Honestly, I'm carrying out vital tasks down there darling!

It's a sad day that I have to report the death of Paul Bastow.....i'm assuming he's dead as he hasn't posted anything on his fucking blog for nearly a month now the lazy northern homo fertiliser. (If you are dead Paul can I have your polytunnel? Ta xxx)

For many of us there's still a few weeks to go until showtime. You should have planted pretty much everything you might need so from now until your big day you just need to keep an watchful eye over everything and try and spot problems and act accordingly before things get irretrievably bad. My wife calls it 'faffing about' but I prefer to call it vital observation. We have a few areas in our garden that have been allowed to go wild with weeds this season whilst we draw up new plans to re-arrange the plot to allow for a chicken house and more veg growing space. Rather than get to grips with these areas she will very often find me quietly looking at my plants and apparently achieving fuck all, but i'm actually observing how plants are growing, what the insects are doing and checking for the first signs of any disease. Here are a few things I might be looking out for at this time of the season.....

Carrot tops......make sure the shoulders aren't becoming exposed to the light, drawing more soil or sand around them if possible to stop them going green. Also, look out for secondary growths on your carrots and snap them off cleanly before they get too big. See my previous post for what this looks like http://smithyveg.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/secondary-growth-on-carrots.html?m=0

Beetroot foliage......can get infested with leaf miner and these little critters can quickly ruin a bed. I spray with Decis but if you 'pop' the burrowing maggot before it does too much damage you can halt their march.


Celery foliage......celery leaf miner. Treat as for the beet miners. Best to take preventative measures as the foliage is part of the exhibit, unlike beetroot, and any sign of pest damage will result in you being downpointed.

Tomatoes......look for droppings on the upper surfaces of leaves, an indication you have tomato moth caterpillar chomping away at one of your fruits. Locate the culprit which will be somewhere above the droppings, pick off the fruit and destroy.

Parsnips.......the past few years i've had red spider mite despite them growing outside, mainly because it had been so tropical....not something i've had to worry about this season! However, I have had one or two snails rasping their way up a few stalks. Damage is superficial but you want to pick them off and boot them over next door as soon as you see them. I'm still hugely pleased with my parsnips, and the foliage is already as big as when I've pulled them in September the last few seasons' shows so i'm hopeful of a good year if I can keep those pesky carrot fly off.

250g onions......I've fashioned a simple cardboard 'prong' gauge set at 82mm so that I can go along the rows looking for any that might be approaching that diameter. Once they reach this size they should be bang on 250g (for the varieties I grow, Vento from seed and Setton from sets) and I will strip back any split skins and leave them to grow on for another couple of days. This allows any 'ribbing' on the base of the bulb to flatten out.

Marrows....if training up vertical supports do this every 3 or 4 days as they will start extending out quickly and you don't want a flappy bits that are in danger of being broken off in high winds. I am also taking off any immature marrow fruits for now and any side shoots are taken back to the first pair of leaves.

Peas.....look out for marauding tartan clad pea moth grubs. Spray with Bugclear when in flower. I shall be planting mine on the 31st July, 27 days after sowing which is following Ian Simpson's timeline. I'm growing Dorian and although this variety will have a snowball's chance in hell of doing any good I am determined to get a set of peas on the bench at Malvern somehow, to prevent another year of ridicule from former champion Ian Stocks of Scotland. Ian is currently on holiday in the Baltic so don't be surprised if we are soon at war with Russia. Dorian is supposed to be mildew resistant, something Show Perfection is not, and I'd be wasting my breath growing it in September.

Leeks....where do I start? You are looking for little lime green caterpillars of the leek moth munching on your flags. When startled they roll themselves up and tumble down into the growing point and are a complete fucking bugger to pick out. Leek rust can quickly decimate your chances if left to go unchecked. I spray with Bumper as a preventative measure. Aphids will also rapidly colonise the barrel inside your collars so keep checking inside them regularly during the season. And this year is a bad one for leeks going to seed prematurely. So far 16 of my 23 plants have succumbed and I can only really blame the weather as many people up and down the country appear to be suffering.

Potatoes......despite regular sprayings against blight i'm not taking anything for granted and I monitor the foliage daily to check for the first signs. If you're fast enough you might get away with picking off the affected leaflets but more probably you'll have to get your spuds up immediately and use them up before Winter as they usually won't store as well. I'm told that even Sherie Plumb has got badly hit by blight this year and didn't sweep the spud classes at the Southern Branch Show as she usually does, so there may be a chance for someone else at this year's National Championships at Malvern. I bet Owain Roberts is chomping at the bit!

Brassicas....check for tiny eggs of the cabbage white butterflies on the underside of the foliage. Despite spraying with Decis I still get some kamikaze butterflies who manage to lay the odd egg and these need squishing before they hatch. My cabbages are well behind and haven't even begun to think about hearting up yet.

You also need to be regularly checking your stored shallots that none have gone rotten and bin these immediately to stop them spreading onto others. I went through mine again yesterday and discarded another pile that had gone double, leaving me about 30 to make a set of 12 from, but they don't look great, another product of this crazy season's weather.

The last couple of days have been hitting 30 degrees here so the season has just gone from one extreme to the other, and i've now used virtually all the water from my two large butts to keep the tomatoes and cucumbers ticking along. This season really has tested the mettle of anyone who grows to show so we may have to give it up as a bad job and look for something else to amuse us this Autumn.

Shitbits

I always try to avoid the danger of only putting the good stuff on here but to publicise my many failures also, so that those of lesser gardening skills (mainly from Yorkshire) can see that even I am not brilliant all the time. I've not mentioned my tomatoes for a while and that's because at one point I feared they were going a similar direction to last season, the foliage being very spindly, and the lower ones mottled and yellowing. I could rule out the cause of last year's disaster, namely cold, as I resisted planting until last May so I was left with a few options. The first one is that greenhouse border soil has become toxic. This is not as dramatic as it sounds, merely that a lack of Winter rains has caused a build up minerals which causes more harm than good to the plants. Dusting the planting trench with Q4 and Nutrimate may well have worsened that problem and is the reason why you should consider emptying out your border every 5 years or so and replacing it with fresh soil.

Now that is a lot of hard work and having spoken to former National Champion Gareth Cameron who has experienced similar issues in his onion beds, he offered me some alternatives. Gareth has researched this huge subject and I'll be speaking to him in more depth about it at Malvern shortly before he drinks me under the table, but he has been looking at 'compost teas' on the recommendation of compost guru Mick Poulteney. As a result I have been flooding the plants roots (via the watering pots) with dilute comfrey and nettle stews....not a compost tea exactly but a quick substitute as I needed something quick. I also sprayed the foliage with epsom salts just in case it was a magnesium deficiency, and i'm happy to note that the plants appear to be responding to this double-pronged treatment. In the Winter I will take some of the soil in the borders away and replace it with sharp sand, mixing it with the remaining soil, which is a practice recommended by the soil testing industry as an alternative way of negating the effects of year's of nutrient abuse on indoor growing media.....I guess on the basis that nutrients leach out of a sandy soil much quicker.

Despite harvesting my shallots before the secondary growth cycle had commenced (I think!) I've had many of my best ones either go double or split completely like this one. My apologies to any neighbours in the vicinity of my plot when I discovered this as some naughty words may have tumbled out of my mouth.

I can only assume this is weather related, as the scorching temperatures of May were replaced by the wettest June since records began. Ideally you want dry conditions from the beginning of June to aid ripening until the shallots are harvested, but it rained pretty much incessantly, causing many neolithic Yorkshiremen to consider suicide. The bulbs must have taken up so much water that this was an inevitable consequence. I do have quite a few that still look sound but to be honest I've now shoved the boxes into a corner of my garage and won't worry about them now until nearer showtime, when I will go through them and select the best, if there are any. What will be will be.


And finally I've been getting a little brassed off with my brassicas. I only managed to get 12 cauli plants to germinate although these continue to grow well and will be planted out soon enough. However, my Brigadier cabbages have been very slow to get going. They were planted out in the heatwave which made them sulk for a start, and then the cooler temperatures and incessant rain means they didn't really start growing so the plants aren't much bigger than those I planted out, although I'd have thought conditions should have suited them perfectly well. On top of that pigeons have located them and despite my dangly CD scarers I have had a couple get nibbled quite a bit, thanks to the feathery little fuckers.

Next year i'm going to look into the viability of pigeon traps using brassicas as bait as I am rather partial to a roast pigeon so I may as well get my own back and consume a few. If there's a glut the local cats will get a bonus. Wonder what fox meat tastes like?

Cauli wobbles and sparsley parsley

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

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

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

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

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

Free Jennifer Lopez nude sex pics hot hot hot

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


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

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

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

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

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

Final countdown

Just a few more days until my last date of the season, the Dave Thornton organised Derby Show on Saturday and Sunday. I actually made up about 9 points on him at Westminster thanks to my policy of entering just about everything including a plate of 1000 matching lentils and a dish of curly pubes (dressed). However my chances of overhauling him are nil as the likes of John Croot, John Goodall and Charles Cooper will be showing at Derby, all first-rate growers. Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained, and although i'm over 300 points behind i've kept back some long carrots, parsnips, stumps and spuds plus I finally have some tomatoes ripening which I hope to include in my Top Tray. There are also classes for brussel sprouts, a brassica collection (for which I saved one of my 3rd place winning Westminster red cabbages) and a weirdly named 'stem vegetable collection' where you choose from 3 types, 1 of each type selected from Onion, Leek, Celery, Beetroot, Swede. Never seen a class like this at any other show anywhere but it could be worth a dabble! And there is an any other veg cass that my radishes won last season, although I've been a bit more ambitious this year and think I have some nice clean turnips plus I still have several decent lettuce 'Sandrine'. If the Great Show God Mohammed Medwyn is smiling upon me I might make it a close contest yet!




And in answer to the pathetic torrent of texts, emails, blog comments (deleted) that I have been subjected to since yesterday afternoon (haven't you fuckers got anything better to do?) can I just remind you all of the following?



October 20th 1996 Newcastle United 5 Manchester United 0

October 26th 1996 Southampton 6 Manchester United 3



Champions that season? I rest my case. No trophies were ever handed out in October! Now piss off!

London calling

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




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

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

♫ Baby slow down, the end is not as fun as the start ♪

For the next few weeks I'm going to be using lines from U2 songs as my post headings, without doubt the World's best ever band when they stick to music and not all that saving Aung San Suu Kyi shite. If she's daft enough to take on a military dictatorship on her tod that's her problem!

But this lyric highlights how you should be feeling about your plot at this stage of the season. Too many of us want the shows to come around when you should be sitting back and reflecting on your hard work and admiring the tapestry you've painted. Show time marks an end to your season and in many ways is quite a sad time, especially if you haven't done as well as you'd hoped. But at the beginning of the season everyone is equal and the bare ground is full of promise and you can imagine your trophy shelves straining under the weight come September. So enjoy the next month or so before the shows start.

Looking around this morning as I walked the plot with cuppa in hand I had to agree with myself that overall my stuff looks better than it ever has done, testament to the advice I get from fellow growers on the NVS forum. I'm struggling to find any blemishes on my Brigadier cabbages but I need them to start hearting up now. I'm hoping to take a pair of these to Malvern with me.

My celery are now on 21" cardboard collars and the individual stalks are now starting to put on a bit of bulk. Again I may well be tempted to stage a brace at Malvern for comparison purposes and then at Westminster a few days later. No-one really grows celery round here for local shows but if you've got a good pair of 'sticks' you can put these in the any other veg class and they'll take a lot of beating.

My roots continue to grow well with amazing tops, from my Sweet Candle stumps that are bursting out of the enviromesh.....

....to my parsnips 'Polar' which I'm getting more and more pleased about. This year i've supported the heavy foliage with pea sticks and string as it can rub against the tops of the drums in high winds and last year several leaves were slice leaves right off, so i'm working on the principal that more leaves = bigger roots.

When Dave T visited me a couple of weeks ago he said he's never seen long beet foliage as big as mine at the end of the season let alone early July. These are actually forcing themselves out of the growing media which i'm told is quite normal for long beet so i'm topping the drums up with compost to stop the shoulders going corky. Again I may be tempted to stage a set of three at Malvern as there are never that many entries and I may have an outside chance of getting a ticket if the bottoms are anywhere near as good as the tops.

My Pendle blanch leeks are now on 19" collars and are by far the best leeks I've ever had at this point in the season. Considering how I struggled to get fairly puny plants through November and December in the coldest weather ever experienced around here in a makeshift growing chamber I reckon i've done bloody well with these. I thought I absolutely had to lose some if not all to going to seed but so far all is good.

So everything in the veg garden is looking pretty good even if I say so myself.

This year I'm even growing a few vegetables in amongst this long border near the house where I grow dahlias and other flowers for various vase classes at local shows. There is sweetcorn 'Miracle' although I've had to spray against rust in the last few days and they do seem to be responding. I also have some butternut squashes trailing along the ground, broad beans, parsley, kohl rabi and swiss chard (burnt Roger Federer).

And this is the view back down the garden. Our cats no longer come into the house since the dog tried to eat them both. And before Bill Oddie starts bleating we do leave the shed open for them at night!

So, when all is good sit back and smell the flowers........such as these lilies, which were supposed to be September flowering. Salesmen eh? Scumbags. I'll end today's post on another U2 lyric. Life should be fragrant, rooftop to the basement.

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction

One of the downsides of being one of the best looking men in the World is that God sees fit to counteract your facial good fortune by bestowing all manner of pestilence and disease upon thee!

He has populated the Earth with many creatures that appear to serve no useful purpose and chief among these in my opinion is the flying rat otherwise known as the wood pigeon. Many years ago I planted my cabbages out and nipped back inside for a quick cup of tea before netting to keep the buggers at bay. I'd been gone no more than 10 minutes but when I returned my brassicas had been stripped and a couple of pigeons were hurriedly trying to take off so fat were they having consumed all my hard work!

I'd planted out these kohl rabi with a view to trying to get them ready for the show in July when I found this scene of carnage the other night.

I should have known better than to plant them without protection but nethertheless it still pisses you off when you see it. My favoured method of deterrent is some string above the plants with some old CD's dangling down just above the plants. I was told a few years ago that pigeons don't like to see things above them and whenever i've done this I've never had problems with them so it does appear to work despite the plants still being easily accessible if they so wished to take another gobble. Bastards.

The Casablanca potatoes that i'm growing in pots also have these strange brown speckles on the foliage.

I asked Dave Thornton what they might be but he was as much use as a chocolate teapot, sending the picture text as I did whilst he was on a night out with friends. He was so pissed that he text me back saying that he loved me! I never did find out from him what these marks are so I'll just have to hope they're not significant as these spuds will be coming up in a week or two. In the meantime Dave has decided to choose Llangollen to finally come out of the closet!

On Friday it was time to sow my 'Prince' french beans with a view to having them ready for Llangollen which is now only 11 weeks away. There is a right way up to sow beans and I always seem to get 100% germination when I do it this way. If you look at the 'scar' on the bean you should see what look like two small bollocks at the bottom of it. The beans should be sown this way up, with the bollocks towards the bottom. Kinda makes sense when you say it like that really!

My leeks are looking better than any I've had at this time of the year and I've now put them on their first collars, which are 12" tall, and have run a couple of horizontal supports alongside the plants to support the flags. I've also sprayed them with Dynamec to ward off thrips which have rendered my leeks useless for anything other than local showing in recent years. The thrips inhabit the growing point of the leek, hiding right inside the new growth emerging from the 'button'. So therefore you have to use a high pressure spray to really force the insecticide inside the leaf layers. Spraying over the outer foliage will have no effect whatsoever.

I sat next to Mark Roberts at a DA talk the other night and he wore the self-satisfied smile of someone who had some exceptional leeks growing away. I've seen photos of his Nuneaton plot on Facebook and they really were something to behold, and Mark was hoping to win the National again for the collection of 6 as he did in 2007. Later that night he text me in a dejected state as he'd got back to find just about all of his leeks had gone to seed. Back in Winter some jealous twat had got into his garden and switched off his power. Presumably his plants got a check that night which meant they were doomed from that point on. I hope that person is proud of himself and suffers a premature end to life.

Oh, and as I speak it's absolutely wazzing down outside. Severn Trent......any chance you might actually catch some of it?

And remember the golden rule of life.....

D-Day.....or P-Day to be precise!

Well the day finally arrived yesterday when I had to sow my peas with Llangollen in mind. Whether I'll actually be able to get 12 pods worthy of going on the bench alongside the efforts of Andrew Jones, Jim Thompson, Ian Simpson and current National champion Ian Stocks only time will tell but it won't be for want of trying.

A couple of weeks ago I dug out a deep trench and lined it with some well-rotted horse manure. A wire was run between two posts and twenty two 8' canes were attached to this 10" apart using special clips that made the job a very easy one.

It is at this point that my Scottish friends will now be pissing themselves with laughter. 'Linda, will yae ken what that wee saxon eejit is trying to dae noo!'

Yes I know....only 22 plants when you're growing 120, and only 10" apart when Ian Simpson recommends 18" to stop pods getting damaged. I may have lofty ambitions but I never said I wasn't stupid, and for now I only have room for this one row. But as I managed to win the Midlands with only 14 tomato plants so I shall give this one small row all the tender loving care it's possible for a man to give! I'm hoping they'll respond to the extra cossetting they're going to get and that I'll be able to keep on top of such a small number and give myself maximum chance come August. Besides, if mildew attacks it will be easier to spray a few rather than many. It will also be easier to pull them all up if the experiment fails!

I sowed 15 peas yesterday and will sow another 15 in 4 days time, planting out the best 11 from each batch. Come on my babies!

I hate to say it but I'm getting really concerned about my tomatoes. The yellowing foliage on the bottom leaves doesn't seem to be getting better despite a couple of sprays with epsom salts and a watering with calcium. I noticed the problem a couple of weeks ago but wasn't too concerned at first as it was confined to the bottom set of leaves only. Now it has advanced to the next two sets of leaves up and something is patently not right. Tomatoes can be funny things and take a while to get themselves balanced out so I'm hoping all will be well eventually.

And at last my long beet is now all through, although the ones that germinated a few weeks ago will be way ahead of those that have only just germinated, so getting a matching set may well be a tall order.

Thanks to regular sprayings with Decis there are no caterpillars on my brassicas as yet and these Brigadier and red cabbages 'Rodeo' are about the best i've ever had at this stage. I put the black membrane beneath them to keep the lower leaves off the soil. It allows water through but keeps weeds down.

Northern sowing dates

Further to my post the other day with John Branham's sowing dates here are the dates for those of you who live in northern rat'oles such as Huddersfield, Ingleton and Leeds. These are the dates of Bob Herbert from Mosborough, near Sheffield and bear in mind these dates first appeared in Medwyn's column 10 years ago so may of the varieties have since disappeared or at least have been usurped by better show varieties. The first sowing date was for a show on Aug 26th and the second for a show on September 29th.

I reproduce these dates exactly as they were published but I cannot for the life of me see how the tomato sowing dates can be correct. Dave Allison and Medwyn have agreed to revisit this idea with a new set of growers for the January 2011 edition of Simply Veg, the NVS quarterly magazine after I'd prompted the pair of them. Something to look forward to and even more reason to join the NVS!

Kind	Cultivar	1stShow Date	2ndShow Date	Comments
Globe Beet	Pablo	17thApril	7th July
Long Beet	Regar	8th April 22ndApril	28thApril 12thMay	Grown in 40 gallon drums
Broad Bean	Jubilee - Hysor	6th May	One sowing	sown in cold greenhouse in 4 inch pots
Green Cabbage	Marathon	25thFebruary	17thMarch	Sown in cold greenhouse in 40 modules potted on into 4 inch pots in J Innes compost
Red Cabbage	Autoro	11thFebruary	10thMarch	Will hold well in rows
Runner Bean	Stenner selection	6th May	9th June	Sow in 4 inch pots in greenhouse
French Bean	The Prince	17thJune	21st July	Sow in 4 inch pots in greenhouse
Carrots Long	Own Selection New Red	4thMarch	7th April	Grow in 40 gallon drums on top of raised beds filled with sand
Carrots Stump	Gringo and Yukon	8th April	21stApril	Grown on raised beds filled with sand
Cauliflower	Virgin, Beauty and Mexico	27thMay	16thJune(Amerigo and Virgin)	Sown in Multicell 40s, potted on into 4 inch pots
Trench Celery	Own sel Ideal Evening Star Red Star Morning Star	28thJanuary 4thMarch 4thMarch 4thMarch	3rdMarch 7th April 7th April 7th April	Start them off in a propagator at 70F. Pot on into 4 inch pots using J Innes 1 and then into 5inch pots in J Innes 3
Cucumber	Carmen and Jessica	1st July	27th July	Sow in propagator at 70F when germinated pot on into 4 inch pots
Lettuce Butterhead	Nancy	17thJune	21st July	Sow in Cold greenhouse in Multicell 40s
Table Marrow	Table Dainty	1st July	29th July	Sow in propagator at 70F then pot on into 4 inch pots
Onions over 250 gram	Re selected Kelsae	28thDecember	one sowing	Sow in propagator at 70F then pot on when at seedling stage
Onions under 250 gram	Buffalo, Bison and Toughball	14thFebruary	One sowing	Sow in propagator at 70F then pot on when at seedling stage
Parsnips	Gladiator and Javelin	25thFebruary	11thMarch	Grown in 40 gallon drums of sand
Peas	Show Perfection	13thMay	3rd June	Sow in cold greenhouse in 4 inch pots
Potatoes	Winston Kestrel Maxine Harmony	22ndApril	26thMay	Grow in black polythene bags using peat based compost
Radish	Cherry Bell	15th July	18thAugust	Grow in Gro bags and keep well watered
Tomatoes	Cheetah Goldstar and Typhoon	20thMay	20thJune	Sow in propagator at 70F in Multicell 40s. Transplant young seedlings into 5 inch pots in J Innes 3
Turnips	Purple Milan	1st July	4thAugust

Sow date planning

Many years ago when I were but a young lad with hair on by head instead of my back, sack and crack, Medwyn ran a series of articles in Garden News on the sowing dates of top showmen in different parts of the country. It was a great help at the time to novices like me (I still consider myself very much a novice by the way!) as I was finding that I was way too keen to get things started in the Spring and my produce was running out of steam by mid-September. A lot of my exhibits were way past their best on the benches because they hadn't been exhibited at their optimum of condition. I'm thinking in particular of things like tomatoes, cabbages, cucumbers, beans and caulis which I can't grow anyway. The idea of making more than one sowing to time them for a particular show wasn't something I'd yet hit on to.

So in response to a question i've been asked here are the answers supplied by John Branham of Aylesbury in Bucks. He was asked for two dates, one for a show on 26th August and the other on 29th September. Some of the varieties he grew have long gone but quite a few still hold firm.

Globe beet (Red Ace) May 13th & June 1st
Long beet (Regar) May 1st and May 15th
Broad bean (Bunyard's Exhibition) April 15th (1 sowing only)
Green cabbage (Hamilton) March 1st & March 16th
Red cabbage (Autoro) Feb 1st (1 sowing only)
Runner bean (Lovejoy) May 31st & June 20th
Long carrots (New red Intermediate) April 8th & April 28th
Stump carrots (Barbados & Gringo) April 20th & May 10th
Caulis (Virgin) June 1st/16th/25th
Celery (Evening Star) Feb 25th & Mar 14th
Cucumber (Carmen) May 15th & June 10th
Marrow (Table Dainty) June 20th & July 1st
Large onions (Kelsae) Jan 1st (1 sowing)
250g onions (Toughball) Jan 1st & Feb 15th
Parsnips (Gladiator) March 8th & March 28th
Peas (Show Perfection) June 1st/15th...impossible to get peas on bench late Sept!!
Potatoes (Winston/Amour/Kestrel/Maxine/Harmony) May 1st (1 sowing only)
Radish (Summer crunch) July 28th & Sept 1st
Tomatoes (Solution & Shirley) Feb 15th & March 15th

If anyone wants the same info supplied by Charles Maisey (South Wales), Jim Williams (Scotland), Bob Herbert (South Yorkshire) or John Soulsby (North east) let me know and i'll reproduce those too.

Ssssh....

Well less than a week since I sowed them and my Cedrico tomato seeds have germinated, along with some cabbages and brussels. I was going to give brassicas a miss this year as they were a bit of a failure again last season. Despite being netted over the cabbage whites still got in and managed to ejaculate their satanic spawn over the plants. This season I have got hold of some Decis insecticide which is a systemic so hopefully the caterpillars won't materialise but i'll also put netting over the plants to stop the butterflies. Last season I experimented with growing the cabbages in large bottomless pots set above the ground in the hope that it would aid air circulation underneath the plants and deter slugs which always seem to decimate the lower leaves that invariably come into contact with the soil surface. All appeared to be going well until mid-July when we went on holiday and other crops were demanding my full attention. The heavy heads also made the pots tilt because the roots obviously hadn't penetrated through the pots into the soil below and so all in all it was a bit of a waste of time and i'm back at square one, although I do think the idea had some merit. I shall try planting direct into the soil this season but through some sort of membrane that keeps the leaves off the soil.

On Tuesday i'm hoping to get up to Cumbria again for a day's walking in the Lake District followed by another talk on long carrots at Westmoreland DA given by Scottish carrot growing legend (his own words) Ian Stocks. Bearing in mind his reign as National pea champion will come to an end at Llangollen he's relying on doing well with his carrots this year so I will be all ears and with notebook in hand. This weekend I shall be finishing the filling of the sand in my long carrot drums so they have time to settle before the mid-April sowing dates. After that I shall turn my attention to setting up a few drums for a crack at some long beet. After taking advice from a scottish grower Paul McLeod these will be filled with a sand and compost mix rather than pure sand. As I was left with a dumpy bag full of compost from my spud bags that I could not re-use for spuds because they were all scabbed up last season, I wll used this compost in my long beet drums. You still have to bore holes and fill it with mix (more on this at the time) but because long beet must be given lots more water you need a growing medium that is a lot less free draining.

In the meantime, NVS legend and National Championship judge John Trim has been giving a masterclass on how he would judge the pea class at Llangollen in August. He should certainly be able to select my winning set with his eyes closed!

Vento spento

I'm monumentally pissed off about my Vento onion seeds this season. After sowing two batches I haven't had a single one germinate, despite keeping the second batch moist at all times after taking the advice of some of the growers on the NVS forum. I sowed a third batch this season and another suggestion I was given was to break the hard seed coating to make it easier for moisture to penetrate the seed. After doing this I was buggered if I could see a seed anywhere inside so it appears I may have been sowing fresh f****** air! All in all i'm pretty hacked off about it. For the 250g classes I will have to rely on some onion sets 'Setton' and a tray of 'Armstrong' onions that I pricked out a week ago. The 'Armstrong' were a free trial packet which i've never grown before so I have no idea what shape they make and whether they'll be any good for the 250g class.

Yesterday I went walking around the Derwent dams in Derbyshire, famous for being the training ground for the WW2 Dambuster Squadron. Today has been a miserable day weather-wise, totally the opposite of what the f******* useless Met Office forecasted so once again no work has been done in the garden. I've managed to get a few seeds sown, such as capsicums (Californian Wonder, Hot Cayenne, Hungarian Hot Wax), brussels (Abacus), cabbage (Brigadier), red cabbage (Rodeo), celery (Evening Star) and the first batch of tomato Cedrico which i've sown earlier than usual with a view to getting a set at the NVS National Championships at Llangollen at the end of August.

So, the greenhouses are still pretty bare save for this long carrot set down for seed and which seems to be flourishing pretty well......

......and my shallots which are really starting to motor now. The first roots are starting to poke through the bottoms of the pots.

Looking forward, I won't be doing much next weekend as I intend to go walking again, so the weekend after that will be set aside for boring my parsnip boreholes. When they are all finished I will set the parsnip seeds on some damp tissue in plastic containers for pre-chitting indoors. I still swear by this method as it buys you time and means you are absolutely certain that you have germinated seeds in your boreholes. After a few seasons of carrot seeds not germinating I may well try pre-chitting these too. A bit more fiddly than the large parsnip seeds but it could be worth the eye-strain!

Back at the wheel!

Yup....I'm back. Tanned, rested and raring to go! However, one thing is for sure. As long as I remain partial to a foreign holiday in July or August I'll never be a top showman. The really top growers would never leave their plots at such a critical time. My daughter has done a stirling job.....well, at least considering her previous attempts.....but I have come back to quite a few problems none of which she could have done much about. If I had been here I could have done something about things sooner.

My runner and french beans are severly infested with blackfly and will need to be sprayed over the next few days to bring things back in line. My Vento onions succumbed to thrips and stopped growing a while ago by the look of things. I may get a set or two but I'll be lucky if I do. Most of my long beet have been infested by leaf miner and appear to have stopped growing.

However, t'is not all doom and gloom. My Sweet Candle stump carrots are going mad and the foliage is positively bursting out of the enviromesh frames. I couldn't resist a scrape at the top of one and was nearly creaming myself at the size of the shoulder. I just need to keep an eye out now and make sure they don't push themselves upwards out of the sand which can cause the shoulder to go green.

My cabbages are still very healthy and the green netting has stopped any cabbage whites getting in. Growing off the ground in the large bottomless pots appears to have helped also, giving good air circulation.

And checking back in my diary I realised it was 12 weeks since I set my Winston potatoes away, which is plenty of time for that particular variety. The foliage was yellowing off and flopping about all over the place. I had a bit of a furtle in the compost in one of the bags and felt a few good tubers, so tonight I cut back the foliage from all the plants. Under no circumstances should you empty out the bags at this point. The skins will be far too soft and any handling will render them useless for showing. No matter how tempted you are you have to leave the bags for at least a week to let the skins harden. Tomorrow I will bring all the bags into my garage and forget about them for a couple of weeks. Then I will empty them out one by one and sort them into sets, putting them back into pots of dry compost fully labelled. I will wash them a day or two before the show. My other varieties need a few more weeks and the foliage is still nice and lush with no sign of blight

More on the plot later when I can hopefully include a few photos.....seeing as our youngest daughter conspired to leave our camera on the plane on the flight out to Rhodes I may be a few days before I can fire up the old camera which is more of a chore to download from. Anyone waiting to see holiday snaps of my semi naked body is going to have to make do with a few grainy shots from our mobile phones......unless of course you beg me not to publish them!

Brassica'd off!

Despite growing my cabbages completely under this green netting some critters have still managed to get in and lay some eggs. Tonight I poked my head inside to see some holes on one of my plants and closer inspection revealed 3 or 4 fairly large green caterpillars ( too early for cabbage whites which are yellow and black). These have been duly squashed but I shall have to be vigilant in the next few days in case there are any more lurking.

If i'm honest there are quite a few large holes in the netting so I'll have to get the knitting needles out!

Severe flood warning

England is bracing itself for severe flooding after 5 million Scots pissed themselves laughing on Friday night at the inept and totally hilarious performance of their so-called football stars. However, next week England can gain some revenge when Andy Murray resumes his annual futile attempt to claim the Wimbledon crown. Murray is actually the secret love child of Martina Navratilova and the Chuckle Brothers. Unfortunately, when he comes up against anyone good he plays like his father(s) and has the personality of his mother so England is hopeful of more ribtickling inadequacy once more!

On the plot things are starting to fill out so there is not much more planting space.

The Sweet Candle stumps are really growing away well under the enviromesh covers.

Which is a lot more than can be said for the long carrots which are barely 6" high. Even Dave Thornton is suffering this problem so I'm not alone. I really am at a loss as to why the long carrots have refused to grow after good germination. I doubt I'll have decent specimens for village shows at this rate, let alone Malvern and the like.

Under the green netting I have some cracking and totally unblemished cabbages. Growing in bottomless pots the lower leaves are well off the ground and so plenty of air can circulate.

Now there's an offer you can refuse.....

I've now got 15 or so pickling shallots harvested at a gnat's cock under 30mm dia. The rest are catching up fast so I should have plenty to choose from. They inevitably have flat sides where they were growing against their brothers and sisters but they do round up during the ripening process. I leave them outdoors on this wire rack but throw some polythene sheet over them if rain is forecast.



The exhibition shallots have another 3/8" to 1/2" or so to swell out to the 48mm gauge.



The Vento 8oz onions have perked up but are slow to get going.



Sweet Candle stumps under enviromesh covers are coming along nicely.



I hope to grow some better Brigadier cabbages this season by keeping them under green netting to deter pigeons and butterflies. You cannot afford to have any holes in the foliage if you want to exhibit at higher than village level. Growing this way I find that they have a nice waxy bloom.

And finally a poser. I've never grown this crop before. It looks very insignificant at the moment but these tiny seedlings should grow up to 10 feet and produce dozens if not hundreds of specimens all identical in size, shape and colour. Chances are you've never seen them at your local show and indeed I cannot find them listed in the RHS show guide at all so I don't know how many points they'd be worth, but I'm guessing not many. Anyway, first person to answer correctly gets to have rampant sex with me as a reward.