Cauli wobbles and sparsley parsley

It has been a strange season thus far. Whilst I'm happy that the majority of my stuff is looking good I have had some issues, the main problem being that I am really struggling to get some seeds germinated. I've now had 4 attempts at getting some parsley on the go. I put it down to old seed and having purchased some new last weekend I now have the first seedlings popping up at long last. Parsley is important for garnishing Leesa's trugs as she pokes it into the gaps between each veg so that the judges cannot see the scrunched up bits of newspaper, old bras, suspender elastic and broken dildos that she uses to prop up the veg on show.

I learned a while ago that lettuce will simply not germinate in temperatures much above 25 degrees so I generally have pots of seeds in a shady corner outside. I can only assume the recent heatwave was a factor but I've had three attempts at germinating some and still no success, despite using fresh seed.

But most disappointing of all are failures to get some cauliflour seed to pop up. I sowed a first batch of 'Boris' 3 weeks ago when it was really hot, and another batch a week ago. There is nothing so far from the first sowing but the second batch is now starting to come through but does seem very patchy and the seedlings don't look that strong. I was hoping to grow quite a large patch of caulis this season with a view to trying to get some staged at Malvern but it looks like that plan will have to be shelved. It's a bit late to be sowing fresh seed now so I'll have to run with what few plants I can muster up. I may buy a few in from a local garden centre.

In the past I've suffered from my caulis suddenly collapsing a few days after planting out. As far as I can tell I don't have a club root problem on my land so on closer inspection I discovered lots of tiny grubs eating the roots which I assume were those of cabbage root fly. However, I never seem to have this problem with my cabbages so that has always confused me. Thankfully though, problems with cabbage white butterflies are now a thing of the past as I use something called Decis on the leaves of all my brassicas (and celery to ward off leaf miner). Two or three sprayings a season are enough and the cabbage whites simply avoid the leaves and don't lay their eggs.

Apparently Decis is a highly toxic substance (as are the phorate granules I used against carrot fly) and according to Greenpeace you need to don full body armour, preferably an XC55 (Mark IV) Turbo Charged Patented Spunkmaster Sprayer with integrated cock wipe attachment and apply a minimum of 6 million miles away from any other human being, and you need to go to horticultural college for the duration of 3 lifetimes to acquire the necessary certification to be able to use it. I prefer to spray on sunny days in a T-shirt and shorts with my bollocks hanging out but I do take the rather unusual and perhaps radical precaution which I'm sure many of the organic grass chewers might find a little hard to accept....OF POINTING IT DOWNWARDS AT THE GREEN THINGS AND NOT SPRAYING IT IN MY FUCKING FACE!

Life is busy......

.....I work. I have 3 teenage kids, 2 of whom seem to want ferrying around to their friends’ houses on a whim. When I climb into bed at night I feel like the middle-aged man I am. So you have to do everything you can to make life slow down a bit, by cutting corners or eliminating all those little tasks that are unimportant.

With this in mind I’m amazed at the lengths the organic brigade go to in order to try and rid their gardens of slugs and snails. On a couple of forums I subscribe to whenever I mention slug pellets you’d think I’d advocated gang rape by the reaction I get. They will happily f*ck about with all sorts of stupid ideas from putting bran around their plants, to crushed eggshells, nematodes and copper strips. Some even go out at night with torches hunting for the snotty little bastards. Quite apart from the cost involved with these ideas I’m just amazed that anyone has time to fart about in such a way. And NONE OF THEM ACTUALLY BLOODY WORK!

However, slug pellets do work. Quickly. One flick of the wrist puts down a scattering of pellets. You don’t need to overdo it. Slugs and snails get attracted to them and die almost on contact. My right wrist is then free to do those important little tasks that God gave it me so to do, and I can also watch late night telly safe in the knowledge that my plants are being protected.

In the morning I will find the dead or dying carcasses of all these little plant killers and it feels good! Don’t believe people who tell you that wildlife eats these rotting molluscs because they don’t. And apparently for slug pellets to do a hedgehog any harm they would have to eat 10,000 of them. In my book that’s one dumbass hedgehog.

The best advice I can give anyone......

......is to use slug pellets especially at this time of year. The organic brigade will have you crushing eggshells, bulk ordering bran and cheap beer and generally doing naked moon dances at midnight. But a quick flick of the wrist (easy tiger!) with a tub of slug pellets will ease all your worries.

This is particularly important with your long carrots. Yes I know they're growing in sharp sand and that slugs and snails don't like crawling over it but quite frankly that is complete hippo shit. I lost several last year so I know it to be true. Slug pellets cause total death to any slug or snail that even thinks about munching your prized roots.

It pays to be nice to me!

Seeing as this lovely person praised me so much and is also so obviously an anti-slughugger I have absolutely no hesitation in plugging her product! (I can be 'bought' that way you see!)

"Hi, what an awesome blog. I love your pics and your comments are hilarious. I am from South Africa and we are hugely embracing the whole eco-friendly, tree-hugging, bird loving mentality (aka Al Gore) right now. We make a kind of plastic netting that farmers use to protect fledgling plants, vegetables and even vineyards from pesky bats and birds - in a humane way. Maybe something to protect your exquisite babies in? Check it out"http://www.plasticexports.wordpress.com/.

Oh, and I nearly forgot......

15) Wind up organic growers at every possible opportunity!

Organic schmanic Janet

On Saturday our Hort.Soc. visited Ryton organic gardens ( and yes I did manage to get in without setting all the alarms off!) and I was prepared to suspend my beliefs in readiness to be converted to the lettuce munchers’ way of life. It is my happy duty to report that growing organically is a complete crock of cobblers. Not one of their lettuce or brassicas had escaped the ravages of Mssrs. Slug and Snail despite the application of enough bran to keep Kellogs going for a week. Their apples, plums and pears all looked very poorly and the soil looked in very poor heart. All in all we skipped out of there at 3pm satisfied that they have always been talking complete bollocks and couldn’t wait to get home and zap some bugs with a lethal spraygun.

Another dictionary explanation

Just looked in the dictionary for a definition of 'Animal rights activist'

=Twat.


So....once again....there you have it.

Organic

Just looked in the dictionary for the meaning of 'Organic';

=Expensive. When used in conjunction with vegetables it usually means covered in slug snot, aphid poo and susceptible to the World of Fungus!

So....there you have it!

In defence of pellets

Here is a picture of a patch of hostas at the side of my house. There isn't a hole from slug or snail damage anywhere to be seen. The reason? I use SLUG PELLETS!

I hate snails. If I never saw another snail for the rest of my life I'd be happy. Quite how those weird french bleeders can eat them by the bucket load is beyond me. But then we did have to bail the workshy twats out of two World Wars.

If I didn't use pellets this patch of hostas (not to mention my cabbages, beans, lettuce etc) would be reduced to stalks as the snotty little sods march over them unchecked. The various solutions offered up by the yippee-hippee, organic, 'thou shalt not' brigade do NOT work. These include using layers of grit, eggshells, bran and beertraps. Why anyone would want to waste beer in such a way is beyond me. And who the hell has enough time to crush enough fecking eggshells to lay a carpet of them for God's sake?

No......believe me.....slug pellets are the only 100% solution. However, if one of the eco MENTALISTS happens to be mincing past your garden putting everyone else's world to rights just as you happen to be spreading a few pellets over your very own little patch of world, he/she will scowl at you from under their psychedelic bobble hat, snort down their pierced nose at you and puff out their chest exhibiting a CND or Greenham Common tattoo. They will bang on at you about how you're killing the environment because birds, hedgehogs, cats and dogs will be poisoned by your little blue Hiroshimas.

Over the years I have developed a way of skilfully counteracting their arguments. I tell them to f*ck off.

Slugs and snails seem to be drawn to crawl over pellets as if they're in a sort of death trance. Death is quick. And it's satisfying. But a slug or snail that has died this way does not get immediately devoured by the next passing hedgehog, frog or bird.....and how many dogs do you know that eat soil? Instead the carcasses lie there untouched for weeks, festering away. And even if a hedgehog was daft enough to eat it, then it's been estimated that they would need to eat another 9,999 for it to do it any harm !

My veg patch

Right then....here goes.

As you can see from my profile and picture below I grow and 'show' flowers and veg. I've been doing this for over 10 years now mainly at small local shows but I am hoping to start showing at National Vegetable Society Shows in the near future.

A common misconception people have is that the 'big veg' they see at shows are no good for eating. I can assure you that they are as good as, or even better than any supermarket veg or stuff that you would grow on your own plot. When 'showing' any veg quality MUST be as important a consideration as the size and uniformity. The only difference is that 'showmen' use seed that has been re-selected so that they naturally grow bigger than the seeds you might acquire from the usual seed sources.

We've just returned from a 2 week holiday in Scotland and The Lakes and this is always a nervous time for me as I have to rely on others to look after my produce while I am away. Apart from a few 'holey' brassicas everything seems to be looking good so I'm hopeful of some good results once the show season starts at the end of August.

My growing regime differs to anyone else who grows veg in that I have to 'time' all my stuff to 'come good' at roughly the same time.......from late August to early October. I grow all my veg in my garden which is over 300' long, but I only have quite a small veg patch at the bottom. I'm trying to take over more of the garden for veg growing but domestic politics mean that I have to leave some flower border space and lawns for the kids to play on.

Also, the way I grow means that we have an absolute glut of veg during September (rejects not destined for the show bench that is LOL) so family and friends benefit from fresh veg that month.

I'm am NOT organic as I do use sprays ........although I do try to companion plant where possible. If I didn't grow tagetes in my greenhouse my tomatoes would be infested with whitefly......I don't know what it is about tagetes but they really do work. Otherwise I reckon growing organically = dead veg and flowers. I hate the way organic growers bang on about 'saving the planet' etc and look as me as i'm Beelzebub !

Anyway....enough for today......attached is a pic of my veg patch from the middle of June.