Celery (soz, couldn't think of a witty title)

For the past few days I’ve been using this little explanation to illustrate the General Election result to the Commytrots at work. In boxing, when your opponent says he’s going to knock you out in the sixth, but in the end he only manages to beat you on points…..it means you’ve still fucking lost!

Anyhoo, I’m a strong believer that you need to plan your growing and showing to as fine a detail as you can. I have a map of every single bed/border/space in my vegetable garden and each Christmas I will sit back with a drop of the hard stuff and work out which crops I’m going to be growing where, paying attention to things like crop rotation as much as possible so you don’t encourage a build-up of pests that like a particular crop. I invariably drink myself wankered and have to do the whole plan again when I’m sober but that’s by the by. This means when the time comes you know exactly where to plant things and you’re not scratching your head shoehorning things in willy nilly. I’m constantly referring back to the plan and to my diary where I plan all my sowing dates by working back from each show to ensure I sow each crop at the correct time. As a result I currently have several patches of bare ground inviting planting but I know they’re bare for a reason as they are wanted for a crop according to my plans and I’m not tempted to use them for something else. Some crops (such as caulis for which most of the bare plots are waiting) will need more than one sowing. I go even further in my planning and decide which shows I intend to enter, and which classes I want to aim for at those shows. It’s no good planning to go to 10 shows and enter long carrots at every show if you’re not going to be growing enough of that crop for instance, so I fine tune my season so that I know where my priorities lie. I used to try and enter as many classes as I could at as many shows as I could and end up running around like a lunatic so I try to be a bit more focussed these days.

Growing everything I could possibly manage, including some things for the fun classes like heaviest marrows, longest runner beans etc meant I became a jack of all trades and master of none. Ok if you want to be like Harry Ecklethwaite and win most points in show but these days I’m more interested in benching an exhibit as near perfect as I can muster (something that no-one can achieve of course). That entails growing less variety to allow you to concentrate on growing a few crops to a better standard. This was bought home to me about 5 years ago when NVS legend Charlie Maisey saw me running around at RHS Westminster staging all my exhibits and advised me to cut back and grow what I was best at. At the time I semi-ignored his advice but eventually I saw sense and ditched some crops that I’d been struggling with, particularly the time-consuming blanch leeks that I’d had go to seed on me for three seasons running, a common problem with the variety Pendle that I used to grow. Shallots was another that I decided to sideline. Whilst I’d had some success with them previously I was getting more and more fungal problems with them and they were diverting my attention unnecessarily at critical times of the growing season. I still grow them but I don’t fuss over them like I used to.

I now don’t bother growing heavy pumpkins and marrows, or long runner beans as these aren’t for serious growers although I do enjoy visiting the recently revived Giant Veg Championships held at Malvern. It’s really great to see the smiles on the little faces of all those growers that are unable to grow proper veg.

I also gave celery the heave-ho, but have reluctantly succumbed to one last crack at them this season but I’m only growing 16 plants in a couple of beds that are often waterlogged, so I’d figured if any crop would grow well there it would be celery. It also had plenty of dried blood forked into it about 3 weeks before planting as it’s an excellent source of nitrogen. The variety is Evening Star and I planted them all out a couple of weeks ago, fitting a loose collar 10” tall made from damp proof course material. At the time the plants were below the top of the collar but have now poked through the top having been drawn upwards to the light. I’ll be applying another taller loose collar in the next week or so, to do the same thing, but won’t tie it too tightly for now, the idea being to draw the plants upwards whilst achieving bulk.

Celery is one of those classes I have absolutely no chance with at Branch and National level, as there are some phenomenal growers on the circuit, but they can come in handy for the small collections where you need 3 pairs of 20 point veg for instance. I’m thinking specifically of the early autumn show at RHS Westminster where less and less of the top growers are fitting it into their showing calendar sadly. I did manage a very pleasing 3^rd there in 2012 with the best pair of ‘sticks’ I’ve ever staged.

Whilst I’m happy with the progress I have suffered some slug damage despite taking precautions. I’ve always found a carpet of slug pellets only succeeds partly, such is the desire of the snotty little fuckers to get to celery for a nosh up. Therefore I do use Slugclear watered into the heart of the celery as well as a calcium feed at the same watering, although in the past I’ve found this double treatment is also no guarantee of total control, certainly not in my garden. Celery heart rot is not something I’ve suffered personally but once it takes hold your plant is soon rendered useless, and it is reckoned that slugs nibbling on the centre shoots can help to bring heart rot on, so it is important to keep them at bay…or at least try.

Leaf miner can also be a problem on the leaves so a systemic insecticide is needed, otherwise the foliage gets networked by a criss cross of unsightly markings where the grub tunnels between the layers. I’ve had good success with Decis in the past but now use Hallmark when I’m spraying my carrots against carrot fly. An exhibit of celery with no slug damage to the sticks, with fresh, green foliage stands out amongst others with the odd nibble so it is worth going the extra mile.

Carrots at dawn. And dusk. And lunchtime. Great book, buy it.

It’s a long time since I’ve been this excited by my long carrots so early in the season, and it’s an excitement bordering on a semi, a hurdle that Liverpool seem to fall at these days. My long carrot tops are contained within a wooden frame with plastic sheeting stapled to the sides, and enviromesh to the top and bottom. The mesh allows air flow and rain to get through and the polythene creates a wind free, cosseted environment that the carrots do seem to thrive on. We had strong winds yesterday that have absolutely battered my parsnips but the carrots are safe and cosy in their enclosures. I have a total of 8 drums with 7 carrots in most of them. Looks like Steptoe's yard but the carrots don't seem to mind.

This season’s crop are from my own seed from roots I put down to seed after they came 5^th at the Dundee National in 2015. They were big heavy roots, noticeably the biggest in the class, but in actual fact not that refined, so I was ecstatic with a  5^th,  but I’m hoping I can grow them a little more carefully this season.  I’m growing more than I usually do as I really want to get an entry into the National at Malvern where there is sure to be a lot of top class competition.

Since I started showing I’ve always loved the long roots in particular. It’s that not quite knowing what you’ve got for months on end until the night before the show when you find out if you’ve got something special or else whether you’ve wasted several months growing. You always have an idea whether they’re going to be good or not from the way they’ve grown, whether the foliage has been good, what diameter the shoulders are when you have a bit of a ‘furtle’, but until you extract it from its dark borehole you never really know for sure (p.s. I wouldn’t recommend having a ‘furtle’ if your roots are grown outside as it can attract carrot root fly …unless you use a systemic insecticide like me).

My fascination for long roots stemmed from a visit to my Uncle’s in County Durham in the late 80’s. One evening he announced we were going to the local pot leek show at the local working men’s club. At the time I certainly wasn’t into showing or even gardening that much, and tagged along reluctantly to show willing. As I now know, it was an incredible sight but at the time I was bored shitless by benches and benches of prized northern pot leeks, several little groups of men (no women allowed back then!) all standing around discussing their season and the relative merits of each set of leeks. However, I do remember being highly impressed by a couple of tables literally shoehorned into a corner on which were piled all the other classes in the show, and on that table was a set of long carrots which mesmerised me and I wondered how they might have been grown. In the early 90’s there was an episode of Gardener’s World where Medwyn was pulling his long roots for the British Championships so I now knew how it was done, and when I got into showing long roots were always going to be something I wanted to grow.

I still remember pulling that first set of parsnips in 1996 that won me my first ever red ticket at a local show and the way I held my breath as the tap root just kept coming and coming, and it’s a feeling I still love. There’s also the sense of wonder/bewilderment/pity on the faces of bystanders when you walk into the marquee or village hall with a 4 or 5 foot long set of long roots that still gives me a buzz to this very day. And I do like to stand behind people when the show is open and listen to their comments about them. I remember one woman going to great lengths to tell her husband that ‘the grower would have grown those long carrots by drawing up the soil over the course of the season as it grew in order to draw it upwards’. She must have somehow had visions of all these termite mounds like stalagmites littering my garden!

Over the years I’ve tried all manner of borehole mixes for my long carrots and chopped and changed them many times to try and improve the results. In 1998 I won a local show with this set that also got me on the front page of Garden News.

At the time I thought I was a total genius, which is not uncommon when you have a bit of good fortune like that so early in your showing career when all you’re doing is copying what others way more experienced have told you to do. Any tit can do that. Truth is I just got very lucky that season and I never grew such good long carrots for several years. But at least I quickly realised it and didn’t go around passing myself off as an expert in search of undeserved or false accolades. By 2011 I was seriously struggling to get any sort of weight or skin finish despite using the very best seed. Having witnessed how good Ian Simpson’s were at Harrogate that year I cheekily emailed him and asked him what his mix was and it was to his great credit that he had no hesitation in telling me. However, when he said it was just sieved Levington F2S with added calcified seaweed I was amazed as there didn’t seem to be enough nutrient content in it, but Ian was adamant that carrots don’t need a lot of additional nutrient so I decided to give it a go as I felt I simply had nothing to lose. Therein was the first problem, I couldn’t source any F2S, the ‘S’ standing for silver sand, so I mixed F2 and silver sand separately at a ratio of 4:1 and ran with that. The carrots I had in 2012 were the best I’d grown in many years and bought me a 5^th in the UK Carrot Championships at Harrogate, with Dave Thornton a place behind me much to his disgust. I was greeted with the following email on Monday morning “Who grew those fucking carrots for you?”

Buoyed by my first ever success over the Derby Cockwomble I went on to beat him again at RHS Westminster 2012 with another decent set.

I now felt I was starting to understand what makes long carrots tick. Watering is always going to be key and it’s easy to get it wrong. Too much and you get disproportionate roots as I did in 2007 when it seemed to rain non-stop all Summer and even the sand in my drums were permanently waterlogged. I had big shoulders that I got really excited about but when they were pulled they were very squat roots and only carried their weight for a foot or so and looked a bit odd as a result. As I write it’s pissing down and forecast to do the same for several days so that’s not great news. Water too sparingly and the skin finish is wrinkled rather than smooth and you are liable to get large side roots developing.

In 2013 I grew some carrots in long pipes as an experiment and it was these that I exhibited at the Harrogate National of that year. They were heavy roots, but didn’t have great uniformity and were a little ‘wavy’, but I decided to throw them in rather than risk those I was growing in drums as I didn’t have many of them at the time. Whilst I didn’t get in the tickets and didn’t expect to, it did at least allow me to get a set on the bench at the highest possible level of showing and I felt they looked ok if nothing else. It certainly convinced me not to try long carrots in pipes again.

It was later in the month when I pulled those growing in the drums for Malvern that I had my best result to date for long carrots, winning the Midlands Branch Championships and beating the likes of Mark Roberts, Andrew Jones and Jim Thompson in the process. I remembered back to those early roots I’d grown in single height drums and how it had been my ambition to compete with and beat the very best. It had taken me nearly 20 years but I had done it so now the trick was to try and repeat it.

At Westminster 2013 I took some even better long carrots down but had to settle for 2^nd behind Dave T which he was ridiculously pleased about but as it happens it’s turned out to be the last time he’s beaten me with long carrots.

In 2014 I took a year out from showing, a prelude to my decision to give it up for good after this season. It was a nice break from the incessant routine of a showman’s year. In 2015 after coming 5^th at Dundee it was onto the Midland Branch Championships at Malvern where I was hoping for ‘2 in a row’ with long carrots. I pulled 2 absolute corkers but could only find a slightly smaller third to make up the set and so was beaten into 2^nd place by Ronnie Jackson. His set is the other one in the picture.

I actually had a matching 3^rd root which would have given me the win in my opinion but sadly it had a huge hole in it which wasn’t apparent when first pulled. I went from a massive high to rock bottom within seconds but that’s showing for you and you have to be prepared to take disappointment on the chin. Worse things are happening in the World as events in Manchester and London recently have shown us.

By the time I moved onto RHS Westminster I only had slightly smaller roots left but this set was good enough to put me ahead of Mr T once more.

Last season was a mixed bag with long carrots for me, I think I probably neglected them and I just couldn’t pull any decent sets, erratic watering the probable cause, although I ended the season very well with virtually my last three decent roots from the drums winning me a red card at Derby show in October 2016. These were fairly slim but did carry their weight really well down the root and were perfectly proportioned.

There’s not a lot you need to do now all the hard work has been done, but one vital task I would definitely recommend you keep on top of is making sure any side shoots are picked off when they’re still small. Left to grow on these will render your roots useless for showing as they tend to make them oval in profile. Great if you’re a cricket ground but wank if you’re a show carrot believe me. New Red Intermediate does tend to want to throw out these extra shoots from the carrot shoulder, but if you pick them off when they’re small the scar will not be noticeable come harvest time.

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!

Tapping into the past

Many, many moons ago, back when Manchester Utd had only just started to put Liverscum back in their box, a journey which was fully completed last Wednesday night when King Jose put another big dollop of gleaming silverware in the Old Trafford trophy room, before even Tony Bliar and Gordon Brown had knackered the British economy up for several generations to come,  I watched an episode of Gardener’s World where Medwyn Williams was pulling his long carrots and parsnips for the very grandly named British Tap Root Championships. It was in fact so long ago that Medwyn fitted on screen without them having to go to a wide camera lens. When I got into showing veg a few years later I remembered that programme and vowed to enter the British Tap Root Championships as soon as possible. However, it’s something I’ve never managed to do, as it’s always held as part of the Welsh Branch Championships of the NVS and it has invariably clashed with one of my other shows.

So with my final year of showing in mind I felt I’d better bite the bullet and finally give it a go this season and get it out of my system. For this class you have to stage 2 parsnips, 2 long carrots, 2 long beetroot and 2 stump rooted carrots. The very best root growers in the country, (and Mark Perry), have all won this class in the past. Whilst I’m confident of growing decent parsnips and long carrots for this class, benching the other 2 crops to a decent standard will take a bit more doing. For the past few years my stump carrots have been troubled with a disease called cavity spot (Pythium violae) and they’ve been pretty average as a result I have to say. This problem manifests itself as sunken dark spots on the skins that won’t rub off no matter what, making them look quite ugly when they dry out. The only way of combatting this was to buy in fresh sand for the beds, so I emptied them out and set up more drums for long carrots with the surplus sand. It’s weird, but long carrots don’t seem to suffer from cavity spot for some reason. Parsnips are also said to be susceptible but again it’s not a problem I’ve encountered either. Having set up the new beds (mine are old paving slabs set on edge to contain the sand) and allowed the sand time to settle when the time came to do the bore holes I was seriously lacking motivation having done 94 bore holes for long roots the previous couple of weekends. In the past I’ve cored a hole out of the sand then finished off to two foot depth with a crowbar. In truth I just couldn’t be arsed, so after coring out 115 holes with a 2 ½ ” diameter plastic tube to 12” deep, spitting the surplus sand into a bucket, I just filled the holes with a 4:1 sieved M2/vermiculite mix (no added nutrients) through a metal funnel that had the whole task done in a few hours. It was a pleasant change. My idea is that the root will use up the nutrients in the 12” core, develop a definite stump end rather than growing down forever as it hits the nutrient free sand, the tap root itself will happily go down into the sand for moisture. We shall see. I sowed all my Sweet Candle seeds at the start of April and got great germination, and now have two very even beds growing away really well. It’s important not to let Sweet Candle dry out as the roots can easily grow overlong and become rough skinned so the sprinkler will be getting some use over the Summer.

In the past any long beet I’ve ever grown have tended to be grown in boreholes where the parsnips or long carrots have failed to germinate. Very often I’ve ended up with huge long beet that don’t quite cut the mustard for quality. For the British Tap Champs I decided I had to be a bit more dedicated and so I set up a row of plastic drainpipe tubes I grew some long carrots in a few years back. I filled each of these with about 18litres of an M2/peat/silver sand mix with added seaweed meal which I’m hoping will give good colour. A long beet expert once told me that long beet need much more water than other long roots so I really need to make sure these pipes don’t dry out. Positioned on the shady side of my tunnel the worst of the sun keeps off them during the hottest part of the day so that should help.

It will be nice to do well in this class if I can. At the RHS Westminster Autumn Show held at the beginning of October I managed to win a similar class there in 2015 after several years of trying. I scored well with my long carrots and parsnips, my stumps were not too bad on this occasion, but my long beet only were a bit heavy and had poor form so only scored 12.5. Good enough to win on the day against Jim Pearson and David Thornton but I’ll need to improve if I’m to be in the tickets at Wales in September.

In it to win it (part 2)

Apologies for making this blog invite only, but it had to be done as I was getting so much spam that it was taking too long to wade through each day. Also, I shouldn't be showing up in search engines before too long which should keep certain folk happy. I always found it quite amusing that people complained about my blog so much when there was this perfectly useful little 'X' thingy in the top right hand corner of all computers that could be clicked if you no longer deemed me worthy of screen time.

I took virtually all my big onions down to Westminster. Not that they were that great but after staging I realised I was going to be taking home a fair few quid. This was because I was one of only two entries in both the large onion class and the collection of onions, and although I knew they wouldn't get a 'first' the prize money for coming second was £50 and £40 respectively, so for the sheer effort of bothering to take them I was handsomely rewarded. Some of them were still green underneath despite having been harvested mid-August.

Whilst we enjoyed Westminster Tuesday really is a crap day to hold a veg show meaning at least one day off work but the venue is stunning and as I have intimated there is a fair old wedge of prize money on offer. I've never really understood mid-week shows and I believe it puts the working man at a disadvantage but I suppose each organisation has its reasons, some of them historical. I was contemplating giving Westminster a miss next year but as the entries were down by quite a bit then you do feel a certain responsibility to keep going for the sake of the future of the show. Hopefully I've persuaded a few of you to have a crack next year as there is some good prize money on offer if you are prepared to make the effort. I hope the RHS does a bit more marketing on the Westminster Shows as it would be a shame if the show died through lack of interest. Yes it's a real bind getting veg into the middle of London but if you can then try and car share and by using a website called ParkatMyHouse you can find a local address to leave your vehicle for about a tenner a day. I found a pub about a mile away. If you travel overnight and don't leave until 6pm you also avoid the congestion charge, although sadly not the crazy London traffic. Alternatively the North East Derby DA get a coach load up which certainly takes the stress of driving through London away and I'll be going back to this option next year. If anyone needs advice on entering, getting to and from the venue for future reference then drop me a line.

I grew pot leeks for the first time this season and whilst I virtually neglected them after planting they nevertheless made a reasonable entry at Westminster and won me another first prize, although I was the only entry! Another ten quid. Ker-ching! I shall certainly be growing a few more of these next season, the variety was Cumbrian. I grew some reasonable Pendle blanch leeks last season despite almost total neglect so perhaps there is a theme running here? They were certainly a lot easier to prepare and transport than blanch leeks.

To round up the rest of my Westminster results I got a 3rd for two beautifully conditioned Blyton Belle marrows although one was a bit smaller than the other. Once we get to the end of September they don't grow as fast as they did and I ran out of time to match them up for size. The larger one had actually been cut at the end of August.

A pleasing 3rd in the coloured potato class with Amour. I really wish the judges at Westminster would rearrange the exhibits how they found them rather than slinging them back on the plate from a few yards away!

1st with 15 leaves of chard 'Vulcan'. I have to thank Leesa for choosing the 15 and arranging them.

2nd in the chilli pepper class with Hungarian Hotwax. Leesa chose these too!

3rd for parsnips 'Polar', sadly a variety that is no longer available. Looks like i'm back to square shouldered 'Pinnacle' next year!

3rd for courgettes 'Ambassador'.

1st for lettuce 'Saladin'. I dug the roots up intact, washed off all the soil, wrapped them in damp tissue followed by kitchen foil and the plants stay nice and fresh for the two days of the show no problem.

A very pleasing 3rd for my celery 'Evening Star'. I even beat former National Champion Geoff Butterworth so that has given me a real boost to carry on growing celery despite the fact that we don't eat the bloody stuff! Besides, celery doesn't last too well on the show bench and gets left behind every time.

2nd for french beans 'Prince'. The timing of my sowings were for Malvern so I was really struggling to keep these going and they were a tad 'beany'.

3rd in the 4 dishes class. I had to stage some pretty poor 250g onions in this class or I might have easily got a 2nd. Sherie Plumb won the class.

So that's my final show of the season done and dusted. I'll leave the final word to Medwyn.

Gin & Turnip anyone?

Whilst I was staging on Tuesday morning at Westminster Dave Thornton suddenly said stop what you're doing and come and look at this. He led me to the fruit section as he wanted me to see this set of three lemons exhibited under the name of the Duke of Devonshire.

These were without doubt the biggest three lemons I've ever seen together since I witnessed Medwyn talking to Ian Stocks and Gareth Cameron last month. They barely fit on the plates provided by the RHS and carried off a first prize in the any other fruit class. The only thing I don't like is that the gardener who grew these doesn't get the recognition he deserves because I doubt very much whether the Duke of Devonshire ever kicks off his privileged slippers and actually sets foot inside the glasshouse at Chatsworth!

There were several exhibits of blanch leeks at Westminster but I had to look twice and have a sly giggle at Dave's anorexic set which were incredibly long but only smartie tube thickness. Still, at least his hadn't gone to seed like all of mine, the foliage was clean and I think they got him a 4th!

And I made a note to look out in the seed catalogues for this variety of turnip, the winners in the class, variety 'Oasis'. I've found turnips quite awkward to grow successfully for the showbench. They either get slug damage, the leaves get nibbled by caterpillars, or they split underneath rendering them useless for show. They are also prone to the tap roots getting brown marks and looking very unappetising so this exhibit really shone out on the showbench in London. I can only assume they were grown indoors in raised beds filled with good quality compost as they were absolutely gleaming.

There is so much to see in London these days and shortly after a quick whizz round Harrods where I was very tempted to buy one of their bling-bling watches for the knockdown price of £45,500.00 I was very taken by this 'living wall' of the Athenaeum Hotel, Piccadilly. This is watered by 3000 integrated drip feeders and looked very naturalistic indeed. By the way Oscar now points at me and shouts 'cock'....he's actually pointing at my £22.50 Sekonda watch.....I think!

Manna from heaven

At Westminster there is a tap root class calling for long carrots, parsnips, long beet and stump carrots, 2 specimens of each. This is always well-contested and several of the North East Derby lads compete in this one. I only had the stump variety Caradec left over, a carrot I'd grown last season in pipes in the greenhouse and was so impressed with it that I decided to grow it in stations in a sand bed in the standard way to see if it might be a contender against Sweet Candle. I can report that it most certainly isn't! I struggled for uniformity and many of them were quite bent after pulling. I tried straightening them by applying gentle pressure but after snapping a couple I had to go with what I had and made a reasonable entry with my best two long beet, a nice set of long carrots but a pair of parsnips that were unfortunately touched by carrot fly. When I pulled for Harrogate none of my parsnips had been affected but the action of pulling them had obviously attracted a 3rd generation of the flying pests and I had several roots affected for Malvern and Westminster. In future I really need to make sure I re-apply some phorate around the crowns in September or else construct some form of barrier to prevent them access.

I was reasonably pleased with the third placed ticket behind John Goodall in first and Dave Thornton in second, both ex-National Carrot champions, but I didn't really look at the class in great detail as by that time we'd been up all night and I was absolutely fucked to buggery.

When I returned on Wednesday I took a closer look and couldn't help noticing that Dave's collection seemed inferior to mine at first glance so I started to compare the scores to try and ascertain how the judge had arrived at the totals. It was then that I noticed a glaring error on behalf of the judge.See if you can spot it?

Needless to say I complained immediately and the tickets will be reversed, although Dave says he's never speaking to me again!

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.

Success at last!

Fair play to Leesa, she doesn't give in. A deserved first prize ticket for a trug at a major show at long last! Thanks to Dickie 9 Centimetres for taking the photo!

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!

Eat to the beet

As I'm not showing until mid-September at the earliest I still haven't sown any gobe beet yet. In theory they take about 15 weeks from sowing to showing and I will now sow a row a week until the third week in June to cover all my shows. However I do find that current judges' favourite 'Pablo' can end up all sizes from the same sowing, some getting to grapefruit size in barely 7 or 8 weeks and others being marble sized in 20 weeks, so you do need to give yourself plenty of options.


My best shaped roots in recent years have undoubtedly come from my deep raised leek beds which have been cultivated for several years now to a fine, rich tilth meaning the central tap roots can get down very deep. It also stays quite thin all the way down, whereas if you grow in soil it can be a bit thick just below the bulb. I sow a 20' row either side of the leeks, (I find they compliment each other) although on one side where the shallots are still growing it won't be until mid-June at the earliest. Each row can potentially yield me 50 roots or more as I will sow them only 4" or so apart.

However, I also have several half drums filled with compost sievings and leftover carrot and parsnip mixes all mixed up together, and last year I grew some intermediate beet 'Forono' in these, culminating in me winning the class for a set of 4 intermediate beet at Westminster.

They do seem a lot harder to match up than globe beet, and indeed I had to rely on Leesa to make the final choice of 4 for this dish. She really does have a good eye (well, she married me!). I sowed a few drums of these on Tuesday evening including some in this old galvanised dustbin. When we went to wheelie bins most people chucked these out....i'm glad i'm a hoarder and kept ours!

Tonight I hope to get my long beet sown, perhaps a little late for any high expectations at the likes of Malvern and Westminster, but as I produced some absolute monsters from an early May sowing last season I thought I'd delay it a bit to compare quality. The best roots need to be about 3" diameter at the top, certainly no more than that otherwise they do seem to lose a bit of quality. The variety i'm growing this season is 'Regar', one i've always struggled with in the past as they do tend to twist quite easily. I'm told the key is to keep the mix moist at all times. My drums are a mix of sand and compost so that they are not as free draining as the parsnip and carrot drums. My bore hole mix this year is as follows;


1 gallon sieved topsoil (bagged)
1 gallon sieved multipurpose compost
1 gallon sieved coarse sand
2 oz Tev04
2 oz Calcified seaweed
2 oz Seaweed meal
+and a sprinkling of table salt!

Here is last year's winning set from the Llangollen National grown by John Jones. Nice!

On Tuesday evening I also thinned down my Sweet Candle stumps to one per station. By angling the seedlings you don't want to keep at about 45 degrees and pulling gently they come out without too much disturbance. I try and leave behind seedlings that are all at approximately the same stage of development, which sometimes means pulling out the largest and best looking ones.

After thinning I gave a sprinkling of phorate powder to kill any carrot fly that may somehow manage to get through my mesh and polythene framework. I have this bed with 24 roots in......

....and this one with 44 roots in (yes I know I need to do some weeding!!!).

All I need to do now is water them once or twice a week and hopefully I'll have some decent stumps to show come the middle of September onwards. Trouble is I'll not know this until the day before the show when they might all come out fanged and all the effort will have been in vain, such are the pitfalls of this silly hobby.

For the past couple of seasons I've had a wager with NVS National Secretary Dave Thornton based on accumulated performances at several shows, but this year the wager is all down to one class, the so called Millennium Class at Malvern which calls for 5 dishes of 4, namely 250g onions, stump carrots, tomatoes, globe beet and spuds. The one with the highest points value on the judge's scorecards will win the 20 quid and I'm reasonably confident this time around that I can beat him, especially as we have both agreed that the money has got to be handed over during the evening in the hotel in front of everyone else, whilst grovelling before the victor on bended knee. I don't intend to be that twat, so I really need my globe beet and stumps to be good again this season. This was last year's winner at Llangollen, staged by my NVS chum Mark Hall who will be going for a hat-trick of wins this year.

I believe I also have a small wager with Marcus Powell on the outcome of this class so I will either be raking it in or emptying out my pockets on the morning of 29th September.

This was my unplaced set in a similar class at Malvern last year where you only need to get 4 dishes from the choice of 5. If I'd been able to stage a set of tomatoes (18 pointers) instead of having to go with two sets of 15 pointers (globe beet and 250g onions) I could have won this class as the scoring was very, very close.

I got an unexpected bonus this week when it was pointed out to me that we get TWO bank holidays, Monday & Tuesday next week. I didn't know and no fucker at work told me and i'm supposed to be a director! I couldn't direct a fucking bus! Leesa was actually going to let me get up and go to work on Tuesday to a deserted factory to see how long it was before I realised. How vindictive can you get? It means I will have an extra day's gardening so I want to make hay and get all the nagging little jobs out of the way so that I can get on with final planting over the next couple of weeks. However, a word of warning my friends......make sure you're safe at all times in the garden over the long weekend and whatever you do, DON'T have any accidents. When those out-of-touch bastard doctors go on strike you'll most likely be left to bleed to death!