Welsh wows and what the f***s!

On Friday evening we travelled over 200 miles to compete in the annual Welsh Branch Championships of the NVS and after a long journey the first problem that faced us was manoeuvring the car down a ridiculously narrow alley at the side of our hotel to their car park. Despite pulling the wing mirrors in I was still sucking my breath in to try and make us smaller! Further shocks came as I tried to get a few hours kip which soon became almost impossible as the dregs of Carmarthen nightlife seemed to use the street below our room window for a slanging match. Rising at 3.15am for the 8 mile journey to the venue I passed dozens of revellers still going strong in the many pubs, but whilst their night was drawing to a close mine was just about to begin.

When I staged my veg at the Royal Pavillion at the 2011 National in Llangollen I didn’t think I’d ever come across a more dramatic place for a veg show. Walking into the domed glasshouse of the Welsh Botanic Garden was an even bigger wow moment however and proved to be a truly stunning place set your exhibits out in. And straight away I thought I’d potentially wasted my time as there was some superb stuff already on the benches but if I’ve learned one thing it’s never be put off by first glances as you never know what faults you can’t see on other people’s stuff, and you can be sure the judge will find them. One entry I didn’t manage to get down was in the National Tap Root Championships of Great Britain which was really the whole point of entering in the first place, to fulfil a dream I first had when I started showing over 20 years ago. Unfortunately my long beet just didn’t come up to the desired standard so I went to plan B and entered parsnips and long carrots instead. And it wasn’t a bad plan B as I managed to win the long carrots and get 3^rd in parsnips, although I have to say I felt my long carrots were as rough as a badger’s snatch. I’d had to scrub them more than I would have liked as there was a lot of black marks at the skin lenticels where the root hairs emerge and I just couldn’t get them as clean as I would have preferred. Having said that several people told me they were still clear winners but I know I’ll need better looking roots for the National in 2 weeks time. Still, it was nice to take a few quid off the elderly class sponsor!

I was altogether much happier with my parsnips and thought I may even have won, they certainly looked the best set on Sunday afternoon when the dry atmosphere of the glasshouse was rendering many of the exhibits quite dehydrated in appearance, but I was happy that Mark Perry won the class, and here he is doing his best silverback gorilla impression. He was so happy to win that he left the trophy behind at the function and had to come back for it. Tit.

If anything went against my nips it was probably that I had one a bigger diameter at the top and I was in two minds about pulling more to see if I could get a better match up, but in the end I decided to leave well alone and save the rest for the National when Mark and I will be doing it all again, this time however we’ll be up against even stiffer competition so we’ll need even better roots. I was also in the tickets with my tomatoes (3^rd), 250g onions (3^rd) and marrows (2^nd) so all in all a really good return as this level of competition is the top of the tree believe me.

The Welsh Branch has a collection class for 6 single veg which is always a well supported class as every exhibitor will have that one single specimen that doesn’t match any others but is otherwise superb, and in keeping with several other attempts at this type of collection I was frustratingly out of the tickets by only half a point. Whilst I had the highest pointed parsnip and long carrot my scabby potato only scored 12.5 out of 20 so it was my own fault, as I should have put a tomato or cucumber in instead.

One other piece of news that absolutely blew me away was that a chap in Minnesota USA has just broken the World record for the heaviest carrot, a record held by our own Peter Glazebrook. So what I hear you ask? Well, amazing as it sounds I actually supplied this guy with the seed in a roundabout way. I set my 5^th place winning carrots from the 2015 Dundee National away for seed, harvesting them late last year intending to use them myself and give away any surplus to anyone who wanted some, advertising this on a couple of Facebook pages and several growers took me up on the offer. Kevin Fortey of GiantVegUK heard of this and asked me for some seed to send to America as they use New Red Intermediate, they just grow it in a different way to get the heavyweights. I sent him a load and thought no more of it, doubting that giant veg of such proportions could ever come from my seed, despite the fact that the roots they came from were quite a heavy set. Apparently there is a chap in South Wales who is growing a carrot that may even beat this one, and he is also using my seed, so I’ll be very interested to see the outcome at Malvern. Happy days.

And on Saturday afternoon, just before we set off to the prize giving function hosted by a very generous Welsh Branch that had made us very welcome all weekend, I was asked by a fellow hotel guest what time Liverpool kicked off. About every 15 minutes I told him.

First show of 2017

A top grower (well he always insisted he was a top grower) was once quite sniffy about competing in local shows, implying that it was beneath him now that he was winning at NVS Branch shows with his cabbages and cucumbers. Not me. I still get a big buzz out of winning a ticket at my local show and it was with some sadness that I entered my veg on Saturday morning for the last time. I know the organisers have been a little bit worried about the effect my giving up showing will have on the show as I have supported it with multiple entries since my first show here in 2001, but there were a few new exhibitors putting in some reasonable quality stuff so I sincerely hope the show will continue to thrive. These shows are the breeding grounds for anyone with aspirations to go onto bigger things but should always be supported as much as possible. And besides I said I’d still try and support them with some baking in future years. However, they told me not to threaten them with that shit. As it was I walked off with the coveted Society Cup for most points, and my name will now be etched on the side of it for a record extending 14^th time in 17 years. I’m rather stupidly proud of that.

As I said in the previous post I was particularly pleased with my winning long carrots which were quite a small set compared to many more I appear to have growing. If they carry their weight down like these I’m going to be in a position to compete at the bigger shows to come. One slight concern on a single carrot I pulled for another class was what appeared to be cavity spot which is said not to affect long carrots as much as stumps. I actually used the infected sand from my cavity spot infected stump beds to fill extra carrot drums thinking things would be fine so we shall have to see if this is going to be a major problem for me over the next few weeks.

My stump carrots were almost embarrassing to me. Yes, they won, but if I’d put this set in a National Veg show I’d have been soundly beaten with a sharpened swede, they really were utter wank. I’ll be pulling my stumps for the Welsh Branch Championships tomorrow night and if they’re anything remotely like this they’re going to feed my grandson’s rabbit.

Being a local show you can put more than one entry in a class so over the years in an effort to support the show I have often made multiple entries, whilst being wary of not wanting to do too much and put people off. It’s a fine line but sometimes it’s best to just put one in if you know you’re probably going to win it so that someone else can experience the thrill of getting a ticket. One class I did pull a few entries in was the any other veg class, and my rhubarb was a worthy winner beating my marrows into 2^nd and my turnips into 3^rd. Other exhibitors’ entries in the class included kale, radish, chard, squash and a very large pair of caulis that were unfortunately badly discoloured and well past their best.

I had 1^st and 2^nd in the tomato class but was surprised my 2^nd place entry didn’t actually win. What do you think?

The small fruited tomato class at any show is always well contested and I was pleased to win with a set of Strillo, although I had to cut over 50 to find a set of 10 that weren’t split. Fair to say I shan’t be growing Strillo ever again.

I won the globe beet class with a nice set of 3 that I thought I’d made a fatal mistake with when I was prepping them. I cut the foliage as if I was prepping them for a National show when I suddenly clapped my hands over my face as I realised our show asks for them to be shown ‘with foliage’. Calming down I noticed that I had cut them long at first and therefore there was some new middle foliage still visible so technically I couldn’t be NAS’d and so it proved as far as the judge was concerned.

And the little fuchsia ‘Auntie Jinks’ that I’d been nurturing all Spring & Summer won me another 1^st place. Triffic.

As I said earlier, I’m now turning my thoughts to the Welsh Branch of the NVS Branch Championships in Carmarthen this coming weekend, assuming we’re not going to get nuked by North Korea and America before then, and I emailed my entry form off yesterday morning. Saves the cost of a stamp and doesn’t risk those spanners at Royal Mail losing it in transit. I have entered the rather grandly named National Tap Root Championships of Great Britain but it does all depend on how my long beet pull tonight. I’m having to pull them so long before the show as the daylight hours are getting much less in the evenings by the time those of us who work for a living manage to get home. It’ll be carrots tomorrow night and parsnips on Thursday as we’re travelling down on Friday evening so everything needs to be up and prepped in good time. I’ve entered 9 classes in all plus a couple of back-ups, long carrots and parsnips if the long beet doesn’t cut the mustard, but I shan’t bother with those if they’re adequate for the tap root collection. There is also another collection class for 3 sets of veg with a points value of 18 or less, so I’ll hopefully be going for tomatoes, runner beans and stump carrots, but this is usually a highly contested class so each veg will have to be tip top.

And finally I was in bed the other night pulling off my boxers when the wife walked in on me. “Please don’t do that to the dogs!” she said.

Patience is a virtue, envy is not

This time of the year for the veg showman, and the growers of long roots in particular, is like that scene in Braveheart, the one where that fine Scottish fella Mel Gibson and his clan of tartan bollock brains are waiting for the advancing English. Many of them want to reveal their dastardly plan early but Gibson makes them wait until the last possible moment before pulling up their row of spikes and piercing the gallant Englishmen’s horses and basically cheating their way to victory, as is their way, especially when it comes to cake competitions. At this time of year the temptation to pull the odd carrot or parsnip for a looksee is unbearable, especially if you think you may have some decent specimens, but it is an urge you should resist at all costs, as you may pull one of those roots you might be relying on to make a set in a few weeks’ time. Once pulled, a long carrot or parsnip can be replanted but they will lose freshness and won’t grow anymore, so don’t do it, you have been warned!

Having said all that I did pull one of my long carrots at the weekend. It was a very small one that had developed a double crown so it was never going to be any good for showing, so I decided to get it up to see if it had travelled all the way down, without any forking, and to gauge the skin finish. I must say I was very happy on all accounts. If all my others are this shape and finish, albeit much bigger, then I shall be a happy bunny come show time and will hopefully have a chance of being in the tickets at the biggest shows in the country. My long carrots are looking quite heavy shouldered already so all that remains to be hoped for now is that they carry their weight evenly well down the root. Of course without x-ray vision and for all I know that might have been the only decent carrot in all the fucking barrels!!

After the piss and panic last week over the stump carrot crown rot problem, all appears to have calmed down. Getting any diseased ones up and spraying the remainder with Signum  seems to have arrested the problem, and the bed now looks healthy. They aren’t the biggest but I’ll be happy if they’re at least stump ended, as the fresh sand I used this year should at least mean I don’t have any cavity spot, a problem I experienced for the past couple of years.

All my onions for the 1-1 ½ kg class are starting to ripen on wood shavings in my garage. I managed to get 9 all at just over 17 ½ “ circumference so now it’s a case of seeing whether they all look the same once ripened, but I am hoping to have a set of 5 at the National. It’s highly unlikely I’d be in the tickets as I expect that most classes at Malvern will have at least a dozen entries, and this’ll be one of them. Despite not harvesting until late July I didn’t suffer botrytis because the double pot system meant I could water the bottom pot and keep moisture away from the bulb in the upper pot.

My Tasco onions for the 250g class are also starting to colour up nicely, but this is a class that will have anything up to 30 entries at Malvern so you really do have to have perfectly matched little bulbs, and despite growing over 100 I only have about 40 to choose my sets from, the remainder either being too small or not a good enough shape.

I will probably be looking for my best set of 4 to keep back for the Millennium Class at Malvern, that is assuming I can also find 4 potatoes that aren’t scabbed up to buggery. I will be emptying out the bags this coming weekend, once they have been out of the ground for a fortnight meaning the skins are now hardened and there shouldn’t be a risk of them skinning during handling. The Millennium Class calls for 4 each of 250g onions, tomatoes, globe beet, potatoes and stump carrots and is a class I would love to win a ticket in. With this in mind, and with a little under 6 weeks to go my tomatoes are starting to ripen like never before, not something I’m too chuffed about as I’m usually waiting my first red tomato at this time of the season, but they’ve come very early for some reason. I picked a large tray last week and ‘staged’ the set below on my kitchen table. Just to keep my eye in you understand.

This means my competition ones are going to have to come from the 4^th truss and above in all probability, so I shall be thinning out the trusses over the next few days, getting rid of fruits with the potential to cause neighbouring ones to have flat sides. It’s a bit of a leap of faith to sacrifice perfectly good looking fruits but it does reward you with better shaped ones come show time and I guess as I’ve ticketed in the last 2 Nationals it proves I do know my tommies! Below you can see how a truss is thinned, before and after.

I thought I also knew my cucumbers but this season has been a baffling one thus far. My plants have been very slow indeed to get going, just sitting and doing nothing for what seemed like several weeks after planting. I’m usually chopping them back to keep the sideshoots in check by now but thankfully they are now starting to get to the eaves of my tunnel when I will start to train them horizontally so I am still hopeful of getting some cucs on the bench at Malvern. All fruits forming on the vertical vine are picked off before they have chance to develop, and it’s only once they are able to hang down from above that they’ll be allowed to swell and grow. A big plants means the fruits develop quickly, from a 2” long cuc you should have one of showable size in about a fortnight.

At the weekend I’ll be judging my only show booking for this season, at Burbage near Hinckley, Leicestershire. This will be the 5^th year I’ve judged the veg here and it’s always a nice little show to judge with several classes taxing the brain, especially tomatoes, runner beans, onions as grown and rhubarb. With that in mind I’d like to appeal to all growers to show a little decorum after judging rather than throwing a hissy titfit befitting of a small child because a result may not have gone your way. Judging of vegetables is not and never can be an exact science, despite the written guidance of the NVS and RHS, especially at the highest level when the very smallest of faults can be the difference between first and second. Some days it may go for you, others it might not, but proper men (and women) will take defeat on the chin with good grace and think forward to the next show with a smile. Sometimes growers are blinded to the faults on their own exhibits and prefer to concentrate on the faults of those that have beaten them, sometimes justifiably, but more often than not the correct decision has prevailed. Either way, it happened, get over it. To question a result and try and denigrate someone in their moment of glory, or to issue veiled threats over the internet just marks you out as a total cock, not the experienced and helpful older showman you might pretend to be, and it’s nasty old tossers like you who are one of the reasons why I’ve decided to walk away from showing.

Lukaku Pogba Lindelof Matic

Another thing that winds me up about social media gardening groups is when you advise someone on a particular insecticide/fungicide for a problem and some new-age, ecowarrior, knobthwaite cockfondler pipes up about making sure you have a valid sprayer’s licence, full body protection with nipple softeners and plastic cocksock etc etc etc. Oh do me a favour, go put your head between two rounds of bread and make yourself a cunt sandwich. I actually know someone who has a sprayer’s licence and I have serious doubts that he manages to put his own fucking shoes on each morning, so having a licence is no guarantee that you’re able to use chemicals wisely. If I want to use chemicals I’m gonna use ‘em so unless you’re gonna get the PC Police out to raid my potting shed keep shut yer fecking cake’ole. There’s also nothing quite so good at getting the organic keyboard warriors going off on one than to mention a glyphosate based weedkiller manufactured by the apparent evil corporate bastards at Monsanto, it really is great fun winding the twats up. However, they will often recommend their own home-made concoction that has had no scientific testing done and which, as far as I can tell, is an acid. I think I’ll stick to Roundup personally. Gallons of it. So fuck off.

Moving on, Epsom salts are fast becoming my ‘go to’ solution in the garden when a plant looks a bit out of sorts, especially when it comes to greenhouse tomatoes. A couple of months ago my plants were almost yellow but daily sprays with an Epsom salt solution have somehow greened them up into decent looking plants with heavy crops of fruit promised for show time. However, I’m not stupid, this is the 2^nd season in a row that this has happened. Despite flooding the soil prior to planting to mimic winter rains and flush through any excess fertilisers there is obviously an issue with the soil in the border that the tomatoes grow into, so I’ll be sure to change the whole lot before next year. I may look to have a crack with some compost tea as an alternative, something that Gareth Cameron has had brilliant results with and which would be preferable to lugging a couple of tonne of soil around.

Before the season started I was wondering what small fruited tomato to grow for show, having grown Marshalls’ Montello for a one off competition at Malvern last year. I’ve grown various varieties down the years with varying degrees of success, including Harlequin, a small fruited plum variety, to gain a 3^rd place ticket at the National. Unlike other vegetables there appears no single cultivar that rules the roost so this season I plumped for Strillo which I had seen win at the highest level before. And I’ve been picking fruits for the kitchen for a few weeks now, but the plants still have many to come so I’m hopeful of having some dishes to show during September, including my local show where the small fruited class has, in brackets, (not plum), so I could never enter Harlequin. The only downside I’ve found with Strillo is that is does have a tendency for the fruits to split, even before they’re fully ripe so we shall see.

My Evening Star celery are progressing reasonably well aside from the usual slug issues. On advice from a former celery National champion Paul McLeod I’ve top-dressed around the base with some fresh compost to encourage further rooting, and this weekend I’ll put some black dpc collars around the cardboard ones to shut out all light. At the moment they’re on 18” collars. I haven’t decided whether to put a 20” collar on yet, as I may just leave them as they are and try and get them to bulk out. From now on they just need water, water, water, but I will start feeding with Chempak 8 in a couple of weeks time, plus a feed of sulphate of potash 3 weeks before the shows to harden them up a bit.

And it’s taken a few years since the retirement of the great Sir Fergie but it now looks like Manchester United will shortly be back ruling the roost if recent signings are anything to go by. Despite a few relatively barren years when, to be quite honest, United have been playing completely wank, they still managed to win more trophies than Liverscum, Manchester Shitty and Totteringham Hotshite combined, to become the most successful club in English football history.

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!

Montello peccadillo

The showman’s Spring is one long list of back-breaking or time consuming tasks that have to be done by certain dates to ensure you’re in the tickets come August/September/October. In January we’re emptying our root drums of sand and putting it all back in again! This adds air to the sand and stops it getting too compacted over time, thus making the process of boring or coring your holes less difficult. For the past few years I haven’t bothered to empty out the whole depth of sand, just the top 18”-24” or so, this being entirely down to laziness, and it hasn’t had any detrimental effect so far, so in my opinion it’s your choice whether you bother. Purists will say it’s essential, but in my experience it has been anything but.

Then in February/March we’re actually boring the holes and filling with the mixes which is hard work believe me. This year I’ve done 44 parsnips and 50 long carrots. The parsnips were first in mid-March, and as I added extra height to the drums the process of coring and boring was harder. I now have a 7 foot long metal crowbar, 1 inch thick which takes some bastard lifting in and out of the 6 foot deep holes and twirling it around to make the bore holes 94 times I don’t mind admitting. I was using muscles I’d long since forgotten about. As I have to go ‘up’ to get long roots rather than digging down as some growers do on free draining plots meaning they can work from ground level, I soon realised I would have to make higher platforms on which to stand for the hole making process, as well as giving me somewhere to stand when I’m tending and watering the plants. It was something I hadn’t really reckoned on and lost me a whole weekend as I frantically threw together a series of wooden planks and offcuts. It’s an extremely unstable looking structure and shakes like a shitting dog but it only needs to last a season, although I have already fallen from it whilst stepping down onto a ‘step’ which consisted of nothing more than two stacked milk crates that gave way and turned out to be quite a painful experience on several parts of my body. You wouldn’t think I had a health & safety qualification would you?

Having suffered with cavity spot on my stumps for the past 3 years there was no alternative but to buy in fresh sand for the beds. This needed barrowing 200’ from the front of my house where it was delivered, quite precariously down a set of steps, along a narrow path and tipped into the emptied slab beds. Bollocksed dot com.

Next up are the exhibition onions. As my soil suffers with white rot I have to grow them in large pots (I actually have a bottomless one stacked on top of another), so I have to mix M3, vermiculite and sterilised soil several times to fill each pot. This year it involved a weekend huddled over a large mixing tub mixing everything, before filling the pots, planting the onions from their 4” pots and assembling a ‘cage’ of canes and metal rings to keep the bulb upright.

The next big job was the long beetroot. Having only dabbled with this crop in the past, chucking a few seeds into stations where parsnips or long carrots had failed to germinate I decided I would have to be a bit more serious if I wanted to have a decent crack at the British Tap Root Championships. With this in mind I had 23 six inch diameter plastic drainpipes about 3 foot long which I set up in a row next to my polytunnel. The problem with drainpipes is they take a lot more mix to fill them so several evenings were spent in my garage bent over the same mixing tub doing the mix for the long beet, about 18 litres per tube, transporting this up the garden to fill each pipe individually.

Then we move on to the spuds which we exhibitors grow in large plastic bags filled with peat to ensure we get nice clean tubers 12-14 weeks after planting. The peat, for me five 200 litres bales, has to be sifted or checked by hand to make sure there are no big lumps or sharp twigs that might stop the tubers from achieving a nice shape, before filling each bag with about 20 litres and adding fertiliser as we go. Again, two weekends bent over a tub, then filling 40 bags and placing a seed potato in each.

So it was with some relief that last weekend I finished what I consider to be the last ‘big job’, and in truth, the one I enjoy most, that of planting the tomatoes into their final positions in the greenhouse border. The sun was out, the compost was warm and the plants were all first rate as I set them out into their final positions around the greenhouse into large bottomless pots. The pots in front of the plants are also bottomless, and these will be used for watering later in the season so that it goes direct to the roots, and allows the soil surface to be dry, ideal conditions for tomatoes that like it hot but dry and prevents botrytis rots and other diseases caused by too much moisture.

Some people may think this is a bit late for planting out tomatoes but end of May has always been the date for me, and even then I’m keeping an eye on the night time weather forecasts for a week or so. 20 years ago we had a severe ground frost here in the East Midlands and we lost all sorts of crops. I remember the date vividly therefore. The tomatoes would probably survive an outside frost but it would knock them back.

From now on it’s really just a case of keeping every crop ticking along although there are still many crops to either sow and plant, but that’s a piece of piss if you call yourself a gardener. I now grow a variety of tomato called Zenith after my previous banker Cedrico got discontinued. Having won at Malvern in 2010 with Cedrico I suffered a barren-ish few years with toms, only winning the odd class locally although I did gain a nice 1^st at Westminster in 2012.

In 2015 I took a set of Cedrico up to the National at Dundee that quite frankly I was ashamed of. The calyces were turning yellow and when I came to set them out on the Friday morning I almost didn’t bother when I saw the quality of all the others benched. To say I was astonished to come back and find a 4^th place ticket against my set was an understatement. I suppose my fruits were a nice evenly matched set if nothing else so that must have counted in my favour. There were only about 10 entries and it just goes to show you but I still wonder to this day if the judge was pissed.

I was unable to make the National when it was held in Wales last season but sent a set of tomatoes down with a fellow grower who kindly agreed to take them and stage them for me. This time I was growing Zenith for the first time and I was really happy with the set, seen below on my kitchen table before travelling down.

In my eyes it was head and shoulders above the ones I’d come 4^th with the year before. However, I was only placed 5^th and when I found out in a text from Mark Perry I was fairly disappointed but apparently it was one of the best quality tomato classes in many a long year with over 30 entries so I had to be chuffed with that.

As September progressed I had some really nice fruits developing so that I was hopeful of doing well in the Midland Championships at Malvern. I was also growing a small fruited plum variety called Montello as Marshall Seeds were putting up £500 of prize money at Malvern for a special one-off class specifically for this variety, £250 to the winner so it was sure to attract a lot of interest. Contrary to Marshalls advice I sowed my Montello a bit later than they recommended and it looked as if I was to be proven right, as my plants were laden with hundreds of fruits come the end of September. It was an awful plant to manage, try as I might to keep it contained and grow it like a ‘normal’ tomato by nipping out any sideshoots. It just wouldn’t play ball and grew how it bloody well wanted whether you liked it or not, but the fruits were tasty enough and as I said, probably the most prolific tomato I’ve ever grown.

So, there I am on the eve of Malvern pulling my parsnips, in a happy mood as some nice roots were coming out. All of a sudden I heard a loud bang which sounded as if something had fallen heavily next door so I had a quick peer over the garden fence and couldn’t see anyone or anything so I had a wander back up my garden as I was intrigued at what I’d heard. I soon saw the cause of the commotion. The support wires holding the tomato canes in one of my greenhouses had snapped and yes you guessed it, all of my precious tomato plants including the Montello were now in a huge mangled heap on the floor. Furthermore most of my biggest and best Zenith had fallen from the calyces and were rolling around in the dirt in varying states of damage. It was utter carnage and I still hadn’t picked my sets for Malvern. An hour later, after tiptoeing through the mess and picking up what fruits I could salvage I had hundreds of fruits laid out on a raised bed and I had to laboriously pick out all the unblemished ones to make out my various sets. I did my best but my wife usually chooses my best fruits as she has a better eye than me but seeing as I was now so behind schedule I just boxed them up ready for loading.

Fast forward to 3.30am next morning and we’re offloaded at Malvern getting all the various entries in, when I came across my 15 Montello in the Tupperware box and went off to place them on the boards supplied. About 5.30 we’d finished and we had a quick wander round all the entries to make sure we hadn’t missed anything. When we got to the Montello class I told my wife about the prize money and from the 40-odd entries it was obviously going to be an extremely difficult class to judge. Most of the entries were covered over but my wife pointed to one set and said how nice they looked compared to all the others that you could actually see. She didn’t realise they were mine until I told her, so I was quite pleased bearing in mind her previous success in choosing my sets and thought I might even get close to a ticket.

I came 4th in the tomato class which was a disappointment as I believe that I could have won it had I not lost so many good fruits to damage the day before, but hey ho, it’s all put down to experience and I’ve made sure I’ve doubled up on the support wires this season, using stronger galvanised wire for the task.

I had completely forgotten about the Montello class believe it or not, that is until NVS Mids Chairwoman Sandra Hall came and guided me by the arm to the class in question to see ‘1st’ written on the back of my entry card. Later in the morning I was interviewed by a very nice woman from Marshalls, met one of their top brass and the actual breeder of the variety, which was interesting. I even appeared on their Twitter and Facebook feeds. Best of all was being presented with a big fat cheque for 250 quid for staging 15 little tomatoes. Mental! 

One final story, it was even later that I found out that Medwyn had judged the class and unsurprisingly it took him and his son Alwyn an hour and a half. After completing his deliberations he said right let’s find out who won, so he turned over the entry card with your name on and which is always left face down against your entry at Malvern and other big shows. I’m reliably informed that his exact words were “Oh fucking hell!” Charming!

Worth the wait.

Out of my 8 firsts at Westminster the one that probably pleased me the most was tomatoes. It's been two years since I won a tomato class and after this car crash of a season it's taken till October for the best shaped fruits to ripen. As with the carrots they weren't the biggest but they were nice and round and a well-matched set. Charlie Maisey certainly liked them. And as far as i'm concerned Cedrico is still the best variety to grow for show.

Westminster 2012

As I was driving down to London this morning at 2am I was wondering if I wasn't wasting my time. 8 firsts and 240 quid later I'm very glad I made the effort. Pick of the bunch was a win in long carrots and a very competitive tomato class. When I staged my tomatoes (chosen by Leesa I have to admit!) Charlie Maisey said "you've got a good chance with those there boyo".

My long carrots weren't the biggest you'll ever see but they carried their weight well down, were uniform and nice and clean. I even got to have my photo taken by Medwyn. Hope he got my good side!

Malvern 2012 Part 4

After winning tomatoes at Malvern in 2010 against 30 odd entries I haven't won a bloody tomato class since! The plants have grown very strangely this season and I struggled to find 12 fruits to put down at Malvern although in the end I didn't think they looked too bad, certainly not in the dark when I staged them!

Fluctuations between daytime and nighttime temperatures were to blame along with the almost total lack of sunshine at times here in the Costa del Midlands. It was no surprise that the winning set came from a grower towards the south of the country, admittedly one of the country's very top showmen Derek Aldred with this very nice set.

I'm also not convinced that the soil in my greenhouse border hasn't contributed to some problems, so with that in mind I shall be replacing it during the Winter months rather than giving them a few 'winter floods'. Emptying out a couple of tonnes of soil and replacing it is always a ballache of a job but it's been 4 years since I did it so it's about due. I will also empty out a trench before planting next May and fill with M3 compost to make sure the plants don't go short of food. Someone suggested I ditch Cedrico and try Zenith available from Medwyn's as they'd had success with it. I'll take that suggestion on board but for now I'll stick to Cedrico as when it grows right it looks great with its long, spidery calyces.

I had entered the large onion class at Malvern but for some reason my bulbs are still bloody green even though they've been up for the best part of 7 weeks now. I've had the fan on them, then covered them in dark cloth as the nights grew colder but they still steadfastly refuse to ripen, although they're still firm bulbs. I'm at a loss as to what I've done wrong as i've always been able to get my onions a nice colour by mid-September at the latest. John Jones won this year.

Ray Spooner won the 250g to 1.5kg onion class and whilst a couple of the bulbs were a bit tide-marked they were nevertheless a very well-matched set.

Sherie Plumb won the 250g class with Toughball.

I notice in Medwyn's GN column this week that Sherie advises she sows her onions a week after Malvern to have them ready for her July shows. This is dedication but quite frankly I intend to forget about veg shortly until the New Year. You have to have a break from it in my opinion and besides I want to try and get the plot in better shape and get some construction work done ready for a polytunnel in the Spring.

There weren't many caulis at this year's National with David Peel taking the honours.

I believe it was David's second National win as he won french beans last year at Llangollen. I shall be trying again with caulis next season, growing them in a raised bed where I grew my celery this season. David also had an excellent Harrogate Championships  a couple of weeks back winning several of the spud classes, but Sherie Plumb was back on form at Malvern winning both the coloured and spud classes. Just when you think people have the beating of her the clever minx gets things back on track with a vengeance.

The Millennium Class always attracts plenty of entries and it attracted more than ever this year with John Smiles coming out on top for his first ever win at National level. John has had a good year, also winning the Northern Horticultural Society's Master Gardener Class at Harrogate where you staged a vase of flowers, a pot plant, a dish of veg and a dish of fruit.

I actually came last in the Millennium (someone has to!), my pathetic globe beet and mismatched tomatoes letting me down badly. I really did struggle to get globe beet germinated this season for some strange reason. I usually have hundreds of them growing away in several rows no problem whatsoever. Despite this, the Millennium is one class I shall be going all out to try and get a ticket in at Harrogate 2013 when it is the Northern Branch's turn to host it. It was introduced as a class anyone could grow for, the thinking being that you don't need any special set-up to grow all 5 crops, although after the summer we've NOT had then I suggest a heated and lighted greenhouse is required to grow tomatoes, small onions and globe beet!

Meanwhile at the Labour Party Conference Ed Milliband has promised to rebuild Britain as one nation. It will be called f***ing Poland!