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.