My best shaped roots in recent years have undoubtedly come from my deep raised leek beds which have been cultivated for several years now to a fine, rich tilth meaning the central tap roots can get down very deep. It also stays quite thin all the way down, whereas if you grow in soil it can be a bit thick just below the bulb. I sow a 20' row either side of the leeks, (I find they compliment each other) although on one side where the shallots are still growing it won't be until mid-June at the earliest. Each row can potentially yield me 50 roots or more as I will sow them only 4" or so apart.
However, I also have several half drums filled with compost sievings and leftover carrot and parsnip mixes all mixed up together, and last year I grew some intermediate beet 'Forono' in these, culminating in me winning the class for a set of 4 intermediate beet at Westminster.
They do seem a lot harder to match up than globe beet, and indeed I had to rely on Leesa to make the final choice of 4 for this dish. She really does have a good eye (well, she married me!). I sowed a few drums of these on Tuesday evening including some in this old galvanised dustbin. When we went to wheelie bins most people chucked these out....i'm glad i'm a hoarder and kept ours!
Tonight I hope to get my long beet sown, perhaps a little late for any high expectations at the likes of Malvern and Westminster, but as I produced some absolute monsters from an early May sowing last season I thought I'd delay it a bit to compare quality. The best roots need to be about 3" diameter at the top, certainly no more than that otherwise they do seem to lose a bit of quality. The variety i'm growing this season is 'Regar', one i've always struggled with in the past as they do tend to twist quite easily. I'm told the key is to keep the mix moist at all times. My drums are a mix of sand and compost so that they are not as free draining as the parsnip and carrot drums. My bore hole mix this year is as follows;
1 gallon sieved topsoil (bagged)
1 gallon sieved multipurpose compost
1 gallon sieved coarse sand
2 oz Tev04
2 oz Calcified seaweed
2 oz Seaweed meal
+and a sprinkling of table salt!
Here is last year's winning set from the Llangollen National grown by John Jones. Nice!
On Tuesday evening I also thinned down my Sweet Candle stumps to one per station. By angling the seedlings you don't want to keep at about 45 degrees and pulling gently they come out without too much disturbance. I try and leave behind seedlings that are all at approximately the same stage of development, which sometimes means pulling out the largest and best looking ones.
After thinning I gave a sprinkling of phorate powder to kill any carrot fly that may somehow manage to get through my mesh and polythene framework. I have this bed with 24 roots in......
....and this one with 44 roots in (yes I know I need to do some weeding!!!).
For the past couple of seasons I've had a wager with NVS National Secretary Dave Thornton based on accumulated performances at several shows, but this year the wager is all down to one class, the so called Millennium Class at Malvern which calls for 5 dishes of 4, namely 250g onions, stump carrots, tomatoes, globe beet and spuds. The one with the highest points value on the judge's scorecards will win the 20 quid and I'm reasonably confident this time around that I can beat him, especially as we have both agreed that the money has got to be handed over during the evening in the hotel in front of everyone else, whilst grovelling before the victor on bended knee. I don't intend to be that twat, so I really need my globe beet and stumps to be good again this season. This was last year's winner at Llangollen, staged by my NVS chum Mark Hall who will be going for a hat-trick of wins this year.
I believe I also have a small wager with Marcus Powell on the outcome of this class so I will either be raking it in or emptying out my pockets on the morning of 29th September.
This was my unplaced set in a similar class at Malvern last year where you only need to get 4 dishes from the choice of 5. If I'd been able to stage a set of tomatoes (18 pointers) instead of having to go with two sets of 15 pointers (globe beet and 250g onions) I could have won this class as the scoring was very, very close.
I got an unexpected bonus this week when it was pointed out to me that we get TWO bank holidays, Monday & Tuesday next week. I didn't know and no fucker at work told me and i'm supposed to be a director! I couldn't direct a fucking bus! Leesa was actually going to let me get up and go to work on Tuesday to a deserted factory to see how long it was before I realised. How vindictive can you get? It means I will have an extra day's gardening so I want to make hay and get all the nagging little jobs out of the way so that I can get on with final planting over the next couple of weeks. However, a word of warning my friends......make sure you're safe at all times in the garden over the long weekend and whatever you do, DON'T have any accidents. When those out-of-touch bastard doctors go on strike you'll most likely be left to bleed to death!
2 comments:
Prepare your rake Simon :-)
Nice article. We used to grow organic vegetables professionally. There was a local show where you could show vegetables, etc. One year we entered and won all the prices for the vegetables we did that a few years then got bored as there were little kids entering and never winning so we retired from showing vegetables!!
Great way to grow beetroot.
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