No Tasco fiasco

I had a good year last season with onions for the 250g and under class. At most shows this class is well supported, as you don’t need exotic growing chambers to be able to grow them like you do for the large onions. This is certainly the case at the NVS shows where there are several top growers of 250g onions such as Sherie Plumb, Ronnie Jackson and Graham Wagstaffe. I’ve exhibited at National and Branch level several times without success but have always been content that my bulbs must have been there or thereabouts, and I was certainly never out of my league. So it was a nice surprise to come 3^rd at Malvern last year in a well contested class yet again, with the variety Tasco. I really needed an extra week or two to have them fully ripened.

My pal Ronnie Jackson won the class at Malvern and his set (also Tasco) were adjudged best exhibit in show. Beautiful. The onions, not Ronnie. Obviously.

The same set actually won for me at Derby Show in late October when they had ripened to a nice straw brown colour, which was a lovely bonus in a class of over 20 entries. I had a big grin all weekend proving that ‘smiles’ is my middle name, ironic as it’s sometimes wasted on miserable twats that have it as a surname, but hey ho.

There are several varieties suitable for this class, others are Toughball, Canto, Globo, Vento to name but a few, but I’ve always liked Tasco as I find it a bit more robust than the others when grown outside. Having said that mine are now grown in a long border in my tunnel which makes tending them an easy task.

It’s important to keep them growing upright with split canes and plastic support clips (available from Medwyns... I also use flexible plastic coated wire) so that the growing point is in the middle of the bulb and also if the plant flops to one side you can get uneven shapes which is a fault the judge will use to down point you. These were sown in January, planted out a month ago and won’t be ready to harvest for at least another month when I’ll need to be checking the diameters daily and getting them up when they reach the magic figure of 83mm. I use nothing more than a cardboard gauge I made myself for this task and which I've had for several seasons now. Last season they were a bit late going in so weren’t getting up to size at the time that I needed to get them ripened in time for the shows, so I had to settle on 80mm diameter. This meant most of my bulbs weighed between 200-225g. Bear in mind they may weigh more than 250g when you pull them up and leave 6” of stem, but they should be under (or better still bang on!) when you prep them for show. Make sure you have a good quality set of digital scales for this purpose. The judge will!