Thinning down!

I've been quite lazy so far this season and putting some timber on apparently, although I weighed myself this afternoon on my works' industrial scales and was pleased to see i'm a very svelte and nimble 10 stone 61 pounds. Need to be careful I don't waste away! But now I really need to motor as there are many things to be doing each and every day if you want to be in with a shout of winning those red tickets!

I'm only growing three drums of long carrots this season (although I've crammed 7 in each) and I thinned each bore hole to one yesterday evening.

With a mix of simply F2 with added sand (couldn't source F2S) and calcified seaweed it will be interesting to see if I can get back on track with long carrots after several years of disappointing results. I think my borehole mixes just got way too complicated down the years and looking back at previous years long carrots used to be one of my strong points. I found this photo from about 10 years ago when I got a best in show with these meaty (but far from perfect) roots at Sturton Show.

Only 6 or 7 years ago I got another best in show with these.

So I'm at a loss as to how my long carrots seem to have regressed although I have been getting excellent skin finishes. Last season I had absolutely enormous tops and was quite excited at the prospect of pulling roots in proportion, but they turned out to be way too small to be competing against the likes of Dave Thornton and Ian Simpson. Having said that I did score 15 out of 20 for this pair in my 3x2 collection at Llangollen, and these were reasonably heavy.

I think the variation in sizes throughout the season means I'm not getting my mixes uniformly mixed up, so the simpler mix i'm using this season should give me better uniformity if nothing else.


I have a lot of plants to set out in their final positions this coming week, including celery, a pumpkin (for fun) some sweetcorn, butternut squashes, courgettes and much more, but a word of warning. In the mid-90's I remember losing many tender plants to a very hard frost on the evening of June 6th and I am always very wary about planting before this date for that reason. Clear, frosty nights are often associated with a full moon and we have one on June 4th this season, although statistically full moons don't tend to have more frosts than any other day in the cycle. Even so I'll be keeping a close eye on the night-time weather forecasts for the next few days.

My shallots have excelled my wildest dreams this year and are swelling very nicely indeed. I emailed National Champion Dave 'Annoying Twat' Thornton a photo a couple of days ago for his opinion and he said 'yeah they look about right'. Believe me, this amounts to as high a praise as it's possible to get from him, so I'm quite excited that I'll be able to compete this season and have plenty of bulbs from which to make a set or two.

I shall be spraying them with Rovral this evening and then hoping for no more rain until harvest time (it's wazzing down as I write!). I'm measuring a sample bulb at 12.30 each day with a digital caliper and jotting it down for use in future years, and they are currently swelling by over a millimetre in diameter per day. At this rate I'll be harvesting around the 12th to the 16th as and when each bulb reaches a size which i'm hoping to be around 50mm, but will be quite happy with 45mm (Dave somehow manages to get about 65mm). I will part each bulb from the clump carefully, leaving the others to grow onto size but only as long as there are still new green shoots emerging from the centre of the bulb. Once this fresh, green centre growth has stopped you need to harvest them all, as they will surely go 'double' if left in the ground any longer, because they are now preparing to go onto their secondary growth cycle, which is splitting again. Many growers will leave theirs until late June in the hope of getting even bigger bulbs but I firmly believe you should bite the bullet, set yourself a target and get them up as soon as they reach that target, and don't be tempted to give them a bit longer. Be content with what you've got, not what you want. They will actually continue to 'grow' several millimetres during ripening as the foliage dies back into the bulb, and any flat sides will round up no problem. By harvesting like this when they're still on their initial growth cycle you shouldn't have too many problems with them going 'pregnant' in store thus:

My best year was 2010 when I got 3rd at Malvern and 2nd at Westminster, both times behind Faceache Thornton.