Malvern 2012

I went into this seeking my first ever ticket at National level and succeeded with a 4th in cucumbers. The standard of entries was simply awesome, amazing when you consider the weather everyone has had this season. Full report with photos over the next few days but right now the NVS after-show piss up beckons!

A day off work to prepare....

.....why oh why do I put myself through this shite every year?

Stumps shite!
Long beet even shiter!
Tomatoes shiter still!
Parsnips full of carrot fly!
Onions still not ripening!

Still.....I'm hugely looking forward to baking my fruit cake later!

Survival

Well now, I've been suffering since Thursday from what I believe is quite simply the most severe case of manflu that has ever been recorded. Today my voice went and meant I was unable to take phone calls from customers. Bliss! Quite how i'm still alive however is a miracle and is testament to my amazing fitness and powers of recovery.....plus a wife who tolerates my pathetic whinings and runs around after me! Along with torrential rain it meant I was unable to do any gardening and I fear certain things may have got away from me as a result. I have one cucumber in the fridge at 17.25" having left it too long on the vine despite my intention not to do so. Due to my weakened state of health I only got around to cutting it on Sunday. The others are straining just over 16" but I doubt they'll catch up as the weather is so cold and miserable.


I've been cutting french beans at 7" since Sunday as I find they start to go beany much after that and I'd rather have a smaller set showing no bean bulge than hope for a longer set that I may never achieve. Quite how certain growers get beanless pods up to 9" is beyond me. Perhaps heated greenhouses? I mentioned this method before of storing beans on the incline with their stalks in a shallow pool of water. Kept in a darkened garage it does seem to keep them in good condition for several days meaning you can pick many beans to give you a lot from which to make your final choice. A word of warning....try and make your final choice at home before travelling when you are less stressed and only take a couple of spares. That way you can just lay them out with confidence at the show knowing they are your best set.

I am still very unsure how my long beet is going to turn out. The recent rains and high winds have absolutely battered the foliage so thank God all tap roots have to be displayed with 3" leaf stalks only. This is the scene that greeted me at lunchtime today.

I'm really looking forward to trying to get the long beets up. Of all the tap roots long beet are the ones most likely to snap and the few that I've grown in the past have often snapped at the 2' mark when I've pulled them a la parsnips and long carrots so I'm going to go to extra lengths to try and extract them complete from the bore holes. I have been advised to sink a bore pipe next to each root and take out a plug of the growing medium. Using a hose pipe I shall try carefully washing the soil from around the root and hopefully it will fall into the hole and come away intact the full depth of the drum. They're not huge shouldered but long beet only need to be about 3" diameter at most to look their best as long as they carry their weight down the root for the first foot or so. I've never exhibited a full dish of long beet before so this one is a totally new one for me if I manage it, which is a tad ambitious as I've only grown two drums of 7!

So at the moment I don't quite know which of my 15+ entries for Malvern will actually make the benches (if any!), but that is no matter because if the weekend is anything like last year's National at Llangollen we'll have a very enjoyable weekend with our NVS friends, swapping tips, ideas, not taking things too seriously and generally ripping the piss out of each other. On the NVS website's members only forum we are having a fruit cake competition and several growers and their wives/girlfriends/hangers-on going to Malvern are entering this most prestigious event of the weekend. Despite a certain amount of bureaucratic red tape that was originally thrown in our path (and which we have decided to ignore and indeed ridicule) the cake-off is still going ahead. There is also a class for a vegetable animal and I have a plan for an animal so lifelike it would fool Bill Oddie. To me this is what being a member of a Society is all about and whilst I would love a ticket of any description in the National Championship classes I am totally looking forward to meeting up with the friends we made last year and making new ones from the many, many people I speak to on the forum all year. One young chap who lives in Ireland is even going to enter next year's championships by sending me his spuds via the postal service to stage for him!

Several growers have used the forum to great effect to win prizes at Branch and National Championships by asking advice over the Winter months and then putting it into practice. I've said in the past that before the internet we would have to get by if any problems arose and then come show time you would be able to ask the winning growers how they achieved their success. Now we can talk to each other all year via the various online forums, emails and texts and quickly resolve any problems you come up against rather than having to wait until showtime. So if you want to improve your produce and you haven't already done so make sure you join the National Vegetable Society where growers are only too willing to help you out! However, one bit of advice i'm never divulging is my prize winning fruit cake method!

I don't like harping on about it.....

..........but this was my 'winning' exhibit in the 'BBC' at Harrogate at the weekend.

I didn't bother with a photocall with Dan or Paul this year after some of you contacted me last year to say that they have the sort of faces that can make an onion cry. In fact, after beating them yet again and each having to hand over ten pound notes to yours truly they both looked as if they'd been ducking for apples in a chip pan.


I scored 44.5 points, including a 17 out of 20 for my celery which at the time I felt was very generous indeed. However, as I'm not exactly a celery expert I still don't quite know what the best attributes the judge is looking for so I may be doing myself a disservice and they could well have been worth 17 points, I just don't know. I guess as long as the judge is consistent then the correct result will always come out on collections and I was gratified to notice that I was only a half point outside the tickets which went down to fourth. It's a good job me, Paul Bastow and Dan entered otherwise there would only have been 5 entries.

I thought my celery was a bit on a small side because when I pulled them up I had to take off a few stalks that had split round the back of the plant where I couldn't see when I uncollar them to tend them, thus reducing the diameter quite a bit. However, they were fresh and clean with no sign of pest damage, definitely no heart rot and no blistering on the concave inside edge of the stalks which I understand is a sure sign of an aged specimen that is past its best. When I returned from Harrogate I made sure I went over the remaining plants, uncollaring them and discarding any split stalks. Hopefully there will enough time for the plants to swell out a bit more before Malvern where I have entered a set of 3. I shall also be using a pair in the 3x2 class at Malvern, although all three pairs in the National Championship version have to be from the 20 pointer veg (celery/potatoes/long beet/large onions/parsnips/leeks and long carrots). This isn't the case at Harrogate where I used 2 stump carrots which are 18 pointers.

It was noticeable that there weren't any very large parsnips anywhere at Harrogate. I don't think the winning ones in the main class would have got a look in in normal years but of course if you're not in it you can't win it so the exhibitors that managed to get an entry benched deserve credit. Having said that I reckon I might have come at least 2nd if I'd bothered to enter the class, as Dave T came 2nd and his parsnips were much smaller than mine were on the collection. I cleaned 4 parsnips for Harrogate, 2 for the 3x2, one for the 6x1 and one for the tap root class, and I was really pleased with the condition although in other years they would have been much bigger to go with it. As it is, it appears everyone has suffered the same problem this season, when they just seemed to stop growing from July. I have quite a few to select from for my set of 5 for Malvern, as well as a pair for the 3x2 class.

I'm really looking forward to having a go in only my 2nd National Championships. Exhibiting a set of 5 parsnips and 3 celery at National level signifies another step up in my development and something I only dreamed about when I first started showing nearly 20 years ago. Constant improvement is always my target and with that in mind I am aiming to try and get a single 5th placed ticket next weekend, seeing as I only won a wooden spoon last year! Even that seemingly modest aim is a huge feat when you start ticking off the names that will be present, so a 5th place is a great achievement. Last season the likes of John Branham, Trevor Last, Gerald Treweek, Jim Pearson, Jim Thompson and Derek Aldred were all out of the winning positions as new names such as David Peel and Owain Roberts made a breakthrough, so they'll be no doubt trying even harder to turn things round at Malvern. Throw in champions past and prsent, Medwyn, Ian Simpson, Ian Stocks, Dave Thornton, Mark Hall, Peter Clark, Jeff Parsons, Mark Roberts, Jim McCartney, Gareth Cameron, Ronnie Jackson, Chris Hewlett, Bob Brown, Graeme Watson, Ray Bassett, Ray Sale, Vin Throup, Allan Young, Ron MacFarlane, Dave Metcalfe as well as the female superstars Sherie Plumb, Helen Vincent and Sue McCall and you can see how much of a tall order it is to get in the tickets.

For Malvern I've got 4 nice cucumbers growing so close together that you can barely get a sheet of paper between them. I need 3 for the class.

I also have an absolute glut of french beans maturing, having grown the plants in large pots and bringing them into the greenhouse for the past three weeks to keep the pods from getting spoiled.



These are both very strongly contested classes so I'll have my work cut out to get near the tickets. For now I'll have to content myself winning the BBC and chugging along with the Deliverance Duo from deepest, darkest Yorkshire. I must admit though that it was a tad embarrassing seeing them get their wallets out and handing over the tenners to me, the worthy victor. I really think we shouldn't have to demean ourselves like this in future contests, so with this in mind I was just wondering boys.......next year, can you not set up some sort of direct debit?

Trug-a-lug, keep the sand in the tub

The trug class at any show just seems to get more and more popular. There were 13 entries at Harrogate this year and when Leesa placed ours on the bench I think we both felt we would be out of the tickets for once, and got on with our other exhibits. However, we were very wrong and came back to a 2nd place ticket and a very useful 30 quid in the back pocket! Having more time after judging I was able to run a judge's critical eye over the exhibits and realise that the judge had made a good call and taking that little bit of extra time prepping the veg that I give to Leesa paid off, although it does help to have someone with an outstanding eye for design! Most entrants had merely piled a lot of veg very high so I think a little thought and careful veg placement catches the judge's eye very often.

We've bought a brand new wicker trug for Malvern where there are no dimension stipulations, and having come 3rd here for the past three years we're hoping to go at least one better. However, this is the winning trug from last year, exhibited by a Mr Porter so you can clearly see there's a very, very high standard.

I had a decent weekend for my wallet. Leesa is anti-gambling so it was with some consternation that she witnessed people chucking money in my direction over the weekend (if it had been the other way I'd have done it without her seeing). As well as winning the 3x2 (BBC) against Dan Uddersworthy and Paul Bastardfeatures and a tenner from each to boot, I had a last minute bet with Dave Thornton that i'd beat him him in the National Carrot Championships. I'd lost money to Dave the past couple of seasons when we had a yearly 20 quid side bet on accumulated points during the season and he'd beaten me hands down. When I'd pulled my long carrots I knew I had a pretty good entry and just before I washed them in the bath I picked up an email from Dave asking if we were having a bet this season? I cheekily suggested the Carrot Championships and of course he bit my hand off as he's never seen me produce decent long carrots since i've known him. His hangdog face was a picture when he saw me staging mine next to his and it was a superb moment when I finally saw him open his wallet to hand over the crisp 10 pound note. This is an end view of the National Carrot Championships, Dave's entry nearest camera and mine next up.

I guess I only have two or three decent long carrots left to pull, judging by the tops, and I was very lucky that the 5 I pulled for Harrogate seemed like peas in a pod, and I had no need to keep pulling any more. I won't be entering long carrots at Malvern where you need 5 but I may have an entry of 3 at Westminster a week or so afterwards. It took a text from Dan to remind me that I'd not actually bothered emptying out my drums this season as time was against me and I wasn't that fussed about long carrots this season. If that is the result then I am seriously tempted to not bother emptying out any of my drums and beds this Winter, be it for carrots, parsnips or stumps. They were the best long carrots I've grown for several seasons so I can't see the point of all that hard work unless it's absolutely necessary...which it appears not to be. It could just be that I got very lucky of course!

At Seagrave I benched a couple of sets of long carrots that I'd grown in these pipes (pictured before I'd set them up or secured them), 28 in all so the rows of pipes were 4 deep.

I tried this method last season and whilst I had some heavy specimens they were throwing out all sorts of side roots a couple of feet down as I neglected them from July onwards. This season I gave them a little more attention and when the pipes were emptied out I was pleasantly surprised at the results, one of the sets coming second to a set of my stumps (sadly I forgot to take any photos). It has encouraged me to have a go again next season but I will be growing them in single file inside my soon to be acquired polytunnel so that I can give them much more frequent watering. I found that once the foliage gets large it's impossible to tend to them properly and I had a few with green shoulders. I couldn't see through the forest of leaves that a few shoulders had come clear of the compost which tends to sink in pipes. I believe it's a method that is worth persevering with and indeed Paul Wlodarczak's winning tap root set had an excellent carrot that was grown in a pipe.(below...my 4th placed set next to it)

Dave T is determined to win his money back so we've gone double or quits on stump carrots at the National. Dave's stumps scored more than mine at Harrogate but I have a bed of 28 from which to pull my 5 for Malvern so i'm banking on that yielding me some corkers. It's the first one I sowed and the sides were protected with polythene so the plants have been really cossetted and I'm hoping to have some really pronounced stump ends. If neither of us gets a ticket then the two entries will be judged separately by an independant adjudicator! At least I can't lose anything on the season with a double or quits can I?

One class I was hoping to enter at Malvern was for 3 quality marrows, a class that has been introduced for the first time at National level. I grew 5 plants up along inclined metal poles and managed to harvest my first good specimen a couple of weeks ago.

However, I do find Blyton Belle a bit shy to produce fruits and whilst I have another couple growing I fear there isn't enough time for them to catch up with the one i've cut. Graham Wagstaffe won marrows at Harrogate with this lovely neat pair.

Graham is another top grower and he also won the 250g onion class at Harrogate with this uniform set of 5, variety Toughball I think. I believe they were probably the same set I saw win at Notts DA at the end of August.

However, the picture above doesn't do justice to how small they were.....in other years these would be classed as almost embarrassingly small and i'm estimating they were only about 180g if that, but because of their exceptional quality in this most difficult of seasons they beat larger less well conditioned exhibits. It just goes to show that good small ones can beat larger ones, whatever the veg, so long as you have good form, shape, colour, uniformity and condition. I have a similar sized set put to one side for Malvern which I will have no qualms about showing. They are easily my best looking set of small onions and are pretty well matched. However, if I hadn't seen Graham's winning set I probably wouldn't have dared show them at Malvern.

My car park pass for Malvern arrived today. If you enter the National you get a free entry ticket and if you enter 5 classes or more on the Malvern side you get another, which saves a good few quid. If you get chance try and get to Malvern. Apart from the National Vegetable Society's Championships there are dahlia, chrysanth, cacti, fuchsia and many other competitions not to mention the multitude of other attractions in the showground itself. It's a huge country show and you really do need a full day to get round so get there early as soon as the gates open. We are hoping to get a chicken run set up over the Winter so we'll be eyeing up the various stalls at Malvern that sell chicken houses. If I don't need to empty out my sand drums I should have plenty of time to construct it. I bought some of the winning eggs in the after show auction at Seagrave Saturday night and had them on toast today for my lunch. The yokes were huge and shop bought eggs don't come close.

Gets quite interesting about 7 minutes in....

Look on an empty stomach though!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01ms6mw/Beechgrove_Garden_2012_Episode_22/

Bummer!

It took me a while but I finally managed to bench a set of runner beans and cucumbers at a high level of showing at Harrogate over the weekend. Whilst I wasn't placed I was very happy with how they looked and they certainly didn't look to be in the wrong company.

My cu's were much bigger than everyone else's but as the only two I had ready I had to go with them. They were 17" long and about 3" diameter.

One of these had been cut 5 days previously, wrapped in clingfilm and stored in the fridge whilst I waited for the other one to catch up. The one cut earlier kept in great condition but the second one didn't quite catch up in length, being about 3/8" short so I would have lost points for uniformity. One also had a strange wiggly line etched into it about an inch long at the flower end which I think was the work of a tiny snail I found when the fruit was quite small, so again I lost points on condition. And I managed to retain the flowers without having to glue them on, although I was convinced this wouldn't be the case as the roads around Harrogate appeared to have many potholes. I managed to hit every one in the dark and I was felt certain they they would be shaken off before I got to the showground. I need a set of 3 for Malvern and have 4 contenders all growing away nicely, about an inch or so different in length, the longest being 14" already. I won't leave the longest to grow so long or so big this time (I'll settle for 16"), so that I have plenty of time to let the others catch up, now that I know the clingfilm trick works nicely.

My runner beans weren't world beaters but Dave Thornton was impressed and said they were a tidy set.

Well done to my chum John Ellis for coming 4th in this class. I'd actually started picking my beans nearly two weeks before the show, storing them at an incline on a pane of glass set in a tray with the stalks only in a puddle of water. You couldn't tell the difference between the ones picked earlier or the day before so that's another important tip to be used in future, my thanks to John Trim for sharing this one. I have entered the National at Malvern but as I'll need 15 beans here that may well be a tall order. I settled at 15" rather than trying to be clever and getting longer beans that were showing signs of being 'beany'. I have quite a few about 12" long on the vines so I hope to start cutting in the next few days.

My french beans 'Prince' are all starting to come at once and this is another class i've entered at the National. I was speaking to former champ Ronnie Jackson over the weekend (he supplied me the seed) and he felt my timing was cock on. What I need to do now is to keep banging the water into the pots so that they don't get a check in growth and start to run to seed i.e. go beany. I won't try to get superlong pods, and think i'll settle at 8", cutting them when they reach length and storing in a similar manner to my runners.

This is the set that won at Harrogate, benched by my pal Paul Wlodarczak.

Paul had a stunningly successful weekend, winning the tap root class and coming a tantalisingly close 2nd in the National Carrot Championships. He let slip that he wasn't intending to show next year due to a prior family commitment. Needless to say he is now very tempted to have a go at Harrogate next year when it stages the National Championships. How can you even begin to think about not doing it next season Paul?

Peter Glazebrook once again broke the record for the heaviest onion at Harrogate, raising the benchmark to a staggering 18lbs 1oz. Peter also won all the other 'giant' classes so he had a very lucrative weekend.

Dan came 3rd in the heaviest marrow class and I was very amused to see that he and Paul Bastow put 'Simon' down on the variety cards. Morecambe and fucking Wise they aint!

I couldn't resist having a quick photocall with my namesake at the breakdown however!

Dan actually spent Sunday continually rolling his tongue back up into his mouth and causing concern to the security guards looking after Carol Vorderman, after he took hundreds of photos of her backside! My only comment is I'd like to see the size of the shoehorn used to get her buttocks into these jodphurs! I've seen less dramatic dead heats in a zeppelin race! I know arse botox injections are all the rage these days but I think she may have overdone it a little!

Easier to enter, harder to win!

I caught up with Ian Simpson over the weekend at Harrogate. Ian is a really top grower and was to the fore in several classes despite having a lot of his produce pinched from his allotment. His stunning stump carrots (below) deservedly took the premier award of best in show. He has limited space and facilities however.

As well as being a really great grower he's also a top bloke and talks an awful lot of sense when it comes to the future of our veg shows. At the NVS's AGM to be held on the 29th September at Malvern he has put forward a motion to reduce the quantities called for in 4 of the National classes, namely long carrots, parsnips, long beet and blanch leeks. 5 are currently required and he and several others, myself included, are calling for that to be reduced to three. So-called purists have criticised us, saying that you should have to bench more specimens in a class because 'It's the National!' If that is the case then why are the quantities for potatoes (5) and 250g onions (5) the same as they are in all the Branch Championships? Those classes are ALWAYS well supported with entries.
At last year's National in Llangollen, there were only 3 entries of blanch leeks. That was in Wales, the home of the leek for fuck's sake! Ronnie Jackson has won the British Leek Championships a couple of times when it is held annually as part of the Welsh Branch CHampionships. He came 3rd at Harrogate this weekend in the National Leek Championships. Both classes call for three leeks. He has never competed in the National with blanch leeks because of the quantity differential.......and it has to be said the prize money isn't that great compared to the effort involved. Jim Williams, National Scottish Branch Chairman is another good leek grower who has never exhibited blanch leeks at National level.

For Harrogate I prepared a total of 5 long carrots, 3 for the National Carrot Championships, 1 for the Tap Root Class and one for the 6x1 class. Quite frankly I was utterly pissed off with carrots by the time I'd finished! One of the country's top growers was present at Harrogate and I won't name him but he is vehemently against the class quantity reduction idea. He retired early from work and can devote his whole life to growing for show if he so chooses. He has several large allotments and gardens i'm told. I'm not criticising anyone who wants to do this, or who is lucky enough to have the facilities, but he and one or two others like him cannot go on forever, but while they do entries will continue to dwindle in the nation's premier vegetable show.

I overheard him say that he had never won the National Carrot Championships before although he has come 2nd on several occasions. I venture to suggest that if the class had called for 5 long carrots and 5 stumps he would have won it several times before now! By reducing it more folk like myself would be prepared to have a go just to see what your produce looks like against the very best, and the top blokes like Ronnie and Jim would definitely have a go....and they'd probably win tickets. In effect it would be making it easier to enter, but much harder to win, contrary to what several people have said to me that it would be easier to win. Far, far from it.

I have to say I don't particularly give a fish's fuck if the motion doesn't get passed at Malvern, as I have more important things in my life than veg. It just seems to make sense to me that if the Society is to continue into the future they need to encourage the keen as mustard smaller scale exhibitor with limited facilities. I would urge anyone who is an NVS member to attend the AGM and make sure their vote counts......whichever way you agree with.

In the red corner, and still the disputed BBC heavyweight champion....

Considering the year we've all had the quality and quantity on display at Harrogate today was simply awesome. Of course, I retained my BBC crown against the Huddersfield and Ingleton YMCA, although it was closer on points than I would have liked, and I was saved by my 17 out of 20 scoring celery. I actually lost out on a ticket in this class and the 6x1 class by 1/2 a point, signifying that I am heading in the right direction and bridging the gap between myself and the very best. This was the first show where I certainly felt my produce deserved to be in the same company.

Best moment for me was a dizzying 5th place in the National Carrot Championships (pic below), my long carrots scoring 16 out of 20, half a point off the best scoring set. I even outscored 6th place Dave Thornton. I secured a 4th place ticket in the tap root collection, beating Dave again.

However, I was gazzumped by my protege Paul Wlodarczak who achieved an incredible second in the National Carrot Championships, going one better to win the tap root class and french beans. I fully expect to go back on Sunday to help peel him off the ceiling as he was as high as a kite!

Honourable mentions to Dan who was 3rd in the onion class and Paul Bastow who was 3rd for the second year running in the 250g onion class. I heard several stories of growers holding back their best stuff for the National. If that's true then Malvern is going to be amazing.

My turn to buy the medals!

'Canker' result!

I pulled my parsnips last night for Harrogate and whilst they weren't the biggest i've ever grown, they carried their weight well down and more importantly they were also nice and clean with no sign of the brown marks I've had for the past few seasons and which I attributed to the disease parsnip canker. They were similar to those shown on this specimen that Paul Bastow emailed me a few weeks ago (hahahahahahahaaaaaaa!).

I am now confident in saying that this is definitely carrot fly damage, because for the first time this season I treated my parsnips with the same photate granules that I sprinkle around my carrot tops. They don't resemble the fly grub damage you get on carrots very much which are black and seem to go much deeper (hence why I'd always assumed it was canker), and therefore I can only deduce that the carrot fly grub perhaps don't find parsnip skins as tasty as they do carrots, and just graze around the surface a bit? It's a lesson hard earned and from now on I'll be treating my parsnips and carrots with phorate at the same time. I do this about 3 times during the season to try and combat the various hatchings of carrot fly which are supposed to be around May and July although there are suggestions that a third generation hatches in the autumn in long summers so you need to make sure you keep the crowns well protected. Phorate really does stink and I use disposable gloves to apply it.

As well as the hugely important BBC I'm also putting an entry in the UK Carrot Championships at Harrogate. This fiercely competitive class calls for a set of three stump carrots and a set of 3 long carrots. I pulled my stumps on Tuesday evening as I knew I would be pushed for time in the following evenings, grading my sets for the two shows I have this weekend with the various classes I'll be entering (not forgetting Top Trays) and then covering them in containers with damp peat from the potato bags. They will keep in good condition that way until I wash them this evening. I actually decimated a bed of 48 Sweet Candle to get my sets and the first few 'pulls' were far from promising, but in the end I managed to get a set of 3 that are probably better than any I have ever produced, so it was with some delight that I also managed to get a nice set of 3 long carrots to go with them last night. I came 8th last year and I'm confident I have a much better entry this time around that won't look out of place, and if I can sneak into the tickets I'd be one happy bunny. This was one of my rejected Sweet Candles...had a few wrinkles at the bottom end.

I also have entries in the tap root class, the 6x1 collection class, the 3x2 collection class (The BBC!), pickling shallots, tomatoes, runner beans and cucumbers, as well as several classes on the Northern Horticultural side including the trug, which after many years of constant pressure from my wife and support for her from several of you bastards I have entered in joint names!

Yesterday I posted off my entry form for the National Championships at Malvern, a total of 15 classes. The deadline is tomorrow so if you haven't already done so then do it now, but you'd have to scan it and email it to Pat Brown patbrown59@talktalk.net. It's a lot earlier deadline this season than usual so I reckon there will be a lot less exhibits actually benched than are entered. I had to make a judgement on what I think will be ready in a couple of weeks time but there's a long while for things to go wrong with crops like celery, tomatoes, french beans, runner beans and cucumbers for instance, so I very much doubt if all 15 of my entries will make it and I'll be delighted if 7 or 8 make it. As has been pointed out to me on several occasions I won fuck all in last season's National. More than likely I'll win fuck all again this season but it took my most favourite sportsman of all time, England's Andy Murray several attempts to get his first Grand Slam and perseverance is one of my strong points. Perverting the course of history, two-faced contradiction and talking bollocks are some of my other strong points.

I know several of you are planning to visit Harrogate and I'll be there tomorrow and Sunday so if you spot me then please make yourself known so I can walk you round to the BBC class and show you how brilliant I am and how useless the Geoffrey Boycott Brigade are. If by any chance the judge is completely blind and probably been bribed......I'll be in Loughborough!

Two days to go, two Simons, two stunners!

'Simon' took Kendal Show by storm Dan tells me. Cheeky twat even put 'Simon' down on the variety card. Arsehole.

I could easily give up on this season, I'm feeling as miserable as a Yorkshire clayfondler. I had a furtle among my parsnips the other day and found some very small shoulders despite having relatively large tops. I pulled a couple of sample Sweet Candle stumps out of curiosity. One had more fangs than the Hound of the Baskervilles (see pic below) and the other was so pointed I had to be careful not to prick my finger on it! My long beet has enormous foliage but again the shoulders are barely an inch and a half to two inch diameter. I've lifted the last of my spud bags and unearthed a pile of crap. I only needed a set of 4 Amour for Malvern and did manage to set aside a set of dubious quality. My globe beet are really struggling to make size and with 3 weeks to Malvern I cannot see me getting a set of 4 for the Millennium Class. And my onions just aren't ripening depsite having the fan blowing over them 24/7.

Ah well. Due to circumstances I've not given my veg the best of attention this year and i'm not sure it would have made an awful lot of difference anyway because of the weather we've all experienced. A report on the News the other evening suggested that because the Arctic ice cap was melting a lot quicker than scientists predicted we can expect wetter summers for the foreseeable future. Oh bliss. Perhaps this just means we're going to have to adapt our growing methods. Or perhaps the scientists and weather people don't really have a clue....they have been wrong before! It seems weird that for two years running we've had the best weather in September and October, so Sunday we made the most of it and had a day on the beach at Holkham in Norfolk. I cannot be held responsible for any palpitations caused by the second photo!

It's sure to be a busy weekend as we're travelling to Harrogate in the wee small hours of Friday morning, Leesa having agreed to help me stage in a moment of weakness. Whether my stuff is good enough to be shown at this level this season is debateable, but as long as I win the Bullshit Bloggers' Challenge (BBC) against the Moors Manlovers then all will be well with the World.

As well as Harrogate I also have Seagrave Show this weekend so there won't be much time to catch up on sleep and as I'm on the committee of two I hope to put a few decent exhibits in to make up for what will probably see a drop in the number of entries this season. I won most points as well as best exhibit here last year but I think my geriatric, Liverscum supporting pal Ian Taylor has some decent stuff as he wanted to bet me £100 he'd beat me this year. I told him to fuck off. Whatever happens it will be a fun day out as all exhibits are auctioned off for charity afterwards and we make over £1000 each year thanks in no small part to the generosity of the villagers. This year we're presenting a cheque to the Ear Foundation, a cause close to our hearts because of Oscar's disability.

I've usually got several shows under my belt by this stage so it's a bit of a novelty not to have shown any veg yet and i'm itching to get the roots pulled. I just hope those first two Sweet Candle aren't indicative of the rest because if they are........then I am undoubtedly, absolutely, scarily in 20 foot deep, stinking to high-heaven BBC doo-doo shit for the next 12 months!

Charmin'!

I value the friendship of my pals and as a consequence I like to look out for them, minding their backs and giving them little reminders as the show season kicks in. Being the great mate I am decided it would be nice to send Dave Thornton the e-card below. I have to say I was disappointed at his response. I mean honestly.....you try and help someone out.....

Beamer up Scotty

My company car is up for renewal and it is with great reluctance that I have decided to give up my beloved BMW in bell-end red with extra knob'ead accessories and get a totally more practical estate car after several years of headscratching and worry when it came to transporting all my veg and various other exhibits such as flowers, pot plants and cacti to shows. When BMW design their vehicles I feel sure that getting leeks, celery and various long root boxes in and out of the back seat and boot are not considerations that get onto their drawing boards so when it came to the time to make a choice I had to remember that for a few weeks every year I cursed and wished I had an estate car! In future I will now be able to get my veg to and from the shows in much better condition but it does mean I shall spend the majority of the year wishing my new car didn't have all the ooomph of a Yorkshire onion grower when I put my foot down! Such are the choices in life but it will be a while before it arrives so I still have a few more weeks of trying to shoehorn everything in.


As my show season hasn't started yet I need to make sure I have to hand all the various bits and pieces that I will need to transport my produce to the shows, and any staging paraphernalia and information once I get there. You really don't want to be adding to your stress levels in the hours before the show so try and make sure you have everything you're likely to need ready and good to go. This is not an exhaustive list but here goes.....


Raffia (for tying onions)....this should already be done but sometimes you need to re-tie at the show if it comes loose.
Boxes to transport produce.
Various display stands for onions plus black cloth to drape over them
Plates and dishes for the display of 250g onions/shallots/tomatoes and spuds
Vermiculite or dry silver sand for nestling shallots into
Tape measure (to measure 3" if it is required to cut parsnip & carrot foliage)
Runner and french bean display boards if not provided by the show
A sharp knife for trimming celery roots (careful it's not on general view....locked in a briefcase would be best just in case the police stop you!)
Scissors
Green string
Top tray board
Vases and oasis
Judges guides
Pen and paper/notebooks (always handy)
Schedules!

And just remember that showing veg SHOULD be enjoyable. I've always said that the day I get upset at a judge's decision will be the day I give up showing, as you have to trust the integrity of the judge and the process. At village level shows very often they wheel out the guy who has been judging shows since Michael Jackson was black and Leeds United were a top club, and he probably hasn't taken any formal qualification. At this level I certainly don't think you should get upset if a decision you disagree with doesn't go your way. Bear in mind also that the judge has handled your exhibit and assessed any faults, weighed them up against other entries and come to a decision for a 1-2-3. Veg can never be judged on appearance alone and it can never be an exact science, but qualified judges do have quidelines to help them. If you're unsure as to why you haven't done as well as you'd hoped try and seek the judge out after the show as a good judge will always try and stay behind to explain his decisions and this can be quiet enlightening. I actually learnt a lot by stewarding for the judges at our local show for several years. You have to be discrete, especially if you're competing yourself, but by listening in you can often hear their thought processes as they arrive at their decisions.

There has been some discussion recently on the subject of not awarding a first prize if the standard doesn't conform to what a judge would normally expect. But what is normal? At village level I believe it is wholly inappropriate to hold back a 1st or even 2nd prize. In the past I have even been awarded a 3rd place when I was the only entrant and if it had been my first ever show I would have felt very embarrassed and not understood why this had happened. However, as I'd been exhibiting for several years I took it on the chin (it is made of granite!) although I was a little peeved as it wasn't an awful entry by any means and at least I'd gone to the trouble of preparing and transporting the exhibit. However, not everyone is as understanding and laid back as me (cough!) and I have heard of several people vowing never to grace a particular show ever again, so I do hope judges are going to start using a bit of common sense on this issue. The show I judged Saturday morning had several classes with only one entry in and at most shows I attend there wasn't a single exhibit that would have got a look-in but it didn't enter my head to start cocking about only giving 3rd prizes etc. There are now people in that village who feel they're top dogs with runner beans, beetroot or whatever and hopefully they'll want to do more in future years and enter more shows. That's what it's all about at that level folks.

Making concrete plans

Despite this season being the worst in living memory for growing veg you really can't be too downhearted, especially when you see the paralympians doing their stuff against all the odds. No man has any right to feel sorry for himself when you compare yourself to them. For that reason I will always try and enjoy the actual growing part and see each season as a different set of challenges, and if you get something on the benches then all well and good. If you don't, then as my Scottish Man Utd supporting pal Frank Taylor would say....there's always next year! (He says that a lot actually as his wife keeps beating him).

Similarly, winning is not the be all and end all......EXCEPT when it comes to next weekend's Annual Bullshit Bloggers Challenge at Harrogate for which the clock is now ticking! I could happily accept my wife beating me, but to even consider being beaten by the Yorkshire ferret fiddlers makes my knackers quiver. All summer they've been going on about the amount of Yorkshiremen winning medals at the Olympics but they soon shut up when I pointed out that most of them had to be trained at Loughborough University! Similarly both the Yorkshire backward boys have learned all they know from me so beating them should be easy enough.

This year's BBC is being contested in the 3 x 2 class, where you have to bench 3 sets of veg, 2 specimens of each and unlike the National they don't have to be 20 pointers so you can use good 18 pointers such as tomatoes, stump carrots and cucumbers. I already know what my set of 3 will consist of, and it should be good enough to beat the banjo playing hicks. Each set of 2 veg will be scored by the judge, giving a total points value so even though we're unlikely to get in the tickets (like last year in the 6x1 class) at least we can deduce a 1-2-3 from our own little competition. If anyone else fancies competing it's 10 quid in, winner takes the pot. You don't have to be a blogger, just talk complete and utter bullcrap like we do!

Here is the winner of the class in 2010 grown by Ian Simpson.

Harrogate also holds the UK Carrot Championships where the requirement is for 3 stumps and 3 long carrots. I came a creditable 8th last season so I'll be having another crack this time around. I've only grown 21 long carrots so I may well have to pull half of those to get my set of 3, although the others may well go in my 6x1 and 3x2 entries. I used Ian Simpson's simple mix this year so it will be interesting to see if I've improved on the efforts of recent years. The tops aren't great but the shoulders seem promising.

There is also a class for 3 tap roots, chosen from a parsnip, long carrot, long beet and stump carrot, one specimen of each. These type of classes are a great idea for using up those single specimens that don't match any others and would otherwise go to waste and for that reason it's a very popular class. In 2010 tap root specialist Graeme Watson won with this entry.

I'm going to have a crack at runner beans at Harrogate as my bean fence is heavily laden with developing beans, so they should be cock-on for next weekend. I shall start cutting them in the next few days so that I have plenty to make my final selection from. I won't try and get them too long, but will settle for 16" so that they are fresh and haven't started getting 'beany'. You only need 9 so it's a lot easier than the National where you need 15.

Having snipped off all developing cucumber fruits until I had large plants, trained 4' vertically before they started being trained horizontally, my plants are now absolutely dripping with fruits, so these should be coming good for Harrogate and Malvern also.

The trick now is to make sure they don't come into contact with the foliage as a small scratch now will be a large blemish when the fruit is fully formed. I pack bits of polystyrene sheet between some fruits as they develop to protect them from getting scratched.I also need to remember to duck when i'm in the greenhouse so that I don't knock the flowers off, because I shan't be able to stick them back on with superglue 'cos that is like cheating dude!

I've now just about settled down after our holiday and back into the humdrum daily routine of normal life and work. I've mentioned my bowel movements on here from time to time and I know you all like to keep up to date with them so I'll just mention the iffy toasted sandwich at Marrakech Airport that caused me some close calls at the weekend. There were certainly some interesting psychedelic botty yodels I have to admit. Still, I would rather have it that way than the other, and I well remember the severe constipation I used to suffer from many years ago when I worked with my dad in the building trade. It got so bad that in the end I had to go to the doctor. He advised me to stop wiping my arse with the cement bags.

Millennium misery and Medwyn missives

Whilst the Sun God Helios was paying homage to my magnificent body last week, back in Loughborough we had a hailstorm that made the kids turn up the television very loud as Oscar was frightened. If I'd been at home I would also have been very frightened...for my celery mainly! When I got back in the early hours of Saturday morning to be given this information it didn't immediately register, but on inspection of the plot Saturday afternoon I was horrified to see a lot of damage to the leaves, with many marks, rips and in some cases holes where the hailstone has gone straight through. I spent 30 minutes carefully snipping off any ripped leaflets and with the best part of 4 weeks to go til Malvern hopefully they'll recover a bit by then.

I have huge concerns also with my parsnips. A few growers have reported that growth seemed to stop back in July and mine did to a certain extent when the foliage went a bit yellowy. Now growth has pretty much stopped altogether and much of the foliage has gone brown. I assumed it was red spider but can find no trace so it's another disaster I can only put down to this year's disastrous weather patterns.

I had one very small specimen that was a re-sown station so I decided to pull this one to check on skin finish, and I was delighted to note it was very clean with no sign of carrot fly damage so hopefully the rest will be the same. However, plants don't seem to know whether they are coming or going......I even have a sole wisteria flower. Wisterias flower in May for crying out loud!

We didn't get in back until 3am Saturday morning but I had no chance of a lie in as I judged a small show at 11am in a local church. It was quite a small scale affair and to be honest there wasn't a great deal of quality but it was an enjoyable couple of hours and the organisers made us a decent lunch for our troubles. They told me that entries were well down on previous years, a situation that is being echoed up and down the country.

On Sunday it was my local show at Sutton Bonington and it was nice to be able to enjoy the day as a spectator although I did do my stint on the front desk. Here too entries were down a bit, mainly due to me not entering this year. Although it was a bit strange not being called upon at presentation time to collect a trophy or two I am glad I decided to have a 'gap year' and a few other growers enjoyed their day in the limelight. I even signed up a nine year old boy into the society. His mum said he was mad keen about growing veg to show so I shall be keeping an eye on him over the next few years and mentoring him as much as I can. No doubt he will lose interest during his late teens when he discovers girls but hopefully a spark will be lit that will never go out and he'll return to the hobby when he has his own garden or allotment.

Winner of best veg was my old adversary John Barton with a plate of excellent speckled french beans.

Meanwhile I took a stroll round the showground with Oscar and we put the World to rights.

I emptied out 20 bags of 'Amour' potatoes yesterday evening. I'd cut the haulms off before we went away and stored the bags in the garage to they didn't get wet and the potato skins could set hard. I was very disappointed to uncover a pretty poor crop although I was expecting it as growth had been so poor. If I'd planted in April instead of May I'd probably have done a lot better as the roots would have been down sooner. As it was young plants sat in puddles of water for weeks on end and the die was cast. It just goes to show that Lady Luck plays a part and i'm hoping that another 10 bags planted later as yet still growing will yield me 4 tubers that I need for the Millennium Class at Malvern (4 potatoes/4 tomatoes/4 globe beet/4 stump carrots/4 250g onions). I have set aside a set of 4 but they are a little on the small side but if needs be I will have to go with them. However, as my 250g onions are also on the small side (nearer 190g!) I really don't want to have 2 undersize crops out of my 5 sets if I can avoid it. It might all be academic anyway as I may well struggle to harvest a decent set of globe beet because these too are very small at the moment, and I will only have 50 or so to choose from as I really struggled to get germination during the June deluges. Mother Nature really does have us all by the testacles at the moment and for now she aint letting go.

It is however reassuring to know that even the best are having problems and Medwyn now has a blog that he is regularly updating so I do recommend you have a look-in from time to time.

http://www.medwynsofanglesey.co.uk/blog/

Maybe this year will prove to be the year of female domination. Despite early setbacks I understand Sherie Plumb has returned to form and the Scottish Branch Championships saw success for my friend Helen Vincent with caulis and celery in only her second year of showing, and Sue McCall won blanch leeks at Welsh Branch in only her second ever show I believe, both pretty amazing successes. They make me bloody sick!

More essential Smithyveg travel advice part five (In and out of Africa!)

1) Apart from the stunning Atlas Mountains and the 5 -star complex where we were....Morocco is a right sweaty shit'ole!
2) When will the Mediterranean countries get over their olive fixation? Putting them on your food to entice you into thinking they are grapes is a nasty move! They look and taste like sheep shits.
3) During the course of our sojourn we encountered about a dozen yanks. None of them did anything to dispel my belief that most americans are arseholes! Especially the one who swam two lengths of the pool and then trod water for 5 minutes before he realised his mobile phone was in his swimming shorts pocket! To console himself he said to his wife "honey i'm gonna go to the gym for an hour to work on my aaaaabs!" I haven't a clue what an 'ab' is but I'm fairly sure I can't be arsed to work on mine and I thought of him as I ordered another beer and lathered chip fat over my one-pack.
4) Muslim countries really ought to get over their ridiculous aversion to pigs. Going a whole week without bacon nearly fucking killed me!
5) As far as I could tell there are no discernible road traffic laws in Morrocco. However, I did manage to deduce that it was mandatory to drive so close to the person in front that your bollocks are draped over their rear windscreen, whilst flashing your headlights and sounding your horn before violently swerving around them into oncoming traffic, people, dogs and donkeys. Our taxi driver resembled a demonic John Candy in 'Planes, trains and automobiles'! Had the last laugh when we walked off at Marrakech airport without tipping the crazy twat.
6) It takes 5 Moroccan men all day to paint a 3 metre square piece of decking. I'm sure it was because it was hot and they needed to do a thorough job, rather than the fact it was next to the pool where several bikini clad western women were reclining!
7) I could watch Blackburn v. Leicester or Coventry v. Birmingham several times during the week on Al Jazeera tv, but it took me bloody ages to find out the Man U. score.
8) Free wi-fi only works if you can find the one spot in the hotel reception that transmits it, and only then if you resemble a Madame Tussauds dummy so that you don't lose connection.
9) You cannot buy Guinness in Morocco. This is quite criminal. But not as criminal as charging 3 quid for a tiny bottle of Heineken that equates to one swallow for a fat, balding thirsty Brit.
10) Hammam scrubs stop you getting sunburnt. But you do look a bit of a prick sat in a boiling steam room with dogshit smeared all over you.
11) Until you've visited a dusty, barren, north african sweatbox you'll never fully appreciate how beautiful Britain is in the pissing down rain!
12) if you show veg and you go on holiday in July, August or September you will suffer all sorts of pestilence and problems while you are away! (more on this in the next few postings!)
13) The British bloke in this photo had a body like a Greek God!