Class 26

For those unaware of The National Vegetable Society it is split into 5 branches, Southern, Midlands, Welsh, Northern and Scottish. Each branch has its own BRANCH championships every year, and the Midlands Branch that I belong to holds theirs at Malvern each year. Northern Branch hold theirs at Harrogate for instance and so forth. The Southern Branch Championships is always the first one of the year and they hold theirs in July at the Dorset County Show, and if you can win down there you can probably win at any village show in the country. Every five years each branch takes their turn to host the National Championships of the NVS and this year it’s the turn of Midlands Branch at Malvern. As a result the Midlands Branch Championships will be held as part of Shrewsbury Show in August instead. I won’t be able to do that one so I shall have to relinquish my parsnip trophy won for the past 2 years at Malvern. Any member can enter any of the 5 branch championships and the National, and it’s the National which is the biggest and best and the one that every grower aspires to. There are 26 classes in all, and because of the incredible level of competition any ticket is something to cherish, because the usual names are often the ones that hoover up the silverware so it’s incredibly difficult to become a true National Champion. The best growers usually travel to wherever the National is held, whereas that isn’t always the case for the Branch Championships so you can only ever really call yourself a regional champion if you win at a Branch, although some branch championships do carry more kudos than others. I hope that clears up any confusion?

In 2012 The National Vegetable Society introduced a new class (no. 26) into their annual National Championships for a 15 point or under veg that would change each year, the hosting branch having the honour of deciding which veg would be contested. In 2012 at Malvern the veg chosen by Midlands Branch was marrows, and the winner was Marcus Powell, pictured below during a recent court case for breaching an injunction taken out against him by Sherie Plumb.

A year later at Harrogate it was small fruited tomatoes won by Mark Hewartson (I came 3^rd!), in 2014 at Dorset Southern Branch chose globe beet won by Andrew Jones. In 2015 at Dundee, Scottish Branch chose broad beans which I thought was an interesting choice as I only ever grew them to eat and didn’t realise they could be grown to show so late in the season. The size of those benched at Dundee really staggered me as they must have been over a foot long, a variety called Relon that appears to be no longer available in any catalogues and which has been perpetuated by some of the growers up there. Ian Simpson won the class.

I had some seed given to me by Jim Pearson and grew Relon last season but could not time them for any shows. Despite sowing them according to Jim’s sowing dates they all cropped way too early but I have to say they were huge beans like those benched in Scotland so I’ll keep the strain going south of the border if I can.

Last year when the National was held in Carmarthen at the Welsh Botanic Garden glasshouse the Welsh Branch chose globe beet once again, displaying the usual lack of imagination you expect from the Welsh. Well, they still think their rugby team are the best in the World! It was won by Trevor Humphrey with his usual stunners with incredibly long tap roots.

This year the class has come full circle and it’s the turn of Midlands Branch once more to choose which veg to grow and compete with, and they have gone slightly off grid with kohl rabi, or german turnips to give its alternative name. 

I think this is an inspired choice as you never see it on the benches and I doubt if many of the usual suspects will ever have grown it for exhibition so this is one National title that is really up for grabs this year I believe. I shall be doing my first sowing this weekend, with Malvern a mere 13 weeks away, and a second sowing next weekend which should be about the right timing to get me a set of 4. I’ve only ever grown kohl rabi 2 or 3 times in the past so I do have a little bit of knowledge about them, and one thing I did learn is that they soon deteriorate once they reach their prime so timing is essential. Now, according to the NVS judges guide kohl rabi should be no more than tennis ball size, but there is a variety I’m tempted to grow called Superschmelz which can grow considerably bigger. Whatever you grow all specimens need to be alike in shape and size, and most importantly of all in good condition with no sign of pest or disease damage. I doubt any of the judges at the National no matter how experienced would have come across this crop many times during their judging career so no doubt they’ll all be cribbing up on it just in case class 26 is one assigned to them!

It will be interesting to see what the branches decide on in future as there are many more 15 point or less crops that could be given a go, assuming the unimaginative Welsh keep plumping for globe beet of course. Cabbages, brussels, broccoli, calabrese, celeriac, courgettes, garlic, kale, lettuces, peppers, radish, swedes and turnips to name but a few.

Malvern 2012 part 2

At Saturday's AGM the NVS voted against any change in the quantities called for in classes such as long carrots, parsnips and blanch leeks. In fact the motion was soundly thrashed with only 11 of us voting for change. There had been some powerful lobbying going on behind closed doors so the status quo rules the roost for now. When I put my hand up to support the motion it looked as if I was asking where the toilet was. When there was a show of hands in opposition to the motion the gust of wind blew Gareth Cameron's wig out of the window. Whilst I believe it is a mistake we have to take it on the chin and move on.


Because I didn't do much showing this year I was able to actually get a set of 5 parsnips on the bench, something I've always dreamed of doing. This will now probably not happen again for a long time as I go back to supporting my local shows with entries as I just won't be able to spare 5 for one class. But I managed it, and I was happy with how they looked despite a tiny spot of carrot fly damage on a couple of them. Mine are on the left of this shot, those on the right being the 2nd placed set of Ian Stocks.

At every show an exhibitor unveils a dish of veg that stops everyone in right their tracks and when I saw Ian's parsnips being unveiled on Friday evening I stuck my neck out and said 'best in show'. They were huge roots and absolutely pristine white, and I wanted them to be mine so much that my bollocks throbbed, so it was with a huge amount of surprise that I came back after judging to find he'd only been awarded 2nd place behind Andrew Jones. Andrew's set were a superb exhibit but I didn't feel they were a patch on Ian's, as they were a bit rough and knobbly in places. Apparently Ian lost out because his shoulders were square-ish in profile when compared to Andrew's which admittedly were very uniformly round when viewed end on. This was really harsh, and in my opinion the point or two that Ian might have lost on shape and form can't have been enough to negate the incredible quality and condition. But that's life and we have to live with a judge's decision. Ian later later threw his dolly out of the pram when his vegetable animal was also adjudged 2nd to Mo Robinson's red onion cat.....named 'Simon the big pussy'. Another Northern comedienne who is well and truly in my sights from now on!


I also staged a set of 3 celery (centre) which when compared to those of Ray Sale (left) and Jim Pearson (right) didn't disgrace themselves either.

You really do learn something at every show and I was disappointed that I had to remove a few split stalks when preparing them Friday morning. Colin Higgs is a good celery grower and he advised that I have to remove them as soon as I see them, and get all round the plant at least once a fortnight. This allows the next layer of stalks to fill out. I planted all my celery against a fence meaning I could only tend them from the '2 o-clock to the 10 o-clock' position. Next year I shall plant them in another raised bed where I can get at them the full 360 degrees.

I must make a special mention of Marcus Powell who won the inaugural marrow class. I felt the NEC had boobed by asking for 3 rather than two, knowing that it takes a lot of room to grow marrows along rods in order to let the fruits hang down, but Marcus managed it with this cracking set of Bush Baby.

I was hoping to get a set of 3 Blyton Belle but as in previous years I found this variety very shy to produce a quantity of good shaped fruits despite growing 5 plants in this way so I have decided to have sex with Marcus if he'll give me some of his prize seed.

Marcus also came a splendid 4th in the runner bean class that was won as usual by Sherie Plumb, her set also being judged the best exhibit in show.

More photos, reports and offers of bodily abuse in return for champion strain seed to follow over the coming days.

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?

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.

D'ya wanna be in my gang?

Well now, I've really been enjoying the European Football Championships, although I'm glad Poland have been knocked out as my car is fucking filthy! England are playing that shite and having that much luck they might even bloody win it! I'm glad there's a couple of days grace from it all now as there is much stuff to be done on the plot!



When I started showing locally I was viewed with an awful lot of suspicion by the established order of 3 or 4 (at most) geriatric bastards who had been contesting the local shows for many years, sometimes decades. These dinosaurs really didn't want any upstart coming into their cosy little 'club' and so I struggled to glean even the smallest snippet of information out of them to the point where I was very much on my own and struggled to make an impression for a few seasons. I vowed there and then that if ever I was in their position I wouldn't be a complete and utter cunt like them and would open myself up to anyone else and hand over as much knowledge as I could give them if I was asked. Sadly these arseholes still walk among us.


One of the benefits of the internet and various gardening forums such as that of the National Vegetable Society, is that we can all fast-track our learning curve and indeed if I go back 3 years the quality of my produce bears no resemblance to what I've been producing more recently. There is now quite a large gang of new-ish 'showers', many of them still quite young, who are improving at a good rate of knots and who will start to get into the tickets at Branch and National level before too long I feel. They've been networking knowledge and experiences for a couple of years now, guided by several top notch NVS growers who have been happy to give their time, expertise, seeds and sometimes even plants, and i'm proud to have played my own little part in that. However, I sincerely hope the established pecking order will embrace this influx of enthusiasm and realise that the future of the Society is in their hands. We may not do things their way but we're keen as mustard and want to have a laugh and a giggle along the way. Life isn't all about rules, regulations and constitutions. Sometimes it's about sharing drunken evenings and fucking fruit cakes!



One of the good things about keeping an online diary (blog) is the ease with which you can look back at previous years to see how things compared, whether you're ahead of the game or trailing behind, and what you were doing differently then (and often wrongly!). I was surprised to realise i'm now approaching 6 years of writing this garbage, and my thanks to those of you who regularly dip in, even those of you who think I'm a wanker and who I now know are avid readers!!! I can also look back at photos of my exhibits in years gone by to see how much I have (hopefully) improved, and also by taking photos of my competitors' entries to reassure me come showtime that I can compete, especially when you start stepping up a level.


One of the things that doesn't seem to change every year is the great British weather. It's regularly shite despite our rose-tinted glasses that summers in years gone by were gloriously temperate during the day and it only rained at night when we were in bed. The truth is we have to be prepared for the worst, and take precautions accordingly, as no-one will have any sympathy for you come showtime i'm afraid. I'm hearing many stories of slow-growth, produce cooking, produce rotting, polytunnels being blown away, lack of rain, too much rain, bolting, botrytis, fluffy mould, anal rape, pillage and chipped finger nails. As I write it is raining steadily and more is forecast over the next few days, and some parts of the country, mainly in the south and west, have been subjected to severe flooding. Luck of the draw plays a large part in your results especially if you happen to live in a part of the country that has escaped the worse excesses of Mother Nature. I also think I may have played a blinder this year by sowing late to time things for the end of September as I haven't suffered any growth checks, although as there is still a long way to go pestilence may yet descend upon me and make my face as miserable as Dave Thornton's currently is.


At the weekend I put my large onions in pots outside as the tomatoes growing behind them needed tending and I needed to plant some potbound aubergines where the onions were resting. This is not an ideal situation as I am putting them at greater risk of botrytis by growing outside, but my greenhouses are bursting at the seams. Luckily, my financial controller and under-gardener has already suggested that we acquire a top of the range polytunnel in time for next season, meaning that I shall be able to grow my onions to completion indoors. For now though they will have to take their chances outside which will be fine if we get a sustained period of dryish weather until late July. All in all though I'm ecstatic about how they're looking and with at least another month for them to grow i'm set to have my best ever onions.

The first tomatoes have now formed on the bottom trusses meaning I shall start feeding with tomorite, nettle soup and comfrey soup in rotation, adding sootwater from July to bring out the colour. The roots are well down by now as I can see them at the bottom of the bottomless watering pots so I will do most of my watering and feeding through these in order to keep the soil surface as dry as I can.

My Kestrel spuds are only about 10" high, and my Amour only just breaking the surface as I have delayed setting them so I don't have to have them in store too long before my shows in late September. Once they reach about a foot high it's very important to keep the bags moist at all times as this is the critical stage in the possible development of scab, which thrives in dry soil. I'm also giving the foliage a spray with Maxicrop and they really seem to gleam afterwards.

And finally, I've decided that I shall probably have engraved on my headstone 'Who the fuck has he upset now?' As many of you know I'm a bit of a diplomat. We have lovely neighbours, a young indian couple who regularly swap curries with us for veg over the garden fence. Sadly they are attached to a pair of monumental tossers, another young couple, childless, who are constantly moaning at them (via TEXT!) to keep their kids quiet, inspite of the fact that they're quite happy to let their boxer dog bark loudly without shutting the fucking thing up. He is a big bully who has been seen beating his wife up but she seems to take it like an idiot. After our neighbours had told us about yet another upsetting text on Saturday evening (not late) to keep their lovely children quiet (only a bit of bedtime boisterousness), I decided to erect this spiffin sign in my garden so that the wife-beating wanker two doors up can quite clearly see it. I have now witnessed him walking up and down his garden several times, smouldering with anger but like all cowards he's too scared to say anything to me, but I live in hope of a street brawl before too long. I'll keep you posted on how I get along as I think he'll start as a clear favourite but i'm a dirty little fucker with a few nasty tricks up my sleeve.

The Edible Garden Show 2012

Not long back from helping set up the NVS stand at Stoneleigh Park near Coventry. I had chance to have a quick look around and it's certainly a much bigger event than last year so hopefully there'll be plenty of new members recruited this weekend. I'll be on the stand Saturday and Sunday so come and say hi if you're planning to go.

Www.theediblegardenshow.co.uk

Lady GaGa and Keeley Hawes in naked lesbian sex romp at National Tap Root Championships

Apologies once again but the last such like heading did wonders for my viewing figures! I even had a visit from the United Arab Emirates and I had visions of an arab logging on in an internet cafe in Abu Dhabi and getting my ugly mug pop up instead of Jennifer Lopez's tits. No doubt his mule got well buggered that night!

Anyhoo, I was given a copy of the Welsh Branch Championships schedule yesterday, and whilst I won't be entering this year as we will likely be on holiday, it is a show I hope to enter sooner or later. That's because it contains the National Tap Root Championships, a class that captured my imagination when I watched Medwyn winning it during an episode of Gardener's World in the mid-90's. You need two specimen's each of parsnips, long beet, long and stump carrots, and current champion is Ian Simpson (photo below).

Ian is giving a talk at Leeds DA on Tuesday on carrots and peas and I may well pop up to listen to that as he always has interesting stuff to say. There are dozens of talks like this up and down the country given by the the top growers in Britain, so if you want to improve your results you really do need to join the NVS and get to as many of these events as you can.p

Free Jennifer Lopez nude sex pics hot hot hot

Apologies for the title, but my blog stats tell me that the most popular page (by some distance) was the one I did last year entitled simply 'Loughborough', presumably visited so often by prospective students and visitors to the town doing a google search. No doubt when they click on the link it isn't quite what they are looking for nor indeed expecting and some swearing and cussing ensues, but hey-ho! So I dreamed up the above title, and if I can just convert to growing for showing, two or three of the masturbating teenagers out of the millions that will now undoubtedly visit this blog for other reasons then it'll be a result (well, it worked with Adam Greathead!). Either that or I'll be cited in the Guinness Book of Records as the most prolific cause of lost boners in recorded history!


Well now, I really do have to buckle down from now on in and make full use of every spare moment. My peppers popped through the compost today and in the next few days I will be sowing brussels, cabbages, aubergines and celery indoors. The sand in my parsnips drums has now settled with no further sinkage, so I took the opportunity to drench it with some Jet 5 at a rate of 45ml to 5 litres. Hopefully that has scorched the crap out of any remaining canker spores or carrot fly larvae that might have overwintered. I'll try and get my mixes done in the next week for boreholing next weekend, although my involvement with the NVS stand at The Edible Garden Show might mean that goes back another week.

I really can't praise my friend Helen enough for the superb onions she's grown for me and as Dan is quite rightly intimating, I hope I can do them full justice from now on. They are already as big as anything I would have had growing in the beds in May so I'm off to a flyer with them. Unfortunately my growlight has gone on the blink so they're currently residing in my conservatory but as this weekend sees equilibrium with 12 hours of equal daylight/darkness I'd have been switching the light off anyway.

My conservatory is also home to my Pendle Improved leeks and several trays of Vento onion seedlings.

These are on a par, if not better than any leeks i've produced in the past so i'm more than happy with how they're ticking along, but once again Helen put me to shame as I simply could not believe the size of her leeks which must be at least an inch diameter and 11" to the button. Derek Aldred is going to have some serious competition at Southern Branch this season. And thanks for the tea and cake Helen!

I've also done something I've not bothered with in the past, although it does make a whole lot of sense. I've heard one or two other growers talking about germination tests so I've done one with a few long beetroot seeds from a batch I had left over from last season supplied by a scottish friend. As I grew my best long beet last season I wanted to see if the same seed was viable and i'm happy to report a small pot of seed has germinated, although I won't be starting the boreholes off until early May with Malvern in mind hopefully. I've got two drums prepared already, and hope to get another four set up before then, each with 5 roots in. You can do a germination test with old batches of carrot and parsnip seed also. It certainly saves wondering whether they're ever going to germinate after sowing proper.

London calling

Next up is my 4th Clash (see how clever I was there!?) with Dave Thornton at the RHS Westminster Show a week today. This is an absolutely stunning venue in which to stage vegetables and if you can make the effort the rewards are good as the RHS give very good prize money across the classes, not just in the big collections. Thanks to a website www.parkatmyhouse.com i've managed to find a parking spot at a local pub for 10 quid a day (you can claim this back) so I shall be driving into London in the early hours in order to avoid the congestion charge. Leesa will be travelling down on the train later on in the morning as there will definitely be no room in the car for her this time around.




The reason for this is i've entered 35 classes including 5 collections in the hope of clawing back some of the points difference between myself and the Derby Dingbat. He currently leads by a seemingly unbridgeable 716 to 351 but hopefully i've got a few tricks up my sleeve as Westminster has classes for things like squash (of which I have a nice specimen), turnips, brussel sprouts, red cabbage, cylindrical beet (I have 4 drums of these to empty out!), loose leaf lettuce (my current speciality!), courgettes and chard. When I informed the Thornquat of all my plans his smug face quickly changed and I know he's looking for late rule changes as we go to press just in case. Having said all this he usually picks up a rook of red cards at this show, especially if the Welsh boys don't turn up as happened last year. Therefore I don't doubt that Medwyn will be taking his photo again for GN....yawn!

As well as my Westminster preps i'm also in the process of digesting the NVS Judges' Guide for my impending exam this Saturday. Because Midland Branch aren't holding an exam this year i'm having to travel down to Dorchester in southern country-bumkin land so i'll be setting out early for the 200 mile trip. It means I will be not be entering Sturton Show in Lincolnshire for the first time in 12 years. As well as a two hour written paper there is a mock show that you have to judge, coming up with a 1-2-3 in each class. There are two collections A & B that have to be pointed, so i'm hoping that my experience in entering several collections this year and concentrating on the pointage given to each competitor will stand me in good stead for this. I may sleep in the car if i'm too tired afterwards but as there are more village idiots per hectare down south I don't really want to be hanging about after dark.

79.5

In a forecast that bodes well for my judges exam at the beginning of October I said I'd get 75-80 points!

My parsnip scored 15 points which was actually the highest scoring out of all the collection parsnips, so I know I can compete at the highest level with them. If only i'd been able to guarantee three with no canker then who knows, but I did spot some damage on most of the entries benched at Harrogate. I need to get more 'meat' on my carrots although they were nice and clean. My leek scored 14 so I was pretty chuffed with that too.

So, i'm 20 quid richer tonight. I did think about foregoing the wager but then I remembered all those heightist jokes and I thought 'fuck 'em!'

10-9-8-7-6........

Eee I allus feel reet gid afta a rant tha kno's, now av git te wash me kerrits in't bath, ecky thump.




As you can see I've started practising speaking northern gibberish so that I can converse with the natives in a few hours time. I pulled my carrots and parsnips for Harrogate last night and in truth I was more than a little disappointed with the results. The stump bed that I've already pulled some crackers from suddenly decided it was going to throw out a right mish mash of shapes and sizes. It took me 25 pulls to come up with two sets of 3, meaning I've left myself with only about 40 to cover Malvern, Westminster and Derby.



My long carrots were nice and clean, and quite long but didn't have the weight I was hoping for, but I shall be happy to stage them for their condition if nothing else, and that's the main thing with all show veg.

Despite sterilising my sand and putting weed suppressant membrane down I still had a few spots of canker on my parsnips and struggled to find one without any marks for the 6x1 class. It's a shame because I've pulled some real crackers in every other respect and would have considered putting a set of 3 up at Malvern next weekend if they'd all been clean. I think I shall have to invest in some JET 5 next season which I'm told will not only sterilise all canker out of your sand it will also burn a hole through to the centre of the Earth. My grandchildrens' future is a small price to pay for blemish free parsnips.



I'm off home now to start several hours of washing, prepping, bagging, packing and loading. The banter has reached a crescendo between myself and Messrs Unsworth and Bastow on Facebook/text/email in recent days as we each try to get last minute digs in but now the time has come to shut up and put the veg on the benches. I shall be leaving home around 2am for the 100 mile drive up the M1/A1 to stage my few entries, but mainly for the 6x1 class. This has been a lot of fun. May the best man win.



Results will be shown on here during the course of tomorrow morning.

The recriminations will start shortly after.

We will all be pissed by lunchtime.

T minus 2

It never ceases to amaze me how the Yorkshire Uphill Claydiggers continue to poke cheap jibes at my apparent lack of vertical inches. No matter, for come Friday morning I have no doubt that I will be higher than Adolf Hitler's gas bill as I celebrate my win in the Bullshit Bloggers' Challenge ......or BBC as Unsworth and Bastow now insist on calling it as it means they have to type less words the lazy northern shitstabbers. Along with my magnificent certificate Dan has donated these rather spiffing shiny medals to allocate between us so he must have found some money in one of his clay pots. I guess we just need Mr Bastow to donate something now? I don't mind taking home the black pudding but he can keep the whippet!

Tonight, to save a bit of time tomorrow night, I shall be pulling my carrots and parsnips, matching them up into sets then covering them in the old potato bag peat. I won't wash them until tomorrow night however. I recently staged a set of carrots I had pulled over 8 days before and stored them this way very successfully with no apparent deterioration in skin finish, so one day aint gonna matter one jot. Therefore a carrot and a parsnip will be making up veg 2 and 3 of my set with a 'stick' of celery, plus I have a Sherine spud in storage that will be washed tomorrow night. That makes 4. A blanch leek equals 5 so I just need to decide on my 6th which will come from either a runner bean or a tomato as I finally have some ripe ones. I predict that I will score between 75 and 80 out of 120! There's nowt so bracing as sticking your neck out and watching your head get cut off!



The Northern Horticultural Society side of the show have a class called (rather grandly) the National Carrot Championship which requires a set of 3 long carrots and a set of 3 stump rooted carrots. I have entered this also. No doubt Graham Watson and Peter Clark will also be entering this class so it will be a fine opportunity to compare my roots against the very best in the land and see how far I still need to progress. Welsh Branch run something called the National Tap Root Championships where you have to stage long carrots, parsnips, long beet and stump carrots and I've always wanted to enter that one day. Calling myself National Carrot Chumpion will do for now though!

Harrogate T minus 4

Well now, what with my two local shows being safely tucked out of the way with a few confidence boosting wins under my belt I can finally turn my attention to what promises to be the biggest moment of my showing year, namely the inaugural BULLSHIT BLOGGERS Challenge at Harrogate this Friday morning. The Northern NVS collection of 6 only requires single specimens so it's an excellent starter class at this level for the likes of myself and fellow bloggers Paul Bastow and Dan Unsworth, plus any other top level novices that want to join us. Rules are 10 quid to Dave Thornton before staging, winner takes all decided by the number of points scored as marked on the tickets by the judges.



When pulling our veg and making up matching sets you will often find one superb specimen that doesn't match any others. Local shows may have a class for a single veg/flower/fruit as mine does, but invariably you have to leave it at home which can be a shame. This makes the Northern NVS collection class a very popular one amongst the top growers and I understand from speaking with a few that there are very often 20-30 entries. As for us, we can have our own little show within a show with the winner taking the pot and bragging rights for a year. Of course we all know it's gonna be me but I don't want to put them off, so as a little incentive and at huge financial outlay to myself I've come up with with this rather splendid certificate for the 'winner'.

I could probably stage a radish, kohl rabi, courgette, cherry tomato, ball of belly button fluff and a piece of snot as my set of six and still beat the Yorkshire batty boys, but I shall be taking it seriously and will be revealing my set during the course of the week.

Hold onto your hats, cos this one is gonna be a whole lot of fun, with some controversy, blood, sweat and tears thrown in for good measure!

Problem solving on a daily basis......

This interweb mullarkey is a wonderful thing. Once upon a time, pre-WWW, if you had a problem with one or more of your crops you 'lost' a season until showtime when you might be able to tell a fellow grower of your problem and hope that he came up with a solution for you to try the next season, then and only then. Nowadays however, a grower has access to all sorts of useful information and can often find a solution to the problem with a quick google. However, the best source of info I find by far is the NVS's own forum where several of the country's top growers have sod all better to do and are usually to be found lurking on there waiting to answer your questions. So if any of you aren't members I would urge you to part with your 17 quid and join up in 2012 as you need to be a member to access the forum. If you don't find it immediately worthwhile I will personally take it upon myself to refund you 17p.




It was on the forum that I came across this little gem of an idea offered up by NVS legend and pickled shallot maestro John Trim. A conversation 'thread' was started about the best way to store runner beans in the run up to a show. I've always wrapped mine up in damp towels, picking them three or four days before a show as they reach my selected length. However, I've always found this method quite unsatisfactory and never seemed to be able to get enough specimens to make more than a set of 6 when I may also want another set of 6 for a Top Tray, even though I grow a fairly substantial fence of 25 plants or so. JT mentioned his method of inclining the beans in a tray with the stalk end being submerged in water. Therefore I came up with this set-up, a pane of glass angled in a plastic tray so that the beans all have their toes in the small amount of water at the bottom.

And believe me this really does seem to work. At the weekend I won the runner bean class with a uniform set of 15 inchers, and managed to include an even better set of 16 inchers on my Top Tray that scored 15 out of 20 (although on that basis believe me Sherie Plumb's beans would score 53 out of 20!) The thing is all the 16 inchers were picked nearly 10 days before and were still as fresh as when they were first cut. I was very impressed and will certainly be adopting this method from now on.

Also on the forum JT posted his method of preparing pickled 'onions' which he said were the tastiest you'll ever put in your mouth. I said I didn't believe him and he'd have to prove it, and fair play he presented me with a jar at the National. These are without doubt the best pickled onions (actually shallots) I have ever tasted, not too sharp, pleasantly sweet with a mildly hot aftertaste. My youngest daughter and I have now polished off said jar having eaten them all like sweets for the past few days, so i'm going to have to make my own. JT's recipe is as follows:



One kilo of shallots-I use Hative de Niort (nothing but the best) but pickling onions will do.

900 mls of white vinegar-I use Sarsens

6 oz of white sugar

One red & one green sweet peppers-cut into strips

Sprigs of fresh Tarragon

Teaspoon of pickling spice to each jar.

THE METHOD

Put the vinegar into a saucepan with the sugar & heat until the sugar dissolves. Put to one side to cool. Peel the shallots (best done the day before bottling) put them into a bowl, sprinkle with plenty of salt & fill the bowl with cold water. Leave the shallots in the brine for 24 hours. Then drain off the brine & rinse with cold water. Tip the shallots out onto a tea towel to dry. When perfectly dry fill sterilised jars with shallots & add some of the peppers, a sprig of Tarragon & the teaspoon of pickling spice. Top up with the white vinegar. Give each jar a plastic cover & screw on the lid. They will be ready to eat 8 weeks from bottling.


This weekend I have another local show in the village of Seagrave which I always enjoy as it's a huge amount of fun. Then next week I shall be doing a daily countdown to the impending Bullshit Bloggers Challenge at Harrogate when I take on the might of the Yorkshire Homo contingent of Bastow and Unsworth (plus any others who want to take us on!) in the NVS Northern Branch's set of 6. A year's bragging rights are on the table as well as some ten quid side bets. Securicor will be on hand to follow me home.

Llangollen 2011

Well I've finally dipped my toe in and exhibited at my first ever National and what a fabulous weekend me and Leesa had. Setting off at half past midnight early Saturday morning I got to our hotel in Chirk just before three and installed Leesa at the hotel before setting off for the Royal Pavillion in Llangollen to stage my 7 exhibits. Believe me there's no more magical place than a hushed National venue at 4 in the morning. Virtually every exhibit is covered with sheets of paper or dampened towels until just before judging.

As for me I did brilliantly, all of my entries coming in equal 6th! This National was all about fulfilling a dream and actually getting some stuff on the benches to compare my stuff against the best to see how far I have to progress. And in truth it aint that far, my stump carrots in particular being unlucky not to get a ticket......not my words but those of Ian Stocks (this year's champion) and Medwyn Williams. As you can see it was a widely contested class. My set is nearest camera.

Another class I was keen to get an entry in was the 3 sets of two 20 pointer veg class, as I felt this was a good class to be able to compare my long roots without wasting too many. I scored 15 out of 20 for carrots and 13 for parsnips, coming 11th out of 20 entries which I was pretty chuffed about. With a total of 40 out of 60 I was only 8 points behind the winner.

There were some new names among the tickets, perhaps signifying a changing of the guard as the likes of Jim Thompson, Trevor Last and John Branham all failed to get a red card to their names. Star of the show for me however, was fellow blogger Owain Roberts who managed to beat Sherie Plumb in the coloured potato class with these Kestrel. An amazing achievement in his first National, and he also won the Banksian medal for most prize money.

I managed to bench spuds in three of the four classes and was pretty happy that they didn't look out of their depth. Skin finish was pretty good, I just need to get better size and uniformity now.

The rest of the weekend became a huge social event and I appear to have been adopted as a mascot for pisstaking by my Scottish, Welsh and Cumbrian chums. After dinner last night Medwyn banged the table and called for order as he had a 'special award' to make to an NVS member. Soon turned out that I was the member in question, as I was presented with this wooden spoon for spectacular failure, my big gob over the last few years putting me in the firing line for several minutes of seat squirming embarrassment. I f****** loved it and I shall treasure it forever. But they better watch their sodding backs from now on! Bastards!

Next stops for me are a couple of local shows for the next two weekends and speaking with Ian Simpson last night he is as passionate as I am about keeping your local village shows alive as they are the life blood of the bigger shows and where we all learn our trade. So congratulations today to Helen Vincent from daaan saaaf who won best in show with some excellent celery at her first attempt. Well done Helen.....National at Malvern next year? I'm sure you'd be invited into the 'Wee Jimmy's tour crowd' (you had to be there to understand what that means!).











And last but certainly not least, happy 24th anniversary today to my wife Leesa who wasn't in the slightest looking forward to this weekend as she feared I would be lost in veg talk with my fellow exhibitors, but thanks to the WAGS is now seriously looking forward to future Nationals, and especially Dundee 2015!

Here's to us!

Lockdown

Right then, I won't be on here all next week as I need to spend my precious time making sure all my exhibits are prepared to the optimum for the National Championships. What i'm trying to say is that I can't be wasting my time talking to you lot! And i'm also treating the whole experience as a mini-holiday with some walking planned for the Sunday.




I've over-ambitiously entered 14 classes at Llangollen namely;



White spuds

Coloured spuds

NVS Sherine

NVS Amour

French beans

Runner beans

Shallots

Pickling shallots

Peas (yeah right!)

Long carrots

Stump carrots

Parsnips

250g onions

3 x 2 class (20 pointers)



If I actually manage to get 6 of those on the bench I'll be a happy man. I'm still miffed that I made such a dog's dinner of my tomatoes as they would have offered me the best chance of a ticket...but there's always next year! Therefore, I have zero expectations in terms of tickets but consider this a must-do exercise in order to compare my stuff against the very best growers in the land. A single 5th place ticket would have me creaming my pants and kissing Dave Thornton and Ian Stocks which is highly unlikely (thank f***!) when you look at the cast list of suspects, but as long as i'm not disgraced then all will be well with the World.



I shall certainly be taking at least two entries of spuds and will be interested to see how my skin finishes compare to the likes of spud specialists such as Sherie Plumb and John Bebbington, whose entertaining talk I attended last night at North East Derby DA. I already have sets of 5 Casablanca and 5 NVS Sherine set aside, with my Kestrel and NVS Amour to be emptied out this Sunday and graded into sets. I am absolutely itching to empty them out and have a look but you MUST resist any urge to do this as you have to give the skins time to set. I stopped watering two weeks ago, cut the haulms off 3 nights ago, then got the bags into the garage two nights ago so that no more rain can get at them. Most growers are tending to try and get the bags as dry as possible towards the end of their growth to give them spuds in the best possible condition. Ideally i'd like to leave them longer (7-10 days after lifting) before emptying out for the skins to set but if i'm gentle I should be ok. They'll certainly be set by next Friday evening when i'll be washing them. I had a sneaky peak into the bags and couldn't spot any scab on the Kestrel or Amour so I'm hopeful of also getting an entry into the coloured potato class (with Kestrel) and the NVS Amour class sponsored by JBA.



Now then, about these peas..........

Fruit street hack

I spent a hugely enjoyable day walking around some fields near Kings Lynn today. I was asked to represent the National Vegetable Society at Thompson and Morgan's fruit press day held at R W Walpole's extensive fruit farm. David Allison the editor of the NVS quarterly magazine 'Simply Veg' was unable to attend so he asked me if I could step in.

What I know about fruit you can write on the back of a postcard so it was a bit weird to be amongst some of the foremost horticultural journalists in the country. But it was well worthwhile as I came home with a large doggybag full of fruit bushes and strawberry plants all ready for planting. I have to write a short piece on my visit for the NVS magazine so don't blink or you might well miss that one!

During a very pleasant lunch the person who plonked himself next to me was none other than ex-Gardener's World contributor Bob Flowerdew. It was with some trepidation as I think I've referred to him before on here as that 'organic ponytailed plonker', so I was preparing myself for a bit of a debate and maybe even a brawl. Luckily he doesn't subscribe to smithyveg.com so an incident was averted, but to be fair he was actually quite good fun.

Getting back to the plot tonight I think my tomatoes are virtually at death's door. The other night I thought I might have sussed out what I had done wrong. When I put manure in a trench below where the plants would grow it suddenly occurred to me that I had not watered it all prior to backfilling with the border soil. Consequently I thought perhaps my plants had thus got their roots into manure that was virtually dry and the problem was one of poor conductivity and the plants had become stressed. Therefore I whacked gallons of water into the bottomless pots to try and rectify my schoolboy error. After a couple of days of what I thought was improvement I now have to accept this hasn't worked and the plants will need to come up. I have several cuttings off Dave Thornton in a jar on a windowsill which I will pot up as soon as they have sent out roots. Oh how he loved giving me those. I'll never live it down.

Having said all this, several of you have mailed me saying you appear to be having very similar problems with your Cedrico, growing them in all manner of ways so there doesn't appear to be a common fault that I can put my finger on. Someone said it might be bad seed but I don't think that is the case as I planted out the strongest, healthiest plants I've ever had. Magnesium deficiency was another idea mooted but the leaf colour is nothing like that. I've had it in the past and a spray with epsom salts soon returns the colour to the plants.

It is annoying as I really did think tomatoes presented me with my best chance of getting into the tickets at the National. What's more they are always one of my banker veg for Top Tray collections.

Never mind....my parsnips 'Polar' are suddenly starting to grow well and are probably looking better than they have for a couple of years. I noticed some aphid activity yesterday so be on the lookout and spray as soon as you see them. I gave them a blast of garlic spray which is also a plant invigorator. I may yet be tempted to stage a set of 5 at Llangollen just for the hell of it.

And I put 12" cardboard collars onto my celery plants too. Whilst these are the healthiest, cleanest plants I've ever grown thanks to regular spayings of Decis and garlic spray they are quite small at the base and will need to bulk out a lot. The bottomless pots are really helping to keep the soil moist as the water is concentrated straight at the roots.

And i've been reasonably happy with my first ever attempt at growing 250g onions 'Vento' to maturity in the greenhouse in 7" pots. It ties up a lot of greenhouse space but means I should get a better skin finish and as I used sterilised bagged soil in the mix I won't get the white rot problems that I get in my veg plot soil. Canes and clips keep the foliage upright (I can assure you it's only the camera angle that makes them look as it they're leaning) and the protection of the greenhouse means they don't get buffeted by wind. As soon as these reach 83mm diameter I will get them up. After ripening I know they will be just under 250g in weight at that measurement.

Almost liftoff

Pretty much all the hard back-breaking work is now done in terms of shifting tonnes of sand, boring holes, lugging bales of peat, planting spuds and getting greenhouse frameworks sorted. A good job too as I've lost so much weight i'm now only 14stone 6lbs and am wasting away. From now on it's a lot of sowing, planting, feeding, tying up, tweaking and generally fannying about in order to make sure your stuff stays fit and healthy for the next few months.

I got 50 late sown onion plants in today, the so-called Frisco variety which is probably Tasco as Frisco appears not to exist. I planted them in this long bed through a weed suppressant membrane as I am still trying to eradicate bindweed from it.

My tomatoes are looking good as are the 'Bonica' aubergines I've planted in front of them. I've never had plants look this big and this healthy before so hopefully i'll be able to exhibit some for the first ever time this year. There is a danger they could get shaded out by the tomatoes as they climb up into the greenhouse ridge but we shall see. Ideally you want to be planting them in a separate bed with plenty of sunlight but as I haven't got that luxury I will have to manage. The bed was well rotavated and a good layer of horse muck put in the bottom which I hope will benefit both crops. The bottomless watering pots will also feed both.

And it will soon be time to put my gobby predictions into practise and sow my peas for Llangollen. The two inclined poles will be carrying my runner beans, the first sowings of which germinated today. I have some new plans on how to grow runners this season and will be going into this in June. The row where the spade is sticking out had a deep trench dug last weekend and an 8" layer of horse muck layered into the bottom of it. This is where I hope to be growing a couple of rows of the best peas ever witnessed at National level or else I'll run round the streets of Llangollen naked shouting Ian Stocks is my hero. In front of that are my bags of Kestrel and NVS Amour spuds.

All kinda exciting aint it?

Thank God for long Bank Holiday weekends

On Wednesday evening I went to a laugh-a-minute talk at North Derby DA given by John Smiles on the highs and lows of his showing year last season. We all have to accept we'll have many lows during the season and take them in our stride. John certainly looks at life from a 'pint half full' perspective and entertained us for over an hour. North Derby has some excellent speakers coming up including John Branham next month and Sherie Plumb in the autumn.

Thanks to the Royal Wedding we have two long gardening weekends to catch upon all those hundreds of jobs that need doing if we're to be in the cards come show season. Today I managed to get the Mantis on the patch of land i'll be putting my potato bags in the next few weeks. Last weekend I got 70 Sweet Candle stump carrots under the enviromesh covered raised bed.....





....and today I got another 28 in this smaller (but much deeper) bed. These are all with Malvern in mind at the end of September.

Thinking realistically, if I'm to realise my ambition of getting a ticket at National level my best chance will probably be with tomatoes. My first batch of Cedrico have grown very strongly and i'll be looking to get these planted next weekend.

With my various tomato feeds in mind I cut a load of comfrey leaves today and immersed them in water. In a few weeks time I'll drain off the stew and bottle it up ready for use in the summer as a weak potash feed. I shall do the same with some nettle leaves (for nitrogen) later this week.

After a slow start i'm now pleased with my leeks. They are nice and clean and at the size I like to plant out. I'll prepare the bed this week with a good few handfuls of blood, fish and bone plus some seaweed meal and plant them out a couple of weeks later.

The Casablanca spuds that I planted in buckets for a July show are well up. These buckets are now outside but can easily be taken back inside overnight if frost is forecast. Next weekend I hope to be bagging up the Casablanca for the main show season but I really had to get  some on the go to see if all the fuss about them is justified, having never grown them before myself. 

In the greenhouse these stump rooted carrots 'Caradec' growing in pipes standing on the border soil will soon need thinning. I set 3 stations in each pipe as I felt there was room to support three. I'm hoping these 'Gringo' shaped roots will give me a decent set of four for the Millenium Class at Llangollen. I have 42 to choose from. I have wrapped some silver tin foil around the black pipes to deflect light and hopefully stop them overheating or drying out.

Tomorrow I'm hoping to get a couple of drums of long beet up and running. There are peppers to be pricked out,  weeds to be dug up and burned, an enviromesh frame to be made for my long carrots etc etc. I'm a long way off from thinking about my peas for Llangollen but i'm just wondering whether Man Utd's brilliant summer signing and yesterday's match winner Javier Hernandez is a good omen. His nickname is 'Little Pea'. Spooky eh Mr Stocks?