Small collections and big tits

If you’ve had chance to read the first chapter of Carrots at Dawn below I hope it's whetted your 'happy tit' enough to buy it and read the rest of it. There are a few bad reviews left on Amazon by people who objected to Craven Morehead (bloody nice bloke, very handsome too) contacting them direct via their presences on various gardening websites that are all in the PUBLIC FUCKING DOMAIN. Anyone blessed with the gift of laissez faire would merely have deleted those contacts (emails/FB messages/Forum posts etc) if they objected so strongly, but surely there are many more important things in life these days that should get our ganders up. One particularly nasty response came from a Mr. D. Brooks whoever the hell he is, who wrote;

'More than one gardening forum has been spammed by this person desperate to make an odd sale or two. For this reason - the same reason as one of the other reviewers - I would not now go anywhere near it.'

Now, I don’t know who this twat is but he sounds like a very old and miserable wanker with an allergy to smiling and if he ever attempted to write anything gardening/showing/allotment related or otherwise I have absolutely no doubt it would be the most boring and droning document ever written since the Hong Kong phone book, but no doubt he’d get an award for it. A much nicer review (and there are many) came from a Karen Coleman;

 'Absolutely hilarious. Couldn't put this book down. Had me chuckling out loud from start to finish. If you've a sense of humour and like gardening/growing vegetables then you'll love it. But if you're easily offended by swear words then maybe not. I thought it was bloody brilliant.
Highly recommended! '

Moving on, I’m a great fan of the small collections at many of the bigger shows such as the 3x2 class which calls for 3 exhibits of two 20 point vegetables. This can often be useful as you usually need to pull many more long carrots of parsnips than you might need for a class, and can often find a good matching pair that would otherwise be left behind. Similarly you may harvest a glut of cauliflowers, or have more celery ready than you need for the regular classes. When the National was last held at Malvern in 2012 I entered this class with a pair each of long carrots, parsnips and celery and was very happy with my entry albeit I was nowhere near the tickets as there was a really heavy entry that year.

At Dundee in 2015 I went for long carrots, parsnips and caulis and was a mere point outside the tickets, so whilst making progress it really goes to show that all 3 dishes have to be top notch.

The winning entry from the great Scot Alistair Gray gives you some idea of the mountain mere mortals like me have to climb.

At Malvern last year for the Midlands Branch Championships I came 4^th although quite how the judge awarded me a ticket beggars belief as one of my long carrots had quite a large split near the shoulder where it had got compressed by some boxes during the car journey. I really do wonder sometimes if the judges handle every single specimen, whilst having some sympathy with them as they are under pressure to get the task done in order for the show to open.

The ‘Millennium Class’ was introduced at the National a dozen or so years ago. You need 4 each of stump carrots, potatoes, 250g onions, globe beetroot and tomatoes, the idea being that you don’t need fancy growing facilities to be able to grow any of the crops required.  250g onions can be grown from sowing in February, tomatoes in March, spuds and stumps in April, and globe beet from May, so it really should be open to anyone. In reality it aint that easy and the top growers are usually to the fore, Peter Clark winning for the 3^rd time in total at Dundee with this exhibit.

I was an excruciating half point outside the tickets, my tomatoes letting me down for once, the yellow calyces getting me down marked I feel sure, although they somehow scored 15 out of 18, and my spuds only receiving 13 out of 20, but at least I had improved on my 2012 showing when I was actually last out of 20 or so entries!

Note the maximum points available for each crop;

Spuds 20

Tomatoes 18

Stump carrots 18

250g onions 15

Globe beet 15

These are due to the degree of difficulty determined to grow each crop, spuds being the highest, 250g onions and globe beet being deemed the easiest. At the Midlands Branch the rules are slightly different, as you can choose any 4 from 5 of the vegetables, but here you want to be careful that you don’t choose both 15 pointer crops at the expense of one of the 18 or 20 pointers, as you’ll be 3 or 5 points behind before you’ve even started, so you only want to go for one or the other if possible. At Malvern last year I came a very pleasing 2^nd, only one point off the red card, pleasing until I realised it was Dave Thornton what had won it. Bollocks!

Parsnip progress

What a fandabbydozy few years it’s been for me with parsnips in particular. I’d always won lots of classes with my ‘nips locally but it became a different kettle of fish when I started plonking some down on the benches at the ‘big shows’. Winning at Leicester Show in 2008 a fellow competitor reckoned they wouldn’t have looked out of place at a top NVS show, and that comment eventually convinced me to start having a crack at a higher level. However, In 2012 when the National was last held at Malvern I entered 5 parsnips which were the best I had ever grown but when I staged them next to my mentor Ian Stocks’ set it was clear I still had a long way to go. Mine are on the left of the photo.

When Ian unveiled his I instantly thought to myself ‘best in show’, but perhaps controversially Ian was placed only 2^nd , behind Andrew Jones who thus won for the second year running with Gladiator. One of the reasons being mooted was that the variety Ian grew ‘Pinnacle’ was a bit ‘blocky’ in profile. However, Ian managed some degree of payback by winning when the National was at Harrogate the year after.

My breakthrough with parsnips came in 2013 when I placed 3^rd at Malvern, behind parsnip expert Andrew Jones in 1^st. Mine weren’t brilliant I have to say and 3^rd was a very pleasant surprise, but in truth there were only about 6 entries I recall.

In 2015 I had the great feeling of actually winning parsnips at Malvern, nudging Andrew into a rare 2^nd place. When I first started growing long parsnips nearly 20 years ago I’d never have dreamed I could have progressed from this;

To this;

As you can see my parsnips have improved nearly as much as my looks. Back then I grew them in a single plastic oil drum filled with sand, and I didn’t bother cutting the bottom off so I invariably ended up with a  root coiled at the end where it had reached the bottom of the drum and gone spiralling round. Over the years I have acquired more drums (engineering companies will often give them to you to save paying to have them disposed of) and I have extended the depth through varying methods, so that my roots have got longer and longer. Initially it was a raised bed filled with sand and the now bottomless drums placed on that. In 2012 it was noticeable that my roots were shorter than all those in the tickets, and whilst length itself is not really a consideration for the judges I came to believe good length will make them stand out and make the judges take note, so long as your roots have good quality that is. The longer they are then the longer they will fill out and taper down the root, which all adds to the effect. I also think the longer ones come out more easily, as they are so thin at soil level which is the weakest part, so they don’t snap further up the root. Just my belief.

In 2015, and before my Malvern triumph, I had also travelled up to Dundee for that season’s National Championships, a brilliant weekend at the Dundee Flower and Food Festival, where I managed a 4^th place ticket in highly exalted company. Ian Stocks won again, David Thornton was 2^nd and Graham Watson 3^rd, all previous parsnip winners at the National, so I was in very good company. John Croot and Geoff Butterworth both felt I might have been placed even higher but I was more than happy with 4^th I have to say, as you can see by my soppy grin and gay pose.

One of the big problems I’d had in previous years with parsnips were brown lesions and cavities on the skin. For years I believed this to be parsnip canker and tried to take appropriate measures, all to no avail. When you actually read up on parsnip canker it should only thrive in clay soil and hates lime. My parsnip mix is obviously quite free draining and contains lime so I could never understand why I kept suffering with ‘canker’. Over time I came to realise I was actually experiencing carrot fly damage. This looks totally different on carrot skins, with dark, deep holes and fissures that are unmistakeable. I wonder if, whilst the carrot fly grub is perfectly willing to nibble on parsnips, they only graze the surface and this rots in a different manner to carrots giving a brown appearance rather than black. Once I realised carrot fly was the culprit I was able to spray with a strong insecticide called Hallmark which you do have to go to clandestine efforts to acquire. No doubt the organic brigade will once again accuse me of killing Mother Nature but I don’t give a flying fart as for exhibition your veg has got to be in pristine condition. So, to be sure that you know, this is what carrot fly damage looks like on parsnips;

It was an incredible feeling to repeat the win at Malvern last year with an even better set, actually beating 5 current or ex-National champions in the process, proving that I had moved on to become one of the best parsnip growers in the country, something to put on my headstone for passing dogs to piss up against no doubt. I hadn’t been able to make last year’s National held in Wales due to the imminent arrival of my 3^rd grandson, but fellow showman Mark Perry felt they were better than those that came 1^st at the National a couple of weeks earlier, won by Andrew Jones yet again. Nice to hear, but Mark is also a Liverpool fan so you have to say he does talk a lot of bollocks a lot of the time so I am cautious.

The next step now is to try and repeat this in September this season when the National Championships of the NVS comes to Malvern on its 5 yearly cycle, which will now be my final chance at becoming a National Champion, by no means an easy feat as the top growers in the land will now be gunning for me. So I got a slightly earlier start than usual this season, taking advantage of some decent weather in March to get the chitted seeds in the boreholes. The variety I’ve grown for the past 2 years and that has served me so well is one called Victor, available from Medwyn’s. I like the way its shoulder is nicely rounded into the leaf stalk cavity making cleaning quite easy. One of my fellow competitors at Malvern asked how I got my roots so white and I admitted that I actually take the rough side of a scourer to them once I’ve got as much dirt off them as I could with a hose pipe and the smooth side of the scourer. If you want to try this method I’d strongly recommend you try on a spare first, as you do have to be quite gentle so as not to rub in deep scratches to the skin. It works for me, but I certainly wouldn’t do it on carrots or potato skins for instance. Bearing in mind you need a set of 5 at the National rather than 3 then every root will have to be top notch.

I also extended my drums yet again by adding another 9” of part drum on top, taped together with strong duct tape so ensure they don’t come apart. This will potentially give me roots up to 70” long. Risky maybe? Should I have changed a winning formula in my final season of showing? Who knows, but I just fancied having a go at getting a set that overhangs the edge of the benches, even at Malvern, by several inches. However, I would never be able to match the late, great Jack Arrowsmith. I once saw a set of his at Malvern that actually touched the floor at the foot of the bench and carried on for another few inches. They really were something else.

I ended last season winning parsnips at Dave Thornton’s show in Derby, picking up best in show with them. There were some superb exhibits grown by several top growers so to get best in show in that company was something I would only have dreamed about when I ended the blog back in 2012. As I said, a lot has happened in the last 5 years.

It has been another busy few days in the garden, dodging the heavy rain showers mostly over the weekend, then moving the hose around during this mini-heatwave we’re experiencing, but I did take a few hours out on Saturday night when I donned my black tie .....

......to attend the prestigious 2017 Trumpton Garden Book Awards, as special guest of the very camera shy Craven Morehead whose book Carrots at Dawn had been shortlisted for the 2017 overall book of the year out of all the various category winners. Other nominees were;

A Russian back garden by Onya Bakyabitch
Herbal remedies for erectile dysfunction by Don Kedick
50 great Australian gardens by Sydney Arbour
Love in the garden by Ben Doon and Phil McCavity
My Israeli garden adventures by Lemmy C. Yatitz

The judges were the esteemed garden writers Hugh Jardon and Mike Oxmells. Sadly, Craven didn’t win but he was very pleased with the judges’ comments that Carrots at Dawn had plunged garden writing to previously unplumbed depths.

He’s back…for a few months only though!

I’m delighted to announce the return of the gobbiest, most handsome and generally deluded vegetable shower in Britain. Evidently I don’t own a mirror. Due to work commitments and hassle from certain quarters where a sense of humour was sadly lacking, I had to take my blog down back in 2012, and that coupled with my growing family (4 grandkids and counting) meant I have had my hands very full in the intervening years. However, this is to be only a temporary reprieve for you all as I shall be retiring from showing at the end of this year, certainly for the foreseeable future, so this time I don’t give a fish’s tit who I upset.

A lot has happened in the 5 years I’ve been away. For one thing I got fairly decent at some crops and have managed to win tickets at the highest level of the game, certainly not too shabby for a “wooden spooner” as someone once called me anyways, and I’ll be recounting those stories in the next few weeks.

Many have asked me in the intervening years when I was starting the blog up again and in truth I had no intention of ever doing so but due to the mind-numbingly boring content of many of the alternative sources of information and the fact that there appears to be no-one else out there willing to be controversial and take on the organic beardy-weirdy knobs head-on I’ve decided to come out of exile. Be warned though, if you don’t like using chemicals or swearing simply for the sake of it and because very often it sounds funny, take exception to prolonged mentions of Manchester United, the magnificent job that the Tories are doing rebuilding the country, or you simply don’t have a sense of humour of any description then jog on to John Harrison’s Allotment-dot-oh-god or any of the other boring as fuck websites for your information. And don’t bother leaving negative comments as I’ll only delete them and make it my life’s work ridiculing you at every possible opportunity thereafter. So, in short, if you’re pining for some light relief from Dan Unsworth’s continuous moaning about the weather, Paul Bastow’s sparse postings or any of the gobshite drivel currently cluttering up t’interweb on various Facebook and Twitter garden pages then strap yourself in, you deserve this and I apologise for neglecting you all.

You will note that I have deleted all content pre-2012 as I shall be making a fresh start, doing weekly updates on my growing and showing progress. Truth is that you’re learning all the while, and some of the things I wrote in 2007 are either out of date or just simply wrong, so I shall be recounting my journey from now armed with this fresh knowledge. I’ll try and do a couple of posts a week, but I certainly shan’t be as prolific as I was pre-2012.

Meanwhile, if you’re looking for some light-hearted reading matter with lots of choice swear words, a highly unbelievable plot and noisy sex then I can thoroughly recommend a book called ‘Carrots at Dawn’ by an incredibly good looking chap and brilliant grower called Craven Morehead (ahem!).

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Carrots-Dawn-Fifty-Shades-parsnips-ebook/dp/B00QSMLQ52

Based around the run up to a village show there are several characters that regular showmen will probably recognise as having similarities to people they have rubbed up against themselves. Ignore the bad reviews on Amazon, I have it on good authority they were just spiteful comments by doddering old dry-farts who took exception to this guy promoting his book on Facebook pages and various gardening websites. For instance, Medwyn Williams, President of The National Vegetable Society said of it.

“I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s a book that I can really recommend.”

Despite being a Liverpool fan and thus possessing of an intelligence that has you questioning his judgement I think that is high praise indeed. It really is such a brilliant book I could have written it myself!

Best regards

Simon Smith ONVS