Heatwaves and splash spuds

I took the opportunity the weekend before last to knock off some peaks in the Lake District, staying in the beautiful Buttermere valley. 26 miles and 6 mountains later my aching limbs are still suffering over a week later, but man I sure do look sexy on a mountaintop!

Whilst on top of a mountain called High Sile I took the opportunity to have a much needed bladder emptying session on the Ennerdale side of the mountain knowing that Gareth Cameron lives further down the valley. Gareth is 50% of a showing Cumbrian duo otherwise known as Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood. I reckon my toxic weewee should have reached his allotment by now so it should already have started to kill all his veg meaning I have one less opponent to worry about come show time. Very much looking forward to my next walking holiday to the Campsie Fells, unfortunate name for surely no proper men live below such a gay sounding range of hills?

In the heatwave that large swathes of the country were experiencing recently I had to make sure my spuds in the bags were getting plenty of water. The haulms are currently approaching 12” high which is approximately the time when the tubers are forming (tuber initiation) and water is critical at this time if you want to avoid scab. I only grow a single variety these days, one called Amour which seems to be the one favoured by most of the top growers since the demise of Kestrel which appears to be losing some of its colour (the purple speckles on the rose end).

In truth I find Amour really easy to grow compared to other varieties, and the skin usually scrubs up a dream if you can keep it free from scab. From 30 bags last season I managed to win my local show which is always easy enough if I’m honest, but saved my best set of 5 for the coloured class at Malvern. This was a high risk strategy as I’ve never won a ticket for spuds at NVS level before but as soon as I’d benched them in a class with over 20 entries I did think they might have an outside chance of a ticket, the problem being most of the entries are covered with various cloths placed over them by the exhibitor to delay them going green until after judging, so you can never tell for sure. Coming back to a 3^rd place ticket behind only Sherie Plumb in 2^nd and Ray Sale in 1^st was one of my best achievements last season I reckon, in that it was the most unexpected of all. If the tuber in the 9 o’clock position had been more rounded at the end then perhaps I might have been placed higher because my skin finish was on a par with 1^st and 2^nd. These are the fine lines you have to try and be above if you want to compete at that sort of level and you do have to be as critically subjective as you can when selecting your sets.

I planted 40 bags of Amour this year but a couple have failed to come through for some reason. Each bag is filled with peat, and whilst I don’t bother sieving or shredding the peat like a lot of growers do (can’t be fucked to be honest), I do fill them all by hand and break up any big lumps and discard any large twigs as I go. Bit of a ball-ache and a job I certainly won’t be missing in future when I give up the showing.

Due to the humid weather then blight will be prevalent around the country so you do need to sign up to one of the blight warning websites which are easy enough to subscribe to. I am on Blightwatch and I notice that the old ‘Smith Period’ calculation has now been ditched for something called the ‘Hutton Period’ which has much more scientific data behind it apparently. Blight is not something I’ve ever suffered myself but the other day I noticed most of the lower leaflets on my spuds were discolouring to a mottled yellow with darker patches that resembled blight. To the nervous grower this might have led to them taking an overdose of Yorkshire beer (which wouldn’t have killed them as it’s weaker than piss) but as I hadn’t had any warning of blight in my area I wasn’t concerned about that. I think it is magnesium deficiency so have sprayed with Epsom salts in the hope this will rectify the problem. I wonder if the copious amounts of water I’ve been spraying over them have leached the magnesium nutrient from the bags such as there was? In the Winter when we had a new kitchen sink fitted I took the opportunity to ask the plumber to fit me an outside tap at the same time. This is a luxury I’ve never had before so now I can water the garden at will, and as I don’t have a water meter I’ve done exactly fucking that. It has however, meant that I’ve often forgotten it was on, and I’ve buggered off somewhere and come back several hours later to large puddles of standing water and the neighbours complaining about water running through their gardens.

Killer sheep

When I told Dave Thornton a few months ago that I intended to grow my 250g onions in some wooden planters, filled with Levington M3, he told me it was a stupid idea and that I would never be able to get enough moisture to them. Well thank God I never listened to him as without them I would not have any onions to an acceptable standard this year. I made them out of offcuts of wooden planking with old compost bags stapled to them, black side facing out to protect the wood for several seasons to come. The main idea behind my thinking was to ensure I got some onions through the season without them succumbing to white rot, something that I have to accept as pretty much inevitable in my infested soil. However, as moisture hasn't been a problem in this washout of a season I've got my first crop of Vento swelling, all of them looking pretty uniform and I'm guessing about 2 or 3 weeks to harvest.

I also have these Setton (sets) which are also starting to swell......

When you compare them to these Setton grown in waterlogged ground you can see the difference. The ones in the ground are a pale imitation of those in the planters, the foliage being quite sickly looking and the bulbs have barely started to swell. Some have also gone to seed. I always expect about 60% to succumb to white rot but that's if they don't rot off in the boggy ground first. On this occasion then it's Smith 1 Thornton 0. I shall be making more of these planters over Winter and growing them all this way in future.

If you can escape blight then the potato is one crop that revels in plenty of moisture and I should be harvesting these Maris Pipers for the kitchen in a couple of weeks time. Despite the recent deluges i'm keeping a close eye on the show spuds in bags, as they can still dry out if you're not wary. Just because it's been pissing it down for several weeks don't assume your bags are getting drenched too, as the dense potato foliage can stop rain getting to them. As my spuds were planted late and have only just started to get going the compost in the bags is as wet as the surrounding soil and so Mother Nature has done the hard work for me. When the haulms are a foot high or so (as mine currently are) it's critical to make sure you water them well, as this is when the tubers are forming and most susceptible to scab if the bags are dry.

Yesterday was the best day weather-wise in ages here in the Midlands so instead of taking the opportunity of a day in the garden I thought 'sod it' and we decided to have a day's walking around Derwent and Ladybower dams in Derbyshire, made famous as the training ground for the Dambusters. The museum was open and it contains quite a poignant tribute to the air crews who carried out the raids, many of whom never came back. There is also a superb display of charts, diagrams and photos about the making of the dams at the turn of the 19th Century. Well worth a visit. However, we are both suffering a bit today as we first hiked up to Alport Castles into the wind, a dramatic rock slip that has left a 100' high rockface and rock stack, seen here behind Leesa with the brooding plateau of Kinder Scout in the background. This was just after we'd finished our packed lunch surrounded by glorious countryside, cut short because Leesa was convinced one of the many inquisitive sheep in the area was about to kill her because.....and I quote....."it's looking at me funny! Tell it to go away!"

Sunday visit to church

I love my veg, but I refuse to be tied down to it. Recently I've been itching to get out walking so despite the 27 degree temperatures I took Leesa out for a leisurely 10 mile hike yesterday. She'd heard me enthusing about the 'Roaches' in Staffordshire and decided she'd like to come and see what all the fuss was about, so I left the veg to fend for itself in the heat, packed the rucksack, donned a ridiculous pair of shorts, laced up the boots and off we went. Leesa likes to walk light.....

...so guess which turnip had to lug the heavy rucksack as usual?

First stop was a 200' long chasm 50' deep in the wooded hillside called 'Lud's Church'. It was much cooler down here and as you can see from the ferns and mosses clinging to the side, sunlight doesn't penetrate much.

I made a new friend along the way!

After some gentle uphill plodding we reached the top at approx. 1660 feet. A young lady kindly took our photo. Always offer to return the favour.....then run off like billyo with their camera!

At the end of the day a deserved pint of Abbot's Ale....

....and half a shandy!

Back on the plot things didn't suffer too much in the heat but I am having to give the onions quite a lot of water to keep them ticking along. I should shade them or lug them outside but to be honest I just can't be bothered, and they seem to be doing very well despite the heat. There's a class in the NVS National Championships for onions over 1kg but smaller than 1.5kg (3.3lbs)so I will try and get a set of 5 for that for a giggle, although they're easily the best i've ever had at this stage of the season and we still haven't reached the longest day yet so who knows what size they'll end up.

I did manage to get the leeks collared on Saturday. This year i'm using these plastic coated twist wires that you cut to your desired length (Dave Thornton gave me a huge bundle of it) and they make the task of collaring and uncollaring the plants on a regular basis much easier than fiddling about with bits of string as i've done previously.

I got all the shallots 'dished', that is the soil removed from around the clump so that each bulb can swell out without any chance of stones or hard lumps halting their progress. I'm still watering them at the moment but will stop this in the next few days with a view to starting to get them ripened off by mid-June. They're all roughly 33mm diameter in the main at the moment. As soon as these are lifted I'll sow some globe beet in their place which should be about right for Malvern or Westminster.

As well as 15 bags of Kestrel (just popping through) I got 10 bags of Amour set out. I was going to do 20 of each but I may well leave it at that now.

My celery plants have continued to grow well and I'll be planting them out over the coming Jubilee weekend. I am having to make sure the pots are thoroughly wet at all times and having the plants in these blue trays means I can pour an inch or more of water to achieve this, celery being bog plants in the wild that don't much care for wilting sunshine.

The long carrots in pipes in the greenhouse are another crop that are suffering in the heatwave, and I think I may have to abandon this idea as an alternative way of growing long roots in future. A few that were growing away ok have just been cooked to a crisp! Getting enough water to them is proving to be problematic, and I think i'm probably only wetting the top few inches but I'm also worried about flooding them. Back to the drawing board.

However, mad mexicans seem to be enjoying this sunshine......

....and the herbs also love it, being mainly of Mediterranean origin. Funnily enough I thought I heard the ghostly voice of Robin Gibb emanating from my herb bed earlier but when I went to investigate it was just the chive talking.

Things I have learned in Scotland this week

1) It is sometimes NOT misty on the mountain tops. I had an absolutely glorious walk up Beinn Ime today, walking via the high pass alongside the craggy 'Cobbler' which I shall save for another day.....and when I feel brave enough to go through 'the eye of the needle' (look it up!).
2) Sea otters are thriving. I saw a pair of them yesterday and it was a superb sight.
3) Scotland has the funniest sitcom on TV. Why do we not get 'Still Game' in England? Imagine 'Last of the Summer Wine' set in Glasgow....but funny. Hilarious. Brother bought me series one on DVD.

Back home to Blighty and Oscar tomorrow :o)

matt Munro

First walk of my scottish mini-holiday today, along Glen Fyne and then up Ben Bhuide (attempted!). It was a beautiful walk, if a little slippery in places and I ended up on my Sherie Plumb on several occasions. As it was getting late and mist shrouded the top I decided to leave the summit for a clearer day when the views are reported to be superb, turning back at about 2800'.

I'm now soaking my tired limbs once more and for the benefit of several guys who (rather worryingly!) approached me at the superb Scottish seminar and said they enjoyed my last bathtime photo (names not revealed until the Christmas Smithyveg awards) I hereby post another to keep them happy. I do so to illustrate the joys of taking a bath/shower/wash in Argyll. The water is BLACK! The reason being it comes from a boggy reservoir a few hundred feet up the local hillside. You get used to it eventually and it does make your skin feel incredibly soft afterwards. However, in the spring you also get bits of mashed up frog that strayed too close to the filter!

Kneed a break

Today was the annual 15.7 mile Seagrave Wolds Challenge walk that I have done for the last 5 years, this year with a very badly injured knee. What a soldier I am. Currently enjoying a well deserved soak in a hot bath. The toys are NOT mine!

I also managed to get a snap of one of my walking pals Alan against the infamous sign that he head twatted on last year's walk......and I mean TWATTED! He's just about forgiven the rest of us for spending the next 5 miles giggling helplessly like little kids.

♫Walk, walk, walk with me to the water......♫

I've got 8 days off work now and apart from a short trip into the hellhole that is London for a short break for a bit of museum visiting and a musical, I shall be spending many hours titivating my crops and tying my shallots.

Yesterday however, I took the opportunity to get some fresh air in my lungs and did a walk in Staffordshire called 'The Roaches' which is a 1600' ridge with some amazing rock formations. Starting near the village of Flash (aaaahaaaaaah) which is the highest in Britain me and a pal walked to Tittesworth (snigger) reservoir and back via Hen Cloud and the very jagged Ramshaw Rocks.

The Winking Man can be seen quite clearly from the road below as you drive past and is a popular local landmark.

But out of all the weird rock shapes I was most taken by this one. "Medwyyyyyn. He's being rude again!"

Right so that's mind and body fully recharged now for some garden therapy.

♫There's nothing you have that I need, I can breathe......♫

Land of the giants

The best fun I've ever had growing veg was when I managed to grow a 19 stone pumpkin in 2009. Ive just finished reading a very enjoyable book called 'The Biggest Beetroot in the World' by Michael Leapman (ISBN 978-1-84513-319-1) about the world of the giant veg growers. Apparently there is a rift between the NVS guys and the giant growers which I sincerely hope isn't true as I always like to see the big veg at Malvern. They always put a smile on people's faces.

One of the best growers of giant veg is Peter Glazebrook who is getting ever closer to the world onion record. I've organised a trip to his garden for my local hort.soc. in July and am immensely looking forward to seeing the drainpipes against his house where he grows his long roots, watering them from an upstairs window! And guess what? Peter is a follower of this blog as I found out when he approached me at North Derby DA recently and introduced himself although I already knew who he was....everyone does!

Despite another long bank holiday weekend today will be the first day I've been able to get on the plot as I've spent a couple of days walking amongst another Land of the Giants, Snowdonia in Wales. I dragged 4 pals up and over Crib Goch on Friday. It was a glorious day although one friend in particular took some persuading to make the climb rather than doing the much easier tourist tracks.Note the union jack sticking out of my rucksack....my tribute to the Royal Wedding that was going off as we climbed!!

The two dots at the end of the ridge are myself and the friend in question who I was having to nursemaid across. The views were amazing....the drops potentially fatal. Perhaps I should have told him about it before we set off!

On Saturday three us did Tryfan whch is basically a 3000' rock scramble. It looks steep (see the tiny cars below) but you never really feel in any danger and there were literally hundreds doing it.

I even managed to inch out onto 'The Cannon' for a photo opportunity.

And finally what a momentous day this is!! Osama Bin Laden is finally dead. Excellent news. Now all we have to do is get rid of Gaddafi, Robert Mugabe, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong-il and George Michael!



Carrot mix decisions

Had a cracking day out in Cumbria once again on Tuesday, doing a 10 mile fell walk in the afternoon and then attending Ian Stocks' talk on long carrots in the evening at Westmoreland DA. Ian's talk gave me quite a bit of food for thought as his mix is quite a bit different to any others i've seen or used myself before. For the record it is:

75 litres sieved Levington F1 (you're lucky if you end up with 60 litres after sieving all the sticks, tampons and other shite out)

25 Litres silver sand

12 ounces Vitax Q4 (or Tev 04)

12 ounces Calcified seaweed.

Note that he uses no vermiculite whatsoever. However, as he said if you have a mix that works for you then don't try and fix what aint broke, although by all means try a drum with a new mix for experimentaion purposes if you have the room. With this in mind I am going to use Dave Thornton's mix for the coming season as I had already decided to use this having seen his stunning carrots at Malvern (don't tell the big-headed twat I said that) but I am going to go back to boring the holes rather than coring the first few feet then boring. It is only in the last two years that i've cored and i've had terrible problems with fanging. Ian reckons that by boring you are creating extra pressure around the root and forcing it downwards. It's an interesting concept but it's a fact that when I used to bore I regularly produced carrots like these.....

But since i've been coring i've produced donkey fodder like this......Nuff said!

Dave Thornton's long carrot mix is:

4 buckets sieved multipurpose compost
1 bucket superfine vermiculite
1/2 bucket washed sand (I will use silver sand)
"a handful" of calcium carbonate of lime
"a handful" of Vitax Q4
"a handful" of seaweed meal (I will used calcified seaweed)
Plus a few pinches of phorate insecticide.

In the meantime the first 8 Cedrico tomato seedlings, timed to grow my Llangollen entries, have been pricked out. It seems an awful way off just now to be thinking of trying to get an even matched set of 12 plus 4 for the Millenium collection class from these tiny little plants but that's the plan.

Up mountain and down dale

Top, top day yesterday. A 5am start saw me driving up to the glorious Lake District for a walk up High Street from Haweswater. On arriving at the very isolated car park I was greeted by the sight of a huge stag walking in the road before it bounded up the hillside. Breathtaking. It was a cold day but a bright start was soon spoiled by some high level mist that meant I didn't have the views of the surrounding peaks when I got to the top. And it was quite surprising to see how many more mad men were out and about. I really expected to see no-one else all day.





















After ticking off another 5 'Wainwrights' I travelled to a village near Kendal for a talk by Ian Simpson on stump carrots organised by the Westmoreland DA of the NVS. Ian has won stumps at the National a couple of times and he gave me a lot of food for thought about how I grow my stumps.

His attention to detail is quite outstanding and I shall be changing my methods slightly to mimic his methods a little more. The one thing that struck me most was the texture of his borehole mix, which we were able to experience as he'd bought some with him to hand round to the assembled group. Now that really is attention to detail, to even think of bringing some along with you to a talk! I riddle my compost through a 1/4" sieve to remove any lumps but he goes even further and then puts it through an 1/8" sieve. He is adamant this fine textured medium gives him the superior skin finish he is famous for. He also bought along photocopied handouts showing the finer points of his presentation and I will be looking back at this in the coming months during my preparations. If growing Sweet Candle, depending on your show date you need to count back 22 weeks for your sowing date.

And he is a great fan of the concentrated garlic sprays for warding off carrot fly, so much so that I bought a bottle of the stuff for 3 quid. Dan Unsworth mailed me tonight saying the stuff retails for 12.75 so as a tight-fisted Yorkshireman he's well chuffed! And it was good to meet up again with my blog following pals Paul Bastow, Paul and Linda Wlodarczak, James Park and of course Dan, not to mention NVS legends Gareth Cameron and Ronnie Jackson. Nice also to meet Chris Crowther and Chris Jackson for the first time.
























In the last few months it's been a real privilege to listen to some of the NVS 'greats' lecture on their growing methods for different crops and it's great credit to them that they are prepared to do this and try to help others improve. For my part I hope to give as much of that information out to as many beginners and improvers during the coming months.

Decisions, decisions....

Well now, the show season is virtually at an end save for Derby Show on the last weekend of this month (bloody late show that....will I have anything left?!) so it's time to take stock, start tidying the carnage that my garden has become (lawn not mown for 2 months!) and start planning my growing regime for next year. Seed catalogues have started arriving so it's good to browse these whilst cracking one off on the big white ceramic thunderbox. Whilst going round the shows I've also made notes of different varieties that have been winning tickets that I haven't grown before. One of these was the small tomato 'Harlequin' that won at Westminster for Geoff Butterworth (another bloody nice bloke!). Gardener's Delight and Sungold are the best tasting small tomaotes but it's very difficult to find 12 (Malvern) or 15 (Westminster) matching fruits as they tend to be all shapes and sizes.

I took two sets of tomatoes down to Westminster and couldn't decide which set to put in. At first I put in my larger set, nice green calyces but perhaps not as uniform as they could be. I got out my smaller set which had slightly yellowing calyces but were pretty much like peas in a pod. Dave Thornton, John Croot and John Goodall all went for the smaller set so I was happy to go with that set (below). They all seemed quite impressed with both sets so I was reasonably confident.As we breakfasted and walked around central London they all made comments that made me think I was in with a shot.

However, upon returning I found I didn't have a ticket of any description. The winning set consisted of some quite large fruits. All the lads commented that my discarded large set was better than the winning set of 9. Ho hum!

I'm now addicted to having a go at a higher level although I am still passionate about the local village show. With this in mind I now have a dilemma on next year's horizon as the NVS National will be held in Wales in Llangollen on August Bank Holiday weekend. It's the same weekend as Leicester Show and another long standing village show that I have done for the last 15 years. Do I enter (and indeed support!)the local shows and pick up over a dozen red cards or do I have a go at my first National in the hope of getting a placing somewhere? Mmmm.....Llangollen is awfully close to the Snowdonia National Park.......