Hedging your bets!

People often ask me what date do you sow such and such veg if you want them in perfect condition in time for a show on a particular date. Around 1pm when judging commences! The answer can never be a simple one. The vagaries of the great British climate mean no two seasons are remotely the same, even if you manage to fend off all pest and disease attacks. Your watering and feeding regime will vary slightly from season to season depending on your circumstances. And of course we all forget about Lady Luck whose services we need now and again. Some seasons she may give us a huge dollop of luck, and others she's concentrating on helping your competitors, the fickle two-timing bitch.
 
Timing is never really an issue with onions apart from needing an early in the year start in order to give you enough time before the show to get the skin ripened. Shallots harvested in June can be stored in boxes until the week before the show when you can tidy them up and tie the necks. The colour and condition will actually improve as the show season progresses. Leeks will sit quite happily in their beds as long as you give them plenty of moisture and weekly maintenance of the flags and barrels. The long roots can cover a show season from August through to November from a single sowing. Potatoes harvested in July can be shown well into late Autumn if you cut the haulms back and leave the pots for a week or more before emptying out so the skins harden, storing them in dry compost until you need them for washing the day before your show. Even tomatoes can stay firm and fresh looking on the trusses for several weeks since the introduction of vine ripe varieties such as Cedrico.
 
Timing becomes more important for summer crops and legumes such as cucumbers, lettuce, beetroot, french beans and peas. I shall be going into peas in a lot of detail from June as I attempt to bench a set of 12 at this year's National when I will be sowing them 85 days from the show date. With the other crops I find you sometimes need to hedge your bets and sow little and often. Globe beet need sowing about 15 weeks before your show, turnips and lettuce need about 10 weeks, french beans 10-12 weeks, kohl rabi 8-10 weeks, radish 4-6 weeks....in theory. In reality I very often find some globe beetroots will get to size after 8 weeks while others hardly get past golf ball size. Once your french beans are an inch or so long they seem to get to the required length very quickly and will soon go past their best, so you need several plants to choose from and keep picking them regularly to ensure you have plenty to choose from in the two or three days before the show when you can pick when they get to your required length and store in a cool place. If you let one pod go past its best I find the plant is never quite the same again. Lettuce will hold in good condition for a week or two but it's best to sow and grow a tray of a dozen or so every couple of weeks.
 
So, keep a detailed diary, count back from your show date and make sure you sow accordingly, but be prepared to sow another batch a week before and another one a week after if you want to be absolutely sure of having it all right on the night!
 

Fertilisers

I'm at risk of becoming Dave Thornton's groupie as I attended another lecture given by him on fertilisers on Monday night. It's a heavy subject but I'd recommend you attend such a talk if you get the chance so that you can better understand your plants needs. Again, I shall be divulging as much as I can about what I learnt over the coming weeks and months but for now it's important you get any fertilizers onto your beds at least 2 weeks before you plant or sow. A good compound fertiliser with equal NPK is as good as anything for now but you may want to consider applying extra nitrogen. Dave felt that we amateur gardeners don't pay enough attention to nitrogen depletion in the soil, as it's the one ingredient that gets leached out of the soil during winter and which is most easily taken up by plants. Plants requiring a lot of nitrogen will need much more than others....things like cabbages, brussels, celery and leeks. A surprising veg that also needs a lot of 'N' is beetroot.

Like I said, more on this subject soon. At the weekend we went away for a short break in Norfolk but whilst I was there I took the opportunity of visiting the garden of Trevor Last in Norwich. If Andrew Jones, Sherie Plumb and John Branham are (in no particular order) the Man Utd, Chelsea and Arsenal of veg showing then Trevor is the very highly respected Everton, always capable of getting a result. He specialises in long carrots, parsnips and celery these days. I was gratified to see that he wasn't that far advanced in his preparation, although his parsnips, growing under enviromesh and polythene covers were about an inch high. When we returned on Monday afternoon the first of my parsnips had pushed through the compost surface. His onions were on a par with mine but his leeks were probably an inch in diameter which is pretty awesome at this time of year.

Top tip from the Macemaster

I went to a lecture given by top amateur grower Ivor Mace last night. Best known for his chrysanths and huge onions he's also been a national champion with carnations, roses and daffodils. One excellent tip I picked up was the way he mixes his potting mix for chrysanths and I shall be bearing it in mind this weekend when I do my parsnip mix. He recommended mixing the light ingredients first, such as the compost, vermiculite and the nutrients and getting them all thoroughly mixed before adding the heavier ingredients such as the soil (and sand in the case of parsnips). It certainly makes sense and should ensure a more even distribution of the nutrients.

Soot water

My daughter's boyfriend has been knocking about an old fireplace in their new house and has managed to bag me up a sack full of soot. I thought a photo of some dirty old soot wouldn't be too inspiring so here is a better one!............





















Anyways, it's an ingredient that the great tomato grower Chalie Maisey recommends for giving tomatoes a deep red colour and also to keep the calyces looking freshly green. For the last few years my later tomatoes have been showing a yellowing calyx which can lead to downpointing at the highest level. As I say, this only tends to affect my toms later in the showing season and as Malvern is relatively late show I did notice this year that my fruits showed this fault against the winning ones which were all nice and green. Obviously the top growers must have some secret and I'm reliably informed soot is the answer. Here is set of my tomatoes from Sturton a couple of years ago (albeit a winning set) which is held the week after Malvern. The yellowing calyces are quite visible.

Apparently you put the soot in a hessian sack and immerse them in a water butt, using the resultant solution in turn with your usual feeds. I may experiment with 50% of my plants being fed with soot water and 50% not to see if there is really any discernible difference.

Cabbage carnage

I found this photo on the t'interweb and it made my blood boil. If I had come back after judging to find my cabbages mutilated in such a way I would have thrown a monumental titfit and as you all know I'm a placid kind of fella. I know why this has been done but it is totally wrong. This subject was in the gardening press recently with some judges calling for every exhibit to be cut to check for various internal diseases. Can you imagine what a showbench would look like in the wake of such a ruling? Thankfully, the NVS is leading the way on this and is now advocating that not even beetroot should be cut as there simply is no need to check for internal white rings with today's modern varieties.

The way I see it is there is a clue in the word 'showbench'. It is a SHOW. The public come to see veg that has been grown to perfection. There may well be a bit of rot deep within that perfect onion you see marvelously presented but so what? You cannot see it so what's the problem? At that moment in time they are the best looking. In another month the rot may well have grown and rendered the bulb useless. At a beauty pageant the winning beauty queen is the best looking bird on that day. You don't cut her in half to see if she has the start of lung cancer or something and then award the title to the minger who came 2nd do you?

Waste not want not

Apparently, the Jeremy Vine radio show has been discussing the subject of urinating on your compost heap all week in the light of this story........

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/gardening-blog/2009/nov/13/composting-urine

I've actually been doing this for many years. I pee into an old watering can and then pour it onto my compost heap. This helps kick start the composting process.

However, a word of warning from past experience.....don't wait until the watering can is full. It can take several weeks to fill a standard watering can by which time it smells worse than Venus Williams' tampon.

Pointing of vegetables

I've been asked a question about the pointing of vegetables. This can be a confusing issue to the novice but needn't be.

The first thing you need to know is that there are two pointing systems that judges can apply, either RHS rules or NVS rules. There are subtle differences between the two but for most village shows I think it's fair to say RHS rules will dominate.

There are some veg that are deemed worthy of 20 points as these are considered the 'top veg' that are the most difficult to grow. These are:

Long carrots
Parsnips
Caulis
Trench Celery
Long leeks
Pot leeks
Onions (over 8oz)
Potatoes
Peas
Tomatoes

These are the ones that most showmen will choose from when compiling collections but if they're struggling with the quality of one of their 'dishes' they may well turn to one of the 18 pointers such as aubergines (rarely), long beet, stump carrots, cucumbers (indoor type), and shallots

In truth you only need to worry about the points value of veg when you're making up a collection. When judging individual classes a judge will be comparing your dish against all the others and it's rare for them to go to the bother of pointing each dish. Instead they will have in mind the attributes that make up a good 'dish'. (p.s. this is just a term and not all veg are actually displayed on dishes!)

For instance, consider long carrots. The 20 points are broken up as follows:

Condition 6 points
Size & shape 4 points
Colour 5 points
Uniformity 5 points

The important thing for all novices to realise is that size only warrants a fifth of the total points available. The overall quality takes up the other 16 with condition being the most important consideration. As I said there are some subtle differences in the NVS rules but I think their philosophy is much the same.....quality counts!

I'd advise novices to get hold of the RHS's 'Horticultural Show Handbook' ISBN 0-906603-73-0.

Some 15 pointer veg include broad beans, french beans, globe beet, cabbage, capsicums, outdoor cucumbers, lettuce, marrows, squashes, 8oz onions and sweetcorn.

If you start to show at NVS level beware as some collections call for 20 pointer veg only. I'm sure the NVS boys will put me right but I'm not sure if tomatoes have been downgraded to 18 points and exhibition shallots upgraded to 20 points under NVS rules.

Watch the weather forecast

Don't be lulled into a false sense of security. We can still have hard frosts up until the 6th June which is the date I lost a lot of beans and lettuce about 15yrs ago. I did my best John Terry impression that day (remember how he cried like a big girl's blouse after last season's Champions League Final?).

Get ready with plenty of fleece or newspaper to protect things like emerging potato shoots.

The best advice I can give anyone......

......is to use slug pellets especially at this time of year. The organic brigade will have you crushing eggshells, bulk ordering bran and cheap beer and generally doing naked moon dances at midnight. But a quick flick of the wrist (easy tiger!) with a tub of slug pellets will ease all your worries.

This is particularly important with your long carrots. Yes I know they're growing in sharp sand and that slugs and snails don't like crawling over it but quite frankly that is complete hippo shit. I lost several last year so I know it to be true. Slug pellets cause total death to any slug or snail that even thinks about munching your prized roots.

Pests and diseases of vegetables

Had a talk at our Hort Soc last night on the above subject from Dave Thornton, General Secretary of the NVS. I made a note of some quite interesting points so here they are in no particular order whatsoever!

• If your spuds are suffering from potato leaf roll virus (which is becoming more of a problem apparently) dig up the affected plants and tuber immediately and dispose of.
• Sterilise water butts as they harbour all sorts of nasties, particularly in warm weather. Use a dash of Jeyes Fluid, Armillatox or cheap bleach which is just as good.
• If saving your own seed sterilise it with a powdered fungicide.
• Fungicides containing Pencanazole are a good general fungicide, which works on leek rust also.
• Dip brassica roots in a hydrated lime solution prior to planting to ward off clubroot.
• Perlka is another product for the control of clubroot.
• Leek and onion thrips are totally different to flower thrips. An insecticide from the garden centre advertising that it kills thrips will probably be the wrong sort therefore. Use a product called Dynamec and apply with a high pressure spray jet.
• Blight.....forget Dithane as most blights are immune to it. Bordeaux Mixture is about the best product available to the amateur grower.
• Do not use Growmore for potatoes as it is often bulked out with lime.
• Vitax Q4 is the best feed for spuds.
• Most of the above mentioned products are not on general sale. Seek out agricultural suppliers such as CWG in Melton Mowbray.

Found this on t'interweb......very good!

How many times have you been to a Flower Show and said to yourself, “I’ve got as good (or better) growing in my garden!” Have you ever considered showing, but felt slightly intimidated by the exhibits on show? Does the name Horticultural Society frighten you? Fear not, look no further – we have a 10 point plan for you to blow away the mystique!

Read the Schedule – carefully!! Know what is being asked for in the relevant classes which interest you.

Note dates & times – for receipt of entries, staging exhibits, times of judging, Show opening & closing for uplifting exhibits.

Consider your entries – complete the entry form with care.

Avoid making too many entries – (tell me about it!) Enter items you are reasonably sure you can stage well; trying too much can be stressful.

Prizes are not everything – there is more honour in exhibiting well in a strongly contested class without winning a prize than getting a ticket where there is little or no competition. There is however also good educational value of a high standard exhibit in a poorly contested class. (It’s not your fault if there are few entries)

Encourage others – you might know someone who is a successful grower of flowers or vegetables, an excellent baker or photographer or have children who could enjoy the involvement. Persuade them to ‘have a go’.

Allow ample time for staging – avoid a last minute rush, when mistakes can be made. Show Stewards are always available to help you, just ask.

Pay attention to detail – label entries if possible, make sure entry cards are in position correctly at your exhibits and are the right class. Note numbers of specimens required and pay attention to uniformity in exhibits.

Be a sporting exhibitor – the judges decision, whatever it may be, should be accepted with good grace. Seek out answers to why your exhibit didn’t win, calmly & patiently. The Show convener will always help you here. Do this & you will achieve better results another time.

Enjoy – take pride and pleasure in your exhibits - Show what you grow, share what you know! I

Come on & have a go – we know you’re good enough.

Tomato update

My tomatoes last year were the best I'd ever grown and came about because of my desire to beat my friend Wendy at long last! There was only so much ridicule I could take each year! I therefore devoted far more time to them than I had ever done previously, to the detriment of some of my other veg, especially runner beans.

Having 'nailed' them last year this year should be easier.....but it hasn't been so. Because I had poor germination (only 6 came through on the original batch) I had to hurriedly sow some more in late April and these are well behind the others.......but I should get a longer cropping season because of that, and give me a better choice for the October shows. In many ways it has also helped my onions because they are all growing in the same greenhouse border......if I had planted all 14 or so tomato plants together the onions would now be getting swamped and therefore not ripen properly. So, by accident I may have stumbled upon the way I will grow them in future years.

I use three different feeds in alternation as soon as the first tomato is about the size of a pea. The first is the usual tomato feeds you can buy anywhere. The other two are liquid feeds I make from fermented comfrey leaves and nettle leaves that have rotted down in buckets of water for a few weeks. The 'stews' are sieved off and the resultant liquids bottled up. A splash of each feed is put into a watering can at each watering.

I water and feed into half lemonade bottles sunk into the soil next to each plant. This way the water gets straight to the roots and the topsoil is kept dry. This is because tomatoes hate dampness and much prefer hot, dry conditions. This is especially important nearer show time as any moisture in the greenhouse could settle on the ripe fruits and cause what are known as 'ghost spots' which are basically tide marks.....you would be downpointed for this on the showbench.

Again.....as with everything involved with 'showing' it seems an awful lot of effort to go to but when the judge is looking to decide between 2 or 3 'dishes' things like that can make all the difference.

3rd in a one horse race!

This pic shows my 3rd prize winning entry at a show a few years back. Nothing unusual in that perhaps except it was the only entry in the class ! How can this be so you may wonder?

Well, on this occasion the judge decided that my entry wasn't up to the standard he would have expected to find had the class been better supported. He considered that under normal circumstances I might only have merited a 3rd place and judged accordingly.

This is a contentious issue as some people think it's not fair on newcomers to the show scene who may be put off from entering in the future due to the perceived humiliation of such a decision. Luckily, I was happy with the decision as the celery wasn't in brilliant condition and had a spot of celery heart rot. As a reasonably experienced exhibitor I was half prepared and would even have accepted disqualification.

Just because you may be the only entry in a class don't expect to automatically come back to a 'red card'.

Showing Tips

I'm quite proud of this..........I've prepared it for inclusion on the website of Sutton Bonington Show.



http://www.calypso.fsnet.co.uk/Guidelines%20for%20Exhibiting.pdf

'Pointing' of vegetables

Before entering a vegetable exhibit in a Show it is important to know what a judge will be looking for. Too many people are blinded by size and will put the largest specimens into a class with no regard to other factors such as condition and uniformity. The overall quality of an exhibit should be the most important consideration to such an extent that ‘if you wouldn’t eat it don’t show it !’ Gone are the days when the biggest onions automatically won. They will if they are grown well and form a nice even set.........but your smaller ones can and should win if they are in a better condition and are more evenly matched.

The points awarded for parsnips are relevant in understanding what is required. Below are the points awarded under the guidelines of the Royal Horticultural Society and the National Vegetable Society. It is sometimes advisable to check which rules are being used for a particular Show, although for most village events it is not necessary to worry about it too much.

RHS points - Condition 6, Uniformity 5. Size and Shape 5, Colour 4, Total 20 points.
NVS points - Condition 6, Uniformity 4, Shape 4, Size 3, Colour 3. Total 20 points.

In both of the above, size is awarded relatively few points out of the total 20. With this in mind it can be seen that no-one should be put off from having a go just because they think they can’t compete with the ‘big ones’.

Parsnips are one of the '20 pointer' veg. Others are long carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, runner beans, large onions and cauliflowers. The inference is that these veg are more difficult to grow to perfection than say cucumbers (18 points), cabbages (15 points), beetroot (15 points), or 8oz onions (15 points). When a judge is comparing different types of veg in collection classes it would be very difficult, for instance, for cherry tomatoes (12 points) to beat regular size tomatoes unless the cherry toms were near perfect and the regular sized ones hadn't been grown very well, were in poor condition or were poorly matched.....but it can be done!

Presentation of the exhibit can very often make a difference. I have beaten what I would consider to be potentially superior exhibits because not enough attention was given to their preparation. This includes not washing carrots and potatoes, not taking off dead or decaying foliage and displaying an abnormally large vegetable with two other good but smaller specimens and hence losing marks for uniformity.

The pic above shows my winning onions at a recent show. The ones that come second each year are about 4 pounds each and many people struggle to understand how mine keep winning. But luckily the judge knows what he's doing (some don't) and recognises that the larger ones are poorly matched, badly ripened and unevenly weighted.

Read the schedule carefully before entering. Too often people will only put 5 tomatoes in a dish if 6 are asked for. If it asks for carrot foliage to be trimmed to no more than 3” then do so. A judge will be quite within his rights to award a NAS (Not as Schedule) card and first time exhibitors could easily be turned away from what can become a very satisfying and rewarding hobby.

1 flower 1 veg

Enough of football for now.....I'll spend the winter months showing different classes and how to stage in them.

A popular class at a lot of shows is the class for a single specimen flower and a single specimen vegetable. (Some shows go further and also have a single specimen fruit). They are usually very popular as most people will have a spare veg or bloom that they can enter into this class without having to match it up to other blooms or veg. However, it is important to try and select your best single flower or vegetable if you want to have a chance of a prize card.

The judge will compare your dahlia (or whatever bloom you choose) against other dahlias so it needs to be as fully developed and blemish-free as possible. Therefore, flowers such as dahlias/chrysanths and gladioli would be the best ones to go for as these are deemed harder to grow to perfection than say marigolds/sunflowers and other annuals.

Similarly, what are termed '20 pointer' vegetables such as carrots/parsnips/tomatoes/potatoes etc are looked upon more favourably than lower pointed veg such as cabbages/peppers/beetroot etc. (I will explain the pointing of veg in my next post).

The pic above shows a well contested class at Littleover Show this year. The superb gladioli and potato near the camera won.....my humble dahlia and carrot staged next to them didn't even warrant a place.

It's SHOWTIME!

Sorry for not posting for a few days.....had a situation at work that has caused some stress. You wouldn't believe how difficult it is to sack someone these days ........even if they're a lazy, lying, incompetent idiot who steals from you! Ah well!

Ok.....first couple of shows this weekend and round 1 of the great tomato challenge with my friend Wendy. 2 weeks ago I had world beating tomatoes....a few of the better ones have started to split but hopefully i'll have more than enough to choose from. I need about 36 in all to cover 6 classes at 2 different shows.....a tall order.

Other things have 'arrived' on time but others just haven't quite made it. My cucumbers need another 3 or 4 days for instance. In a previous post I mentioned how I protected the 'cus' with sheets of polystyrene to prevent the spiky foliage scratching the skins. Above is a pic showing this.

Both shows need to be 'staged' on Sunday morning and they're some 20 miles apart so a lot of rushing around is involved. For that reason, all of Saturday will be spent washing or preparing the exhibits, checking and rechecking the schedules and loading the car up ready for an early start on Sunday morning. I'll only be able to get the stuff for the first show ( which is at a village about 5 miles away) in the car so once I've staged there it's back home to reload for the other show in Leicester.

On Saturday morning I will 'pull' my carrots and parsnips. After months of work you finally get to see if they are any good or not, as until that point you just cannot see whether they are any good. They might have 'forked' halfway down making them no good for exhibition purposes.

I'll let you know how things went in the next few days.

The varieties I'm growing this year......

When exhibiting at a show make sure you read the schedule carefully and put the correct exhibit in the correct class.

Also, pay attention to detail. If the schedule states carrot foliage should be trimmed to no more than 3" make sure you do it. The judge may 'NAS' you (Not As Schedule!) if you don't and you will be disqualified. All those months of effort will have gone to waste for the sake of a few seconds concentration.

The pic above shows my winning 'stump-rooted' carrots at last year's Leicester Show. There is no need to go to great lengths......keep it simple. I see some exhibitors on the local scene employing all sorts of presentation methods but all you need to do is choose 3 well-matched, clean specimens laid neatly side-by-side.

The best varieties for showing usually have to be sourced from specialist suppliers as they are not on general sale. The ones I am growing are as follows:

Long carrot - New Red Intermediate
Stump carrot - Ulysses & Gringo (see pic)
Parsnip - Countess
Potato - Winston/Kestrel & Amour
Runner Bean - Enorma
French bean - Purple Speckled
Leek - Vin Throup strain (bought as young plants)
Onion - Shomaster (grown from sets)
Onion under 8oz - Tasco
Cabbage - Charmant
Red Cabbage - Huzaro
Shallot - Hative de Niort
Beetroot - Red Ace
Tomato - Cedrico
Cucumber - Jessica
Cauliflower - Amerigo

My veg patch

Right then....here goes.

As you can see from my profile and picture below I grow and 'show' flowers and veg. I've been doing this for over 10 years now mainly at small local shows but I am hoping to start showing at National Vegetable Society Shows in the near future.

A common misconception people have is that the 'big veg' they see at shows are no good for eating. I can assure you that they are as good as, or even better than any supermarket veg or stuff that you would grow on your own plot. When 'showing' any veg quality MUST be as important a consideration as the size and uniformity. The only difference is that 'showmen' use seed that has been re-selected so that they naturally grow bigger than the seeds you might acquire from the usual seed sources.

We've just returned from a 2 week holiday in Scotland and The Lakes and this is always a nervous time for me as I have to rely on others to look after my produce while I am away. Apart from a few 'holey' brassicas everything seems to be looking good so I'm hopeful of some good results once the show season starts at the end of August.

My growing regime differs to anyone else who grows veg in that I have to 'time' all my stuff to 'come good' at roughly the same time.......from late August to early October. I grow all my veg in my garden which is over 300' long, but I only have quite a small veg patch at the bottom. I'm trying to take over more of the garden for veg growing but domestic politics mean that I have to leave some flower border space and lawns for the kids to play on.

Also, the way I grow means that we have an absolute glut of veg during September (rejects not destined for the show bench that is LOL) so family and friends benefit from fresh veg that month.

I'm am NOT organic as I do use sprays ........although I do try to companion plant where possible. If I didn't grow tagetes in my greenhouse my tomatoes would be infested with whitefly......I don't know what it is about tagetes but they really do work. Otherwise I reckon growing organically = dead veg and flowers. I hate the way organic growers bang on about 'saving the planet' etc and look as me as i'm Beelzebub !

Anyway....enough for today......attached is a pic of my veg patch from the middle of June.