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.

What I want to know is.....

....when did this terrorist supporting Trotskyite bell end pinch two of my long carrots? Wanker!

No Tasco fiasco

I had a good year last season with onions for the 250g and under class. At most shows this class is well supported, as you don’t need exotic growing chambers to be able to grow them like you do for the large onions. This is certainly the case at the NVS shows where there are several top growers of 250g onions such as Sherie Plumb, Ronnie Jackson and Graham Wagstaffe. I’ve exhibited at National and Branch level several times without success but have always been content that my bulbs must have been there or thereabouts, and I was certainly never out of my league. So it was a nice surprise to come 3^rd at Malvern last year in a well contested class yet again, with the variety Tasco. I really needed an extra week or two to have them fully ripened.

My pal Ronnie Jackson won the class at Malvern and his set (also Tasco) were adjudged best exhibit in show. Beautiful. The onions, not Ronnie. Obviously.

The same set actually won for me at Derby Show in late October when they had ripened to a nice straw brown colour, which was a lovely bonus in a class of over 20 entries. I had a big grin all weekend proving that ‘smiles’ is my middle name, ironic as it’s sometimes wasted on miserable twats that have it as a surname, but hey ho.

There are several varieties suitable for this class, others are Toughball, Canto, Globo, Vento to name but a few, but I’ve always liked Tasco as I find it a bit more robust than the others when grown outside. Having said that mine are now grown in a long border in my tunnel which makes tending them an easy task.

It’s important to keep them growing upright with split canes and plastic support clips (available from Medwyns... I also use flexible plastic coated wire) so that the growing point is in the middle of the bulb and also if the plant flops to one side you can get uneven shapes which is a fault the judge will use to down point you. These were sown in January, planted out a month ago and won’t be ready to harvest for at least another month when I’ll need to be checking the diameters daily and getting them up when they reach the magic figure of 83mm. I use nothing more than a cardboard gauge I made myself for this task and which I've had for several seasons now. Last season they were a bit late going in so weren’t getting up to size at the time that I needed to get them ripened in time for the shows, so I had to settle on 80mm diameter. This meant most of my bulbs weighed between 200-225g. Bear in mind they may weigh more than 250g when you pull them up and leave 6” of stem, but they should be under (or better still bang on!) when you prep them for show. Make sure you have a good quality set of digital scales for this purpose. The judge will!

I had a good year last season with onions for the 250g and under class. At most shows this class is well supported, as you don’t need exotic growing areas to be able to grow them like you do for the large onions. This is certainly the case at the NVS shows where there are several top growers of 250g onions such as Sherie Plumb, Ronnie Jackson and Graham Wagstaffe. I’ve exhibited at National and Branch level several times without success but have always been content that my bulbs must have been there or thereabouts, and I was certainly never out of my league. So it was a nice surprise to come 3^rd at Malvern last year in a well contested class yet again, with the variety Tasco. I really needed an extra week or two to have them fully ripened.

My pal Ronnie Jackson won the class at Malvern and his set were adjudged best exhibit in show. Beautiful. The onions, not Ronnie. Obviously.

The same set actually won for me at Derby Show in late October when they had ripened to a nice straw brown colour, which was a lovely bonus in a class of over 20 entries. I had a big grin all weekend.

There are several varieties suitable for this class, others are Toughball, Canto, Globo, Vento to name but a few, but I’ve always liked Tasco as I find it a bit more robust than the others when grown outside. Having said that mine are now grown in a long border in my tunnel which makes tending them an easy task. It’s important to keep them growing upright with split canes and plastic support clips (available from Medwyns) so that the growing point is in the middle of the bulb and also if the plant flops to one side you can get uneven shapes which is a fault the judge will use to down point you. These were sown in January, planted out a month ago and won’t be ready to harvest for at least another month when I’ll need to be checking the diameters daily and getting them up when they reach the magic figure of 83mm. I use nothing more than a cardboard gauge I made myself for this task. Last season they were a bit late going in so weren’t getting up to size at the time that I needed to get them ripened in time for the shows, so I had to settle on 80mm. This meant most of my bulbs weighed between 200-225g. Bear in mind they may weigh more than 250g when you pull them up and leave 6” of stem, but they should be under (or better still bang on!) when you prep them for show. Make sure you have a good quality set of digital scales for this purpose. The judge will!

Montello peccadillo

The showman’s Spring is one long list of back-breaking or time consuming tasks that have to be done by certain dates to ensure you’re in the tickets come August/September/October. In January we’re emptying our root drums of sand and putting it all back in again! This adds air to the sand and stops it getting too compacted over time, thus making the process of boring or coring your holes less difficult. For the past few years I haven’t bothered to empty out the whole depth of sand, just the top 18”-24” or so, this being entirely down to laziness, and it hasn’t had any detrimental effect so far, so in my opinion it’s your choice whether you bother. Purists will say it’s essential, but in my experience it has been anything but.

Then in February/March we’re actually boring the holes and filling with the mixes which is hard work believe me. This year I’ve done 44 parsnips and 50 long carrots. The parsnips were first in mid-March, and as I added extra height to the drums the process of coring and boring was harder. I now have a 7 foot long metal crowbar, 1 inch thick which takes some bastard lifting in and out of the 6 foot deep holes and twirling it around to make the bore holes 94 times I don’t mind admitting. I was using muscles I’d long since forgotten about. As I have to go ‘up’ to get long roots rather than digging down as some growers do on free draining plots meaning they can work from ground level, I soon realised I would have to make higher platforms on which to stand for the hole making process, as well as giving me somewhere to stand when I’m tending and watering the plants. It was something I hadn’t really reckoned on and lost me a whole weekend as I frantically threw together a series of wooden planks and offcuts. It’s an extremely unstable looking structure and shakes like a shitting dog but it only needs to last a season, although I have already fallen from it whilst stepping down onto a ‘step’ which consisted of nothing more than two stacked milk crates that gave way and turned out to be quite a painful experience on several parts of my body. You wouldn’t think I had a health & safety qualification would you?

Having suffered with cavity spot on my stumps for the past 3 years there was no alternative but to buy in fresh sand for the beds. This needed barrowing 200’ from the front of my house where it was delivered, quite precariously down a set of steps, along a narrow path and tipped into the emptied slab beds. Bollocksed dot com.

Next up are the exhibition onions. As my soil suffers with white rot I have to grow them in large pots (I actually have a bottomless one stacked on top of another), so I have to mix M3, vermiculite and sterilised soil several times to fill each pot. This year it involved a weekend huddled over a large mixing tub mixing everything, before filling the pots, planting the onions from their 4” pots and assembling a ‘cage’ of canes and metal rings to keep the bulb upright.

The next big job was the long beetroot. Having only dabbled with this crop in the past, chucking a few seeds into stations where parsnips or long carrots had failed to germinate I decided I would have to be a bit more serious if I wanted to have a decent crack at the British Tap Root Championships. With this in mind I had 23 six inch diameter plastic drainpipes about 3 foot long which I set up in a row next to my polytunnel. The problem with drainpipes is they take a lot more mix to fill them so several evenings were spent in my garage bent over the same mixing tub doing the mix for the long beet, about 18 litres per tube, transporting this up the garden to fill each pipe individually.

Then we move on to the spuds which we exhibitors grow in large plastic bags filled with peat to ensure we get nice clean tubers 12-14 weeks after planting. The peat, for me five 200 litres bales, has to be sifted or checked by hand to make sure there are no big lumps or sharp twigs that might stop the tubers from achieving a nice shape, before filling each bag with about 20 litres and adding fertiliser as we go. Again, two weekends bent over a tub, then filling 40 bags and placing a seed potato in each.

So it was with some relief that last weekend I finished what I consider to be the last ‘big job’, and in truth, the one I enjoy most, that of planting the tomatoes into their final positions in the greenhouse border. The sun was out, the compost was warm and the plants were all first rate as I set them out into their final positions around the greenhouse into large bottomless pots. The pots in front of the plants are also bottomless, and these will be used for watering later in the season so that it goes direct to the roots, and allows the soil surface to be dry, ideal conditions for tomatoes that like it hot but dry and prevents botrytis rots and other diseases caused by too much moisture.

Some people may think this is a bit late for planting out tomatoes but end of May has always been the date for me, and even then I’m keeping an eye on the night time weather forecasts for a week or so. 20 years ago we had a severe ground frost here in the East Midlands and we lost all sorts of crops. I remember the date vividly therefore. The tomatoes would probably survive an outside frost but it would knock them back.

From now on it’s really just a case of keeping every crop ticking along although there are still many crops to either sow and plant, but that’s a piece of piss if you call yourself a gardener. I now grow a variety of tomato called Zenith after my previous banker Cedrico got discontinued. Having won at Malvern in 2010 with Cedrico I suffered a barren-ish few years with toms, only winning the odd class locally although I did gain a nice 1^st at Westminster in 2012.

In 2015 I took a set of Cedrico up to the National at Dundee that quite frankly I was ashamed of. The calyces were turning yellow and when I came to set them out on the Friday morning I almost didn’t bother when I saw the quality of all the others benched. To say I was astonished to come back and find a 4^th place ticket against my set was an understatement. I suppose my fruits were a nice evenly matched set if nothing else so that must have counted in my favour. There were only about 10 entries and it just goes to show you but I still wonder to this day if the judge was pissed.

I was unable to make the National when it was held in Wales last season but sent a set of tomatoes down with a fellow grower who kindly agreed to take them and stage them for me. This time I was growing Zenith for the first time and I was really happy with the set, seen below on my kitchen table before travelling down.

In my eyes it was head and shoulders above the ones I’d come 4^th with the year before. However, I was only placed 5^th and when I found out in a text from Mark Perry I was fairly disappointed but apparently it was one of the best quality tomato classes in many a long year with over 30 entries so I had to be chuffed with that.

As September progressed I had some really nice fruits developing so that I was hopeful of doing well in the Midland Championships at Malvern. I was also growing a small fruited plum variety called Montello as Marshall Seeds were putting up £500 of prize money at Malvern for a special one-off class specifically for this variety, £250 to the winner so it was sure to attract a lot of interest. Contrary to Marshalls advice I sowed my Montello a bit later than they recommended and it looked as if I was to be proven right, as my plants were laden with hundreds of fruits come the end of September. It was an awful plant to manage, try as I might to keep it contained and grow it like a ‘normal’ tomato by nipping out any sideshoots. It just wouldn’t play ball and grew how it bloody well wanted whether you liked it or not, but the fruits were tasty enough and as I said, probably the most prolific tomato I’ve ever grown.

So, there I am on the eve of Malvern pulling my parsnips, in a happy mood as some nice roots were coming out. All of a sudden I heard a loud bang which sounded as if something had fallen heavily next door so I had a quick peer over the garden fence and couldn’t see anyone or anything so I had a wander back up my garden as I was intrigued at what I’d heard. I soon saw the cause of the commotion. The support wires holding the tomato canes in one of my greenhouses had snapped and yes you guessed it, all of my precious tomato plants including the Montello were now in a huge mangled heap on the floor. Furthermore most of my biggest and best Zenith had fallen from the calyces and were rolling around in the dirt in varying states of damage. It was utter carnage and I still hadn’t picked my sets for Malvern. An hour later, after tiptoeing through the mess and picking up what fruits I could salvage I had hundreds of fruits laid out on a raised bed and I had to laboriously pick out all the unblemished ones to make out my various sets. I did my best but my wife usually chooses my best fruits as she has a better eye than me but seeing as I was now so behind schedule I just boxed them up ready for loading.

Fast forward to 3.30am next morning and we’re offloaded at Malvern getting all the various entries in, when I came across my 15 Montello in the Tupperware box and went off to place them on the boards supplied. About 5.30 we’d finished and we had a quick wander round all the entries to make sure we hadn’t missed anything. When we got to the Montello class I told my wife about the prize money and from the 40-odd entries it was obviously going to be an extremely difficult class to judge. Most of the entries were covered over but my wife pointed to one set and said how nice they looked compared to all the others that you could actually see. She didn’t realise they were mine until I told her, so I was quite pleased bearing in mind her previous success in choosing my sets and thought I might even get close to a ticket.

I came 4th in the tomato class which was a disappointment as I believe that I could have won it had I not lost so many good fruits to damage the day before, but hey ho, it’s all put down to experience and I’ve made sure I’ve doubled up on the support wires this season, using stronger galvanised wire for the task.

I had completely forgotten about the Montello class believe it or not, that is until NVS Mids Chairwoman Sandra Hall came and guided me by the arm to the class in question to see ‘1st’ written on the back of my entry card. Later in the morning I was interviewed by a very nice woman from Marshalls, met one of their top brass and the actual breeder of the variety, which was interesting. I even appeared on their Twitter and Facebook feeds. Best of all was being presented with a big fat cheque for 250 quid for staging 15 little tomatoes. Mental! 

One final story, it was even later that I found out that Medwyn had judged the class and unsurprisingly it took him and his son Alwyn an hour and a half. After completing his deliberations he said right let’s find out who won, so he turned over the entry card with your name on and which is always left face down against your entry at Malvern and other big shows. I’m reliably informed that his exact words were “Oh fucking hell!” Charming!

Tapping into the past

Many, many moons ago, back when Manchester Utd had only just started to put Liverscum back in their box, a journey which was fully completed last Wednesday night when King Jose put another big dollop of gleaming silverware in the Old Trafford trophy room, before even Tony Bliar and Gordon Brown had knackered the British economy up for several generations to come,  I watched an episode of Gardener’s World where Medwyn Williams was pulling his long carrots and parsnips for the very grandly named British Tap Root Championships. It was in fact so long ago that Medwyn fitted on screen without them having to go to a wide camera lens. When I got into showing veg a few years later I remembered that programme and vowed to enter the British Tap Root Championships as soon as possible. However, it’s something I’ve never managed to do, as it’s always held as part of the Welsh Branch Championships of the NVS and it has invariably clashed with one of my other shows.

So with my final year of showing in mind I felt I’d better bite the bullet and finally give it a go this season and get it out of my system. For this class you have to stage 2 parsnips, 2 long carrots, 2 long beetroot and 2 stump rooted carrots. The very best root growers in the country, (and Mark Perry), have all won this class in the past. Whilst I’m confident of growing decent parsnips and long carrots for this class, benching the other 2 crops to a decent standard will take a bit more doing. For the past few years my stump carrots have been troubled with a disease called cavity spot (Pythium violae) and they’ve been pretty average as a result I have to say. This problem manifests itself as sunken dark spots on the skins that won’t rub off no matter what, making them look quite ugly when they dry out. The only way of combatting this was to buy in fresh sand for the beds, so I emptied them out and set up more drums for long carrots with the surplus sand. It’s weird, but long carrots don’t seem to suffer from cavity spot for some reason. Parsnips are also said to be susceptible but again it’s not a problem I’ve encountered either. Having set up the new beds (mine are old paving slabs set on edge to contain the sand) and allowed the sand time to settle when the time came to do the bore holes I was seriously lacking motivation having done 94 bore holes for long roots the previous couple of weekends. In the past I’ve cored a hole out of the sand then finished off to two foot depth with a crowbar. In truth I just couldn’t be arsed, so after coring out 115 holes with a 2 ½ ” diameter plastic tube to 12” deep, spitting the surplus sand into a bucket, I just filled the holes with a 4:1 sieved M2/vermiculite mix (no added nutrients) through a metal funnel that had the whole task done in a few hours. It was a pleasant change. My idea is that the root will use up the nutrients in the 12” core, develop a definite stump end rather than growing down forever as it hits the nutrient free sand, the tap root itself will happily go down into the sand for moisture. We shall see. I sowed all my Sweet Candle seeds at the start of April and got great germination, and now have two very even beds growing away really well. It’s important not to let Sweet Candle dry out as the roots can easily grow overlong and become rough skinned so the sprinkler will be getting some use over the Summer.

In the past any long beet I’ve ever grown have tended to be grown in boreholes where the parsnips or long carrots have failed to germinate. Very often I’ve ended up with huge long beet that don’t quite cut the mustard for quality. For the British Tap Champs I decided I had to be a bit more dedicated and so I set up a row of plastic drainpipe tubes I grew some long carrots in a few years back. I filled each of these with about 18litres of an M2/peat/silver sand mix with added seaweed meal which I’m hoping will give good colour. A long beet expert once told me that long beet need much more water than other long roots so I really need to make sure these pipes don’t dry out. Positioned on the shady side of my tunnel the worst of the sun keeps off them during the hottest part of the day so that should help.

It will be nice to do well in this class if I can. At the RHS Westminster Autumn Show held at the beginning of October I managed to win a similar class there in 2015 after several years of trying. I scored well with my long carrots and parsnips, my stumps were not too bad on this occasion, but my long beet only were a bit heavy and had poor form so only scored 12.5. Good enough to win on the day against Jim Pearson and David Thornton but I’ll need to improve if I’m to be in the tickets at Wales in September.

Parsnip progress

What a fandabbydozy few years it’s been for me with parsnips in particular. I’d always won lots of classes with my ‘nips locally but it became a different kettle of fish when I started plonking some down on the benches at the ‘big shows’. Winning at Leicester Show in 2008 a fellow competitor reckoned they wouldn’t have looked out of place at a top NVS show, and that comment eventually convinced me to start having a crack at a higher level. However, In 2012 when the National was last held at Malvern I entered 5 parsnips which were the best I had ever grown but when I staged them next to my mentor Ian Stocks’ set it was clear I still had a long way to go. Mine are on the left of the photo.

When Ian unveiled his I instantly thought to myself ‘best in show’, but perhaps controversially Ian was placed only 2^nd , behind Andrew Jones who thus won for the second year running with Gladiator. One of the reasons being mooted was that the variety Ian grew ‘Pinnacle’ was a bit ‘blocky’ in profile. However, Ian managed some degree of payback by winning when the National was at Harrogate the year after.

My breakthrough with parsnips came in 2013 when I placed 3^rd at Malvern, behind parsnip expert Andrew Jones in 1^st. Mine weren’t brilliant I have to say and 3^rd was a very pleasant surprise, but in truth there were only about 6 entries I recall.

In 2015 I had the great feeling of actually winning parsnips at Malvern, nudging Andrew into a rare 2^nd place. When I first started growing long parsnips nearly 20 years ago I’d never have dreamed I could have progressed from this;

To this;

As you can see my parsnips have improved nearly as much as my looks. Back then I grew them in a single plastic oil drum filled with sand, and I didn’t bother cutting the bottom off so I invariably ended up with a  root coiled at the end where it had reached the bottom of the drum and gone spiralling round. Over the years I have acquired more drums (engineering companies will often give them to you to save paying to have them disposed of) and I have extended the depth through varying methods, so that my roots have got longer and longer. Initially it was a raised bed filled with sand and the now bottomless drums placed on that. In 2012 it was noticeable that my roots were shorter than all those in the tickets, and whilst length itself is not really a consideration for the judges I came to believe good length will make them stand out and make the judges take note, so long as your roots have good quality that is. The longer they are then the longer they will fill out and taper down the root, which all adds to the effect. I also think the longer ones come out more easily, as they are so thin at soil level which is the weakest part, so they don’t snap further up the root. Just my belief.

In 2015, and before my Malvern triumph, I had also travelled up to Dundee for that season’s National Championships, a brilliant weekend at the Dundee Flower and Food Festival, where I managed a 4^th place ticket in highly exalted company. Ian Stocks won again, David Thornton was 2^nd and Graham Watson 3^rd, all previous parsnip winners at the National, so I was in very good company. John Croot and Geoff Butterworth both felt I might have been placed even higher but I was more than happy with 4^th I have to say, as you can see by my soppy grin and gay pose.

One of the big problems I’d had in previous years with parsnips were brown lesions and cavities on the skin. For years I believed this to be parsnip canker and tried to take appropriate measures, all to no avail. When you actually read up on parsnip canker it should only thrive in clay soil and hates lime. My parsnip mix is obviously quite free draining and contains lime so I could never understand why I kept suffering with ‘canker’. Over time I came to realise I was actually experiencing carrot fly damage. This looks totally different on carrot skins, with dark, deep holes and fissures that are unmistakeable. I wonder if, whilst the carrot fly grub is perfectly willing to nibble on parsnips, they only graze the surface and this rots in a different manner to carrots giving a brown appearance rather than black. Once I realised carrot fly was the culprit I was able to spray with a strong insecticide called Hallmark which you do have to go to clandestine efforts to acquire. No doubt the organic brigade will once again accuse me of killing Mother Nature but I don’t give a flying fart as for exhibition your veg has got to be in pristine condition. So, to be sure that you know, this is what carrot fly damage looks like on parsnips;

It was an incredible feeling to repeat the win at Malvern last year with an even better set, actually beating 5 current or ex-National champions in the process, proving that I had moved on to become one of the best parsnip growers in the country, something to put on my headstone for passing dogs to piss up against no doubt. I hadn’t been able to make last year’s National held in Wales due to the imminent arrival of my 3^rd grandson, but fellow showman Mark Perry felt they were better than those that came 1^st at the National a couple of weeks earlier, won by Andrew Jones yet again. Nice to hear, but Mark is also a Liverpool fan so you have to say he does talk a lot of bollocks a lot of the time so I am cautious.

The next step now is to try and repeat this in September this season when the National Championships of the NVS comes to Malvern on its 5 yearly cycle, which will now be my final chance at becoming a National Champion, by no means an easy feat as the top growers in the land will now be gunning for me. So I got a slightly earlier start than usual this season, taking advantage of some decent weather in March to get the chitted seeds in the boreholes. The variety I’ve grown for the past 2 years and that has served me so well is one called Victor, available from Medwyn’s. I like the way its shoulder is nicely rounded into the leaf stalk cavity making cleaning quite easy. One of my fellow competitors at Malvern asked how I got my roots so white and I admitted that I actually take the rough side of a scourer to them once I’ve got as much dirt off them as I could with a hose pipe and the smooth side of the scourer. If you want to try this method I’d strongly recommend you try on a spare first, as you do have to be quite gentle so as not to rub in deep scratches to the skin. It works for me, but I certainly wouldn’t do it on carrots or potato skins for instance. Bearing in mind you need a set of 5 at the National rather than 3 then every root will have to be top notch.

I also extended my drums yet again by adding another 9” of part drum on top, taped together with strong duct tape so ensure they don’t come apart. This will potentially give me roots up to 70” long. Risky maybe? Should I have changed a winning formula in my final season of showing? Who knows, but I just fancied having a go at getting a set that overhangs the edge of the benches, even at Malvern, by several inches. However, I would never be able to match the late, great Jack Arrowsmith. I once saw a set of his at Malvern that actually touched the floor at the foot of the bench and carried on for another few inches. They really were something else.

I ended last season winning parsnips at Dave Thornton’s show in Derby, picking up best in show with them. There were some superb exhibits grown by several top growers so to get best in show in that company was something I would only have dreamed about when I ended the blog back in 2012. As I said, a lot has happened in the last 5 years.

It has been another busy few days in the garden, dodging the heavy rain showers mostly over the weekend, then moving the hose around during this mini-heatwave we’re experiencing, but I did take a few hours out on Saturday night when I donned my black tie .....

......to attend the prestigious 2017 Trumpton Garden Book Awards, as special guest of the very camera shy Craven Morehead whose book Carrots at Dawn had been shortlisted for the 2017 overall book of the year out of all the various category winners. Other nominees were;

A Russian back garden by Onya Bakyabitch
Herbal remedies for erectile dysfunction by Don Kedick
50 great Australian gardens by Sydney Arbour
Love in the garden by Ben Doon and Phil McCavity
My Israeli garden adventures by Lemmy C. Yatitz

The judges were the esteemed garden writers Hugh Jardon and Mike Oxmells. Sadly, Craven didn’t win but he was very pleased with the judges’ comments that Carrots at Dawn had plunged garden writing to previously unplumbed depths.

He’s back…for a few months only though!

I’m delighted to announce the return of the gobbiest, most handsome and generally deluded vegetable shower in Britain. Evidently I don’t own a mirror. Due to work commitments and hassle from certain quarters where a sense of humour was sadly lacking, I had to take my blog down back in 2012, and that coupled with my growing family (4 grandkids and counting) meant I have had my hands very full in the intervening years. However, this is to be only a temporary reprieve for you all as I shall be retiring from showing at the end of this year, certainly for the foreseeable future, so this time I don’t give a fish’s tit who I upset.

A lot has happened in the 5 years I’ve been away. For one thing I got fairly decent at some crops and have managed to win tickets at the highest level of the game, certainly not too shabby for a “wooden spooner” as someone once called me anyways, and I’ll be recounting those stories in the next few weeks.

Many have asked me in the intervening years when I was starting the blog up again and in truth I had no intention of ever doing so but due to the mind-numbingly boring content of many of the alternative sources of information and the fact that there appears to be no-one else out there willing to be controversial and take on the organic beardy-weirdy knobs head-on I’ve decided to come out of exile. Be warned though, if you don’t like using chemicals or swearing simply for the sake of it and because very often it sounds funny, take exception to prolonged mentions of Manchester United, the magnificent job that the Tories are doing rebuilding the country, or you simply don’t have a sense of humour of any description then jog on to John Harrison’s Allotment-dot-oh-god or any of the other boring as fuck websites for your information. And don’t bother leaving negative comments as I’ll only delete them and make it my life’s work ridiculing you at every possible opportunity thereafter. So, in short, if you’re pining for some light relief from Dan Unsworth’s continuous moaning about the weather, Paul Bastow’s sparse postings or any of the gobshite drivel currently cluttering up t’interweb on various Facebook and Twitter garden pages then strap yourself in, you deserve this and I apologise for neglecting you all.

You will note that I have deleted all content pre-2012 as I shall be making a fresh start, doing weekly updates on my growing and showing progress. Truth is that you’re learning all the while, and some of the things I wrote in 2007 are either out of date or just simply wrong, so I shall be recounting my journey from now armed with this fresh knowledge. I’ll try and do a couple of posts a week, but I certainly shan’t be as prolific as I was pre-2012.

Meanwhile, if you’re looking for some light-hearted reading matter with lots of choice swear words, a highly unbelievable plot and noisy sex then I can thoroughly recommend a book called ‘Carrots at Dawn’ by an incredibly good looking chap and brilliant grower called Craven Morehead (ahem!).

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Carrots-Dawn-Fifty-Shades-parsnips-ebook/dp/B00QSMLQ52

Based around the run up to a village show there are several characters that regular showmen will probably recognise as having similarities to people they have rubbed up against themselves. Ignore the bad reviews on Amazon, I have it on good authority they were just spiteful comments by doddering old dry-farts who took exception to this guy promoting his book on Facebook pages and various gardening websites. For instance, Medwyn Williams, President of The National Vegetable Society said of it.

“I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s a book that I can really recommend.”

Despite being a Liverpool fan and thus possessing of an intelligence that has you questioning his judgement I think that is high praise indeed. It really is such a brilliant book I could have written it myself!

Best regards

Simon Smith ONVS

The End

Hello guys and gals


Unfortunately this REALLY will be my last posting on here. Since October when I said I was taking a break from blogging I've decided that I quite like not having the pressure to find something to say and I have now decided to make that permanent. As you all know business life is very difficult and isn't getting any easier and I really do need to concentrate on that for now. If the Government is correct then we have another 6 or 7 years of hard times ahead of us and I've had to look at the things I am involved in and make cuts to allow me to enjoy things in my spare time that really matter such as my family and grandchildren.

Many thanks to all of you who have been on this journey with me for the past 7 years or so and the kind words that you have offered (mostly). I've made some great friends as a result and I shall certainly be keeping in touch. To those of you who didn't have a sense of humour and tried to make life awkward for me....wankers!

If anyone ever has any questions then feel free to email me smithyveg@aol.com and I'll always do my best to answer, but failing that make sure you join the National Vegetable Society where growers that are far more knowledgeable than me are always on hand to help you out.



All the best

Simon

The 2013 season starts here.

Whilst I've cut down on the shows that I have done this season I have found it a bit of a bind prepping certain veg in recent weeks, struggling to get myself motivated even for the big shows. Parsnips in particular have pissed me off, and I didn't lavish the usual care and attention on my Westminster entry. The decision of the NVS not to reduce them from 5 to 3 at future National Championships was a frustrating one and makes me wonder whether I can be arsed in future. Parsnips need quite a bit of rubbing to get the dirt from all the nooks and crannies and when you've done the first one and it's gleaming (Which can take 10 minutes or more to do properly) and your hands and arms are cold and you're faced with a bathful of another 8 or 9 for the various classes then your motivation starts to wane. It was for this reason that I supported a class reduction proposal. Washing several plates of spuds over the sink is another excrutiatingly mindnumbing task and with proposed increases in peat prices I am seriously considering not bothering growing spuds to show in future. How do other growers feel about these subjects?

Maybe the answer is to specialise? A couple of seasons ago Charlie Maisey watched me whizzing around like a lunatic at Westminster and advised me to cut down on the amount of different veg I grew and concentrate on growing a few to the absolute best of your abilities. Charlie himself is best known for growing tomatoes, cucumbers and runner beans. At the time I was adamant I wanted to grow as much as I could in order to fill the benches at local shows but if I'm struggling to enjoy the preparation then perhaps I need to re-evaluate which crops I grow in future?

Next season I intend to do a new show at Causey Inn in Stanley, Co. Durham, not far from the Beamish Museum. Run by the recently formed North East Horticultural Society this show has gone from strength to strength the last couple of seasons but it has been held on the same day as Harrogate Show. Next year it will be held the week after so I'll give it a go and put myself up against the cream of the north east where there are many incredibly good growers who never venture out of the region. Indeed, it was in Co. Durham that my interest in show veg was first fostered 20 years or so ago, when my geordie uncle took me to a working men's club at pot leek show time. There were many benches straining under the weight of pot leeks but I was more interested in one small section towards the back of the display where they'd crammed in all the other vegetable classes, and in particular the long carrots. I just had to know how they were produced and it wasn't long before Gardeners' World did a piece showing Medwyn preparing for the British Tap Root Championships and from that moment I was hooked.

Causey have excellent prize money and some very interesting classes that don't require you to pull several drums of parsnips or long carrots so I've decided to give Malvern and (possibly) Westminster the elbow next season and visit a different neck of the woods for a look-see. Have a look at the NEHS website and see what you think.

http://www.ne-hs.com/

So that's my show season over for another year. Due to our 25th anniversary I severely cut back on the amount of shows I did this season but I must admit I did enjoy the reduced workload so I have some hard decisions to make next season and so I fear there are one or two shows I won't be able to attend for the foreseeable future. A couple of years ago I was doing virtually one show every weekend from mid-August until late October in some capacity or other and I want to trim it down so we have at least one free weekend every other week during the show period. It's been a real bonus for me that Leesa has started to enjoy helping me out at staging time but I don't want to push my luck so I am already looking at the shows I do and coming up with a schedule for 2013. I already know that I won't be doing Malvern and maybe Westminster next year.

I'm also now going to be taking a mini-break from the blog until just before Christmas as I want to concentrate on getting the plot tidy and some construction work for a new polytunnel and a chicken run. I have quite a few exciting plans for the garden and it's no use talking about them I have to get outdoors on cold Winter weekends and get things done! I'm also itching to get out on the hills and try out my brand new walking boots which I am currently wearing around the house to try and break them in and avoid blisters. In November we're having a weekend in the Brecon Beacons and I'm hoping to take Leesa up Fan-y-Big (titter titter!). I also need to give my undivided attention in the coming weeks to Strictly Come Dancing and Victoria Pendleton's Argentine Tango. Just before Christmas I will be publishing this year's coveted Smithyveg Awards. I've already started writing them and the usual suspects are in the firing line but I can promise some new faces will be winning my much coveted awards this season. Until December folks........adieu!

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.

Gin & Turnip anyone?

Whilst I was staging on Tuesday morning at Westminster Dave Thornton suddenly said stop what you're doing and come and look at this. He led me to the fruit section as he wanted me to see this set of three lemons exhibited under the name of the Duke of Devonshire.

These were without doubt the biggest three lemons I've ever seen together since I witnessed Medwyn talking to Ian Stocks and Gareth Cameron last month. They barely fit on the plates provided by the RHS and carried off a first prize in the any other fruit class. The only thing I don't like is that the gardener who grew these doesn't get the recognition he deserves because I doubt very much whether the Duke of Devonshire ever kicks off his privileged slippers and actually sets foot inside the glasshouse at Chatsworth!

There were several exhibits of blanch leeks at Westminster but I had to look twice and have a sly giggle at Dave's anorexic set which were incredibly long but only smartie tube thickness. Still, at least his hadn't gone to seed like all of mine, the foliage was clean and I think they got him a 4th!

And I made a note to look out in the seed catalogues for this variety of turnip, the winners in the class, variety 'Oasis'. I've found turnips quite awkward to grow successfully for the showbench. They either get slug damage, the leaves get nibbled by caterpillars, or they split underneath rendering them useless for show. They are also prone to the tap roots getting brown marks and looking very unappetising so this exhibit really shone out on the showbench in London. I can only assume they were grown indoors in raised beds filled with good quality compost as they were absolutely gleaming.

There is so much to see in London these days and shortly after a quick whizz round Harrods where I was very tempted to buy one of their bling-bling watches for the knockdown price of £45,500.00 I was very taken by this 'living wall' of the Athenaeum Hotel, Piccadilly. This is watered by 3000 integrated drip feeders and looked very naturalistic indeed. By the way Oscar now points at me and shouts 'cock'....he's actually pointing at my £22.50 Sekonda watch.....I think!