Rock the kasbah!

This will be my last post for a couple of weeks or so as we're off on holiday at the end of this week to Morocco, to a 5-star hotel in the Atlas Mountains to celebrate 25 years of Leesa putting up with me. Current Foreign Office advice for Moroccan travel lists a very small risk of westener adduction but I figure they're more likely to want to to nab Leesa, so unless I get detained by an amourous raghead camel-shagger I'll be seeing you in September. I'm leaving the plot in the capable hands of my mother-in-law having realised to my cost that leaving watering duties to any of my 3 daughters is akin to asking Fred & Rose West to babysit for you and expecting to come back and find your children looking healthy and anywhere other than supporting a newly poured floor slab.


With each passing day I feel more and more content with my celery, by far the best I have ever grown and that's as much as you can really hope for, continuing to improve. The photo below really doesn't do them justice and with over 5 weeks to Malvern I'm hopeful of getting a set of 3 on the tables. However, I don't doubt that all the best celery growers will have had an exceptional year with this moisture loving crop so I'll only be making up the numbers but it will satisfy me merely to have an entry on the same playing field.

I've now started to let a few marrows form on the plants that I've trained along a metal framework. You can now see how they will hang downwards as they gain weight, fully exposed to daylight and therefore they will be green all the way around. Make sure they are regularly tied to a stout framework like mine as the last thing you want is the ties snapping and whole plant suddenly collapsing to the floor and spoiling your chances.

I'm now starting to get very confident of my tomatoes giving me plenty of good sized fruits for the later shows. From the 3rd truss upwards I have plenty of large round green fruits and it will be these that I hope to have timed ready for Harrogate and Malvern.

The bottom couple of trusses are virtually all red so I will pick these and disperse them to family and friends. A lot of the fruits are quite small but a few (like the one in the photo below) are pretty good quality and if I had a show tomorrow I would take some beating. I'm currently feeding alternately with Chempak no. 8 and soot water.

I've got 2 beds of Sweet Candle stump carrot and the one that is enclosed by polythene with just a mesh top could give me some excellent roots if the foliage is anything to go by. It really is bursting out of the top and forcing the enviromesh upwards so that any carrot fly could get in easily if they so wished, although phorate granules will soon stop them in their tracks. I have another stump bed that is all enviromesh and they are way behind this bed. During all that cold wet weather in May, June and July this frame really did give them a cosstted environment that they seem to have fourished in.

Similarly my long carrots have also benefitted from a similar structure.

Not all is going according to plan however. My brassicas have been an absolute disaster this season, and are as pathetic as Julian Assange and his supporters. They are clean enough (unlike Assange the dirty raping bastard) but they are very small and weak looking plants. I think the beds I grow all my veg on in rotation are perhaps getting a little tired and having spoken to Gareth Cameron i'm going to be giving the soil a drench with compost tea, something he's had some good results with on his pot leeks and which I'll be looking at in more detail and reporting on at a future date.

Until September folks................



وداعا



.....which apparently is Arabic for goodbye! Just looks like some fucking squiggles to me. Mustapha dance!

Requiem in P minor

I think I'm going to have to admit defeat in my quest to get a set of peas benched at Malvern this year. My hat goes off to anyone south of Yorkshire who can grow a set in late September as it really does seem to be an impossible task for me and proof if ever it were needed that peas are well worth all of the 20 points allocated to them in the NVS Judges' Guide. Many years ago Medwyn did a series of Garden News articles on the sowing dates top growers used for a late August and a late September show, asking 6 exhibitors from all around the country, and John Branham who lives in Aylesbury left the date for sowing peas for the late show blank as he considered it a complete waste of time trying. I now concur. The Scots are pretty much unbeatable when it comes to peas so I shall leave it to the last two years' champions to battle it out again, my pals Ian Simpson and Ian Stocks (below), who (along with his wife Linda) sent me and Leesa a lovely silver anniversary 'e-card' today. It's not actually until the 29th but appreciated all the same. And get your bloody hair cut before Malvern Ian!

Despite growing a mildew resistant pea called Dorian the plants are well behind what I'd expect them to be and are currently about 18" tall ....if that. They don't look particularly healthy either, although there is no sign of mildew. From now on I'm just going to grow some peas against netting the old fashioned way for eating purposes only in June/July and use the space for something else later such as lettuce/caulis/overwintering leeks. It means I will no doubt be subject to some not inconsiderable ridicule at Malvern but if you can't take it you shouldn't dish it out, as that means you're just a cunt and believe me there are plenty of those in the veg showing world. Don't forget the old saying.....

One veg I am starting to get the hang of growing are long beet ('Regar'), and I may well grow more than these couple of drums in future years. Biggest problem is hacking back the grape vine growing along the top of the fence above them...but that's another story.

I didn't sow these until early June as my early May sowing last year grew way too big, and the tops were like tree trunks come September. Thus far I have large healthy tops and the roots are a couple of inches diameter at the top and with 6 weeks to Malvern I think I might yet have a crack at staging a set of 5. If the colourful stalks are anything to by I'm on the right track.

Rather than growing them in drums of just free draining sand they are filled with a mix of sand, soil and compost that retains more moisture, and they are given a decent watering every three or 4 days. This should stop the twisting effect that I found 'Regar' prone to when I used to grow it. You don't want huge roots on the showbench, and roots about 3" diameter look more refined on the showbench, providing you can get the whole tap root out which is more of a task with long beet that parsnips or long carrots. However, I've been given some pointers on how to achieve this without snapping it so I'll report on that when it happens.



Gotta fly now....I think Jesus is trying to tell me something......

Please form an orderly cu!

Since losing two of my four cucumber plants to wilt not long after planting the remaining two have grown really well and are now at the top of the vertical supports. The foliage is fresh looking and very green and now able to support several fruits.

They will now be trained horizontally at head height meaning I will have to duck under them when I enter the greenhouse (yeah ok....that's about knee height to big thick Yorkshiremen then!). I am only growing the central stem and any side shoots are cut back to the first leaf axil. All baby fruits have been picked off up to now, but once the plant has 'turned the corner' I will start to allow fruits to form so that they hang downwards. If you look carefully at the photo above you will see the strings going off from the top of the plants for them to be secured to. This way the skins won't get scratched by the coarse foliage and good strong plants mean that there is a big engine for the fruits to form quickly, vitally important on the showbench as you want good size with freshness.

Cu's can be picked up to a week before your show and stored in clingfilm in the refrigerator. Careful the setting isn't too low as they will freeze and then you'll feel like a right dick. Try and keep the flower attached to the end of the cu, but if you do happen to dislodge it secure it back onto the fruit with a very tiny dollop of superglue. Do it carefully and no-one will ever be able to tell, since most judges are geriatric old sods with shite eyesight. Whilst this is technically cheating every fucker does it and don't let anyone tell you they don't. Besides, it's nigh on impossible to make a car journey without them being shaken off.

By picking the fruits over a week or so you can ensure they are all bang on the money for length, but do bear in mind they will grow very quickly, especially in a dampened greenhouse, so you need to keep a close eye on them to make sure they don't go over the length of the ones you've got in store. I've even heard stories of some growers setting their alarm clocks for the middle of the night when they'd calculated a time they would reach the required length!

I've been pleasantly surprised by my aubergines once again and I am looking forward to entering a few plates in the any other veg classes, not to mention using the rejects in some delicious mousakkas. However, a couple of plants have thrown down their leaves almost overnight, having looked very healthy beforehand. It's not red spider as i've sprayed with Dynamec and there isn't a tell-tale web in sight, and it can't be overwatering as plants next to them are perfectly fine. It is a mystery, but the same thing happened last season and after picking off all the droopy leaves to leave a pathetic looking plant, they did seem to recover and go on to produce a crop.

If anyone has any idea what has caused this please let me know as I asked Dave Thornton and he didn't have a clue.

To your marks.....

I feel a huge sofa and Guinness shaped void in my life now the Olympics is over. Despite the Scots' early attempt at sabotage it was a total triumph for Britain from start to finish, although getting shite acts Elbow, Emeli Sande and Muse into the closing ceremony spoiled things a bit at the end. Attention now turns to who stands on the podium at our summer and autumn shows! ( I really do shoehorn this shit in sometimes!).


Despite my recent attempts to get tickets at a higher grade of showing I just love the small village or town shows and will always try and enter as many as I can. Anyone who shows and who thinks these aren't worth entering needs his genitals feeding through a mangle and gobbled off at the other side by an Azerbaijani shotputter. I'd been bitten by the bug in the mid-90's after watching Medwyn pulling some parsnips on an episode of Gardener's World and resolved to have a go at the method myself having first witnessed a few sets at the sadly now long defunct Loughborough Show. I well remember pulling my first set of long carrots and parsnips from a couple of hastily prepared drums the next Autumn and proudly (and nervously) taking them to a local village show set in a marquee. The smell inside a hot marquee is a magical one as far as i'm concerned and it was made all the more enjoyable that particular day as I came back to find red tickets against my parsnips and globe beet.

I have hundreds of photos from my early shows which I love looking back on, and it's now plain to me that my early efforts weren't that great compared to what I've been producing recently, mainly thanks to the advice I get from fellow NVS members. However, over the years I've seen plenty of exhibits that were more than worthy of being shown at a much higher level and there is often a healthy level of competition, and you can always learn something new. On Saturday I visited Burbage Show and it was plain to see that the terrible weather has significantly affected exhibits in terms of quality and the quantity tabled. As I had a very irritable Oscar with me I was unable to take any photos, but congratulations to all those growers who managed to get something benched in this most trying of seasons. All being well I will try and enter next season as it's a quality show with most of the top Leicestershire growers competing. The Show has a website;

http://www.burbagegardeningclub.org.uk/

Because Malvern is hosting this year's National Championships the Midland Branch of the NVS moved their Branch Championships as part of last week's Shrewsbury Flower Show, and I'm as pleased as punch that blog follower Marcus Powell had some excellent success including winning the 3x2 class with his entry below, all the more impressive when you consider the likes of John Branham and Andrew Jones were competing.

Just about everybody I've spoken to says that their celery is without question their best looking crop this season which is totally unsurprising as celery is a bog plant in the wild. My celery is starting to bulk up now and I've been persuaded to put a 20" collar on at this late stage as we have some 6 weeks until Malvern, although I may leave a few on 18" collars for Harrogate which is two weeks earlier. Growing each plant in a large bottomless pot sunk into the ground really allows me to concentrate water to the plant's roots and I'm giving them all a good daily drenching. I learned last season that it's nigh-on impossible to overwater celery. I really proud with this row of healthy looking sticks, all standing to attention. The plastic coated twist ties mean I can undo the collars for maintenance purposes very quickly indeed.

The 'Prince' french beans have grown nicely since plating into 12" pots. I will take these into the greenhouse after returning from our holiday in 3 weeks time. It's one less thing for the mother-in-law to have to worry about watering while we're away.

A few days ago I started to get concerned about my parsnips, as the foliage was looking a little yellow and a mildewy type fungus was affecting the stalks. A spray with Maxicrop greened them up again and a new fungicide called Signum appears to have conquered the mildew. I also had a few stump carrots suffering blight (alternaria) and I've used Signum on these too.

Over on allotment diary Dan's pumpkin 'Simon' is 2 feet long and topping 30 pounds, and a fine, handsome beast he is. As Dan says it is half the length of his namesake but only 10% of his weight. Wanker. (Too near the truth for comfort though!)

Getting back to the Olympics my beloved Leesa won an Olympic themed cake compy at her place of work and was presented with a 'gold' certificate in recognition of her achievement. (If only the killjoys hadn't stepped in and spoiled our fun at Malvern!).

As a reward I've decided to buy her a new dress.

At the third exit....

The season just gets crazier. Due to a late sowing and planting I wouldn't expect my tomatoes to start colouring up yet based on 'normal' seasons, but last week the first ones started turning and now many more have followed suit. I haven't even thinned the foliage or had to hang up any ripe bananas! After several months of cold temperatures those few days of sunshine last month must have been enough to shock the fruits into ripening. It's a blessing in disguise as I can hopefully use up the fruits from the lower trusses which are usually not a great shape and will get plenty to choose from the 3rd and 4th trusses upwards. I certainly have many nice large shiny green fruits to come so I'm hopeful of tabling a set at Harrogate and Malvern this season. I've also got some cracking aubergines growing below the plants too.....which does make the watering a little awkward.

I pulled up all my 250g 'Setton' onions last night.....actually make that 150g onions as I only managed to salvage a dozen or so from this pile that might make me a set of 4 for the Millennium Class. They stopped growing when the rain stopped, basked in a few days of sun and basically said fuck it, we're ripe, dig us up before that wet stuff comes back. I shall have to make the best of a bad job as the Vento isn't much better.

With my leeks going to seed, my spuds being dogplop and my globe beet hardly germinating I am having to think of a plan B so i'm now turning my attention to other crops such as these Blyton Belle marrows which i'm tying to a sturdy framework of arching metal poles. I've taken off all embryo fruits thus far but fairly shortly the plants will be turning almost horizontally so I can then allow fruits to form. They will then hang down away from the spiky foliage and you'll get a blemish free skin with green colouring all the way round. In the past when i've trained them along the ground you will get one side of your marrow with a yellow face where it has been in contact with the ground. I tried putting a pane of glass between two bricks and growing the marrow on this with some success but it can be dangerous when you walk down the garden at night after a few bevvies!

My french beans 'Prince' timed for Malvern are ready for planting into large pots. I'll plant 3 to each of the pots that i've been growing the onions in and put these on the greenhouse staging for regular maintenance and titivation. Growing under cover should give blemish free pods. These plants come from seed provided by Ronnie Jackson who has won at Branch and National level. He grows them in his polytunnel borders but pots will have to suffice for me again.

And as I may have to rely on some lesser pointed crops to win a few quid this season i've started planting a few lettuce in succession. I've come up with this nifty little idea of some plastic covered wooden planks suspended at the ends on bricks. The plants are planted between the planks, themselves into 3" bottomless pots, the idea being that the roots grow through the pot into the soil below and the leaves rest on the clean surface of the plastic and don't get marked by the soil. The plants will be cut just below the bottomless pot and this allows me to wash the roots with a hose without splashing about too much soil onto the underside of the (hopefully very clean) leaves, The roots are wrapped in damp towelling and this keeps the lettuce fresh for a two or three day show no problem. Sometimes I really do get scared by the brilliance of my brain.

By the way if anyone's interested I'm selling a good line in cheap sat navs stolen (with some ease apparently) from thick northerners' vans. Let me know if you're in the market for one.

Tete de coq

I've got mixed feelings about this photo.

Apart from the fact that I am still devilishly good looking, these were my first two harvested onions at 19" circumference from last night. I was hoping to enter a jolly decent set in the 1.5kg class and Dan Unsworth (proof that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.....God made him as ugly as I am gorgeous) told me I should get them up at 18.5" or else they would be over that weight. Rather than take the advice of someone who has forgotten more about onions than I know I decided that I knew better than my neolithic northern mate and chose to ignore him, and these are the result. 3 lbs 11 oz or 1.67kgs. What a cockhead!



It means I will now have to consider putting these in the exhibition onion class at Harrogate and Malvern, (assuming I get another 3 to match them) which is a bit of a bugger as it puts you up against a whole different class of exhibitor entirely, such as Vin Throup, Ivor Mace, Andrew Jones and Dave Metcalfe. The 1.5kg class was introduced for those who didn't have the facilities to grow big onions, and the joke among some circles is it's for those growers who don't know how to grow onions! Well, I guess this proves that I can grow onions now? However, it also proves that I don't fucking listen!



These two had completely run out of steam and the foliage was spent, as you could see the neck starting to collapse to one side. I cut the tops off, discarded the M3 mix onto the garden, washed the roots of any remaining soil (which were very strong and healthy I have to say) and have laid them on their sides, necks downwards on a blanket in the conservatory with some polystyrene sheet over them to dry them off a bit, and will turn them over the next few days before storing them somewhere at constant temperature (don't know where yet!). I have 4 more that are about 1/2" to 3/4" behind and still growing quite well, so I'll get these to the same diameter (hopefully!) and cut the tops as soon as they do. I also have several more that are more squat shaped (not a shape I favour) and should be able to make a set of three for local classes. All in all it's been enjoyable watching them swell and wondering how big they'll get and i've learnt a lot about growing them in pots. I hope to repeat the process next season in a polytunnel that I intend to purchase for said purpose.



My thanks to Helen for supplying the plants in the first place and Dan for the advice during the season. As for our sidekick Paul Bastow, some of you may know that he is actually a security consultant and spends his days advising people on how to stay safe and how to protect their property. He is always one step ahead of the criminal mind, and employs a vast array of gadgetry in his daily quest to keep the streets of Britain free from evil. Well, last night his had his sat nav nicked from his van! Double cockhead!

Challenging times

There is absolutely no doubt that this season is like no other I have ever experienced. Aside from the weather I've been having unprecedented problems getting certain seeds to germinate, particularly globe beetroot which I have resown 3 times now and they simply refuse to germinate outside in any number. They normally grow like weeds! It can't be the seed, as I've used three different batches from 3 different suppliers so i'm at a headscratching loss to explain it. When I first popped them in at the height of the summer deluges I didn't expect any problem as the soil was permanently wet. Perhaps it was just too wet and the knobbly seed simply rotted? In desperation I sowed a couple of rows in one of my greenhouse borders and these were much more successful, proving that you need warm moist soil for good germination, not a cold, muddy swimming pool!

My 250g onions are also becoming a concern. I expected them to be ready for harvest around now and hoped they would get to 82mm diameter, but they seem to have stopped at around 65mm. The foliage has gone yellow and to all intents the plants are telling me 'that's it'. They just sat there for weeks on end as the rain lashed down, and once we had a few sultry days the plants seemed to swell out a bit then decide it was harvest time.
My first bags of Kestrel potatoes have been an unmitigated disaster. In normal seasons this bed is ideal as it acts as a bit of a sump for water draining from the surrounding land, ideal for thirsty spuds, but there is a limit and this year I fear they've just sat in waterlogged soil.

Last week the foliage went yellow and it was still barely a foot high so I had no choice but to harvest them. I now have a couple of buckets marble sized Kestrel which is about as much use in the kitchen as I am. If anyone has any clue how best to cook Kestrel let me know as my wife has nothing but utter contempt for them.

I was hoping to enter the Millennium Class at Malvern but seeing as I need 250g onions, potatoes and globe beet it looks like that plan is on hold for another year. My tomatoes are still not looking that great either.

I've given up on my blanch leeks, despite my wife insisting that the seed heads 'look pretty'! I planted 23 and so far at least 16 have gone to seed and the remainder look as if they're about to. This means I will have to be more reliant on celery for collections this season, a desperate measure for someone who until 2 seasons ago was without doubt the World's Worst celery grower! However, I learnt a lot about this crop last year with a little help from my friends, and so far I'm happy with how my plants are progressing. They certainly are one crop that should thrive in this summer's weather. I sowed a little later so that I had fresher plants, and they are just starting to bulk out now, having gone onto an 18" cardboard collar a couple of weeks ago. The soil had some seaweed meal worked into it and I've given them regular feeds of nitrate of soda and calcium nitrate and will now be switching to Chempak no. 8 until harvest time, as well as a few applications of soot water which is reputed to bring out the colour in the foliage. I shall also be giving them shitloads of water from now on, as when I harvested them last season the soil was surprisingly dry despite daily drenchings, proving to me that you can never overwater celery. And in the end I applied Slugclear to the soil despite the warnings of death on the packet as I simply couldn't allow the little snotfuckers anywhere near my plants.

My 'Regar' long beet have motored well despite a very late sowing and with two months to showtime i'm more confident I will have these the refined shape they're supposed to be rather than the weighty monsters I produced last year, and I'm certainly happy with the uniformity of the foliage. Last year 3 or 4 stations produced specimens that swamped the others. There are 14 plants growing in these two drums and I may have a set of 3 to take with me to the RHS Westminster Show in October. The NVS call for 5 in their National Championships which is too many for me and many other growers so no doubt there'll be very few entries as usual (dig dig). Long beet like moist soil at all times, and my drums are therefore filled with an equal mix of sand, soil and compost to retain more moisture.

And last night I planted my 'Dorian' peas with the National at the end of September in mind, 27 days after they were sown. They were all set against 8' canes 10" apart and any tendrils were snipped off. As soon as the plants get their roots down and perk up a bit I'll start tying to the canes every couple of inches. As it was another wet evening I also gave a liberal scattering of slug pellets. It will be interesting to see if 'Dorian' is as mildew resistant as it says on the tin!