Cutting corners

Well that was a good gardening weekend wasted! I haven't really eaten for three days so have been feeling very weak and relying on my tiny amount of fat reserves and I also couldn't stray too far from a lavvy for fear of shitting myself. Anyone who recently bought shares in Andrex....you have me to thank for the sudden rise in share price! My Easter egg from the kids remains untouched when usually it doesn't get past mid-morning Easter Sunday! The result of all this is that I now find myself well behind schedule and having to make some hard decisions. I am going to do something that I've been telling you all not to do for the past few years, and that is to leave my long carrot and stump beds as they are. That's right, i'm NOT going to empty them out and refill them which I've always considered an essential yearly task to stop compaction and make hole boring easier. It also puts air into the sand. Will this make a difference to my final root quality? Only time will tell, but I have given the drums and beds a drenching with Jet5 to kill any lurking nasties and will give the stump bed a scuffling with the rotovator all the same. No doubt the Yorkshire fanny swervers will accuse me of making more excuses, but just imagine their shame when I still manage to beat them at Harrogate in the 3x2 Bullshit Bloggers Challenge 2012.



In between toilet dashes I have managed to bore and fill 5 of my 7 parsnip drums, and I am now waiting for the seed to chit indoors. If you want to see my method for boring go to last year's link  http://smithyveg.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/sun-has-got-his-twat-on.html?m=0 as I couldn't be fucked to do it all again in my delicate and life-threatened state.

As you can see this year I've gone to 6 holes per drum (it was only 5 last year) as I couldn't see any improvement in the size of root against what I used to get when I used to bore 7 holes per drum. 6 is therefore a compromise and I find it very easy to get this many in a drum. My mix this season is pretty much the same as last;

15litres of sieved F2

4 litres of medium grade vermiculite

3 litres silver sand

3 litres sieved topsoil (bagged)

3oz sulphate of potash

3oz of superphosphate

3oz of powdered calcified seaweed

3oz of Tev04 (or powdered Q4 if you can get it)

6oz of garden lime


I go heavy on the lime as canker spores aren't supposed to like limey soil. I'm also going to spray the foliage with SB Plant Invigorator this season. This lot was enough to do just under 8 holes, so needs repeating several times to complete the 42 holes that I am growing this season. I mix the compost, vermiculite and the various nutrients first and add the heavier sand and soil last, doing it all by hand in a large shallow container to make sure everything is well mixed. The cement mixer I thought I was going to acquire cheap from a work colleague never materialised. Maybe next year.

Elsewhere, I potted my Pendle Improved leeks into 4" square pots in M3 and this will be the final potting before planting out in May. I'm really pleased with these and they are certainly on a par if not better than anything I've had at this time of year. The root systems were superb. Other growers will no doubt have huge plants by comparison, but my philosphy with leeks is always 'nice and steady goes it'. I shall be putting a whole box of blood, fish and bone plus a generous amount of seaweed meal into the bed where I intend growing the 24 plants. One thing I've learnt is that leeks like a lot of feed. And any excess is utilised by the globe beet that I always grow alongside them to very good effect.

My (Helen's!) onions in 12" pots seem to have settled in nicely and there is new growth appearing from the centre. Most plants have 7 leaves so I'm hopeful of a few large-ish onions this season. A few of them are leaning over at the base due to they way they grew before planting out, but by supporting the foliage up the entire length they should right themselves in due course. The white substance is a light top-dressing (a teaspoon full) of ammonia sulphate (N) which i'm hoping will boost the foliage production but not excessively so.

With all alliums grown indoors thrips can be a major problem so I give each plant a squirt with Dynamec, pulling apart the inner central growth and forcing the spray into the gaps and creases which is where the little sods lurk. They nibble newly emerging leaves and these nibbles get bigger as the leaf expands and reduce the photosyntetic area available to the plant, thus reducing the potential size of our bulb, not to mention allowing easy passage to the plant for various diseases and fungal infections. Spraying generally over the outer foliage will have no effect on thrip whatsoever.


I think I may have overdone it on the onion set front. I have nearly 200 'Setton' to plant out and as yet I have no idea where i'm going to grow them all. One thing is for sure though...they need planting soon!

One unfortunate side-problem I find associated with using dried blood are foxes walking over your raised beds sniffing out what they think is a dead carcass. I hate foxes. Might have mentioned that before.

And the garden clearance is progressing slowly. I shall be growing potatoes in the newly acquired ground that is currently under the tarpaulin, potatoes being very good for breaking up virgin ground of course. A few weeks ago this was a shrub jungle and whilst I started off in two minds about pulling up expensive plants that I'd collected and nurtured from nearly 20 years ago before I got into veg in a big way, it has proved to be quite an emancipating experience. I can now see new opportunites to grow even more veg at home appearing before my very eyes. It's certainly easier to rotovate a large expanse of ground rather than mowing intricate lawn shapes, edging them, pruning and tying in a load of plants that you can't actually eat! I shall cut back more shrubs in the next few weeks and move the tarpaulin up so that it remains there all Summer, so that all weeds and grass are killed off before working the soil during the Winter.

Meanwhile, I have asked Oscar whether he was feeling at all guilty about giving grandad his satanic tummy bug and sending him very close to Death.........

.....nuff said! I'll suffer any amount of toxic bum juice for a smile like that!

Nearly April already!

A lot has happened since my last post but unfortunately I've been too busy at work and home to keep you all up to speed. My Cedrico tomatoes were sown on 16th March and were up within days and are now pricked out into 2" cells. I have several pots of peppers and aubergines to prick out also. I shall be taking care of my tomato seedlings from now on as if they were my very own bollocks, such was my disappointment at not being able to stage a decent set of tomatoes at all last season due to my incompetence.

I still haven't managed to get my parsnip holes bored yet although I should have that job nailed this weekend. They will soon catch up with anything that might have been sown earlier. Then it will be long carrots and not long after that the potatoes will need to be bagged up. It's non-stop from now on.

I have all my composts to hand now. Just before TEGS I went up to Codnor Horticultural Supplies in Ripley, Derbyshire and stocked up on M3 and F2, with a few bags of peat, sterilised topsoil and vermiculite to boot. I didn't think I was going to get it all into my car but thanks to the two guys in the yard they managed to load me up so that I could still see PC Plodfart of the M1 up my arse if I had to. They really were a helpful company, and despite advertising themselves as 'trade only' they don't turn away anyone with hard cash, and I shall be visiting them more often from now on for my composts and feeds. I've never bothered with Levingtons before, preferring to buy cheap and cheerful from B&Q and adding my own nutrients (very haphazardly!) but I'm now prepared to pay extra for better quality material. I hope it makes a difference.

M3 is a high nutrient compost which I'll be using in my pots for growing my onions on, and F2 is a lower nutrient seed and potting compost which I shall be using for my parsnip and carrot mixes.

My shallots are giving me many concerns yet again. Despite a spraying with Folicur quite a few of them have still developed white tip. Once they get it then the affected leaves can grow no more as they extend from the ends. I think I have it relatively controlled and have plenty of bulbs to plant out so hopefully they'll be ok, but they just won't get as big as I'd like. With a planting date of mid-April in mind i've given the beds where they'll grow a generous dusting of Tev04 fertiliser, and will follow that with some dried blood this weekend for extra nitrogen.

I have also pricked out 30 or so celery 'Evening Star' which needs an awful lot of care taking in order not to damage the tiny little seedlings. Whilst celery are a bog plant and you don't want to allow them to dry out I'm still watering these very carefully with a small watering can so as not to get excess water on the foliage. As these are currently residing in my conservatory I don't want them getting scorched during the afternoon when the sun is strongest.

So, whilst I'm behind on some tasks all in all i'm quite happy with progress thus far. And talking of progress, Oscar has started nursery and even has his very own schoolbag! And he's already nearly as tall as me!

Don't do that again!

Don't know what i'm going to do with this wee monkey. Little sod reduced the wild man of the NVS to tears yesterday. I'd rushed home to find paramedics trying to revive him before he was whisked off to hospital in an ambulance with full blues and twos. By the time I saw him he looked like this, little bugger. I thought he was a goner but to be honest I think he's turning into a bit of a drama queen....just like his grandad! Scared the living shit out of me.

As I write he's still in hospital undergoing various tests but it appears to be some sort of inexplicable seizure, similar to the one I had in Llangollen when I saw my stumps were unplaced!