Cosy Powell drumming home

I was talking to my good mate Craven Morehead the other day (great looking bloke, superb grower, massive cock) and he has asked me to help him do a book on growing to show as there isn’t a decent one out there that appeals to novices and experienced growers alike. Admittedly there is one by a chap called Derek Brooks (hey I wonder if he’s the same arsewipe ‘D Brooks’ who put negative feedback on Craven’s Carrots at Dawn reviews on Amazon?) but quite frankly I’ve had more enjoyable and interesting days watching a freshly painted wall dry whilst having Hitler’s Mein Kampf read out to me. I did have a copy of it but it really was so shit I gave it away so there’s a definite market out there for a book on the hobby that isn’t coma inducing.

All in all we haven’t had too bad a Summer I reckon, although there will always be someone in deepest, darkest Ingleton that will never be satisfied with the weather. In fact, if wet fannies were falling from the sky and landing on his face he’d probably moan about the taste. Yes, we had that really hot spell in late June/early July when the whole country was sweating like a Scotsman watching Crimewatch, but we’ve also had some decent rain showers so there should be some good stuff at the shows over the next few weeks. This is sure to make winning a ticket at the highest level shows even more difficult so growers will have to be really critical about their exhibits. If there are any faults then you’ve probably got no chance as the judges at that level will be micro-analysing every last vegetable in their deliberations. A tiny scratch on your cucumber could be the difference between first and second or even no ticket at all so whilst everything is now growing well in all probability, there are still things you can be doing to make sure your stuff is as perfect as you can make it. This involves daily checking, constant vigilance and attention to detail. At lots of village shows and certain NVS shows just north of the Isle of Wight you can probably chuck any old shit down and win however.

I visited Marcus Powell’s allotments in Buckinghamshire last night and he is most definitely going to be in amongst the tickets as he has some fabulous looking stuff. Last season he won the prestigious collection class with this display, so apologies in advance if you’re eating.

His blanch leeks in particular stood out yesterday, and his celery weren’t far behind, with several sowings at different levels of progress to cover the many shows he does. It was interesting to listen to him as we went through his different crops talking about what he does with each one, we all do things slightly differently but there’s always something we can learn to make things better, so listening to another grower is one of the most worthwhile things you could do if you want to win that elusive red card.

I was gratified to see that his caulis and runner beans for Malvern were at the same stage as mine, as my caulis had been decimated by pigeons shortly after planting out but have now recovered pretty well. My runners seemed to be painfully slow this season, but again were on a par with Marcus’. However, he had some superb runners just starting to crop for the Midlands Branch Championships at Shrewsbury next week and the thing that struck me most were the length of his flower trusses, they were well over a foot long. Mine get to 8 inch if I’m lucky. Must be different soils, or the half strength Viagra he feeds them on. He takes the other half to stop himself falling out of bed.

One of the many jobs I shan’t be missing from next year is growing quality marrows to show. This involves tying them up canes inclined at an angle so that the developing fruits hang down away from the coarse foliage, much as you would do for cucumbers. Making the framework for the canes is a job I invariably rush, which means they often collapse at inopportune moments. After high winds yesterday I suffered a breakage in a couple of the canes high up which will require fiddly repair work whilst getting scratched up to buggery from the plants themselves. However, it hasn’t affected this rather superb looking fruit (var. Blyton Belle), which is rugger ball sized, and I have several others grapefruit sized which should give me a matching set for Welsh Branch in early September. Growing like this means they colour up all the way around and you don’t get that flat discoloured side you do when they grow on the ground.

Shit happens

Pigeons. What is the point of them? No, really, what is the actual fucking point of fucking bastard fucking pigeons? I’ve always been troubled by the feathered fucktards whenever I’ve had young brassicas planted and had to resort to all manner of defence systems, but a couple of years ago settled on sticks placed around the plants at random angles, after reading that pigeons don’t like things above their heads as they think it might be a predator. I was highly sceptical at first but fuck me backwards it actually seemed to work. Or at least it did, because this year the little shitbags have obviously got over their fear and are eating my caulis with a vengeance. Next year when I have more time I am purchasing an air rifle with a view to killing as many of the fuckers as I possibly can, purely for fun, and fuck the animal lovers a few doors up, they can kiss my pimply hairy arse. Whether my caulis can recover in time from this is debatable. The pigeon attack, not my hairy arse.

Potato scab. What is the actual fucking point of potato scab? I’ve sucked fucking reservoirs dry this summer in an attempt to keep scab off my spuds but during a furtle deep into one of my potato bags last night the first fucking potato that I fucking came across had more fucking scabs on it than Jim Carrey’s poxy cock. It just goes to prove that the cockwomble from Derby who told me about giving spuds plenty of water at tuber initiation (is that even a genuine fucking term?) doesn’t know what the fuck he’s on about.

I’m going to have to get my blood pressure tested before the footy season starts! My first batch of runner beans was planted out 3 weeks ago to cover my local show and hopefully Welsh Branch a week after but all my sowings since then have struggled to germinate for some weird reason, despite being the same seed and being treated the same way, sown quite deep in 3” square pots. I can only assume the tender new shoots got ‘cooked’ in the recent heatwave before they were able to emerge. Having used up all my stock I was forced to appeal to that Liverscum supporting, filthy photo texting fellow grower Mark Perry to see if he had any spare seed. He has very kindly sent me some seed which I hope will cover my later shows if I get them in quickly. He employs a bean lettering system similar to the Plumbs but I don’t know why as they all look the fucking same to me.

Meanwhile, scientists and keyboard warriors the World over are shitting themselves about a little bit of ice that’s come away from Antarctica (it’s roughly the size of Cyprus apparently), prophesying the end of the World and blaming Donald Trump for it. Now don’t get me wrong, Trump’s a total cunt, but when you’re hurtling through space at 67,000 miles an hour on a huge oscillating rock on a trajectory that is not fixed from one year to the next shit like this is gonna happen and there aint fuck all mankind can do about it. So quit whining and help me kill some pigeons you underarm dreadlocked, new-age hippy tosspots.

Cauli wally

Strange, unexpected things will always happen. Not a Labour win in the election tomorrow obviously, the British aren’t that stupid. Nor even Liverpool winning a cup, the Klopp bottlers will always be second best from now on. No, I am of course talking about the World’s worst cauliflower grower getting a ticket at the National Championships. This really happened to me in 2013 when I was placed 5^th at Harrogate. Prior to then I hadn’t grown a cauliflower worthy of the name. Every plant I’d ever put in the ground had succumbed to club root or cabbage root fly, often within days of them being planted out. I’d tried collars at ground level and various insecticide and fungicides all to no avail. I was about to give up attempting to grow caulis ever again when I heard about a product called Perlka at an NVS talk which was supposed to combat club root. A natural by-product of industry it claimed to sterilise the soil and was also a source of nitrogen, so I duly purchased some from Medwyns and decided to give it a whirl.

You have to be sure to apply it to the soil at least two weeks before you plant out your caulis so I’ll be doing my first bed today, doing the 2^nd/3^rd/and 4^th beds where I intend to grow successional crops over the ensuing weeks. I dig a hole where I intend to plant each cauli and sprinkle a spoonful of the Perlka granules in it, marking each position with a label. When I did this for the first time in 2013 the growth was immediate and unprecedented for me. I’d personally never seen such big caulis, they were actually bigger than my cabbages so it was an amazing turnaround. Being able to stage a set of 3 at the National Championships was something I could only have imagined previously, to actually get a placing and beating a multiple ex-Champion in the process was totally mental.

The problem with caulis is getting them timed for a particular show. Often you’ll get them hearting up the week before and they don’t last long before they start blowing, but all is not lost. After advice from a fellow grower I cut them with a 3” stalk, and trim the foliage so it’s an inch or so above the curd. The final trim level with the curd is done at the show. After a good wash with a hose jet to remove any dirt I immerse the whole thing in a sink of salty water. This causes any hidden slugs and snails to come to the surface gasping which can then be disposed of. After an hour in the water place them face down on dry towels for all water to escape. Once dry place a couple of sheets of kitchen towelling over the curd, wrap the whole thing in clingfilm but leave the stalk exposed. Then put it in your fridge, but not too cold as they can freeze if you’re not careful. You’ll need a very understanding better half as the fridge fills up with caulis in the days leading up to a show! They’ll last in good condition this way for a week or more.

Malvern 2012 Part 4

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

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

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

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

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

Sherie Plumb won the 250g class with Toughball.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

Gender agenda

Because i'm not doing as many shows this season i'm cutting right back on the varieties i'm growing, which has lead to some difficult choices. It's an easy decision to ditch things like pak choi (who the fuck eats that shit anyway?), spring onions, turnips, swedes, radish and kohl rabi. All these crops were on my list last season for Westminster and I failed to get a single dish of any of them on the table. They looked superb either two weeks before or two weeks after, but all the time they were taking up valuable plot space and needed tending, often to the detriment of more important crops. And they all ended up on the compost heap!




I want to have another crack at caulis so I've decided to ditch runner beans this year, and grow them in the land that is free'd up. I'm also cutting down on spud varieties. I really struggle to get a decent skin finish on white spuds after they've been in store for a month or two, so I'm only growing Kestrel and Amour which any imbecile should be able to grow well, even the northern ring pirates. I'll probably grow about 40 bags of each but before that I need to hack back a load of shrubs and reclaim some new land to grow them in which i'm not looking forward to one little bit. I really wish i'd got into vegetables sooner than I did, rather than planting every colourful, rampant shrub going as soon as we moved into our house in the early 90's.



I will always make sure that I leave room for a few broad bean plants, one of life's true delicacies. Broad beans are about the only veg I grow that I don't aim to show, and Leesa makes a mean bacon with broad bean in orange sauce dinner. I'm still in two minds whether to bother with marrows, a new class introduced for the first time at National level this year with the aim of getting new growers to have a crack. But instead of needing to find a pair they've ridiculously opted to make it a set of 3. Finding a good matching pair is hard enough, and the plants take up an awful lot of room so getting three is going to be amazingly difficult and takes it way out of the realms of a beginner's capabilities in my opinion.



As I want to ensure getting a dish of medium tomatoes at Harrogate(6) and Malvern(12) I need 'wall to wall' Cedrico in one 8'x6' greenhouse, although I won't be sowing these for another couple of weeks yet, possibly even the end of March. This gives me about a spare metre of run in a second greenhouse to grow some small fruited tomatoes (we don't call them cherry these days!) so I am going to be limited to just one variety this year, perhaps 6 plants crammed side-by-side in pots. And the choice couldn't be simpler, for me it has to be Sungold. A quick glance in Medwyn's/Shelley's etc catalogues and you will see varieties listed as the 'only one to grow' for the small fruited classes, such as Piccolo and Tastyno. I grew Harlequin last season after seeing Geoff Butterworth win with it at Westminster in 2010, and indeed I got a 3rd there in 2011 (below), but by Christ do the plants give you cause for concern. They grew in a real weird fashion, the leaves often twisting and corkscrewing, giving the appearance of being very sickly. But it didn't seem to affect fruiting and I picked hundreds of fruits from half a dozen plants, that were very tasty indeed. But Sungold still beats them for taste in my opinion and having come 2nd with it at Malvern, and Sungold beating my Harlequin to 2nd place at Westminster I'm gratified to see that judges aren't being 'snobby' about varieties that aren't normally in the tickets.

However, there is a proviso about staging Sungold, or indeed any tomato at a high level, and that is you need to hire yourself a woman. At 5am at Malvern on the Saturday morning I gave Leesa a bowl of Sungold that i'd hastily picked at midnight by torchlight and said 'plonk those on a board for me, they've got no chance but it's an entry'. When she showed me her effort 10 minutes later I couldn't believe how good they looked, she certainly has an eye for selecting a matching set of fruits, and I was rewarded with a 2nd of course. I very often ask her now to match up a lot of my veg, especially things like tomatoes and peppers, and she even selected my winning cylindrical beet for Westminster when I was adamant a different set was better. Medwyn once won the National with tomatoes on his wife Gwenda's selection so it does appear that ladies do have an eye for that sort of thing.

Cauli wobbles

Jim Pearson's talk on caulis at the recent Scottish Branch seminar was refreshing in as much he didn't reveal any great secrets to growing good caulis. Jim doesn't have soil analyses done, doesn't spray with any chemicals such as Decis, and doesn't believe in counting back so many days from a show for a sowing date as he believe this makes no odds whatsoever, and makes four sowings per year on 25th April, 5th May, 15th May and 25th May. As Jim has won the National more than anyone else with caulis i'm not going to argue with that. He prepares trenches in the Autumn and lines them with home made compost from his compost bins. Once he runs out of compost he uses kitchen waste, backfills the trenches and by the time Spring comes around everything has rotted down and added fertility and structure to the soil. He also adds a sprinkling of blood, fish and bone a few weeks before planting and a handful of Levington Organic Blend Farmyard Manure. In mid-February he will lime the whole plot and leave for the rain to wash it in.




As i'm not going to grow any white spuds next season I will have spare land enough to get about 4 rows of caulis in, at a 2'x2' spacing. Jim grows 179 caulis and when asked why 179, he replies because he hasn't the room to grow 180! I'm hoping to get my trenches prepared this weekend with a view to allowing the winter frosts (we still haven't had one!) to break everything down in the next few months before planting. One thing I will be doing is cutting some DPC material into 4" squares with a slit to the centre to act as barriers to cabbage root fly. Jim goes one step further, by cutting squares of carpet with another slit which he lays on top of the DPC with the slit at 90 degrees to each other, in effect giving him double the barrier. There is a chunk of leftover carpet in my loft that I have earmarked for this purpose.



There were several other tips which I made a note of and will be divulging next season at the requisite times. I've never managed to stage a good set of caulis and assumed my soil has always been wrong for them, and gave up growing them about 4 years ago, but this is a simplistic view so i'll be giving them another go in 2011. I may need a set of three for my Malvern collection but one thing's for sure.....I won't be anywhere near Jim's winning set from Dundee in 2010.

I have a dream

This showing season isn't quite over but I've already made a written note of my initial plans for next season. As I'd always promised Leesa that I wouldn't be showing during our 25th anniversary year I had intended to take a complete year out in 2012. Since making the pledge she agreed (nay encouraged!) for me to do SOME showing but just not for the end of August/early September period when we intend to be out of the country on the honeymoon we never had 24 years ago! With this in mind I have therefore decided to throw virtually everything I have at the Malvern National in 2012, and specifically the collection of 6. I've always dreamed about getting a large collection benched in a National and so i'm going to take the opportunity to have a go next year and fulfil that dream. Having entered collections of sorts at Harrogate and Westminster I was able to see that I wouldn't be disgraced and so I may as well have a crack. I won't have to worry about leaving produce for later shows and can pull as many carrots and parsnips as I want to get the two sets of 3.

You might think it's complete madness to throw so much at something you have no chance of getting a ticket in (the place cards will be contested by a list of 5 or 6 suspects) but it's part of an ongoing 'apprentiship'. I made sure I observed how the top guys displayed their collections at Llangollen and Malvern with a variety of metal frameworks and boards and have made a note of the heights and girth I achieved with my own leeks and celery this season, as well as the length and diameter of my parsnips and long carrots so I'm not overambitious when I manufacture my own display boards during the Winter months. My collections at Westminster and Harrogate were all displayed in flat mode but for a National you need to be getting your leeks and celery vertical. Here is Jeff Parson's winning collection at this year's National.

I shall also not be bothering with runner beans in 2012. None of us in the family eat them and they take up a lot of room on the plot and as I won't be needing them for local shows I'll give them a miss for a year. Instead I will be using the land vacated to have another go at cauliflowers. I've never succeeded in growing great caulis for show and I don't really understand why as I have reasonably deep, fertile, moisture retentive soil. Jim Pearson is giving a talk on growing caulis for show at the Scottish Branch seminar in November so I shall be taking detailed notes. Mind you I took detailed notes last year on growing f***ing peas and look where that got me! I know a lot of people will disagree but I believe peas and caulis should be worth more than 20 points as getting them timed to perfection for show day takes much more skill than leeks, onions, parsnips and long carrots in my humble opinion.



Also, I won't ever be twatting about growing things like pak choi, radishes, turnips and spring onions again. I only bothered as I was trying to win a wager against Dave Thornton and needed a lot of these things for Westminster. Not only did they mean I took my eye off the ball with the 'major veg' in certain cases but I never actually timed them for the bench at London anyway so that was a monumental waste of time and energy. In 2012 I will be concentrating on 18 and 20 pointer vegetables, trying to time my entire season for one weekend in late September! How hard can it be?

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.

Qualify to quantify

The pinnacle of the show grower's ambition is the collection class whether it be your local show or a large NVS or RHS show. I remember when I first started showing and going to the long since defunct Loughborough Show and seeing 4 or 5 superb collections with backboards draped in superb celery and blanch leeks. I'm that old that this was before digital cameras so I have no photos to be able to compare to todays NVS displays like this one at last year's National in Dundee staged by Peter Clark. The prize money is big and the kudos is great. I'm fairly sure that my rose tinted glasses have enhanced those local displays from years ago, and that they wouldn't have been a patch on this exhibit where every dish needs to be as perfect as you can get it. The guys that do these displays will enter very little else as they save all their best veg for this one class, maybe just the one show all season. They are usually made entirely from six sets of 20 pointer veg and you would need a stunning set of 18 pointer veg if you were to substitute a set for one of these. The 20 pointer veg are leeks, celery, long carrots, parsnips, potatoes, long beet, peas, caulis and of course large onions.

Maybe one day in the distant future I'll be good enough to consider competing in this class but for now i'll content myself with trying for something called the Millenium Class at Llangollen, which calls for 5 dishes of veg, 4 each of globe beetroot, 250g onions, potatoes, stump carrots and tomatoes. If I can improve on the form and shape of my stumps and i'm able to harvest 4 good matching potatoes of the same variety then I reckon I could be in with a shout of getting close(ish) to the tickets in what is always a hotly contested class.

This is Allen Young's winning entry at Dorset in 2009.

And here is Mark Hall's top scoring effort from Dundee 2010.

The 250g onions and globe beet are rated 15 pointer veg, the stumps and tomatoes are 18 pointers. Potatoes are the only 20 pointer veg. I've seen a few of these displays now and you often see several faults on the winning collection, especially if that grower has entered the main classes. If you visit an NVS show it's always a good idea to look at these collection classes, going from exhibit to exhibit and assessing the same vegetables against each other. For example, start with the carrots and come up with a 1-2-3 in your head before looking at the marks that have been awarded. Try not to look at the marks before you've done this. Then move onto the parsnips and so on. In a way you're judging it after the event and learning what the judge is looking for, especially if the judge has split the marks for each of the criteria - size/shape/uniformity/condition - but he doesn't always have time to do this.

To be able to show veg you need to think like a judge when selecting your own veg for display, critically analysing your faults and weaknesses to try and bench what is called for according to the RHS or NVS rules applied to any given show. With this in mind I have put my name down to take the NVS judges' exam on October 1st. It involves a written test paper and Dave Thornton has promised me some past papers to look at so I can see the sort of questions likely to be asked. The hardest bit is the practical part, where you have to judge a mock show comprising 6 or 7 'classes' of 5 or so dishes and arrive at a 1-2-3 in front of other qualified judges, handling the exhibits with confidence and explaining your thought processes as you go. Hopefully, I'll pass and then be qualified to judge other shows in the afternoon after staging at my own shows in the morning.

Where I'm 'at' !

Medwyn Williams always says that how many red cards you get in the autumn depends on how much work you put in to the plot during the Winter and Spring, so if that's true I really hope I've got some good results to look forward to. I've been busy beavering away the last few weeks sowing seeds, potting on, planting and digging but like anyone who works full time I always wish I had more time to devote to my hobby.

My parsnips 'Pinnacle' and stump carrot 'Sweet Candle' are on a par with last years seedlings but yet again I fear disappointment with my long carrots. The Graeme Watson seed has failed to germinate in sufficient numbers and those that have look decidedly 3rd rate.

I've planted out my first cabbages and these seem to be growing away well. However, my brussel sprouts 'Abacus' are very small and I reckon I'll struggle to exhibit any in early October at Sturton. Despite failing abysmally on an annual basis with cauliflowers I'm having one final go albeit with the green curded 'Romanesco'. I'm hoping I can at least have a head of decent size that may be a useful addition to one of my trug entries. You never know, if I get two I can always enter it into the 'Any other veg' class as most shows near me have deleted the cauliflower class through lack of entries.

On the onion front, the variety 'Vento' (for the under 8oz class) is performing better than Tasco which has always been slow growing for me. I have plenty of 'Red Baron' and 'Setton' from sets, as this is quite a popular class around here. Apparently an experienced judge can tell if the onion has actually been grown from a set rather than seed but they all look the same to me. I shall try and 'pull' all my onions over a period of time once they have reached a set size (say 4" diameter for my large onions in the greenhouse or 2.5-3" for Vento and the sets) so that I have plenty of bulbs to choose from. This can start from about mid-July and last until late August but either way you want to be exhibiting a set of onions that has been out of the ground for at least 4 weeks so that they have had ample time to ripen.

All of my shallots have now been thinned down to four including the superb ones given to me by NVS secretary Dave Thornton. I will be amazed if they grow as big as their parent bulbs but I live in hope.

I sowed my first row of globe beetroot 'Red Ace' last weekend and another one this weekend. Another couple of rows will be sown for the next 3 weekends and should be enough to cover my season.

As yet my first peas and runner beans are just breaking the compost surface but there is no sign of life from my marrows sown early last week. I will be sowing more of these crops over the coming weeks.

I've just about planted all my spuds but I do have several 'Maxine' and 'Pixie' left over which I will endeavour to get planted up by the end of the month. Hopefully, these will give me fresher specimens for my later shows such as Sturton and (dare I say it?) Malvern.

In the greenhouse I have peppers/aubergines/lettuce/celery and cherry type tomatoes. I planted my first 6 'Cederico' tomatoes yesterday in the greehouse borders. I also have 4 pumpkin plants of the European record breaking pumpkin that was seen at Malvern last year. I shall plant these on the patch of land that I've been loaned in Sileby, in the hope I can at least get one to a couple of hundred pounds or so. Any bigger and I won't be able to physically transport it to any show in my car which is usually packed to the roof with my other produce.

On this extra patch of land I also intend to plant my surplus of onion sets and cabbages, as well as sowing more carrots (for the pot), beetroot, peas, french beans, courgettes and leeks (also for the pot only).

I've managed to take a few dahlia cuttings but am having to rely on some others from Kev Broxholme as my Kenora Sunset and Jomanda tubers are stubbornly refusing to wake up from their winter slumber. I really need to get these off him by next Sunday as I fear by that time he may never speak to me again if Man Utd send his beloved Hull back down into the Championship from whence they came!

MPs' expenses row escalates.

Show me an MP who isn’t a corrupt, selfish, lying, thieving bastard and I’ll show you my winning cauliflower entry at the National Championships. As the world’s worst cauliflower grower I think you can see where I’m coming from!

What if.........?

I'm sometimes asked which varieties are best for showing and then asked where these can be purchased as they are often not available from the large seed merchants. I buy my seed from Medwyns, Sheeley Seeds, and ESP (potatoes) but it got me thinking whether you could compete by only sourcing your seed from the likes of T&M, Suttons, Dobies etc.

I think the short answer is yes you can but you would have to have grown them exceptionally well to compete against seed which has been bred specifically for the showbench. Indeed, some seed which started off as showbench favourites such as Red Ace beetroot and Gladiator parsnip have now found their way into several catalogues.

If I had to go one season only purchasing seed from the 'garden centre' stockists these would be the varieties I would choose. I have chosen from Thompson & Morgan's seed list.

Onion Marco (small classes only)
Long Carrot Yellowstone
Stump carrot Kingston
Parsnip Gladiator
Tomatoes Shirley
Leek Musselburgh .......you'd have to sow early in heat though and grow under cover
Cauli Clapton
Marrow BadgerCross
Beetroot Red Ace
Runner beans Enorma
French beans The Prince
Cucumber Carmen
Cabbage Kilaton
Celery Victoria
Lettuce Webb's Wonderful
Peas Cavalier
Potatoes Kestrel & Winston
Shallots Longor

Quite a reasonable selection there I think and I'd be confident of putting up a good show at local level. However, I still maintain it's worth paying a little bit more for that personal touch and to guarantee selected seed that will definitely perform for you.

Next year's varieties

Long carrot – Resel. New Red Intermediate from Graeme Watson
Parsnip – Pinnacle (Medwyns)
Stumps – Sweet Candle (Medwyns/Shelleys)
Potatoes – Kestrel/Maxine/Winston/Pixie (ESP)
Tomatoes – Cederico (Shelleys)
Cherry toms – Sakura and Sungold (DT Brown)
Onions and leeks – bought in plants from top growers
8oz onions – Vento (Medwyns)
Shallot – Hative de Niort (new stock hopefully!)
Celery – Red Star (Medwyns)
Beetroot – Red Ace (Shelley)
Cabbage – Globemaster (Medwyns) Kilaton (DT Brown)
Red Cabbage – Autoro (Shelley)
Runner beans – seed from a secret source!!!
French beans – Declic (DT Brown) & Purple Speckled (own saved seed)
Peas – Cavalier (DT Brown)
Marrow – Blyton Belle (own saved seed direct from Les Stothard breeding line)
Pumpkin – sent off for some from the grower of the recently crowned european record (should be fun!)
Courgette – Ambassador (DT Brown)
Lettuce – Sunny (DT Brown)
Brussels - Abacus (Medwyn)
Caulis – bollocks to caulis!!!

Final countdown

There’s nowt like a bit of pressure! My last show (Sturton) is a week on Saturday and because of that it ‘gets’ just about everything that’s left. That means I can often make multiple entries in carrots, parsnips, tomatoes, cucumbers and dahlias. So far I’m up to about 70 entries which means a lot of planning so I have to make sure everything is ready in plenty of time for loading on the Friday night. As staging is from 7.30am until 10am it doesn’t leave a lot of time for error so I need to be up and away by 6am. There’s nothing worse than having something go wrong when you have so much to do so I will have to make sure everything is packed safely and neatly and that my flowers are well supported for the 54 mile journey.

With so many entries I like to stage my flowers first as they take more fiddly effort to get right and it’s best to spend the time at the beginning rather than rushing at the end….that’s when stems can easily get broken. If I have to rush it can be with the veg at the end as they usually just need plonking down on the benches!

Sturton is unusual in that many entries are staged on the grass outside the school…….root crops, pumpkins, leeks, marrows, cabbages and caulis. I’ve never come across any other show that does this but it does allow them to spread things out and is fine as long as it doesn’t rain. In all the years I’ve been going I can only ever remember one drizzly day. And come 10am I’m usually bushed and ready for a kip so my routine is always to buy a paper at the village store, park up for a bite to eat and a read and then to get my head down for a couple of hours until I go back after judging. It’s a well run show and this year will be the 121st annual show which is some going. There are only a handful of shows older than that in the whole country!

And as I have many, many more 2nd's or 3rd's than 1st's from Sturton down the years it just goes to show that gaining a red card at Sturton really has to be earned.

Notes and plans for next season

1) Don’t give precious growing space to caulis. You’ve never been able to grow them successfully. In fact, you’re shit!
2) Build wooden retaining walls for the parsnip and long carrot drums and do away with the old metal frames.
3) Grow Pinnacle parsnip and sweet Candle stump…..definitely…..no if’s, but’s or maybe’s!
4) Buy new peat for the spud bags…..but start soon so you can be sieving over winter.
5) Get some cow muck dug in this autumn to the brassica and onion beds.
6) Put netting over cabbages. Only thing that stops cabbage whites.
7) Dig up some shrubs and trees up the garden for extra space for growing dahlias in.
8) Erect a proper f*cking bean fence…..preferably one that doesn’t go ‘ I can’t stand it any longer’ and falls over at the first breath of wind!
9) Growing broad beans for August and September shows…..it can’t be done! Stop it!
10) Aubergines…..waste of effort. Stop it!
11) Grow ‘Vento’ small onions if you can find some seed. Saw some at Littleover and they looked very good for the under 8oz class.
12) Pluck up courage to have a go at the NVS Midland Championships at Malvern in September 2009….probably in tomatoes & parsnips only for now….don’t go mad at first!
13) Get the polytunnel sorted once and for all so that you can grow better quality onions and leeks.
14) Sell the kids….they’re expensive.

It's not all coming up roses!

Despite my success with parsnips, tomatoes and stump carrots this year every season has its disasters and you need to learn from these as much as you do your triumphs. This season’s undoubted disappointment has been my potatoes which I’ve always been quite strong with in the past. They got away well, initially the top growth looked very strong but within a few weeks the foliage started to go yellow and then died back entirely. I suspect it’s because I didn’t put enough feed in the bags (if I’m honest I didn’t put any in!!!) and thought I’d rely on the roots quickly getting through the bottoms and into the well rotted manure I’d put in the trenches beneath them. Alas, t’was a lesson learnt! Also, I used the same peat I’ve had for two years albeit I thoroughly sterilized it after last year’s blight problems. However, I’ve emptied out all the bags onto the garden borders and I’ll get new bags in for next season and make a fresh start. Also, I tried to grow 4 varieties this season (Kestrel/Winston/Nadine and Malin….I still have to harvest Malin…they were the only ones that carried on growing) but I’ll reduce that to 3 varieties next year as I simply haven’t got the room.

My caulis have also failed yet again. Despite applying insecticide at soil level after planting the majority were attacked within days and had to be pulled up, the roots having been eaten entirely by maggots of cabbage root fly. Next season I shall have one last try with the variety Clapton which is supposed to be clubroot resistant and I shall also invest in some collars to see if I cannot deter the root fly. If they fail again I shall just accept I cannot grow caulis and not bother again.

After initial good growth my celery succumbed to some strange rust like disease on the outer foliage. After I picked off the worst affected stalks they looked very spindly but a week has gone by now and they seem to be picking up. Hopefully, I’ll have a couple of heads to display at Sturton, but they’ll be nowhere near what I was hoping they would be.

My pot plants haven’t exactly run away this year either. I really do grow too much and at times I’m like one of those plate spinners trying to stop them crashing to the ground. Each year I keep saying I’ll cut back on the amount of different things I grow so next year……………..errrrr…….

Caulis not great

All of my caulis have now been planted. I lost most of my first planting of the variety 'Bruce' to the maggots of the cabbage root fly despite a squirt of insecticide at the base of each plant after planting. I replanted those stations with plants of 'Cornell' and these seem to be ok. The bed I'm growing them in is probably not ideal as it doesn't get sun from late afternoon but we shall see.