people grew these for show to the point where some years no entries were made. I got involved and suggested ditching the classes altogether. If anyone had some caulis or pot leeks to show then there was always the 'any other veg' class that they could put them in and in their place we would try things like sweetcorn, courgettes or peppers. This makes so much sense at local level. Many allotments these days are taken on by young mums to feed their families, and they will grow crops that their children will like. Crops that children will even enjoy being involved growing because they grow quite quickly and are colourful.

I also got a couple of shows to reduce quantities for things like parsnips, long carrots and blanch leeks from 3 to 2. Imagine a class of 2 entries of 3. Now imagine one with 5 or 6 entries of 2! Which looks better for the viewing public? Which one makes the judge earn his fee and which one would you feel better having won? We all know getting a matching pair is easier than a matching set of three. This works for the novice who might only be able to grow a few of something, but also for the more serious exhibitor who can still support his local show without sacrificing too many 'pulls' for his more serious shows such as those run by the NVS or RHS.

I actually sent letters out to a few local showers when we were thinking of doing all this, and got back some very positive comments. Most of them were happy to try something new and to give it a go if it meant the show surviving. The only negative feedback I got was actually at the show itself from a grower who said he didn't agree with the reduction in long carrots from 3 to 2 as it didn't look right. He is a bit of a purist but the point is he hadn't even been bothered to reply to my letter, and there is your answer in a nutshell. He is undoubtedly a superb grower (and could show at a much higher level) but has never helped out in any way (to my knowledge) but just wants to turn up, plonk down his (excellent) exhibits, take the money and go. Fair enough but I don't think it's fair for him to criticise in that case. I don't think I've ever seen him smile and conversations with him are always quite awkward so I just wonder what he gets out of it all. Winning is always nice but I can quite honestly say the biggest thing I get out of showing are the many friendships I have made.

Over the years I've seen many showers moaning about a decision, giving the organisers grief about bench layout and vowing never to grace the show with their presence again. I've heard of letters being written to local papers and disputes growing out of all proportion to the initial problem. And it's usually because the grower cannot see beyond his own selfishness and look at the overall picture. So what if you've had a bad decision go against you. They all balance out and who hasn't won a class that you thought you shouldn't have won? I've always said that the day I get so upset that I contest a decision (at any level) is the day that I shall give up showing. I've had a local show that I'd supported for several years forget to send me a schedule for some reason, and whilst I've decided not to attend that show for a while I don't intend bad-mouthing them. Perhaps it was an oversight? Perhaps they lost my details? Or perhaps they just think i'm a complete knob and don't want me at their show any more? Who knows, but there's no point getting upset and I sincerely hope the show continues for many years and that many local growers get the showing bug from competing there.

So, if you want to get the most fulfilment out of the hobby I say get involved, muck in and give as much as you take out of it.

Tomato quest 2012

I'm happy to report that my recently failing health is going from strength to strength and i'm hoping to pass some solids in the next few days. My piss is still orange however.


Medwyn won tomatoes at the National last year and when I was chatting to him after judging he was a visibly relieved man that I hadn't been able to enter the class myself. He's never beaten me you see! Well I'm sorry to have to inform him that thus far my plants (var. Cedrico) are on target for this year's National at Malvern. I know his son reads this blog so, ALWYN, .......tell him to make sure he's keeping the trophy well polished so it can be handed over to me in good order!

I've sown them later with the sole aim of Malvern in mind, as I hope my 14 plants will give me the requisite matching 12 fruits. When I won the Midlands in 2010 (beating Medwyn into 2nd....might have mentioned that!) I did seem to time them absolutely perfectly. A big factor with tomatoes is having nice green calyces and a problem with the later September shows is that the calyces can go a bit yellowy in colour. I've spoken to other growers about this and there seems to be conflicting opinions as to what causes this, ranging from a lack of nutrients to the cold nights that you will get at that end of the season. My own personal opinion is it's down to the age of the plants, and how long the fruits have been on the trusses. As a vine ripe variety Cedrico remains firm for quite a few weeks but perhaps there is eventually a payback in calyx condition? All my plants were late last year (replanted in June and therefore still quite young!) and I only managed to stage a set on to my Top Tray entry at Derby Show, where I had fresh looking calyces in late October! However, it has to be said temperatures in most of October 2011 were unseasonably balmy so the warmth factor has to be a consideration. My plants are currently 3" tall and will be potted up into 3" round pots in the next week or two.

I grew aubergines quite successfully for the first time last year and have decided to do so again this season, not so much because they are a valuable 18 pointer but because I love moussaka. I really wish I'd took a photo of 3 that I staged in the 'aov' class at Sutton Bonington Show because they were 3 huge fruits that were well matched nevertheless and won me the class. I couldn't quite manage to get another matching set for any other show, although Dave Thornton got a 2nd at Westminster with fruits from plants that I actually grew for him due to him being unable to do so himself after he had an operation last Spring. Some of these plants are also destined for Thornton and the variety is Bonica. I shall be staking them this season as the plants did tend to lean to one side under the weight of the fruits. And I shall be ruthless in aborting any small fruitlets that do not look as if they will make good shaped specimens when fully formed, as you can only expect each plant to successfully bear 4 or 5 during the season.

I also sowed my Evening Star celery later this season as when I came to stage them at Malvern and Westminster I had some blistering on the inside of the stalks, a sure sign of an older plant that is past its best i'm informed.

It seems unbelievable that these tiny seedlings, coming as they do from seed that looks like dust can grow to such huge plants in such a short space of time. Mother Nature is such a wonderful thing. However, when you see what she did to the faces of Unsworth, Bastow and Dickie 3 Inch you also realise she can also be one hell of a bitch when she wants to be.

Cutting corners

Well that was a good gardening weekend wasted! I haven't really eaten for three days so have been feeling very weak and relying on my tiny amount of fat reserves and I also couldn't stray too far from a lavvy for fear of shitting myself. Anyone who recently bought shares in Andrex....you have me to thank for the sudden rise in share price! My Easter egg from the kids remains untouched when usually it doesn't get past mid-morning Easter Sunday! The result of all this is that I now find myself well behind schedule and having to make some hard decisions. I am going to do something that I've been telling you all not to do for the past few years, and that is to leave my long carrot and stump beds as they are. That's right, i'm NOT going to empty them out and refill them which I've always considered an essential yearly task to stop compaction and make hole boring easier. It also puts air into the sand. Will this make a difference to my final root quality? Only time will tell, but I have given the drums and beds a drenching with Jet5 to kill any lurking nasties and will give the stump bed a scuffling with the rotovator all the same. No doubt the Yorkshire fanny swervers will accuse me of making more excuses, but just imagine their shame when I still manage to beat them at Harrogate in the 3x2 Bullshit Bloggers Challenge 2012.



In between toilet dashes I have managed to bore and fill 5 of my 7 parsnip drums, and I am now waiting for the seed to chit indoors. If you want to see my method for boring go to last year's link  http://smithyveg.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/sun-has-got-his-twat-on.html?m=0 as I couldn't be fucked to do it all again in my delicate and life-threatened state.

As you can see this year I've gone to 6 holes per drum (it was only 5 last year) as I couldn't see any improvement in the size of root against what I used to get when I used to bore 7 holes per drum. 6 is therefore a compromise and I find it very easy to get this many in a drum. My mix this season is pretty much the same as last;

15litres of sieved F2

4 litres of medium grade vermiculite

3 litres silver sand

3 litres sieved topsoil (bagged)

3oz sulphate of potash

3oz of superphosphate

3oz of powdered calcified seaweed

3oz of Tev04 (or powdered Q4 if you can get it)

6oz of garden lime


I go heavy on the lime as canker spores aren't supposed to like limey soil. I'm also going to spray the foliage with SB Plant Invigorator this season. This lot was enough to do just under 8 holes, so needs repeating several times to complete the 42 holes that I am growing this season. I mix the compost, vermiculite and the various nutrients first and add the heavier sand and soil last, doing it all by hand in a large shallow container to make sure everything is well mixed. The cement mixer I thought I was going to acquire cheap from a work colleague never materialised. Maybe next year.

Elsewhere, I potted my Pendle Improved leeks into 4" square pots in M3 and this will be the final potting before planting out in May. I'm really pleased with these and they are certainly on a par if not better than anything I've had at this time of year. The root systems were superb. Other growers will no doubt have huge plants by comparison, but my philosphy with leeks is always 'nice and steady goes it'. I shall be putting a whole box of blood, fish and bone plus a generous amount of seaweed meal into the bed where I intend growing the 24 plants. One thing I've learnt is that leeks like a lot of feed. And any excess is utilised by the globe beet that I always grow alongside them to very good effect.

My (Helen's!) onions in 12" pots seem to have settled in nicely and there is new growth appearing from the centre. Most plants have 7 leaves so I'm hopeful of a few large-ish onions this season. A few of them are leaning over at the base due to they way they grew before planting out, but by supporting the foliage up the entire length they should right themselves in due course. The white substance is a light top-dressing (a teaspoon full) of ammonia sulphate (N) which i'm hoping will boost the foliage production but not excessively so.

With all alliums grown indoors thrips can be a major problem so I give each plant a squirt with Dynamec, pulling apart the inner central growth and forcing the spray into the gaps and creases which is where the little sods lurk. They nibble newly emerging leaves and these nibbles get bigger as the leaf expands and reduce the photosyntetic area available to the plant, thus reducing the potential size of our bulb, not to mention allowing easy passage to the plant for various diseases and fungal infections. Spraying generally over the outer foliage will have no effect on thrip whatsoever.


I think I may have overdone it on the onion set front. I have nearly 200 'Setton' to plant out and as yet I have no idea where i'm going to grow them all. One thing is for sure though...they need planting soon!

One unfortunate side-problem I find associated with using dried blood are foxes walking over your raised beds sniffing out what they think is a dead carcass. I hate foxes. Might have mentioned that before.

And the garden clearance is progressing slowly. I shall be growing potatoes in the newly acquired ground that is currently under the tarpaulin, potatoes being very good for breaking up virgin ground of course. A few weeks ago this was a shrub jungle and whilst I started off in two minds about pulling up expensive plants that I'd collected and nurtured from nearly 20 years ago before I got into veg in a big way, it has proved to be quite an emancipating experience. I can now see new opportunites to grow even more veg at home appearing before my very eyes. It's certainly easier to rotovate a large expanse of ground rather than mowing intricate lawn shapes, edging them, pruning and tying in a load of plants that you can't actually eat! I shall cut back more shrubs in the next few weeks and move the tarpaulin up so that it remains there all Summer, so that all weeds and grass are killed off before working the soil during the Winter.

Meanwhile, I have asked Oscar whether he was feeling at all guilty about giving grandad his satanic tummy bug and sending him very close to Death.........

.....nuff said! I'll suffer any amount of toxic bum juice for a smile like that!

The eye of a needle!

The best laid plans and all that! Oscar had a tummy bug earlier in the week that caused him to re-enact a certain scene from the Exorcist, as well as producing several nappies that would have caused a Geiger counter to melt. He duly passed this bug onto the rest of us meaning that instead of devoting today to getting my parsnip holes bored, I had to make several dashes to the thunderbox for a liquified arse yodel!

I now hope to get my parsnips done tomorrow, as time is running out since I would ideally like to get my long carrots done next weekend. However, one task I did complete was to plant my shallots out. They have benefitted from being potted up into deep 4" pots from the off as they did have really good root systems. Whilst most plants did get a dose of white tip on close inspection i'm happy that I managed to control it before it got too bad, as there was plenty of strong foliage that was disease free. Hopefully I will not have such a bad season with botrytis having dipped the bases in dry Rovral powder before planting and I shall also spray with a Rovral solution a few weeks before harvest. I have 45 planted out which could give me up to 160 bulbs to choose from at harvest time.

Patience is a virtue

I say the same thing every year but I still hear many stories of people being caught out, and that is don't be in too much of a rush to get things sown and planted. I haven't sown a seed in the ground outdoors before May for many years now, preferring to do all my propagating and potting on in the protection of the house for the tenderest subjects or greenhouse for those of a hardier nature. Parsnips are pre-chitted indoors before being placed in their growing stations, and carrot seeds will be sown direct into bore hole mixes but with the added protection of a mini-cloche in the shape of a small pane of glass over a plastic tube. Once they're through they're both hardy enough and can survive a few periods of lowish temperature.



The reason I bring all this up is because we have had a very dry Spring with some balmy days but today Winter has stung back with an icy blast. At the garden centres they've been selling bedding plants for several weeks with little signage warning people of the consequences of planting. If at all possible I don't plant a single sausage before June 6th, a date indelibly printed on my mind as one when we had a very hard frost here in the Midlands in the mid-90's. I sometimes risk planting a few bits and bobs by the end of May if time and space are at a premium, but I will always be bouncing about with stress until the magic day has passed, throwing fleece or other protective covers over plants if low temperatures are even hinted at.


Different areas of the country will have different 'last frost dates' of course and this map what I found on t'interweb gives an indication of what you can expect. As you can see I'm in the same predicament as Yorkshire and large swathes of Scottishland (or Upper England as I prefer to call it!) so the annual bleating about their weather problems cuts no mustard with me. As you will also see, my onion-guru friend Helen benefits from being at least a month ahead of me in growing terms down near the south coast.

However, it's not all doom and gloom as the summers are more temperate for us and we don't usually get the extreme heat that the south gets which means crops reach harvest at least a month sooner. A lack of rainfall is also something I don't usually have to worry about, although the water companies are doing their annual bleating exercises and threatening hosepipe bans because as everyone knows gardeners are the most evil, wasteful bastards known to man! Shame on us for expecting them to repair all the fucking broken underground pipes that leach huge percentages of rainfall into the ground before it reaches our taps.

Fat bird, clear thy throat!

For the benefit of all Liverpool, Arsenal and Leeds fans......this is what winning looks like!

Final onion potting

I only managed to get a day in the garden this weekend so I decided to leave the parsnip boring another weekend and get my onions potted up. Because my old tosser of a dad disgustingly decided not to give me his greenhouse it means I shall have to grow them in large pots to harvest.

After advice from Dave T I microwaved a load of soil from my garden in order to kill off any white rot spores. It was a bit hit and miss to start with but I eventually settled on 8 and a half minutes at max power, simply because that's how long it took to kill a centipede!

I mixed 3 parts M3 and two parts cooked soil with some Q4 a couple of inches below the root ball. I also put some potash in the bottom layer of mix with a view to aiding ripening later in the season.

All in all it was a bit of a rush and my apologies to the plant supplier Helen, but i've now decided I won't be bothering trying to get a collection up at Malvern, therefore I shall just grow them to the best of my capabilities under the circumstances.

And I won't name all of you who have fallen for the April Fool's joke of the last post.....or will I?

Free stuff

After a lot of soul-searching i've decided not to bother growing anything this season, so if anyone would like a load of free onions, leeks, tomatoes and other seedlings let me know as soon as you can.

First come, first served.