Boogie roots....

Last year Shelley Seeds sent me a trial packet of a stump carrot called Caradec with my order. I liked the name as it reminded me of Caer Caradoc, a superb hill in Shropshire that I walked 4 years ago and keep meaning to go back to. I was encouraged by the results even though they grew ridiculously long and a bit ribbed, although I did manage to win a local shows with them. I nicknamed this one Dirk Diggler.

The ribbing and length was down to a poor watering regime and the fact that I grew them in black plastic drainage pipes in the greenhouse, but the skin finish in general was excellent and the stump end very good come September so I thought I would grow them 'properly' this season to see if they could compete with Sweet Candle in any way. I took a couple of plank frames off a long carrot bed and converted it into another stump bed and sowed the seed just after my Sweet Candle was sown, as I found they took a similar timeframe to develop the stump end. These were thinned down to one per station yesterday and i'm looking forward to seeing what they look like come show time. They appeared to be a thinner variety than SC, resembling its predecessor 'Gringo' which ruled the roost until 'Candle' came along. I definitely think it has potential .....but of course I could just be wasting my time. I often do!


I mentioned last month that you needed to be patient with your roots after several of you felt yours were just sitting doing nothing. As I said, June is usually the month that the blue touch paper is lit and so it has proved. My parsnips have really perked up in the last week and this season i'm making sure I sprinkle a few grains of phorate powder around the bases as a precaution against carrot fly. I've always assumed the brown lesions on the skins are canker but after reading up on the subject I've realised that canker shouldn't like the way we grow parsnips (in free-draining media with added lime) so I think it might actually be carrot fly damage. Carrot fly will happily lay their eggs at the base of parsnips if there are no carrots to hand, and as mine are all under cover I guess they might have gone looking elsewhere. We shall see come harvest time if my hunch is right.

 

My Sweet Candle stumps are also growing away nicely. These are contained within a wooden frame and polythene structure with an enviromesh top so the plants are really cossetted against strong winds but rain can get through. I water them a couple of times a week in dry weather and the 'cups' concentrate about an inch of water straight at the roots rather than just draining away into the surrounding sand. I found I got much more refined roots doing it this way last season.

I'm happy to report that I have no problems so far with tomatoes (Cedrico) this season. Although a little elongated the plants look very healthy and the first fruits have formed on the bottom trusses. Since planting i've only watered a couple of times in order to encourage the tap root to forage deep into the border soil. I'll start feeding as soon as the first fruits are pea-sized.

I also have 3 plants of Sungold which have to reside in my conservatory due to a lack of space elsewhere. This way runs the gauntlet of my middle daughter Jen nicking the fruits near showtime as she loves them and Oscar has also shown a huge interest in the canes, wafting them from side to side on occasion and causing me some palpitations. Leesa reckons it shows he's a gardener. I reckon it shows he's a demonic little hooligan. Hopefully they'll survive as I do get lovely clean fruits growing them indoors like this.

I am also growing a single plant of a beef steak variety. At Harrogate there is a class for a collection of tomatoes (with decent prize money) where you need 5 medium fruited, 6 small fruited and 3 beefsteak. Getting a matching set of 3 off one plant is perhaps a tall order but I only have room for the one. I sent the following photo of a funny shaped beef-flap variety to David Allison, editor of the NVS magazine but for some reason he says he can't publish it!

My cactus and succulent collection has now been placed outside in a sunny spot for the Summer and Autumn. This really freshens them up before their Winter hibernation. I bought the creamy cushion cactus 'Echinocactus Grussonnii' (common name Mother-in-Law's Cushion...if only!) for 8 quid at Malvern about 5 years ago. In Tenerife they were growing wild everywhere, and were the size of space hoppers!

The big clean up

The warm October weather we've been experiencing is due to break up towards the end of next week, with the possibility of the first frosts also. This means the dahlias will be blackened and I won't be able to show any at Derby in two weeks time. The same thing happened last year meaning no entries in the dahlia classes but that's a chance you take with a late October show. I haven't staged many dahlias this season whilst i've been concentrating on the veg but I've grown this variety this season, Blyton Softer Gleam and it's really flowered its socks off. I shall certainly be growing this one again and trying to save some tubers and hope we don't get a Winter like last year that killed all my stored tubers.

I also took the opportunity to get my 'show' cacti and succulents inside today. They've been outside all summer and have really benefitted from it. I shall now stop watering, and will not resume until the early Spring.

Since I started showing in late August the garden has been left to its own devices and now resembles a bomb site. In the the next few weekends I need to bring things under control again and get everything shipshape in time for lift-off once more in the New Year. I have a couple of large trees to fell as I want to fit in another greenhouse and they'll be seriously cutting out the light to it if I leave them. And I will be grubbing out several large shrubs that I planted 20 years ago towards the bottom of my long garden when I wasn't into vegetable growing as much. How I wish I hadn't planted them now but I intend to use the new land for several raised beds to grow more vegetables and make us more self-sufficient. It's a bit silly to have such a large garden and yet only about 10% of it is laid down to crop production.

Show no.9 please

Another show tomorrow at Sturton in Lincolnshire, my 9th of the season. As i've said before this is a small village with a big show and any ticket here is earned. Indeed over the years I've had many more 2nds and 3rds than wins. I think it's the last show of the season for many of the local growers so the benches tend to be quite full with quality stuff. The car needs to be loaded tonight for a 6am start to drive the 54 miles in time for the 7.30 staging start. I like to get there early so I have a prime position in the car park before other exhibitors start to arrive. I washed a load of spuds last night and was quite pleased with the skin finish considering they've been out of the ground for a couple of months now. As the skins are now so hard I actually used the scourer side of the sponge to clean them up. Even the Winstons that were scabby cleaned up reasonably well although like a prostitute who picks off her scabs before a client enters the nobbles on the skin betray where the scabs were. Sturton has a class for 5 spuds 'size and quality' so it allows me to enter some large spuds that would otherwise be too big for any other show.

I usually put about 60 entries in but as I need to conserve my energies and produce for Westminster Show on Tuesday I've only managed to mackle 40 odd together this year, including a few entries in the dahlia classes and the cacti and succulent section. Talking of cacti I got a bonus 3rd at Malvern with this set of 4. There were around 15 entries so it was another good ticket to win. I don't know why the back two appeal to me so much but my missus reckons they sum me up as a person beautifully. They merely remind me of Harvey Smith for some reason.

Littleover 2010

Last year was meant to be the last show as the organisers retired after many years of sterling service, but happily Colin Nicklin and Graham Morley stepped up to keep the show going. I'm glad they did because it's always a high class show and every ticket you win is worth something. There are always quality dahlias on show and my pal Kev Broxholme was among the winners.

The one flower, one veg class always attracts plenty of entries. I've won this several times before but was let down this year by a poor dahlia, scoring 4 out of 10. My large Blue Belle spud scored 7 out of 10 however.

The main collection class calls for a vase of flowers and 3 lots of veg, 3 of each. Due to a lack of dahlias I couldn't enter this class this year, but I have plans to get back into the dahlia game next season with a better area in my garden to grow them in.

As for my veg entries I was delighted to win beetroot.......

......especially when you see how many entries there were. The variety is Pablo and the 3 roots came from my regular soil beds rather than the raised beds.

I also won the single marrow class with this Blyton Motley which was a superb shape. Sadly it's the only one I have. If I had another I reckon I'd have a chance of getting in the cards at Malvern.

My only trophy came in the cacti classes, where I won best exhibit with this Echinocactus Grussonnii. I won another first,a second and a third in other classes and a regular cactus exhibitor said he knew he had no chance when he saw mine. Crikey.....I only feed them once a month in the summer. Otherwise they are totally neglected.

In the single specimen any other veg class I came 3rd (yellow ticket) with this parsnip which I think should have won. It's a new variety called Polar which I'd sown in a few stations that had failed to germinate.There wasn't a mark on the skin whatsoever and the easiest to clean up that I have ever had. I shall be trying this variety again next season. The winning parsnip next to mine....although bigger was quite marked, and the 2nd placed leek was not only quite a small barrel the foliage was riddled with thrip damage. Judges eh?

Elsewhere I had disappointing seconds, in the cherry tomato class.......

.......the Top Tray where I showed 3 Blue Belle spuds.....

........and in the main tomato class which I was certain should have won. The calyces on the winning toms were almost yellow whereas mine were deep green. This year I acquired some soot from a friend's chimney which I have soaked in some water all summer. I have been putting a cupful in the watering can every third feed (Tomorite and Comfrey being the other two) as Charlie Maisey reckons soot water helps give a deep red colour to the skins and keeps the calyces green.

I won the 8oz onion class for the 2nd year running which is hard to do at Littleover. The best 5 will definitely be going to Malvern. They won't win, the skins aren't even enough, but they won't be out of place.

What you looking at?

My Cleistocactus Straussii has grown eyes and a nose. Actually flower spikes, it will be interesting to see what the blooms look like as it has not flowered before. Cacti really are bizarre plants and more interesting than you might think.



Meanwhile my shallots are going great guns. I've already picked 10 pickling shallots over the course of the last 5 days as they've reached the 30mm mark. The exhibition shallots (below) are the biggest they've ever been at this stage and seem to be growing visibly in size each day. It's now going to be a case of closely observing the plants over the next 2 or 3 weeks as they need to be harvested towards the middle of the month. You don't want to leave them too long as they can go out of shape. Medwyn reckons you need to look at the new shoots coming from the crown. If these are still emerging you can leave to grow on but if no new shoots are visible you probably need to harvest. Having said that I'm hoping I can harvest over a week or so as they reach a size I have settled on.....48mm diameter. Ideally you don't want any water getting at them from the middle of the month as this can also cause them to go double as secondary growth starts inside the bulb.



These shallots come from Dave Thornton's National winning strain. I won 5 local shows last season after only ever having won that many shows in total in previous years. If I can get anywhere near his National winning set from last year I'll be a very happy man. I visited Dave's allotment after the Medwyn visit a few weeks ago and was pleased to see that his plants were inferior to mine.....in my eyes at any rate! No doubt the big git has some secrets he's not telling me but here's to dreams!

Last knockings

It’s my final show of the year this Saturday in the village of Sturton in Lincolnshire. I’ve said before that it’s a small village with a big show and I think this is the 122nd annual show which is incredible when you think about it. My thoughts are with the show secretary Rebecca who lost her husband suddenly at the age of 52 in August.

I’ve entered 53 classes, not just in veg but also in dahlias, cacti and some photos! I think the pick of my veg will be my spuds. I emptied all my entries out of the compost they’re being stored in a week or so ago to have a look at them and was very pleased with the condition of them. Hopefully they’ll scrub up well and land me some wins in the 6 classes they have for spuds. I shall prepare half of them tonight as I think I shall need about 40 in all, which is too many to leave until tomorrow night.

After Saturday teatime it’ll be time to start ordering those seeds and thinking about next season. How the sands of time are swiftly falling through that hole!

Who says cacti are boring?

Anally retentive!

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…….I’m a sad bastard!

Since I started ‘showing’ in 1996 I’ve won 1,136 prize cards of various colours and denomination (I know this because I keep a spreadsheet….told you I was sad!). Of those I have been most successful with the following:

Carrots 94
Pot plants 90 (various guises)
Beetroot 62
Potatoes 61
Cacti 60
Onions 58 (In various guises/weights etc)
Shallots 58
Dahlias 57
Parsnips 49
Top tray 44
Tomatoes 43

If like me you find that information interesting then we both need to get out more. Where are you taking me?

Points make prizes!

Most of my veg and dahlia plants have now been planted but there's no time to rest and a little planning ahead can pick you up some 'cards' in other classes. I have split several clumps of different succulents and potted them up into 3" clay pots and topped them off with a granite chipping mulch. These will hopefully fill out a little and look good for Sturton at the beginning of October when there are several classes for cacti and succulents. For the sake of a little time and effort I may be able to pick up a 3rd, 2nd or even a 1st in the class for 3 succulents in max. 3" pots. Make sure you pop in a label if possible, give them a good watering and you can more or less forget about them for weeks at a time as they really can look after themselves.

Another class at one of my local shows is for a small basket or vase of various herbs, and with this in mind I gave a lemon balm plant in my veg garden path a good haircut as I know that by early September there'll be plenty of fresh young shoots for picking and arranging with other veg such as thyme, rosemary, chives etc. If I left this plant it would flower and go to seed and would look very straggly and totally unsuitable for exhibition. Again, with a little effort and creativity you can create an attractive display which can pick up an extra point or two in those shows where there are trophies for most points in show.

At most shows I tend to pick up points not just in veg but also for dahlias, fuchsias, herbs, cut flowers cacti and even for baking a cake in the 'men only' section!

Collection of succulents

Here is my winning tray of succulents from Sturton. I think I won (I presume) because of the wide variety and condition of the plants and the fact that most of them were labelled.

The class calls for a 20" square display of cacti OR succulents. That means it has to be either/or and not a mixture. The more eagle eyed of you may observe what appears to be a cactus in my exhibit but in fact it's a spiny euphorbia which is classed as a succulent.

A cactus grower at Malvern told me that all cacti are succulents but not all succulents are cacti. I still don't fully understand that!

And that's it for another 12 months :o(

I had an excellent day at my last show of the season at the village of Sturton by Stow in Lincolnshire, winning two trophies for most points in the produce section for the 6th year running and also most points in the whole show for the 4th time in 6 years. My roots were not of the same quality as previous years and best exhibit in show went to a Mr. W. Croft for a superb set of parsnips.



I was particularly pleased to win the cactus dahlia class with my vase of Kenora Sunset (see pic) and also the blanch leek class (see pic). Wins in the cactus section and also the pot plant section for a flowering clivia meant I ended up with 9 wins, 14 '2nds' and 13 '3rds'. This meant I ended the season with 44 '1sts' which is my lowest tally for many years and yet in many ways my produce has been far better overall than it has ever been. This is largely down to having stiffer competition coming to my local shows from far and wide and is something I welcome. It can only be good for the overall spectacle and will make me try even harder to improve on things in future.

Brussels

Only a couple of days to Sturton now and my brussels are not as good as they should be. Sturton is the only show I know where there is a class for (9) brussels and I've managed to win it on only one previous occasion.

You need to exhibit reasonably large 'buttons' with a good length of stalk and no sign of pest damage or disease. Inevitably this will require the removal of at least one of the outer skins but it doesn't want to be overdone. I only grow 4 plants (enough for our family) and it's quite difficult finding 9 buttons that are similar in size and condition from such a relatively small number.

Still, it's another entry and if no-one else enters (as has been known) then I'm guaranteed a card of some description although not necessarily a 1st if the judge doesn't think it's quite up to scratch! I sent my entry form off yesterday and have managed to muster up 64 in total although 10 of them are in the cactus classes and 3 in photography. I've won most points in veg at Sturton 5 years running but I'll be hard pushed to do so again this year because of my failure to grow any decent potatoes this year. There are 6 potato classes at Sturton and one year I won 5 of them.

However, I'm fairly confident that most of the other stuff I'll be showing is well up to scratch especially my cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, celery and leeks, and so I should pick up points to make up for the losses elsewhere. I only have about 6 long carrots and 8 parsnips to choose from. I'll only know if they're any good when they're pulled on Friday afternoon.

The car will be loaded up on Friday night and I'll set off at 6am as 'staging' is only allowed between 7.30 and 10am. My car will be absolutely loaded to the gunnels and there won't be a spare inch left.......Leesa has to meet me in Lincoln at 12.30pm after coming on the train! And if you're travelling along the A1500 at about 11 o'clock Saturday morning and see a black BMW parked on the grass verge keep the noise down.....I'll be having a well-earned kip!

Cactus road trip

Here are just a few of my cacti and succulents in my conservatory ready for their annual trip to Sturton. The one nearest the camera is an aloe vera that has just been repotted and consequently looks quite architectural with the granite chippings around the base. I find these 'mulches' show off the plants to best effect.

The only thing I do to them really is give them a watering once a week during the summer with a solution of special cacti feed. During the winter they are only watered once every month if that. Some of the succulent leaved plants need a tidy every now and then and they get repotted maybe every couple of years, very often into a same size pot but after having the roots 'teased' and trimmed and new compost added. I make my own 'crunchy' mix with 50% sieved soil and 50% washed builders sand. You need to keep a close eye out for mealy bugs and I find a spray of neat whisky kills them.

When displaying cacti just give the pot a wipe and give them a spray of luke warm water to freshen up their appearance. Make sure any gravel or stone mulches are neatly arranged and that no soil is showing.

Last night was very cold but not quite cold enough for a frost and so the dahlias have survived. Hopefully, if won't get that bad before Sturton as I have quite a few decent blooms starting to form and always enjoy the challenge of transporting them so far and trying to stage them at their best. This may mean cutting some of them 3 or 4 days before the show and keeping them in my darkened garage.

Planning for Sturton Show

No shows this weekend....a chance for a bit of a sit down perhaps? Not very likely though seeing as we have builders in and our house currently resembles the American mid-south dustbowl!

It's now a case of keeping my tomatoes, cucumbers and beans ticking over until the 6th October when I compete at my last show in the Lincolnshire village of Sturton by Stow. My cucumbers have been a real success story this year and they've obviously enjoyed the moist, warm conditions. At Sturton the class is for a single 'cu' so I don't need to match them up and will probably make 2 or 3 entries.

I picked a Tesco carrier bag full of runner beans two nights ago and there are plenty more beans around 2-3" long. These should be ok for Sturton and I'll keep a close eye on them from now on to make sure they grow straight and don't go 'beany'.

Sturton has several classes for cacti and succulents so I need to make sure they are all looking good. The pots need cleaning as several of them have spent the summer outside. I find this makes the foliage and flesh look clean and healthy and keeps mealy bug at bay. I have a bag of granite chippings that I use to cover the surface of the compost and give the plants a professional look.

The dahlias are now starting to give up some decent looking blooms and with Sturton in mind I must continue to disbud them so that I have plenty of good sized flowers in 2 weeks time. Hopefully we won't get an early frost between now and then. Since I've been growing dahlias for show the first frost has always been in early November so I should be ok. I've been very pleased with the variety Emma's Coronet which I first saw at Malvern last year (see pic above of the vase in question). It's a really 'zingy' pink...if there is such a thing!

My large onions are starting to wrinkle on their outer skins and some have actually cracked. Last night I removed one of these on a single onion and was quite pleased to find a nice, tight, reasonably ripe looking skin, so I shall do the same to all of the others and hopefully they'll look ok for Sturton.

Is this just phallus-y?

People laugh when they see this cactus and I don't know why! It managed to net me a 3rd place at Sutton Bonington at the weekend and I think it's a beautiful thing!

Cacti and Succulents

This weekend sees my last show of the season at a village in Lincolnshire. Although only a small village the show is quite a large concern and this will be the 119th annual show which is some going!

There are many classes including root and corn classes as it's a rural farming community. The large swedes and mangolds are quite amazing. I hadn't heard of or seen mangolds until I went here....they're like great ugly beetroot that are used as sheep feed (see pic above).

There are also several classes for cacti and succulents. I have started to acquire a few of these in the last couple of years and grow them in my conservatory where they require the minimum of attention. You just water and feed every couple of weeks in the summer and give them a dribble of water every month or so in the winter. Some of the choice specimens may require a little more cossetting but by and large they are trouble free, and the vast amount of different shapes and forms makes them very interesting I think.

One particular class at this weekend's show which was introduced last year was for a display of cacti or succulents in a space 20"x20". Now this allowed my creative side to 'kick in' and rather than just taking several pots of various cacti and plonking them down on the show bench I had a metal tray made at work that I could fill with sand or grit to hold the pots in place. The made the display quite different from the rest and earned me first prize. The only problem was it weighed a tonne and was a bugger to carry from the car. I wasn't even sure the benches would stand the weight. So this year I've modified it slightly by packing around the pots with polystyrene and putting a lyer of grit on top of that. It's much, much lighter as a result. The pic above is last years entry on the car park floor outside the show hall.