Squeaky bum time

On Monday evening I thought I’d get the schedules out for Malvern and try and work out what classes I wanted to enter at the National and over on the Malvern side too, as (in my head) entries had to be in by the end of this week. That’s when I nearly soiled my silky Calvin Klein knock-offs, for the closing date for the National was Tuesday. After dancing around the kitchen for a few moments effing and jeffing I eventually calmed down and quickly emailed my entry off to the show secretary Pat Brown who acknowledged receipt the next day. Damned spiffing bird she is too, very hard working and all shows need a Pat Brown or else they’ll die out.

I wasn’t going to enter another trug class ever, ever, ever, after coming second last season with a trug that needed a squadron of the Royal Engineers to lift the fucking thing but as I was writing my entries on the Malvern entry form then ‘5A’ somehow managed to dribble out of my pen and onto the paper. Why the thundering fuck have I done that for fuck’s sake? Ah well, when it’s in thee blood tha’kno’s! It’s now called The National Trug Championship no less and i’ve already started assembling it in my garage by placing a marrow and some onions to get a basic structure and more veg will be added as it becomes available during next week when I start lifting for Malvern. The key is to get as much of the big stuff placed so there are no big gaps and they support each other during transportation. ‘Flowery’ bits such as small tomatoes, brussels and chillis can be added once it’s on the showbench to fill any smaller gaps and then any holes are filled with parsley to hide all the foam packing beneath. Hopefully I can go one better than last season when I was actually disappointed to only come 2^nd. I’d thought I’d got it but hey ho, I won one or two other things elsewhere so I shouldn’t grumble. I've since been told the judge wouldn't have liked my big marrow at the front!

A first for me is going to be the Giant Veg Championships held on the other side of the showground, where I’ve entered a carrot in the heavy class. It’s actually one of my ‘quality’ carrots that has grown way too big, some 11 inches around. When I tried to pull it last week thinking it might do for the 6x1 class in Wales I couldn’t budge it so it has probably carried it’s weight well down too and has a lot of surface area so it’ll take a bit more excavating. It’s proved to me that New Red Intermediate can certainly be used for the giant heavyweights where they will dig the seedlings up early in its life and cut the tap root to encourage forking. I have a vested interest in this class now I know that a certain grower in Wales has a potential world beater and has used my seed. The Giants go down to 6^th place so you never know I might get a ticket.

I’ve entered cucumbers at the National and I finally have a few likely suspects growing well having not exhibited a cucumber yet this season. Indeed I cut my first cu this morning before coming to work, carefully wrapped it in clingfilm and popped it carefully in the fridge to await another couple of the several other suspects to catch up. I made a cardboard template to check the lengths against over the next week. When the National was last held at Malvern in 2012 I broke my National duck by coming 4^th (below) with 3 large fruits but I’m going for smaller ones this year as they can lose a bit of colour if you leave them on the plant too long. I’m also straightening the fruits as they form and it’s best to do this at the end of the day when they’re a bit less turgid. You need to be careful in your manipulation mind. Think wanking a sore knob and you get an idea of how gentle you have to be. In theory you no longer have to exhibit them with flowers still intact but everyone still does so if yours falls off just stick it back on with a tiny dab of superglue. Every fucker still does it, some even glue totally fresh fucking flowers on!

I’ve also gone and entered celery where you need a set of 3. Having gone through all the remaining plants on Monday and removed any split outer sticks they are all looking quite healthy and relatively slug damage free although I find it almost impossible to grow them perfectly clean, as do many other growers it appears. There was a very nice set of celery at Carmarthen grown by Jim Thompson but I don’t think I was a million miles from the other ticket winners. However, at the last Malvern National celery was an incredibly well supported class as shown below, so anything less than exceptional isn’t going to get a look in.

I have entered stumps at Malvern on both sides of the marquee, more of a just in case than anything else. My stumps so far this season have been awful, I’d actually go as far as saying completely shit, either pointy, too thin or having large holes in them. I have a 2^nd bed growing that were set away a week after the first and these have appeared much healthier all season for some reason. The shoulders seem bigger too so who knows. My main aim is to get a set of 4 for the Millennium collection and anything else would be a bonus, so if I also get a set of 5 for the National and/or a set of 3 for the Malvern side then I’ll have been a very lucky boy.

One class that I won’t be entering is for 5 onions 1-1 ½ kg as I simply cannot get them ripe. 2 are ok and will appear in my trug but the rest are as green as the day I lifted them. Pity, as well ripened I reckon I may have had an outside chance of a ticket and indeed one of the ripened ones went into my Welsh 6x1 entry and scored quite well.

I have once again entered the 3x2 class, where you need 3 different 20 pointer veg, 2 of each. Back in 2011 at my first National I came about 14^th out of 20 with long carrots/parsnips and spuds and if I’m honest I was a country mile away from the tickets, along with many others I guess it has to be said.

I think I was 11^th out of 20 or so at Malvern in 2012 with long carrots/parsnips and celery but it was certainly a higher scoring exhibit.

7^th out of 14 at Harrogate would appear to be a similar result but I think my parsnips were the highest scoring of all the parsnips in the class so I was getting closer. Weird lighting at Harrogate!

At Dundee in 2015 I was a mere half point out of the tickets but I don’t feel this exhibit was as good as my two previous efforts.

This year I’ll be going for long carrots/parsnips and celery as per Malvern 2012, so I’ll be hoping to go that final push and get into the tickets. If my long roots score as highly as they did in Wales then I might just do it, but this class is always a hugely popular one so it’ll be a massive achievement if I could.

And finally, Dan Unsworth texted me in a tizzy the other day as he’d just woken up from a dream where the blonde one in Abba was giving him a blow job, and he was understandably annoyed that he’d not finished the dream. Dan had only woken up because his beard was tickling his bollocks.

Almost time for lift off

For most of us the show season is now well and truly upon us and there’s diddly shit you can really do to alter the colour of the cards you’ll be winning, if any, apart from continuing to keep on top of the usual pests. My first show is not until next weekend, my local show, and for the first time for as long as I can remember I won’t be entering runner beans or cucumbers. That’s because I only sowed them with later shows in mind and after thinking I may even have overcooked those I am now thinking I’ll be getting some on the bench at either the Welsh Branch, or Harrogate, or Malvern, and certainly RHS Westminster in early October. The first fruits are now being allowed to develop on the cucumber plants, variety Carmen, now that they have ‘turned the corner’ at the eaves, where they have started to be trained horizontally to allow all fruits to hang downwards. This keeps them away from the foliage thus avoiding scratching and means you can manipulate them straight if they’re bent.

The runner beans are now forming although I’ve never seen plants with such little foliage. They do look quite bizarre but hasn’t seemed to affect the amount of pods. I could possibly get a set for my local show next weekend but I think I’ll wait a few more days to get a set up for the NVS Welsh Branch show in Carmarthen at the Welsh Botanic Gardens. You can start picking runner beans 5 or 6 days before the show as soon as they reach the size you require (I’m going for 14 or 15” plus the tail) and wrap in a damp cloth against a wooden batten to keep them fresh and straight and pop them in the fridge. Not too cold mind.

I have a row of Exhibition Longpod broad beans growing away against canes at an angle and the beans are about 2-3” long now, so no good for my show this weekend. Bit of chocolate spot but a Signum drench soon stopped that In its tracks. There is a class at the Welsh for 4 sets of legumes, but as I don’t grow peas I’m fucked, so these are destined for the kitchen I fear, but it has been a useful exercise to gather info on growing them to show if I ever get back into it in 20 years time.

Some of the first kohl rabi to be planted out are starting to swell so these will be too early for Malvern, but it looks like the 2^nd or 3^rd batch will probably be spot on, and I’m hoping the Kref in my polytunnel will be one of them. The variety in the photo is Kolibri and there are another 2 later sowings of this alongside, so my dream of becoming National German Turnip Champion are very much alive and well.

At Harrogate & RHS Westminster there are classes for chilli peppers and I have lots to choose from, albeit they are still green but starting to turn red soon I reckon. My banker variety Hungarian Wax (below) always gives me plenty of choice to make a selection from, but I’m not sure about a 2^nd one I’m growing this season called Cyklon. A case of the reality not quite matching catalogue photo I fear.

With 2 weeks to the Welsh Branch my dream of getting an entry at the British Tap Root Championships is hanging in the balance. My long beet are still quite small at the shoulder, barely an inch and a half diameter, but if they carry that diameter down for 10 or 12 inches then they may look ok. My parsnips, variety Victor, are also starting to concern me as they haven’t responded to the Chempak 8 feed yet and a number of them are looking quite spindly and therefore the root should also be quite small. At the beginning of the month I felt they were 3 weeks ahead of last season but they don’t appear to have grown much in the meantime. I do have quite a few large looking specimens so I’ll be saving these to try and get a set of 5 at the National, so I’ll have a decision to make as to which ones to pull for a set of 2 at the Welsh for the Tap Root Class. Decisions, decisions!

I’ve been picking tomatoes, variety Zenith, for the best part of 2 months, when I’m usually just starting to pick my first fruits so they are well ahead compared to previous seasons. It means I’ll have plenty to choose from for the next 2 weekends, including the Welsh where there are lots of top tomato growers to test yourself against. If I manage to get a ticket there I’ll be well chuffed.

For my local show I’ve been growing a fuchsia variety called Auntie Jinks that I rescued from one of last year’s hanging baskets. After taking advice I pinched out all shoots until 11 weeks before the show, then snipped off all the flower buds until 5 weeks before the show and I have to say it is going to be spot on in a week’s time once all these buds burst into flower. I haven’t grown a fuchsia for a show for several years, and I have found all the cocking about snipping and debudding quite therapeutic after a hard day at work I have to say. If you’re planning to show a fuchsia at your local show do make sure you tidy the plant up a bit, take off any foliage that is turning yellow and any flowers past their best, and give the pot a good wipe. There’s nothing that fuck’s a judge off more than getting his hands dirty on muddy pots.

So, over the next few weeks it’s going to get quite intense as you’re prepping for the show, but do take time out now and again to smell the coffee. It should be enjoyable, not stressful and you don’t want to miss little gems like these cyclamen I noticed growing at the foot of my conservatory wall today. Spiffin’.

And finally Dan Unsworth took to Twitter this week to strongly refute claims that he’s a gay dyslexic. Personally I think he’s in Daniel. And finally finally, the French man who invented beach sandals sadly died this week. RIP Philippe Phillope.

Patience is a virtue, envy is not

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where my shit's at

There really is nothing like competitive growing to bring out the inner wanker in people, and this is non more personified than in the worlds of giant veg and chilli peppers. I’ve been dipping in and out of various websites and forums devoted to these two aspects of horticultural competitiveness for a few years and they probably have higher percentages of illiterate, whiney tosspots than any walk of life I’ve ever encountered. Reading some of this garbage kept me highly entertained during my recent holiday, especially where it sudDENLY CHANGES INTO CAPITAL LETTERS FOR NO APPARENT FUCKING REASON.

Chief fucktard in the world of oversized and largely inedible vegetables is a twat called Scott Robb from Alaska who has the world record cabbage to his name, and who insists on calling it a sport not a hobby. Gareth Fortey has been running Giantveg.com for several years and does a brilliant job raising the profile of the hobby, but his website and Facebook page are constantly sniped at by this mullet-haired moose-shagger with his constant bleats about rules and regulations over what should or shouldn’t be allowed in weigh-ins. Giant veg should be the easiest of competitions to judge, for if it’s the longest or the heaviest then it wins, it aint rocket science, and indeed it’s why lots of limited growers who were useless at growing proper veg, like Unsworth and Bastow for instance, gave up and converted to trying their hand at ‘giants’. However, not for Scott Robb are cabbages with lots of offshoots, or tomatoes and marrows that have grown from fused fruits on a single stem, for these shouldn’t be allowed to stand in his egotistical opinion. Truth is the twat is just afraid of losing his world record to someone from the Motherland.

In the world of hot chillis the arguments are even more bizarre, with some growers even offering to fight others. For fuck’s sake, a chilli is a chilli is a fucking chilli but there are Facebook groups with thousands of members all trying to outdo each other by developing the hottest chillies that look like my dead grandad’s wizened willy. Recently a chilli pepper called Dragon’s Breath hit the news claiming to be the world’s hottest at 2.1 million Scoville units whatever they are. Quite why anyone would want to eat a chilli so hot it could give you a heart attack is totally beyond me, but someone claimed to be selling them and managed to convince many of the gullible fuckwits to part with 15 quid per plant. This sent some anonymous clown called Ashy Moko to go on a crusade to shame these growers, and he appears to have devoted his recent life to this task and involved university professors and other reputable tradesmen in the process, embarking on an incomprehensible paper and email trail to prove his point. He has hundreds of followers all proclaiming him to be their hero. Jesus H Christ….if you spent 15 quid on an unproven plant, you’re a thick cunt, get over it, file it in the life’s experiences folder and get a life.

Anyhoo, after 5 days away from the plot it’s always a relief to come back and find everything is still ticking over nicely, although there are always one or two issues that need immediate attention. After taking advice from Gareth Cameron on 1 ½ kg onions I decided to cull them at 17 ½”circumference to be on the safe side. This meant at least a couple of them would probably reach this size whilst I was on holiday and I would be relying on the mother-in-law to do the honours, which she was absolutely terrified about. As it transpired however, growth slowed meaning she didn’t have to wield the secateurs and I was able to lift the first one on my return Friday night, with another one following Sunday evening and another one now ready for lifting tonight. I have another 5 or 6 swiftly approaching size so I’m hopeful of staging a set of 5 in the 1-1.5kg class at the National in late September, something I’d never have imagined possible on my white rot infested plot, but thanks to my double pot system I’ve proved to myself there are alternative methods to produce quality veg. Once the bulb reaches the size I require I strip any split skins back and remeasure, leaving it to grow a bit more as you would have undoubtedly reduced the size by the stripping process. Once lifted I cut a long neck which will be reduced after tying, trim all roots flush with the base and give the bulb a good clean to wash off any dirt. When dry they are stored in wooden boxes on coarse sawdust shavings, in my garage with sheets of fleece draped over them to ripen slowly. I don’t bother talcing onions anymore because I always felt a bit gay doing it. Job’s a good’un.

My spuds have been a big disappointment this year, the foliage having struggled for several weeks, suffering from yellowing at first (probably magnesium deficiency) and then dark blotching which has rendered them very messy looking and they haven’t reached a good size at all so I’m not hopeful of there being a decent crop of tubers beneath. Those that I have exposed appear to be riddled with scab so it’s going to be touch and go whether I have any to show this season. I’ve now stopped watering with a view to lifting them in another couple of weeks, although we had a biblical downpour on Friday night, drenching the peat which may in itself present problems for harvesting when you’re trying to get the skin lenticels to close down and the skins to start hardening. Growing spuds in bags is certainly not something I am going to miss when I finish with showing later this year.

My onions for the 250g class are mostly all up now and after topping and tailing as for the large onions they are tipping the scales at just over 250g which should be perfect once prepped for show, as they will lose a few grams in weight. They all look identical at this point but as sure as eggs is eggs they’ll all ripen to different shades of brown and picking a set of 3, 4 or 5 is never as easy as it should be.

My celery are looking healthy despite the usual slug nibbles. One thing I’ve discovered is that Slugclear is a total waste of money and doesn’t appear to work for me so it’s back to a carpet of pellets from now on. With 7 or 8 weeks to show time I just need the plants to bulk out now and it’ll soon be time to switch to a Chempak 8 feed for that process.

Now is the time your French beans should be popping through for the mid and late September shows, as they need 8-9 weeks from showing to showing. I’m going to be growing these in the tunnel where my onions were, but first I’ll need to give the bed a thorough drenching as I’d been allowing it to dry out in order to reduce the chance of botrytis on the onions. The variety that everyone grows is one called Hawkesbury Wonder and I’ve been saving my seed for a few years after Ronnie Jackson kindly gave me some. At all NVS Branch shows this season there is also an extra class for a bean supplied by Marshalls called Satelit with big prize money so I’m also having a go at that one with a view to getting an entry at the Welsh Branch show. Feedback from other growers indicates this is a very fast grower.

My Carmen cucumbers have been struggling to get going in the tunnel,  due to the heat I’m assuming, and I have lost a few to stem rot but they appear to have sorted themselves out now and I am training them up the wires to the tunnel frame where I then train them horizontally. I will pick off all small fruits as soon as I see them as I want a large plant before I allow any fruits to develop further. The idea is for them to hang down from the roof supports away from the foliage so they don’t get scratched. It also makes them easier to manipulate so they are nice and straight, and facilitates the measuring process also. Here is a photo of my tunnel from last year.

In other news there were recently appeals for gardeners to count the amount of butterflies in their gardens. I posted the attached on my Twitter feed.

Somehow the Butterfly Conservation knobs got wind of this and gatecrashed my account. I think they know my position on their fluttery little twats now.

Survival

Well now, I've been suffering since Thursday from what I believe is quite simply the most severe case of manflu that has ever been recorded. Today my voice went and meant I was unable to take phone calls from customers. Bliss! Quite how i'm still alive however is a miracle and is testament to my amazing fitness and powers of recovery.....plus a wife who tolerates my pathetic whinings and runs around after me! Along with torrential rain it meant I was unable to do any gardening and I fear certain things may have got away from me as a result. I have one cucumber in the fridge at 17.25" having left it too long on the vine despite my intention not to do so. Due to my weakened state of health I only got around to cutting it on Sunday. The others are straining just over 16" but I doubt they'll catch up as the weather is so cold and miserable.


I've been cutting french beans at 7" since Sunday as I find they start to go beany much after that and I'd rather have a smaller set showing no bean bulge than hope for a longer set that I may never achieve. Quite how certain growers get beanless pods up to 9" is beyond me. Perhaps heated greenhouses? I mentioned this method before of storing beans on the incline with their stalks in a shallow pool of water. Kept in a darkened garage it does seem to keep them in good condition for several days meaning you can pick many beans to give you a lot from which to make your final choice. A word of warning....try and make your final choice at home before travelling when you are less stressed and only take a couple of spares. That way you can just lay them out with confidence at the show knowing they are your best set.

I am still very unsure how my long beet is going to turn out. The recent rains and high winds have absolutely battered the foliage so thank God all tap roots have to be displayed with 3" leaf stalks only. This is the scene that greeted me at lunchtime today.

I'm really looking forward to trying to get the long beets up. Of all the tap roots long beet are the ones most likely to snap and the few that I've grown in the past have often snapped at the 2' mark when I've pulled them a la parsnips and long carrots so I'm going to go to extra lengths to try and extract them complete from the bore holes. I have been advised to sink a bore pipe next to each root and take out a plug of the growing medium. Using a hose pipe I shall try carefully washing the soil from around the root and hopefully it will fall into the hole and come away intact the full depth of the drum. They're not huge shouldered but long beet only need to be about 3" diameter at most to look their best as long as they carry their weight down the root for the first foot or so. I've never exhibited a full dish of long beet before so this one is a totally new one for me if I manage it, which is a tad ambitious as I've only grown two drums of 7!

So at the moment I don't quite know which of my 15+ entries for Malvern will actually make the benches (if any!), but that is no matter because if the weekend is anything like last year's National at Llangollen we'll have a very enjoyable weekend with our NVS friends, swapping tips, ideas, not taking things too seriously and generally ripping the piss out of each other. On the NVS website's members only forum we are having a fruit cake competition and several growers and their wives/girlfriends/hangers-on going to Malvern are entering this most prestigious event of the weekend. Despite a certain amount of bureaucratic red tape that was originally thrown in our path (and which we have decided to ignore and indeed ridicule) the cake-off is still going ahead. There is also a class for a vegetable animal and I have a plan for an animal so lifelike it would fool Bill Oddie. To me this is what being a member of a Society is all about and whilst I would love a ticket of any description in the National Championship classes I am totally looking forward to meeting up with the friends we made last year and making new ones from the many, many people I speak to on the forum all year. One young chap who lives in Ireland is even going to enter next year's championships by sending me his spuds via the postal service to stage for him!

Several growers have used the forum to great effect to win prizes at Branch and National Championships by asking advice over the Winter months and then putting it into practice. I've said in the past that before the internet we would have to get by if any problems arose and then come show time you would be able to ask the winning growers how they achieved their success. Now we can talk to each other all year via the various online forums, emails and texts and quickly resolve any problems you come up against rather than having to wait until showtime. So if you want to improve your produce and you haven't already done so make sure you join the National Vegetable Society where growers are only too willing to help you out! However, one bit of advice i'm never divulging is my prize winning fruit cake method!

I don't like harping on about it.....

..........but this was my 'winning' exhibit in the 'BBC' at Harrogate at the weekend.

I didn't bother with a photocall with Dan or Paul this year after some of you contacted me last year to say that they have the sort of faces that can make an onion cry. In fact, after beating them yet again and each having to hand over ten pound notes to yours truly they both looked as if they'd been ducking for apples in a chip pan.


I scored 44.5 points, including a 17 out of 20 for my celery which at the time I felt was very generous indeed. However, as I'm not exactly a celery expert I still don't quite know what the best attributes the judge is looking for so I may be doing myself a disservice and they could well have been worth 17 points, I just don't know. I guess as long as the judge is consistent then the correct result will always come out on collections and I was gratified to notice that I was only a half point outside the tickets which went down to fourth. It's a good job me, Paul Bastow and Dan entered otherwise there would only have been 5 entries.

I thought my celery was a bit on a small side because when I pulled them up I had to take off a few stalks that had split round the back of the plant where I couldn't see when I uncollar them to tend them, thus reducing the diameter quite a bit. However, they were fresh and clean with no sign of pest damage, definitely no heart rot and no blistering on the concave inside edge of the stalks which I understand is a sure sign of an aged specimen that is past its best. When I returned from Harrogate I made sure I went over the remaining plants, uncollaring them and discarding any split stalks. Hopefully there will enough time for the plants to swell out a bit more before Malvern where I have entered a set of 3. I shall also be using a pair in the 3x2 class at Malvern, although all three pairs in the National Championship version have to be from the 20 pointer veg (celery/potatoes/long beet/large onions/parsnips/leeks and long carrots). This isn't the case at Harrogate where I used 2 stump carrots which are 18 pointers.

It was noticeable that there weren't any very large parsnips anywhere at Harrogate. I don't think the winning ones in the main class would have got a look in in normal years but of course if you're not in it you can't win it so the exhibitors that managed to get an entry benched deserve credit. Having said that I reckon I might have come at least 2nd if I'd bothered to enter the class, as Dave T came 2nd and his parsnips were much smaller than mine were on the collection. I cleaned 4 parsnips for Harrogate, 2 for the 3x2, one for the 6x1 and one for the tap root class, and I was really pleased with the condition although in other years they would have been much bigger to go with it. As it is, it appears everyone has suffered the same problem this season, when they just seemed to stop growing from July. I have quite a few to select from for my set of 5 for Malvern, as well as a pair for the 3x2 class.

I'm really looking forward to having a go in only my 2nd National Championships. Exhibiting a set of 5 parsnips and 3 celery at National level signifies another step up in my development and something I only dreamed about when I first started showing nearly 20 years ago. Constant improvement is always my target and with that in mind I am aiming to try and get a single 5th placed ticket next weekend, seeing as I only won a wooden spoon last year! Even that seemingly modest aim is a huge feat when you start ticking off the names that will be present, so a 5th place is a great achievement. Last season the likes of John Branham, Trevor Last, Gerald Treweek, Jim Pearson, Jim Thompson and Derek Aldred were all out of the winning positions as new names such as David Peel and Owain Roberts made a breakthrough, so they'll be no doubt trying even harder to turn things round at Malvern. Throw in champions past and prsent, Medwyn, Ian Simpson, Ian Stocks, Dave Thornton, Mark Hall, Peter Clark, Jeff Parsons, Mark Roberts, Jim McCartney, Gareth Cameron, Ronnie Jackson, Chris Hewlett, Bob Brown, Graeme Watson, Ray Bassett, Ray Sale, Vin Throup, Allan Young, Ron MacFarlane, Dave Metcalfe as well as the female superstars Sherie Plumb, Helen Vincent and Sue McCall and you can see how much of a tall order it is to get in the tickets.

For Malvern I've got 4 nice cucumbers growing so close together that you can barely get a sheet of paper between them. I need 3 for the class.

I also have an absolute glut of french beans maturing, having grown the plants in large pots and bringing them into the greenhouse for the past three weeks to keep the pods from getting spoiled.



These are both very strongly contested classes so I'll have my work cut out to get near the tickets. For now I'll have to content myself winning the BBC and chugging along with the Deliverance Duo from deepest, darkest Yorkshire. I must admit though that it was a tad embarrassing seeing them get their wallets out and handing over the tenners to me, the worthy victor. I really think we shouldn't have to demean ourselves like this in future contests, so with this in mind I was just wondering boys.......next year, can you not set up some sort of direct debit?

Bummer!

It took me a while but I finally managed to bench a set of runner beans and cucumbers at a high level of showing at Harrogate over the weekend. Whilst I wasn't placed I was very happy with how they looked and they certainly didn't look to be in the wrong company.

My cu's were much bigger than everyone else's but as the only two I had ready I had to go with them. They were 17" long and about 3" diameter.

One of these had been cut 5 days previously, wrapped in clingfilm and stored in the fridge whilst I waited for the other one to catch up. The one cut earlier kept in great condition but the second one didn't quite catch up in length, being about 3/8" short so I would have lost points for uniformity. One also had a strange wiggly line etched into it about an inch long at the flower end which I think was the work of a tiny snail I found when the fruit was quite small, so again I lost points on condition. And I managed to retain the flowers without having to glue them on, although I was convinced this wouldn't be the case as the roads around Harrogate appeared to have many potholes. I managed to hit every one in the dark and I was felt certain they they would be shaken off before I got to the showground. I need a set of 3 for Malvern and have 4 contenders all growing away nicely, about an inch or so different in length, the longest being 14" already. I won't leave the longest to grow so long or so big this time (I'll settle for 16"), so that I have plenty of time to let the others catch up, now that I know the clingfilm trick works nicely.

My runner beans weren't world beaters but Dave Thornton was impressed and said they were a tidy set.

Well done to my chum John Ellis for coming 4th in this class. I'd actually started picking my beans nearly two weeks before the show, storing them at an incline on a pane of glass set in a tray with the stalks only in a puddle of water. You couldn't tell the difference between the ones picked earlier or the day before so that's another important tip to be used in future, my thanks to John Trim for sharing this one. I have entered the National at Malvern but as I'll need 15 beans here that may well be a tall order. I settled at 15" rather than trying to be clever and getting longer beans that were showing signs of being 'beany'. I have quite a few about 12" long on the vines so I hope to start cutting in the next few days.

My french beans 'Prince' are all starting to come at once and this is another class i've entered at the National. I was speaking to former champ Ronnie Jackson over the weekend (he supplied me the seed) and he felt my timing was cock on. What I need to do now is to keep banging the water into the pots so that they don't get a check in growth and start to run to seed i.e. go beany. I won't try to get superlong pods, and think i'll settle at 8", cutting them when they reach length and storing in a similar manner to my runners.

This is the set that won at Harrogate, benched by my pal Paul Wlodarczak.

Paul had a stunningly successful weekend, winning the tap root class and coming a tantalisingly close 2nd in the National Carrot Championships. He let slip that he wasn't intending to show next year due to a prior family commitment. Needless to say he is now very tempted to have a go at Harrogate next year when it stages the National Championships. How can you even begin to think about not doing it next season Paul?

Peter Glazebrook once again broke the record for the heaviest onion at Harrogate, raising the benchmark to a staggering 18lbs 1oz. Peter also won all the other 'giant' classes so he had a very lucrative weekend.

Dan came 3rd in the heaviest marrow class and I was very amused to see that he and Paul Bastow put 'Simon' down on the variety cards. Morecambe and fucking Wise they aint!

I couldn't resist having a quick photocall with my namesake at the breakdown however!

Dan actually spent Sunday continually rolling his tongue back up into his mouth and causing concern to the security guards looking after Carol Vorderman, after he took hundreds of photos of her backside! My only comment is I'd like to see the size of the shoehorn used to get her buttocks into these jodphurs! I've seen less dramatic dead heats in a zeppelin race! I know arse botox injections are all the rage these days but I think she may have overdone it a little!

Making concrete plans

Despite this season being the worst in living memory for growing veg you really can't be too downhearted, especially when you see the paralympians doing their stuff against all the odds. No man has any right to feel sorry for himself when you compare yourself to them. For that reason I will always try and enjoy the actual growing part and see each season as a different set of challenges, and if you get something on the benches then all well and good. If you don't, then as my Scottish Man Utd supporting pal Frank Taylor would say....there's always next year! (He says that a lot actually as his wife keeps beating him).

Similarly, winning is not the be all and end all......EXCEPT when it comes to next weekend's Annual Bullshit Bloggers Challenge at Harrogate for which the clock is now ticking! I could happily accept my wife beating me, but to even consider being beaten by the Yorkshire ferret fiddlers makes my knackers quiver. All summer they've been going on about the amount of Yorkshiremen winning medals at the Olympics but they soon shut up when I pointed out that most of them had to be trained at Loughborough University! Similarly both the Yorkshire backward boys have learned all they know from me so beating them should be easy enough.

This year's BBC is being contested in the 3 x 2 class, where you have to bench 3 sets of veg, 2 specimens of each and unlike the National they don't have to be 20 pointers so you can use good 18 pointers such as tomatoes, stump carrots and cucumbers. I already know what my set of 3 will consist of, and it should be good enough to beat the banjo playing hicks. Each set of 2 veg will be scored by the judge, giving a total points value so even though we're unlikely to get in the tickets (like last year in the 6x1 class) at least we can deduce a 1-2-3 from our own little competition. If anyone else fancies competing it's 10 quid in, winner takes the pot. You don't have to be a blogger, just talk complete and utter bullcrap like we do!

Here is the winner of the class in 2010 grown by Ian Simpson.

Harrogate also holds the UK Carrot Championships where the requirement is for 3 stumps and 3 long carrots. I came a creditable 8th last season so I'll be having another crack this time around. I've only grown 21 long carrots so I may well have to pull half of those to get my set of 3, although the others may well go in my 6x1 and 3x2 entries. I used Ian Simpson's simple mix this year so it will be interesting to see if I've improved on the efforts of recent years. The tops aren't great but the shoulders seem promising.

There is also a class for 3 tap roots, chosen from a parsnip, long carrot, long beet and stump carrot, one specimen of each. These type of classes are a great idea for using up those single specimens that don't match any others and would otherwise go to waste and for that reason it's a very popular class. In 2010 tap root specialist Graeme Watson won with this entry.

I'm going to have a crack at runner beans at Harrogate as my bean fence is heavily laden with developing beans, so they should be cock-on for next weekend. I shall start cutting them in the next few days so that I have plenty to make my final selection from. I won't try and get them too long, but will settle for 16" so that they are fresh and haven't started getting 'beany'. You only need 9 so it's a lot easier than the National where you need 15.

Having snipped off all developing cucumber fruits until I had large plants, trained 4' vertically before they started being trained horizontally, my plants are now absolutely dripping with fruits, so these should be coming good for Harrogate and Malvern also.

The trick now is to make sure they don't come into contact with the foliage as a small scratch now will be a large blemish when the fruit is fully formed. I pack bits of polystyrene sheet between some fruits as they develop to protect them from getting scratched.I also need to remember to duck when i'm in the greenhouse so that I don't knock the flowers off, because I shan't be able to stick them back on with superglue 'cos that is like cheating dude!

I've now just about settled down after our holiday and back into the humdrum daily routine of normal life and work. I've mentioned my bowel movements on here from time to time and I know you all like to keep up to date with them so I'll just mention the iffy toasted sandwich at Marrakech Airport that caused me some close calls at the weekend. There were certainly some interesting psychedelic botty yodels I have to admit. Still, I would rather have it that way than the other, and I well remember the severe constipation I used to suffer from many years ago when I worked with my dad in the building trade. It got so bad that in the end I had to go to the doctor. He advised me to stop wiping my arse with the cement bags.