Malvern here we come

Apparently there’s more than one way to skin a cat. There is also more than one way to promote the interests of a society or body, and the power of the internet is sometimes overlooked when it comes round to handing out the recognition gongs. So no doubt when the AGM’s happen across the land there will be lots of shiny medals handed out to the usual uninspiring jobsworths whilst those with alternative ideas and a bit of gob get overlooked as usual. Fucked if I care. The so-called power of the internet is also taken way too seriously by some folk who get upset over a throwaway joke so they can sod off and find someone else to judge their show from now on.

Anyhoo, in terms of Cape Canaveral we’re now at the launchpad and climbing the ladders up to the rocket, ready to commence countdown (What a totally wank analogy, must do better!). I have already lifted a lot of the 39 varieties of veg I’ll be using in the trug which I have no doubt will collapse the benches at Malvern. If I don’t win it will probably be because it isn’t technically a trug, more of a wheelbarrow without wheels. However, I have come a long way since I produced this trug 10 years ago for my local show.

Every veg on it was red (or purple-y), as a sort of homage to the World’s greatest football team. Happy days now that Manchester United (did you know it's now 10,000 days since Liverpool won the League?) are once more leaving the rest of the Premier League in their wake and playing the sort of orgasmic footy we’ve been used to for so long. I once started plans to grow blue veg in honour of Maggie Thatcher, Britain’s greatest prime minister but decided a trug full of Blue Lake French beans, the only ‘blue’ veg I could think of, probably wouldn’t have got me very far.

My 250g onions have been weighed and sorted for the sets I need and boxed up so all I have to do now is load and go, and it will be easy stress free staging at the show. Outside chance of a low ticket with those possibly.

Tuesday night I lifted my globe beetroot as I need a set of 3 for the Malvern side and a 4 for the Millennium class at the National. They had been growing in a variety of deep beds allowing me to excavate a very deep hole beside them in order to get as much of the fine tap root up as I possibly could. Having pulled over 30 I was really struggling to sort my best set of 4 and didn’t feel any of them cut the mustard but just as it was getting dark I gave up and went with 2 sets plus a few for the trug and trudged up to the house to clean them. Once under the tap and cleaned up I have to say they didn’t look too bad so that cheered me up no end, and they are now immersed in water to which a good dash of vinegar and salt has been added. I’ve always done this as I was once told it helps to enhance the colour but in all seriousness I think it makes absolutely no odds whatsofuckingever, and all it does is make you crave some fish and chips. I won’t trim the foliage until I’m at the show.

I have also sorted out all the black display cloths I need for the various classes, had them washed and ironed and put into plastic bags with a label on each bag saying which is for which class. Another labour saving tip to avoid last minute panic. When I started showing over 20 years ago I did most of this the night before a show and still found time to bake a few cakes. The cakes were shit but I found time to bake them nonetheless. Talking of cakes a few of us are having highly serious mince pie competition at Malvern, to be judged by Medwyn Williams. We had a very similar one last year with rock cakes and despite baking the best looking, best tasting, and most evenly distributed fruit-wise I was inexplicably placed last due to some underhanded cheating by my so-called fellow competitors. This year I have a secret plan to ensure I will emerge triumphant however.

Last night I had all sorts of plans to lift and prepare a variety of vegetables but around 3pm I got a call from the Daily Mail who had found a photo I had posted on Twitter of the large ‘quality’ carrot I’m going to enter into the Giant Veg classes at Malvern, and “did I have a small child I could borrow to make it look even bigger?” To cut a long story short when we got home from work (collecting my eldest grandson en route) we spent over an hour having our photos taken with the offending root, so watch out for yours truly in tomorrow’s DM. Page 3 would be appropriate I reckon. 

This set me right back and all I had time to do was to get my stump rooted carrots up, which turned out to be the biggest disappointment since I tried removing the shell from my racing snail to make him more streamlined only to find that it actually made him more sluggish. They were crap. Utter crap. I got an ‘ok’ set for the Millennium Class but it is only ok at best and this is one crop I shall be glad to say goodbye to.

One bit of good news is I have a reasonable entry in Class 26 for kohl rabi. I managed to get a couple of sets, one quite big and one smaller but more fresh looking and that’s the set I decided to go for. I just hope I’ve trimmed them correctly but I’ve left everything long and will have to have a quick look at everyone else’s on Saturday morning to see if I need to cut back a bit further.

And one piece of remarkable luck I had over last weekend was my wife offering to wash my carrots for me in order to help out. She’s never offered to do that before so Tuesday night I pulled a reject one with a large split for her to have a practice on. After no more than 20 minutes she emerged from the bathroom with a carrot that looked way better than anything I’ve ever done myself, even allowing for the split. She had even removed all the fine root hairs and used a soft toothbrush on the crown. What a woman. I just hope I can give her some roots of real quality on Friday morning for her to do her magic with. Amazing, considering all this comes less than a week after she threatened to leave me because she reckons I always exaggerate things too much. I was so shocked I almost tripped over my cock.

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.

Pulling the trug plug

A few years ago I vowed never to produce another trug exhibit after coming 3^rd at Malvern 4 years running. There were a couple of guys including Allen Young that we just couldn’t get the better of despite my wife’s best creative efforts, then when we finally managed to beat Allen a guy called Mike Smith came along to win the class and keep us in 3^rd. Mike would spend all night constructing his magnificent trugs and fully deserved his wins, but for us it was a lot of effort for very little reward.

Then a couple of seasons ago they revamped the class into ‘The British Trug Championships’ with enhanced prize money as a result, always something that will get my juices flowing.  I didn’t dare ask my wife to do another so last September I secretly made plans to do one all on my ownsome, and set about manufacturing a sturdy wooden trug from old bed slats that I had refused to throw out, as I noticed that our trug always seemed a little bit smaller than those of our main competitors, but I was buggered if I was going to spend 30 quid on a new one! I carefully built it up on our kitchen worktop during the day before Malvern, adding veg to it as it became available during my preparations for the other classes, and when it was finished I have to say I was dead chuffed with it, especially as I’d done it all on my own with no input from my good lady. That was, until the very point I came to lift it off the table to put it into the car and nearly snapped my spine in half. It was ridiculously heavy, even with two of us carrying it and I hoped the judge wouldn’t try and lift it.

When it was staged I genuinely believed we would win so it was with some disappointment to come back to a bright blue 2^nd place ticket and a rather over the top ‘Reserve Best in Show’ award. I felt the winner wasn’t quite up to our standard overall, the amount of varieties of different chillis on the winning exhibit maybe giving the impression of more variety perhaps swinging it. Or perhaps I was just penalised for having the audacity to stage a shipping container! Mine was also perhaps a tad over the top and lacked subtlety so in the cold light of day I think a correct decision was made. Whatever, I sure aint never doing another. I’m now officially retired from trugs. Honest.

Success at last!

Fair play to Leesa, she doesn't give in. A deserved first prize ticket for a trug at a major show at long last! Thanks to Dickie 9 Centimetres for taking the photo!

Trugtastic

By popular demand here are some views of Leesa's trug which secured us 3rd place for an annoying 4th year running. We just can't seem to do any better despite this being the best one we've done by a long chalk. Most years we've lost out to a Mr Porter and Alan Young who have always contested first and second. Whilst we did manage to beat Alan this year a Mr T Smith who beat us into second at Harrogate decided to come down to Malvern and took the honours meaning we stayed in 3rd place. This class has really improved over the last few years and there were a good half dozen or more entries to go with the dozen or so at Harrogate so people really are having a go. Jim Pearson in particular was amazed at the standard of this class at Malvern.

I've told Leesa she can give up now if she wishes but she enjoys doing them and is secretly determined to get that elusive red ticket I reckon. A little tip.....the leeks in my trug were oblong in shape as they had gone to seed months ago! By turning them on their sides and burying them no-one can tell!

Trug-a-lug, keep the sand in the tub

The trug class at any show just seems to get more and more popular. There were 13 entries at Harrogate this year and when Leesa placed ours on the bench I think we both felt we would be out of the tickets for once, and got on with our other exhibits. However, we were very wrong and came back to a 2nd place ticket and a very useful 30 quid in the back pocket! Having more time after judging I was able to run a judge's critical eye over the exhibits and realise that the judge had made a good call and taking that little bit of extra time prepping the veg that I give to Leesa paid off, although it does help to have someone with an outstanding eye for design! Most entrants had merely piled a lot of veg very high so I think a little thought and careful veg placement catches the judge's eye very often.

We've bought a brand new wicker trug for Malvern where there are no dimension stipulations, and having come 3rd here for the past three years we're hoping to go at least one better. However, this is the winning trug from last year, exhibited by a Mr Porter so you can clearly see there's a very, very high standard.

I had a decent weekend for my wallet. Leesa is anti-gambling so it was with some consternation that she witnessed people chucking money in my direction over the weekend (if it had been the other way I'd have done it without her seeing). As well as winning the 3x2 (BBC) against Dan Uddersworthy and Paul Bastardfeatures and a tenner from each to boot, I had a last minute bet with Dave Thornton that i'd beat him him in the National Carrot Championships. I'd lost money to Dave the past couple of seasons when we had a yearly 20 quid side bet on accumulated points during the season and he'd beaten me hands down. When I'd pulled my long carrots I knew I had a pretty good entry and just before I washed them in the bath I picked up an email from Dave asking if we were having a bet this season? I cheekily suggested the Carrot Championships and of course he bit my hand off as he's never seen me produce decent long carrots since i've known him. His hangdog face was a picture when he saw me staging mine next to his and it was a superb moment when I finally saw him open his wallet to hand over the crisp 10 pound note. This is an end view of the National Carrot Championships, Dave's entry nearest camera and mine next up.

I guess I only have two or three decent long carrots left to pull, judging by the tops, and I was very lucky that the 5 I pulled for Harrogate seemed like peas in a pod, and I had no need to keep pulling any more. I won't be entering long carrots at Malvern where you need 5 but I may have an entry of 3 at Westminster a week or so afterwards. It took a text from Dan to remind me that I'd not actually bothered emptying out my drums this season as time was against me and I wasn't that fussed about long carrots this season. If that is the result then I am seriously tempted to not bother emptying out any of my drums and beds this Winter, be it for carrots, parsnips or stumps. They were the best long carrots I've grown for several seasons so I can't see the point of all that hard work unless it's absolutely necessary...which it appears not to be. It could just be that I got very lucky of course!

At Seagrave I benched a couple of sets of long carrots that I'd grown in these pipes (pictured before I'd set them up or secured them), 28 in all so the rows of pipes were 4 deep.

I tried this method last season and whilst I had some heavy specimens they were throwing out all sorts of side roots a couple of feet down as I neglected them from July onwards. This season I gave them a little more attention and when the pipes were emptied out I was pleasantly surprised at the results, one of the sets coming second to a set of my stumps (sadly I forgot to take any photos). It has encouraged me to have a go again next season but I will be growing them in single file inside my soon to be acquired polytunnel so that I can give them much more frequent watering. I found that once the foliage gets large it's impossible to tend to them properly and I had a few with green shoulders. I couldn't see through the forest of leaves that a few shoulders had come clear of the compost which tends to sink in pipes. I believe it's a method that is worth persevering with and indeed Paul Wlodarczak's winning tap root set had an excellent carrot that was grown in a pipe.(below...my 4th placed set next to it)

Dave T is determined to win his money back so we've gone double or quits on stump carrots at the National. Dave's stumps scored more than mine at Harrogate but I have a bed of 28 from which to pull my 5 for Malvern so i'm banking on that yielding me some corkers. It's the first one I sowed and the sides were protected with polythene so the plants have been really cossetted and I'm hoping to have some really pronounced stump ends. If neither of us gets a ticket then the two entries will be judged separately by an independant adjudicator! At least I can't lose anything on the season with a double or quits can I?

One class I was hoping to enter at Malvern was for 3 quality marrows, a class that has been introduced for the first time at National level. I grew 5 plants up along inclined metal poles and managed to harvest my first good specimen a couple of weeks ago.

However, I do find Blyton Belle a bit shy to produce fruits and whilst I have another couple growing I fear there isn't enough time for them to catch up with the one i've cut. Graham Wagstaffe won marrows at Harrogate with this lovely neat pair.

Graham is another top grower and he also won the 250g onion class at Harrogate with this uniform set of 5, variety Toughball I think. I believe they were probably the same set I saw win at Notts DA at the end of August.

However, the picture above doesn't do justice to how small they were.....in other years these would be classed as almost embarrassingly small and i'm estimating they were only about 180g if that, but because of their exceptional quality in this most difficult of seasons they beat larger less well conditioned exhibits. It just goes to show that good small ones can beat larger ones, whatever the veg, so long as you have good form, shape, colour, uniformity and condition. I have a similar sized set put to one side for Malvern which I will have no qualms about showing. They are easily my best looking set of small onions and are pretty well matched. However, if I hadn't seen Graham's winning set I probably wouldn't have dared show them at Malvern.

My car park pass for Malvern arrived today. If you enter the National you get a free entry ticket and if you enter 5 classes or more on the Malvern side you get another, which saves a good few quid. If you get chance try and get to Malvern. Apart from the National Vegetable Society's Championships there are dahlia, chrysanth, cacti, fuchsia and many other competitions not to mention the multitude of other attractions in the showground itself. It's a huge country show and you really do need a full day to get round so get there early as soon as the gates open. We are hoping to get a chicken run set up over the Winter so we'll be eyeing up the various stalls at Malvern that sell chicken houses. If I don't need to empty out my sand drums I should have plenty of time to construct it. I bought some of the winning eggs in the after show auction at Seagrave Saturday night and had them on toast today for my lunch. The yokes were huge and shop bought eggs don't come close.

Derby 2011

It seems strange to think that I probably won't be doing another show now until the Malvern National at the end of September 2012. In many ways I'm going to be 'taking a year out' as at this moment in time I don't intend to do any local showing next year, something I last did in 2000 when we had an extension to our house and I simply couldn't afford the time. The way I feel at the moment I just need to recharge the batteries and rethink my strategy from now on, as putting 30-40 entries in every weekend really takes its toll, and I didn't enjoy some shows as much as I should, in particular Malvern, Westminster and Derby all for different reasons.


For Derby I felt like shite, suffering from a severe dose of manflu in the days leading up to it, so I was chuffed to come away with 9 tickets. Pick of my bunch was a win in a Top Tray class of 8 entries thanks largely to a good set of 6 Cedrico tomatoes (at last!) that scored well along with 3 nice Sweet Candle stumps and 3 Kestrel spuds that weren't great in uniformity but did clean up nicely.

I didn't win with my globe beet which surprised me as that was the one class I thought was a nailed on ticket, even a first. I believe globe beet is the class that is the biggest lottery as it's usually well contested and indeed i've won shows where I didn't expect to so you win some, you lose some.

I was 2nd in the leek class, my set being the heaviest there but a strange bulge on one side of one of the barrels must have counted against me. I've never had it before but I think it's a side shoot and indeed you could see a secondary growth emerging from one of the leaf folds, almost like a mini-leek within the leek itself. Scottish Chair Jim Williams reported in the NVS magazine that he'd seen it on some of his leeks for the first time ever this season and wondered what the cause was. In my case i'm assuming it's stress related as I don't think I watered enough this season, especially during June, July and August when we hardly had a drop of rain to speak of.

I was 3rd in a strong parsnip class with 'Polar', a bit of canker (or was it carrot fly damage?) downpointing me. It's a shame I still get these markings as size and uniformity wise i'm on the money and the skins clean up pretty well too. I'm hoping that a thorough drenching of Jet 5 in the Spring will cleanse any spores and other nasties out of the sand as I hope to get a set of 5 at Malvern along with another three in the big collection class. When I got a best in show with 'Pinnacle' at Leicester Show a few years ago a respected fellow grower reckoned they would have competed at National level. They really did stand out and the skins almost shone but I've never had parsnips so blemish free since. I changed entirely to Polar this year as this variety was pretty clean for me last season but about 60% of them have been marked so I have a decision to make. Pinnacle is supposed to have the best canker resistance rating but does get a bit 'blocky' near the top I find so I'll probably stick to Polar as I think it has a more refined, tapering shape.

I always say you have to be in it to win it and I picked up an unexpected 3rd in the white spud class out of about 15 entries with Casablanca. These looked so bad on Friday night there was no way I could get them clean with a soft cloth so I had to resort to using the rough side of a scourer and rubbing the skin with that as hard as I dare. They looked reasonable when I staged them but as you can see by the Sunday afternoon they looked absolutely shocking. I'm not going to miss growing white spuds at all next season. They look magnificent when they're first harvested but boy do they deteriorate. Sherie Plumb must have some form of industrial buffing wheel in her kitchen!

I also won with brussel sprouts 'Abacus' at Derby, and with the trug prepared as usual by Leesa and which attracted an awful lot of interest from the general public, mainly from people enquiring about the little mexican gherkins that I use to fill in any gaps.

And so that's it. Time now to get the garden shipshape once again, install a new greenhouse that I intend to grow some decent onions in for once, and to get the old walking boots waxed ready for some Munros in Scotland in a couple of weeks time. I've learnt many things in 2011, proof that you will never stop learning and you need to store everything in the memory bank and take it with you into a new growing year. It's been my lowest haul of tickets for quite a few years because I did 4 less local shows than usual and tried my hand at a National Championships and Harrogate for the first time instead, but I feel I've still grown some of my best stuff ever, particularly stumps, leeks and celery that didn't look out of place at the highest level. I got more satisfaction from seeing my veg alongside the very best and winning nowt than I did winning 30+ tickets at my local show. And most important of all (by far!) I made some new friends at these new shows that I am looking forward to spending many more social evenings with in future years.

We wuz robbed

We got 2nd in the trug class out of 7 entries (first photo) and whilst that was an improvement on a recent run of form I think it was better than the winner (bottom photo).

Bushed

Probably too much information but i'm currently soaking in a beautiful roll top bath in our very pleasant victorian b&b after an afternoon spent fast asleep. This through the night staging lark sure does take it out of you.

Pick of my results was 2nd in the cherry tomato class, a result that owes much to having a wife with a good eye. I grow Sungold and whilst this is the tastiest cherry tomato i've never seen it in the tickets so i've always made up the numbers with it. I handed Leesa a bowl of fruits that i'd picked in the dark at 2 o'clock this morning and said 'pick me 12 out of that lot and stage them for me'. I really couldn't have done a better job. She can come again!

However, we could still only make our perennial 3rd place in the trug class despite a different design to usual.

Let's have a look at what you could have won!

After only my 4th NVS show I feel a bit like an old hand now such is the friendship i've experienced at the highest level already. It really has been another top weekend and I'm already looking forward to meeting up with the gang again at Malvern next weekend. Aside from the Bullshit Bloggers Challenge which I won in magnificent style I had the following results;

I came 8th in the National Carrot Championships out of a dozen entries, typically just outside the sodding money! My entry is on the right next to Dave Thornton's 5th placed exhibit. His stumps were truly shocking but his long carrots were quite good I suppose!

My best placing was 2nd for these Sandrine lettuce, the roots having to be washed and placed into a jar of water. Returning to the show today I noticed that everyone else's lettuces had wilted and mine still looked as fresh as they did Friday morning.

I got 3rd in a mini-collection for 4 veg with a points value of 16 or under. I staged 3 Sandrine lettuce, 3 Pablo beet, 3 onions under 250g 'Setton' and 6 pickling shallots 'Hative de Niort'.

And at least I was beaten by one fellow blogger this weekend, James Park (Digtoplant) showing the Yorkshire bumboys how to do it with a 2nd placed trug (top of the photo) beating me into third( below it). This was actually Leesa's fault as she did the design work and threw it together on Friday night in about 10minutes. I really am getting sick to death of coming third with trugs so I'm hoping she pulls her bleeding finger out at Malvern next weekend.

There was quite a lot to see at Harrogate although it's nowhere near the size of Malvern. Pick of the exhibits for me was this stunning display of dahlias by Kent Dahlia Society I believe.



So that's Harrogate over with and I'll certainly be back. It's a long drive (they need to sort that exhibitor parking issue out!.......and also stop the thieving bastards nicking your stuff at the end!) but I earned 44 quid from a second and two thirds! Certainly beats breaking your neck at local shows, and  getting a shed load of tickets for 20-30 quid!

So tonight I treated myself to a couple of bottles of my favourite tipple Snecklifter, Cockermouth's finest. It's certainly wasted on Cumbrian Jim Bowen looky likeys. Super smashing great.





Sutton Bonington Show 2011

This is my local show and the one I'm most involved with being on the committee and arranging the programme of talks each year, so I like to put in plenty of entries across the range of categories. And believe it or not at 5a.m. yesterday I was to be found in the kitchen cooking! I was determined to get a ticket in the 'men only' rock cakes class, after 11 years of complete an utter failure...not even a third. This year I was armed with a surefire recipe from Ian Simpson and Fiona Shenfield of Scottishland. However, my first attempt went something like this!

Not to be defeated I quickly knocked up another mix and didn't leave them in the oven quite so long this time. The result was a lot better, but I still didn't win anything yet again!. So it appears not only do the Scots send me 2nd rate peas they also send me duff recipes too! To be fair the judge was wavering between mine and another plate for the third place ticket so I really must have been 4th which is as near as I've ever got. There's always next year!

As I say, I put a shedload of entries in each year and my car is absolutely packed to the gunnels, even the passenger seat is loaded with my flower exhibits. I have various contraptions for making sure they are secure for the trip but it's still a very slow journey as I try to ensure none of my dahlias snap during transit.

As for the show I got 21 red cards, mainly in the veg classes, but I also picked up bonus wins with dahlias and cacti. For the 10th time I won most points in show and this year it was television's Midlands Today presenter Dominic Heale who did the honours with the prizegiving. Thoroughly bloody nice chap.

I got best veg for my long carrots which was a very nice change after a few iffy years and I've got plenty of equally good, if not better ones to come. I reckon I may put this one down to seed. And no....before any other tits apart from Unsworth ask those are not my footprints on the fridge!

As usual Leesa managed to construct a superb trug for me. Thankyou my dearest! We even managed to fool the judge by using one of the leeks that had gone to seed and was actually oval in profile section.

This year was the 25th Show and it's a big country fair these days attracting thousands of visitors, so there's plenty to see and do, including the dodgems at which I was particularly skilful and wily. My neck should recover by the end of the week I'm told. Bloody kids came from nowhere!

As I end the third full day.....

............of my low-profile year long reign as the greatest tomato grower in the Midlands and Anglesey (and probably certain parts of Yorkshire) I do have to admit the debt of gratitude I owe to my wife Leesa. As I was boxing up the 3 sets of tomatoes that I would need for the various classes on Friday night I couldn't decide which set to enter in the 'big one' and so consulted her for her opinion. Straight away she pointed 'that one. It's rounder and more uniform'. It wasn't the set I would have gone for and so I do have her to thank for allowing me to become a legend in my own head.

She also constructed my 3rd place winning trug.

This is the second time in a row we have come third and as you can see from the first and second prize winners it's going to be a hard class to win. The winner this year was Allen Young and we sat with him at the Saturday night presentation evening (where I was awarded two trophies....not sure if I've mentioned that already?). Allen is a top grower (and bloody nice fella) and his name appeared in the tickets all over the place. Every vegetable in his trug was top notch so if we are to beat him I shall have to make sure I give Leesa nothing but the best to work with in future.

It was only just above freezing when we arrived at the showground at 4.30am and by the time she'd finished she couldn't feel her fingers. All in all I had a hard time persuading her it was fun....as you can see from this photo taken at 2.30am just before we set off!

I couldn't have become Tomato King (have I mentioned that?) without you dear.