Caulis

I've never really successfully managed to grow cauliflowers for show so I'm hoping to do better this year. They're generally accepted as one of the more difficult veg to grow well and timing is often the thing that lets you down. You always seem to have one ready on show day without a partner to match it or else you have 2 perfect 3 or 4 days before the show!

They also like lots of bulky organic matter digging into the beds in the previous autumn, but because I don't have a piece of ground I can keep free for them they invariably have to go in where something else has been grown and since harvested, meaning the soil has been depleted of nutrients. I'll be planting my caulis within the next couple of weeks.....they're only 2" high seedlings at the moment. You can reckon on 12-14 weeks or so from sowing to showing with caulis but it all depends on conditions. In hot summers you really have to give them plenty of water in order for them to develop large, solid curds.

You are out there!

I sometimes write this and wonder wherher anyone is actually reading it......and then you get an email or two from fellow growers !

So hi there to Debbie (see link at the side) and Mel at Sileby.....sorry I only just noticed your comments on previous posts.

If anyone's around at 6.50 then make sure you watch 'The Great British Village Show' on BBC1. It's a bit of a contrived set of shows to 'big up' the art of growing/cooking/flower arranging etc for your local show and some moments on last week's show was a bit cringe-worthy but Alan Titchmarsh is presenting it

Cabbage update

I've not shown my cabbages on here for a while. The variety in the picture is Brigadier which can grow to huge proportions but with good form and quality also. You may be able to notice a series of strings suspended above them which is there to deter pigeons. The don't like to have obstructions above them apparently as it means they may get caught if they have to do an emegency take off if an angry gardener comes down the garden at them! In the past I've planted my cabbages and retired to the house for a quick cuppa, only to return half an hour later to find my newly planted seedlings have all been eaten! Pigeons SUCK!

The only problem now will be to keep cabbage white caterpillars away and I plan to do this with a spraying made from a solution containing rhubabrd leaves. The butterflies hate the smell (allegedly) and won't lay eggs on leaves that have been watered with s

Potato update

My first potatoes planted at the beginning of May are now about 8" high in the polybags filled with sieved peat. I'll need to put canes around the bags soon and tie strings across and around to support the foliage before it gets too tall. The canes placed over the pots in the pic are to stop cats digging in the peat.......soddin buggers!

Before the foliage gets too long I'll also just have to top up the bags with more sieved peat to give the optimum growing area for the tubers to swell into. Then it's just a matter of making sure they get plenty of water.

Progress update

Long carrots Foliage looking good and a good 8-10" long.

Stump carrots Thinned to one per station. Foliage 2" high. No problems so far (Heracles)

Parsnips Erratic growth but few problems otherwise. Sprayed against aphids twice already.

Large Onions In greenhouse......very good foliage and starting to swell.

8oz onions Planted outside and growth as usual. (var.Tasco)

Shallots About ready for lifting but size disappointing. Foliage has been poor.

Tomatoes 6 plants of 'Cedrico' in greenhouse. 2' high and 2 flower trusses. 6 smaller plants to go in this weekend.

Cherry toms 'Gardeners Delight' and 'Sungold' planted in row outside next to leek bed. 10" high no flowers yet.

Leeks Already on 18" collars and 1" dia. No problems with foliage yet.

Beetroot Successional sowings 'Pablo' from early May. Most seem to have germinated.

Cabbages 'Brigadier' looking very good. 'Kilaxy' may have succumbed to a virus as leaf edges crinkled and yellowing. Red Cabbage 'Maestro' also looking good.

Brussels 'Brilliant' starting to grow well.

Caulis Still in cells in greenhouse. Will be planted out in place of lifted shallots.

Runner beans First sowing of 'Enorma' made 2 nights ago in pots. 2nd sowing in a week or so.

French beans First sowings will be this weekend. 'The Prince' & 'Purple Speckled'

Cucumber 'Carmen' will be sown this weekend.

Marrows First sowing made last night 'Blyton Belle'

Courgettes 'Orelia' and 'One Ball' germinated in pots in greenhouse

Pumpkin Plants ready for planting

Potatoes 4 varieties 'Winston', 'Kestrel', 'Nadine', and 'Maxine' planted and through compost in varying stages. 'Amour' to plant this weekend but would have liked to have had them in at least a fortnight ago.

Peppers Planted in large pots. 'Californian Wonder' and 'Sweet Spot'

Many other veg in various stages on and around the plot.

Latest on long carrots

The long carrots have also put on decent growth and they should get away well from now on. A spray with insecticide may be required if greenfly descend but they don't usually go for carrots I tend to find, preferring my parsnips next door. However, slugs and snails are a different proposition and I have to scatter pellets over the tops of the drums to kill them.......whoever says slugs and snails don't like to crawl over coarse materials is talking out of his chocolate starfish!

Unlike most veg, with roots you don't really know until Show day whether you have some good exhibits or not. They may have forked halfway down or be bent etc. But hopefully the preparation you did in the early Spring means that the hard work has been done and the tap roots are now going down deep into the growing medium ready to put on good weight during the Summer.

I will scatter some special powder that I've bought called Rovril during late June and late August to try and deter the carrot root fly. It's not available to the general public (don't ask how I came by some!) and stinks to high heaven. You just scatter a few grains around the crown of each carrot and the root fly won't come anywhere near it......we shall see!

Onions starting to excite me !!!

The onions I purchased back in March have put on exceptional growth.....compared to what I've been used to at any rate. You can almost see the difference daily. I've only ever managed to get them to a couple of pounds but I feel sure these will excel that easily.

The key now is to keep them growing upright in order to keep them symmetrical in outline when harvested. I won't liquid feed except perhaps for some phostrogen towards the end of June to assist with the ripening process. All being well I'll start to harvest during late July.....which won't be easy as I'll be on holiday in Rhodes so I'm hoping my daughter's boyfriend will

Showing Tips

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



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

Get planting

The risk of a late frost should now be over with.......so now's the time to be planting all the tender veg such as courgettes, marrows, lettuces, runner and french beans, as well as all your bedding plants.

Having said that, as I grow for show I haven't even sown my beans yet. I'll be sowing my runner beans in pots tonight. I find that you have better results if you plant out strong plants and germination is more or less guaranteed. They soon make good strong growth and allows me more time to prepare my supports properly. The variety I grow is ENORMA.

My french beans will not go in for at least another week as these only need 8 to 10 weeks from sowing to cropping. I'll be growing THE PRINCE and PURPLE SPECKLED. I'm even toying with the idea of growing these in large pots to make picking easier and to keep them out of reach of slugs.

After my weekend away I've had to throw away several trays of veg and bedding plants.....that's what you get if you leave the watering duties to an airhead of an 18 year old daughter !

Adios!

Last post for a few days.....off indulging my other passion of hillwalking in the Lake District. Will be back on Tuesday 15 'Wainwright's and 30 miles later!

Potatoes for show

To grow really top quality potatoes for show you need to remember one thing.......don't bother growing them in the ground !

If you do you'll only get rough, randomly shaped tubers with an assortment of skin blemishes and diseases as well as the usual holes from slug and pest damage.

They'll be fine for eating but to compete on the showbench they need to be grown in large pots of peat. This involves quite a bit of time and expense but the end justifies the means. As you can see from the pic my spuds gleam in comparison to the other entries around me and justifiably gained first prize.

The reason is that only the roots of the plant come into contact with the soil as they grow through the bottom of the pot. The actual swelling tubers are kept nice and cosseted in their sterile, peat growing medium and as a result they come out as clean as a whistle. Until they get their roots out into the soil you have to put a bit of general fertiliser in the bottom the pot.

I put a couple of seed tubers into the bottom of each peat filled pot. As the peat settles you may also have to top up each pot with a little more peat (in effect 'earthing up') and at this time of year you need to keep an eye out for predicted night frosts and cover them with fleece or sheets of newpaper.

Once growing away strongly the heavy foliage will need to be supported with canes and strings. Harvesting usually happens 12-14 weeks after planting but don't dig up the tubers straight away. What I do is cut off the foliage then leave the pots for a week or so (I actually lift them and take them into my garage) so that the potato skins can harden. If you lift them straight away the skins will rub off at the slightest touch and render them useless for showing.

If it's a week or two util the show you can sort them into sets and store them back in the peat until the night before the show. Only them

Collaring leeks

Over the last few days I've been taking the 14" collars off my blanch leeks and turning them to make them into 18" collars. The collars are made from builders' damp proof course material and will blanch the barrel.

Checking back on my blog I didn't do this until early August last season so they would appear to be way ahead of schedule. Hopefully, they'll end up a lot meatier than last year's leeks as a result.....and they were the best I'd ever grown!

I stripped away any old or decaying foliage whilst I was at it. The top pic also shows me manipulating the barrel carefully to straighten it as some of them may be slightly curved. At this time of year they're quite supple and it's easy to bend them back into shape. The 2nd pic shows the same leek now in it's longer collar, supported against a cane to keep the whole lot growing upright. Horizontal canes support the foliage as they will now start to get quite heavy and would otherwise flop on the soil and even break.

The 3rd pic is a view of the raised bed they're growing in. You may also notice my shallots in pots growing on one side of the bed....these will be harvested during June and I may sow some beetroot in their place. At the side of the bed you can see some more canes with cherry tomatoes planted against them. As you can see I do try to make the most of every possible square foot of space that I can.

Shallots

I said on 17th April that I had thinned my shallots to leave 2 in each pot. This involves carefully peeling back the outer skin and breaking away all the other small bulblets to leave just 2. These will then swell quickly with the extra room they have, and should be a better, more rounded shape also.

The thinnings are planted in front of the pots. When you do this they are often strangely shaped, being almost square in some cases. But they will become round now that they are not squashed up against their brothers and sisters and should be ideal for entering in the pickling classes for shallots under 25mm.....although this can be under 30mm in some shows!

The pic shows a pot with a thinned out set of 2 with the thinnings planted into the soil in front of them. I would have given them a sprinkling of dried blood after thinning to give them a nitrogen boost, and have recently taken to watering them with phostrogen to help with the ripening process and to firm them up ready for lifting in the middle of June. More on that then.

Potatoes in bags

I really need to get the rest of my potatoes in but as I write it's raining hard outside. I have got 2 varieties in.....Kestrel (coloured)and Winston (white) but still need to get Amour (coloured)/Nadine (white) and Maxine (coloured) in. We're away next weekend so if I don't manage it this coming week they'll never go in.



As I've mentioned before I grow my spuds in large pots or special bags (see pic). Each bag is filled to the top with sieved peat to which I add a sprinkle of seaweed meal and dried blood. The bags are then placed into a trench in the soil and soil is pushed around the sides of each bag to keep it in place. 2 potatoes are pushed down into the bottom of the bag and the whole lot watered well.



The idea is that the roots of the potato grow through the holes in the bottom of the bag into the soil, thereby benefitting from the soil nutrients also. As the actual swelling 'new' potatoes never come into contact with the soil as such, they will come out of the bag with superb, clean skins that require the minimum amount of washing for the show bench. As the haulms grow they'll need supporting with canes and string and any flowers that are produced will be pinched out so that all the plants energies go into producing large, shapely tubers.



Before planting each seed spud, I reduce the number of chitted shoots on each dependant on the variety. Maxine for instance always struggles to produce large spuds so I only leave one shoot on each. I leave all shoots on Winston as this produces large tubers quite easily.

Dahlia cuttings

I drove a 220 mile round trip this morning to Station House Nurseries on the Wirrel to collect some dahlia plants I'd had my eye on since Malvern Show last September. The variety is Emma's Coronet and it stuck out on the bench at Malvern like a beacon. I thought it was the most stunning looking vase in the show.......a cracking pink with white blends.

http://www.eurodahlia.com/

As well as this variety I'm also growing my tried and tested varities taken from cuttings from the best of last years tubers.

They are:

Kenora Sunset

Jomanda

Lismore Moonlight

I keep my selected tubers over winter in buckets of dried peat (labelled - most important!!!) after cutting off the foliage and dusting any cut ends with yellow sulphur to protect against rot. This usually happens in November after the first frost has blackened the foliage.

The buckets are carefully watered during April and eventually the tubers will send up cutting material which is severed as close to the legion with the tuber as possible. They are put into compost around a small pot, labelled and covered with an old plastic half bottle to act as a mini-greenhouse. Roots should start to form withing 2 or 3 weeks at which point they are potted on singly before planting out during mid-June. More on that then.