In it to win it (part 2)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3rd for courgettes 'Ambassador'.

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

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

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

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

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

Malvern 2012 Part 3

I was really disappointed with the long carrot class at Malvern and wished I'd not put all my good ones in at the National Carrot Championships at Harrogate as I feel I'd have been in the tickets. When I visited the 2007 National at Malvern Graeme Watson's winning long carrots were breath-taking, certainly the best I've ever seen, and there were several other great sets there that day. (Whatever happened to Graeme Watson?)

This year Bob Oliver took the honours with this winning set.

I don't know Bob personally but in my humble opinion this set wouldn't have got a look in previous years, although there weren't any outstanding sets so I don't think the judge had a great deal to work with. These were quite small and a bit rough-skinned but it just goes to show you have to be in it to win it. The stump carrots on the other hand must have given the judge a nightmare as there were well over 30 entries on the benches. Medwyn made reference to this at the prize giving that many of the entries out of the tickets would have won in other years, there really were lots of crackingly good sets. I put a set in last year that was unlucky not to get a ticket and if anything I put a set in this year that was even better but I didn't stand a chance. A first time National Champion was George Graham on his 67th birthday and he was rightly chuffed as punch. As you can see Medwyn is still a menace to bathroom scales everywhere!

Poor old Mr Stocks....he couldn't repeat last year's triumph and got another 2nd.

On the Malvern side of the tent Mark Perry who supports Liverscum but isn't a bad lad considering won with these nice Sweet Candles. Sorry mate.....the photo quality on these is shite.

I actually benched a set of Dorian peas on the Malvern side in the any other veg class. I didn't take a photo unfortunately as they were a magnificent set and didn't deserve to be thrown across the marquee by Mr Stocks at the end. Just to prove that I talk complete bollocks about peas when I say no-one this far south can grow Show Perfection this late in the year, the winning set came from my pal Mark Roberts who is another 30 or so miles south of me.

Mark had an excellent championships, coming second to John Branham in the large collection, 2nd in the celery and winning the 3x2 collection class. I keep threatening to go and visit his set-up and I really must make time to do it before too long. I'm told it's very impressive.

I was pretty chuffed with my set of 3 although it only come equal 17th out of 22 entries!

Sherie Plumb has dominated pickling shallots for years but was beaten this year by another lady Clare Walters. At prizegiving Dave Thornton couldn't read his own writing and announced her as Clark Walters. Prick.

John Jones from Wales won the large onion class as well as the long beet class for the second year running.

I was hoping to bench a set of long beet but after pulling the first couple on Thursday morning I soon realised they were an utter pile of shite, the huge tops not translating into impressive roots. I snapped the fuckers at 2 and a half foot anyway. I shall not be wasting any more time growing long beet in the future, using the drums for more long carrots instead. I can only admire someone who can extract roots like this.

We had a lot of fun on the Saturday afternoon as several of us met up with our fruit cakes and vegetable animals. Leesa was adjudged to have the best fruit cake which is the first time she's ever beaten me. This was only because I made a mistake with the recipe and published one that I'd never baked with before. We decided to allow all exhibitors to stand around Fiona Shenfield while she judged the class, baying and hollering as she did so. I believe we may have hit onto something and all veg shows should be judged in this gladiatorial manner also!

Mo Robinson won the veggie animal class with a cat fashioned from a red onion.....

.....although Frank Taylor's spud spider was a triumph of engineering as he was heard drilling the holes in the spud for the spider's legs in the hotel bathroom that morning. Ian Stocks' shitting sheep got second but really should have been NAS'd as the class was for a vegetable ANIMAL (Singular!!)

My own marrow and onion snail was controversially unplaced although dressed in that garb it was the least of my fucking worries!

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Triumph and disaster

At last we've had a couple of dry days and that hot yellowy thing in the sky even put in a few sporadic appearances. It only served to illuminate a growing disaster on the leek front, as I went through the bed and counted 10 that had definitely gone to seed. This equates to just under half my crop and if any more go then I won't be making many entries of leeks at shows this Autumn. They certainly haven't gone short of water and I think in view of tales of woe being recounted to me from all four corners of the land this is most probably weather related. A very warm Spring followed by a deluge of water over the last month or so, continuously low-ish temperatures, dull, miserable days have all contributed to sending the plants out of kilter so they don't know whether they're coming or going. You have to be philosophical about it and at least we've got some early leeks for the kitchen now!

One of my four cucumber plants wilted over night and closer examination revealed a rotting stem close to soil level. This could be cucumber wilt which I was recently fascinated to learn is a virus that overwinters in the belly of a little striped beetle so it could be that I lose the other three plants as the beetle traverses across the greenhouse border. I haven't spotted any beetles and to be fair when i've lost plants in the past it has only ever been one rather than all of them, so perhaps I just have a considerate little chappie who wants to be my pet? When I find him I shall pop him in a box and call him John.

I had a few Sungold cherry toms ripening in the conservatory. HAD! The conservatory is temporarily an Oscar-free zone as I also have my onions in there for now. Whilst Leesa and the kids were watching a recent deluge from the conservatory door, unsupervised little fingers were helping themselves to my ripe Sungolds behind their backs. Quite funny now I grant you, but woe betide if it happens in 2 months time......

I said a few days ago that I was going to leave my shallots in a pile and leave them to it, but the recent cool, moist weather meant that the tops just weren't drying out properly and I was concerned they could all rot if I didn't do something about it. So I topped and tailed them, having first checked that any decent ones had rounded up and any flat sides had disappeared. I was still left with quite a quantity of split and misshapen ones that will be used for pickling or cooking.

However, all is not doom and gloom. I have a decent selection of pickling shallots this year although I doubt very much I'll be giving Sherie Plumb, Andrew Jones, Ray Bassett or Ray Sale sleepless nights. Despite harvesting at 27mm I still had quite a few that swelled to larger than the 30mm maximum, a few that just about went through the ring with some pressure, and others that were evidently still at the 27mm mark. Weird.

And my Dorian peas have germinated so I'm hugely looking forward to showing Andy Murray how to beat the odds at Malvern in September. Remember Kipling Andy! I may have joked about winning the National with peas last year, but this year I really, really mean it.

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?

Onwards, upwards, outwards and backwards.

I've decided that shallots are evil little things and that anyone who can grow them to the highest standard deserves to be tied to a dunking chair for they are surely practitioners of witchcraft most foul! On checking mine yesterday I found that a couple had already started to go out of shape and these were ones that I got up first so it obviously doesn't follow that they start to go out of shape when the new growth has stopped. Perhaps some just have it in their genetic make-up? I managed to harvest about forty at 48mm diameter so hopefully I'll be left with plenty to make a set or two. I'm also trusting that the red tinge to most of them will go once the loose skins and first complete guard skin are rubbed off come show time. Purple skinning has been much more prevalent this season and indeed if you are exhibiting in a marquee and they are left overnight this colour will start to appear even on the brownest of bulbs unfortunately. It is actually a fungus.

I have been keeping a close eye on the weather forecast as conditions are getting very close on occasions to being perfect for potato blight. When temperatures are above 10degrees C and there is 80% humidity for two consecutive days , then conditions are potentially perfect for the blight spores to start bouncing up into the atmosphere and landing on your precious potato foliage (and outdoor tomatoes!). This is what is known as a 'Smith Period' (fine name but a shite disease). As rain is forecast again in the next few days, with temperatures in the upper teens I took the opportunity of a dry evening to spray my spud foliage as a preventative measure. As the Irish once found out to their cost, when your spud foliage shows the first signs of the dark blotches signifying they have been infected then your spuds will be dollops of ground snot within days. As Dithane is no longer available to the amateur gardener I used Bayer Disease Control which several growers reported good success with last season. I used a single sachet of the blue/green powder in a one litre sprayer and gave all my spuds a good covering, making sure I also squirted into all the nooks and crannies of leaves lower down rather than just spraying the canopy. I shall repeat this process every 10 days whilst conditions persist.

It has been one of the worst summers I can remember for the large black slugs. Walking down the garden on damp evenings there are literally hundreds of the damn things, some as big as mice. I've read that these large slugs are actually carnivorous but I don't believe a fucking word of that and have been liberally scattering slug pellets across the plot. On a Facebook Allotment Group I belong to one chap called me 'clueless' for advocating the use of slug pellets, which I shall remember with huge smugness when I'm tucking into my roast carrots and spuds this autumn and he's no doubt crunching up more eggshells, stockpiling branflakes and nursing his bad back from his nightly rituals of bending down to pick them up by torchlight. Fucking twat.

I did buy some Slugclear which you water in, with the intention of using it on my celery. Last year, because of the huge amounts of water you have to give to celery, I found that slug pellets were being washed away and I did suffer a few stick nibbles, so I felt Slugclear could be the answer. However, when I read the instructions (for once!) on Slugclear I observed that you should NOT use it on edible crops. The 'not' was highlighted in bold black letters with the address of an undertakers in the smallprint beneath. Now, I can't stand celery and neither can the rest of the family, but my mother-in-law does so despite the very real temptation I decided to stick to pellets for now. My celery is still looking good and about 20" tall on average. I have been feeding Chempak no.2 at half strength and dribbling calcium nitrate solution into the plants to prevent celery heart rot. A regular spray of Decis prevents the celery leaf miner rendering them useless for show.

My onions are averaging 14 1/2" diameter ***(I mean circumference of course!) and put on a 1/4 of an inch overnight. I have a dilemma in that I now don't know whether to pull them at 18 1/2" which is what Dan recommends for the 1.5kg class or let them grow bigger and have a go at the large onion classes. I think I may be biting off more than I can chew by doing that so I'll be content with 3 pounders this season and try and aim for good uniformity for the 1.5kg option. And still no sign of bolting, white rot or botrytis. Surely this cannot continue?

My long beet 'Regar' were all thinned to one per station a couple of nights ago but I fear I made my sowing way too late to have any chance.

And as well as having some long rows of globe beet 'Pablo' I have also sown 16 stations in cored holes in sand, filled with the same mix as for the long beet (it was left over!). Mark Hall grows all his globe beet this way and he certainly does get some nice round roots with long taps. I've always felt it was a lot of trouble to go to but I'm giving it a go in this small trial and see how we get on.

Not sure I'll be able to exhibit any cherry toms this season as little eyes have found them and finds it very funny to flick the flowers!