My Sherine Amour

Always nice to get home and find a package on the doorstep. Today I got my first order of seed potatoes from JBA, the varieties NVS Sherine (white) and NVS Amour (pink splashes). I don't plan on growing a huge amount of tatties this season, but the ones I do grow I want to grow well in the hope of maybe (just maybe) getting a set on the bench at either Llangollen or Malvern. These two varieties are exclusive to JBA and used to be regular show winners several years ago until they were discontinued. Iain Barbour of JBA resurrected them in order to sponsor two special classes at last year's National for the NVS's 50th anniversary celebrations. Hopefully he'll be doing the same for this year's National.

Tonight I set them out in a tray in the garage and covered them to exclude light. Towards the end of February i'll put them in a warmer, lighter spot to encourage chitting.

Due to work constraints I didn't get my order in time into Dave Thornton's ESP so I've also ordered a small amount of Kestrel and Casablanca from JBA. Iain Barbour has kindly offered to personally select the spuds for my order from his vast set up to ensure the best quality for exhibition. Seems like a blatant attempt at trying to ensure his name is kept out of next year's Smithyveg awards to me!

Polar goaler or canker wanker?

A few decent hours weather today meant I could start the laborious but totally necessary yearly task of emptying and refilling my parsnip drums. I start by putting an old dumpy bag close to the first drum to be emptied. The sand from the first drum is emptied into the dumpy bag and the second drumis then emptied into the first drum and so on.

This task is made easier by the metal scoop that I had made and which you can see balanced on top of the two drums in the photo.......

This scoop allows me to reach down into the bottom of the drum and scoop out the sand easily so that the drums are emptied in little time.

After emptying each drum the sand in the raised metal frame is given a good forking through to loosen it up. In the past i've just rested the drum on this foot deep layer of sand, using a spirit level to make sure the drums are perfectly upright. However, whilst refilling you will invariably find that the drum may tilt slightly. Even if it doesn't it can still tilt during the settling process, worse still after you have bored the holes meaning there is potential for your roots to bend and the bore hole skews. Therefore I have decided to put some metal bars across the metal frame and rest the drum on these having seen carrot king Ian Stocks do a similar thing on his blog. I shall be doing this next weekend and take some photos to show what I mean. This will also give me a couple of extra inches of growing length as the drums also tend to sink into sand bed.

I still had a few parsnips in the drums from last season which didn't make the showbench, the double rooted monster on the left for obvious reasons. Still, they taste nice having been subjected to several weeks of frost.

The last few years I have grown 7 parsnips in each drum whereas the norm is 3 or 4 for the really top growers. I shall be compromising this coming season by reducing to 5 in each drum as I just don't have dozens of drums like them, just 7 giving me 35 potential roots to choose.

I have also taken a flyer by deciding that I will be growing the variety Polar rather than Pinnacle that I have grown for the last three seasons. Having had a few non-germinating stations last season with Pinnacle, and no Pinnacle seed left I tried sowing Polar in these positions after being sent a trial packet by Shelley Seeds. Whilst I suffered with canker on the Pinnacles there was absolutely no sign of any damage on Polar despite them all growing side by side in the same drums. The skin on them was incredibly smooth, almost opaque and cleaning up was a doddle. I shall also erect some form of barrier over the drums to stop the windborne canker spores in their tracks.

According to Dave Thornton, Polar has a lower canker resistance rating than Pinnacle so it should have been the other way round, but for whatever reason it worked for me. I also found that it carried it's weight well down the root although they weren't as big as Pinnacle as they were sown a good month later. If I can get the girth then I don't see why I shouldn't become National Parsnip Champion in August. What was that Oscar?......

Clippety doo dah

Got my second package of seed today from Medwyn's, including a packet of Vento onions for the under 250g class which I sowed immediately. I usually wait until the end of the month or even early February before sowing my 250g onions but as I want them for the end of August I've sown a batch now. I plan to grow these a different way this year, in large pots in the greenhouse. More on this in the next few months.

I also received these spring-steel clips from Medwyns. At the Scottish Branch NVS seminar it became apparent to me that these are a must for growing exhibition peas. I find it difficult to get 8' canes in my neck of the woods, let alone 10' ones. As you lose 8-10" of the cane in the ground this gives you barely 7' of vertical height which may not be enough.

By using a wire stretched between two stout posts the canes can be secured to the wire with these clips, meaning the cane only needs to be into the soil an inch or two to keep it in position at ground level. Once in position the canes don't budge a millimetre and it is certainly going to be a lot quicker and also less fiddly than messing about with bits of string. I can almost hear those Scottish pea growers screaming into their sporrans!

New Man City player takes a dig at Man Utd.

Yawn! 34 years since their last trophy and counting!

Why is it so easy grandad?

Well it now feels as if the season has really started with the planting of the shallots (Hative de Niort) into 3" square pots. As a tight bastard I used the compost from last years spud bags which I won't be using for spuds again as all my spuds were riddled with scab. I did add some Vitax Q4 and some nutrimate to the potting which should see them through to planting out time in late March/early April. In all I had 34 large bulbs and 14 for the pickling class that have survived through the Winter. I lost more than usual this season to soft rots for some reason. I also had a few bulbs that started shooting in December and these were immediately binned.

The shallots are in one of my greenhouses for now, with no added heat whatsoever. I did manage to get it cleared of the old necrotic tomato plants last weekend and gave the glass a good spraying with Jeyes Fluid inside and out so that any lurking nasties have been eliminated.


















The only other thing growing at the moment are these pots of show daffs for my local show at the end of March. Growing them in this way allows me to put them outside if I need to slow them down or leave them inside if I need to speed things up. It also means I can bring them under cover if rain is forecast just before the show that may spoil the blooms. I don't show any daffs anywhere other than my local show but I do like to have them at their best all the same.

















Yesterday I sowed a small tray of onions, the seed supplied by Ian Stocks from Scotland, a strain I believe from an exhibition heavyweight Kelsae type. I hope to be able to grow a few to 3 or maybe 4lbs this season.

I had some of my seeds arrive from Shelley Seeds on Friday, and just await the delivery of some more from Medwyns and DT Browns. It's always nice to get your hands on the varieties you want, and indeed I had a bad dream the other night that Shelleys were unable to supply my usual Cedrico tomato seed, but luckily they turned up in the package so no worries there. If I had to put money on one crop where I think I could realistically get into the tickets at Llangollen it would be tomatoes.

And finally today my grandson Oscar watched his first Man U match, the boys beating a 2nd rate Liverpool team in the FA Cup very comfortably. However, as you can see he was absolutely disgusted at the horror tackle that quite rightly got Steven 'over-rated' Gerrard sent off. His little Man U shirt was in the wash!

New year, new diary, new plans, new look.

I'm a happy man today. The Christmas decorations have come down so that's that nonsense over and done with for another year. The holiday period has been one of total inactivity as far as the veg plot has been concerned but I'm feeling quite smug about that as experience has taught me that there really is no rush. I managed to get my Pendle Improved leeks potted on at last but time will tell whether the check in growth will bite me on the bum later in the season.

The next task will be to get a few onions sown and my shallots potted up. I saved my best shallot bulbs from last season meaning I have about 30 to replant plus a few picklers. I shall use the compost from last season's spud bags with some Vitax Q4 and Nutrimate added to keep them going until planting out time at the end of March. I shall fill 3" square pots with the mix , water well and nestle the shallots to about a third of their depth. They will then be left to their own devices in a cold greenhouse and not watered again until the roots are well established or we get some unseasonally hot weather. If we get freezing temperatures again it won't bother the shallots as last season the compost was frozen solid at times during January and February and they still went on to become my best ever.

A few weeks ago I cut the neck of the bulb back to just above the growing tip which you can feel between finger and thumb. This helps stop the emerging shoots getting tangled up in the dry neck tissue and the new shoots can emerge quickly without hindrance. Dave Thornton scratches the base plate and dips them in Rovril fungicide which he says helps prevent losses due to soft rots later in the year after harvesting. My bulbs seem nice and solid and I have only lost a few during the Winter so I shan't be bothering with that.

I have also been filling in my 2011 RHS diary with the season's sowing and planting dates with the various shows in mind, working back from each one, for things like globe beetroot and french beans. My stepmum gets me the RHS pocket diary every Christmas and I now have a dozen or more to refer back to and alter my dates accordingly. In this age of computer spreadsheets and online blogs I still find these dairies invaluable and there's nothing quite like checking back on your own written words and seeing what worked for you in a particular year. It's also interesting to see the variety names that have come and gone and those that still rule the roost.

And finally I have grown something over Christmas that will hopefully help me to get amongst the cards at Llangollen with peas. I noticed that the last two National champions the two Ians, Stocks and Simpson both sport beards. Now, whether my newly acquired facial fungus will attract the mildew away from my pea plants only time will tell but i'm prepared to try anything that may increase my chances. So, not only do I talk like a fanny but from now on my face also resembles one.

The results are in!

It's that time you've all been waiting for and maybe some have been dreading. The 2010 Smithyveg awards when I take on board all the insults and ridicule that some of you have thrown at me during the year and spit them back out with interest. There are also some serious awards reflecting what has been an excellent year for top class veg when the National Vegetable Society celebrated its 50th anniversary. I've said it before and i'll say it again....if you have any interest in growing veg to show standard or simply just improving your yield then the NVS is a must join society. Forget the National Allotment Society....that's for lefties, hippies and new age lesbian mothers wanting to know how to grow bean shoots, okra and gourds for sticking their josticks into.

Anyway...to business.

The shows at Malvern, Westminster and Derby pitched me against some of the country's best growers and there were some superb dishes to be seen. As usual Sherie Plumb was nearly unbeatable with potatoes but when she is it's very often as a result of poor judging. For that reason she comes third in the 'What the hell were you smoking when you judged that?' award. At Westminster she came second in the white potato class because her spuds were around 12oz each and not the 6-7oz optimum size as suggested by the NVS judges' guide. They were so far better than the second placed set in terms of quality, shape and uniformity it was totally embarrassing.

In 2nd place were Dave Thornton's 8oz onions that won at Westminster. Even he was amazed at the result and it denied a keen husband and wife grower a first red card at such a high level.

The winner this year, but of course, is the blind Uruguayan referee that denied England an equalising goal in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. The ball was so far over the line it was actually in Zimbabwe and had to get it's passport stamped on its way back into the stadium. If he had allowed it England would only have lost 4-2 and we wouldn't have felt nearly so humiliated! Still, it meant we could devote the rest of the year laughing at Andy Murray.

Best newcomer in 2010 has to be Ian Taylor of Nuneaton who had the audacity to beat me for most points at my local show in Seagrave. I say newcomer......he's that old he actually remembers cheering the troops off during the war. The Boer War!

For the next gong i'm going 'Back to The Future' for the Battle of Falkirk award for most scottish bodies lying around in a broken and defeated state! And the winner is 'Llangollen 2011', which will see the emergence of a brilliant and incredibly good-looking English pea grower who will leave the previously dominant scottish contingent crying into their Glenfiddichs!

The next award is the Garry Glitter "I love you love, you love me true love, I love you love me love" award for services to vegetable manlove. In second place this year are Dave Thornton and Medwyn Williams. Dave has appeared in Medwyn's Garden News column more times than every other grower combined, to the extent that I am now convinced that Dave must be Medwyn's secret love child.

But the winners this year by a country mile are Paul Bastow and Dan Unsworth for this unashamedly homo-erotic pose at Ingleton Show. When they die I may have them mounted....or perhaps just holding hands!

The next award is for the biggest 'looooooooser' in 2010. Sadly, perennial winners of this award Liverpool FC can no longer be considered as to become a loser you have to actually compete in the first place. So in 3rd position in 2010 is Gordon Brown who thankfully lost the general election in May but still managed to leave the country in such a financial fanny pickle it will take a generation to rectify. Thanks Gordon!

2nd biggest 'loser' in 2010 is the people of the United States of America, who in 2009 thought they were electing the most radical and forward thinking President ever in Barack Obama. Since his inauguaration he has done, as far as I can tell, absolutely nothing!

But the winner is the great Medwyn Williams, current Chairman of the NVS who came 2nd to me at Malvern in the tomato class. As he presented me with my trophy on that Saturday night in September he whispered "I'd better not bloody read about this on your website!" It was already on!

Never mind Medwyn, you also provided me with the best day out in 2010 when I joined the NVS North East Derby DA (NEDDA) along with Dave Thornton (NODDY) on their trip to see Medwyn's operation in May. It was amazing to see the scale of his greenhouses at Bangor University and his new polytunnel on Anglesey just a few days before he started harvesting everything for his Chelsea Flower Show display, where he won an 11th gold medal as well as best exhibit in the floral marquee. This trip narrowly pipped the Scottish Branch's seminar in November which I hope to be attending regularly from now on. Three excellent lectures plus the chance to buy stuff you can't buy in the garden centres near me made this well worth the 600 mile round trip. I don't get out much!

I always end this awards ceremony by announcing the premier award of the night, that of the most gorgeous creature on Earth. In the past it has been won by my wife in 2008 and last year by a 19 stone pumpkin. This year I have a dilemma as I cannot split two worthy contenders so I have decided to make them both joint winners!!

First up is my first grandchild Oscar born on November 24th. Like his grandad he is just about perfect in every way although we recently found out that he is probably deaf bless him, so he will have a few life obstacles in his way but nothing that cannot be overcome. On the plus side however, he will never know what it's like to have to listen to a woman's nagging!

Then of course there were my 6 winning tomatoes from Malvern in September, six perfect, ruby red orbs that made me into the most unbearably smug man in the Midlands. Ladies and gentlemen, raise your glasses to Oscar and.....errr, my tomatoes that I may or may not have mentioned before, ad infinitum.

There isn't time to go into detail but there were several other minor awards presented tonight, among them the 'Not Bad at Growing Shallots I suppose' award (David Thornton), the Mussolini "I'll support whoever is the biggest" award' (Gareth Cameron) and the 'Most Handsome National Pea judge and the cheque is in the post' award (John Trim). Pot leek grower Bob Plant won the 'Person who sends me the most debauched, sickening and quite frankly outrageous joke texts of a sexual nature' award....please keep them coming Bob. And finally Mark Perry won the title of 'Most haunted look of abject horror' when he realised I had won tomatoes at Malvern and he would have a year of unending smugness to contend with. Your turn next year Mark?

It just remains for me to wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. I'll be back soon enough talking more bollocks and passing on as many tips as I can to help you all gain those elusive red cards at whatever level you choose to show at.

Merry f***ing Christmas everyone!

'Beeting' death once more

Regular readers of my humble blog will recall how I bravely hauled myself from the precipice of certain death in 2009 when I contracted swine flu. Well, i'm fairly sure i've got it again and have spent the last 3 days in bed with nigh-on identical symptons. I didn't think you could get it more than once but i'm told you can but my body will have built up antibodies from the first attack. Doesn't bloody feel like it!!! Good job my body is made from girders!

However, I'm feeling a little better now on what is an important day psychologically. From now the days are getting longer and growers are itching to get things going. However, a look out of the window from my sick bed tells me to forget all about any ideas for planting and sowing. Whilst the country is blanketed in thick snow and places like Heathrow are at a standstill here in Leicestershire we've escaped the recent flurries but the landscape has been bleached white by deep frosts.

At the start of the month I drove up to Nelson in Lancashire to collect 24 'Pendle Improved' blanch leek plants from Dave Metcalfe. These have been put into a hastily erected growing chamber under a grolamp in my garage but because I have been unable to get down to the garage for several days these have dried out and suffered a check. Ho-hum. 30 quid down the drain it would appear.

I am in no rush to get my onions sown in this weather but I shall try and get a sowing done towards the end of the month. I grew some seed supplied by Scottish grower Ian Stocks last year and whilst it was a late February sowing and they therefore didn't attain great size I was please with their shape and shall be having a better 'go' with them this year. I'm never after huge....just a couple of pounds or more with good shape and uniformity.

My shallots will go into 3" pots in early January. Last year I never saw any shoots until mid-February because of freezing weather early in the year so I see no reason sowing on the shortest day as used to be advocated. I had my best ever year for shallots and will be hoping to stage a set at next year's National.

Leaving all this aside, I think i'm better off concentrating on summer crops if i'm to have any chance of getting a ticket at Llangollen. Tomatoes will be a must but I'm always struggling to get enough fruits ripe by early August. It isn't quite as simply as merely sowing early. However, I know if I can get my timings right I'll have a real chance.

I shall also be giving cucumbers a real go with a few changes to my greenhouse set-up in mind after listening to Charlie Maisey a few weeks ago. French beans are another crop I'm sure I could grow to a high standard and despite general disdain from my NVS pals north of the border peas as well. I've often grown good peas in the past but it's rare that you will see them exhibited around my neck of the woods past the middle of August due to mildew attack. Because of the effort involved in growing potatoes to show standard I will probably grow less spuds and give the land over to growing quality peas up 8' canes instead. At this point in time my aim is merely to stage a set that doesn't look out of place in such exalted company. If I didn't genuinely think I could do it I wouldn't bother but thanks to tips picked up at the Scottish Branch seminar lecture by former National Champion Ian Simpson and the not insignificant ridicule coming my way from the scottish tribe that has stirred my determination then who knows? Anything in life is possible. I mean, who'd have thought someone who can't sing would have won X-Factor? Again! (Please tell me Matt Cardle had barbed wire round his bollocks! It's the only thing that can explain how someone can sing that badly....although not why so many of the Nation voted for him!).

Although there isn't a class for globe beetroot at the National I will be looking for a set of 4 for a class known as the Millennium Class. This is a real forward thinking class introduced by the NVS a few years ago (errrr 2000-ish i'm guessing?) requiring 5 plates of veg, namely 4 tomatoes, 4 potatoes, 4 stump carrots, 4 250g onions and 4 globe beet. I'd always had a good record with globe beet locally but when you visit an NVS show you soon see that you're not even in the same ball park. There you will invariably find blemish free roots, with little corkiness around the shoulder and long thin tap roots sometimes 8-12" in length.

I'd heard that several growers will grow globe beet in bore holes much as you would you long carrots and parsnips but to me that seemed a lot of hard work for a 15 pointer 'minor' veg. I needed an easier method to suit my means so last year I experimented with several half barrels and an old galvanised water tank that I filled with sieved compost from my compost heap. To prevent weed seeds coming up from the homemade stuff I put a few inches of bagged compost on top of this. This was only mildly successful as I still got quite a few weeds coming up. A top dressing of high nitrogen fertiliser was applied a week or two before sowing as beet need quite a lot of nitrogen surprisingly.

As you can see the raised growing area makes it easier to tend the plants and to draw compost around the shoulders which helps prevent corkiness. A scattering of slug pellets is a must as I find slugs tend to take a bite out of many roots grown in the ground.

The result for me was my best ever shaped roots and that nice thin tap root the judges seem to go for. If you compare my second prize winning set from Derby below, which were grown in this way....

......to a set grown in the ground (below) it isn't hard to see the difference in quality. Those roots grown in the ground tend to have a little swelling at the top of the tap root and of course it's a lot harder to get a long tap root out of the ground which is invariably baked hard by the end of the summer.

For NVS shows I shall make sure I take more care extracting the beet from the compost to get as long a tap root up as possible by reaching down into the growing media as far as I can and snapping the root off at the very bottom if possible.

Globe beet should reach optimum tennis ball size 15 weeks from sowing by due to the vagaries of the British summer this varied from 7 to 20 weeks for me last season! I had some the size of grapefruits and others like radishes all from the same sowings!!! Therefore it's best to have as many drums and raised beds as you can possibly get your hands on to give you as much choice come show day.

A-Maisey-ing

Went to North Mids DA meeting on Monday night to listen to the great welshman Charlie Maisey give a talk on growing tomatoes and cucumbers for show. Charlie is walking proof that as you get older you can more or less say or do what you like and everyone will laugh but I know he's ruffled a few feathers over the years.

He was well known for pushing the boundaries of the schedule so that he couldn't actually get disqualified but made sure his exhibits were presented at their best. He would display his tomatoes on cloth with curtain rings underneath them whilst everyone else's fruits were rolling around on paper plates. If the schedule doesn't say you can't do it then he couldn't be shown a 'NAS' ticket and he undoubtedly scored a few wins with his trademark presentation as judges came to recognise it.

These days most big NVS shows have specially made boards that you have to display on so it is now far more of an even playing field. However, it has to be said he does grow exceedingly good tomatoes but I was quite happy to realise that I knew 99% of what he had to say. However, one piece of advice that he was quite adamant about and which i'm happy to pass on here, is that if your show is staged in a large marquee rather than a building then do NOT stage your toms overnight. This struck a cord with me as Malvern is obviously held in a huge marquee and I didn't put my set in until just before judging, totally by chance as it was the last thing I got out of the car. Charlie reckons those fruits staged overnight in a marquee (it doesn't happen in buildings) are always marked down on condition as they become softer and the calyces look less fresh. Whether that had a bearing on my win in Malvern I don't know but what I do know is it gives me a pathetic excuse for showing my winning set again here. The tomatoes at Malvern were actually judged by Charlie as well!

Another good tip (and one that I did know) was to ALWAYS water your tomato plants with tepid water. Wherever possible I try and keep a couple of full watering cans in the greenhouse so that when I come to water in the evening they are at the ambient temperature of the greenhouse.

After the break Charlie touched on cucumbers and this was a bit more enlightening for me and will lead to me growing my cuc's a totally different way this year. More on this later in the season but it means I have to build some tables to fit my greenhouse so it's another job on the list. Charles has also won the National with runner beans a record 8 times I believe, at a time when you needed 18 pods rather than the 15 you need now. He gave a packet of his Stenner strain of bean up for the DA raffle, a strain that Sherie Plumb and Andrew Jones now use to win with at National Shows now that Charlie has given up competitive showing. And guess who won said packet of beans? Yup.....you guessed correctly, the old Loughborough gobshite himself. However, as one of the nation's worst runner bean growers I don't think Mrs. Plumb needs worry about me just yet. I can only dream about getting a dish of runner beans like this for now.

The snow has mostly gone from these parts but on the drive back from the DA I just had to pull over and take a photo of the temperature recorded on my car's dash. I know colder temperatures have been recorded in Britain but -13 is something I have never seen before. I just hope a lot of pests and beasties have been severely depleted and that next season will get off to a flyer as a result. Somehow I doubt it. They are more resilient than we think.

New kids on the blog....

What an awful few days for the nation........this snow is ok for kids needing a few days off school but for businesses in the midst of a recession it's the last thing we need. It also aint much fun for BMW drivers, quite possibly the worst car ever made for driving on snow. Don't they have f***ing snow in Germany? It's like trying to get an eel into a hole at times.

Here is a view of our factory yard. Not a great depth of snow but temperatures down to -9 mean the ice is treacherous.











It's obviously a quiet time of the year for me with any seed sowing at least a month away. However, in the next couple of weeks I need to collect my Pendle Improved leeks from Dave Metcalfe and will have to set up some form of growing chamber in my garage. This will also mean making sure my grolamp is working properly. More on that soon. I noticed a couple of days ago that the three long carrots I set down for seed in the greenhouse have started to send up fresh green leaves from the centre in spite of the cold weather, so they appear to be happy where they are.



In the last few days I've been told about three new bloggers and I have no hesitation in mentioning and linking to them here. First off is Darren, an experienced allotment gardener from Wiltshire who has decided to have a go at growing for show next season. His first aim is to try and beat his secretive local allotment champion which I can totally relate to. When I first started there was an abundance of people like this in my area who would not give you the steam off their piss if you asked them. They are the ones who moan about no new blood coming into the 'game' and yet they won't divulge their techniques, mixes and tips for love nor money. When you do start beating them it really winds them up which is huge fun believe me.

http://blickys.blogspot.com/


Adam Greathead is only 20 but has been showing for some time and appears to have a great showing future ahead of him. As I've said to both Darren and Adam you have to make regular postings to get the benefit of your blog in subsequent years so that you can look back and see what you've done well or badly. I always try and put the bad stuff on, not just for my own benefit but to show those less experienced that even those with several years knowledge under their belts can still cock up spectacularly from time to time.

http://babyface-growandshow.blogspot.com/


And finally it gives me great pleasure to advertise that my carrot and pea mentor Ian Stocks from chilly Scotland has also started a blog. If anyone wants to know how to grow long and stump carrots in particular then this will be the blog for you to follow next season. He also knows a thing or two about peas and is current National Champion, and will spend the next few months polishing the trophy in readiness for handing it over to me at Llangollen in August!

http://carrotgrower.blogspot.com/



With more snow forecast there won't be many postings during December so I will spend the next few weeks putting the final touches to my annual Smithyveg awards, to be announced on Christmas Eve amid much fanfare ......well, whilst I'm supping a pint of Newcastle Brown and munching on the wife's mince pies (that one wins best euphemism!). I already know there are one or two of you out there who should be very, very nervous!


In the meantime here is the latest pic of my gorgeous new grandson. I think you'll agree he's looking more and more like me every day!

This damned recession is affecting us all!

"Suicide Bombers to go on Strike"

Muslim suicide bombers in Britain are set to begin a three-day strike on Monday in a dispute over the number of virgins they are entitled to in the afterlife. Emergency talks with Al Qaeda have so far failed to produce an agreement.

The unrest began last Tuesday when Al Qaeda announced that the number of virgins a suicide bomber would receive after his death will be cut by 15% this February, from 72 to only 60. The rationale for the cut was the increase in recent years of the number of suicide bombings and a subsequent shortage of virgins in the afterlife.

The suicide bomber's union, the British Organisation of Occupational Martyrs (BOOM) responded with a statement that this was unacceptable to its members and immediately balloted for strike action.

General Secretary Abdullah Amir told the press, "Our members are literally working themselves to death in the cause of Jihad. We don't ask for much in return, and to be treated like this is like a kick in the teeth."

Speaking from his shed in Tipton in the West Midlands, in which he currently resides, Al Qaeda chief executive Osama bin Laden explained, "We sympathize with our workers concerns, but Al Qaeda is simply not in a position to meet their demands. They are simply not accepting the realities of modern-day Jihad in a competitive marketplace.

"Thanks to Western depravity there is now a chronic shortage of virgins in the afterlife. It's a straight choice between reducing expenditure and laying people off. "I don't like cutting wages but I'd hate to have to tell 3,000 of my staff that they won't be able to blow themselves up."
Spokespersons for the Union in the north east of England, Ireland, Wales and the entire Australian continent & of course United States and Canada stated that the strike would not affect their operations, as "there are no virgins in their areas anyway."

Apparently the drop in the number of suicide bombings has been put down to the emergence of Scottish singing star Susan Boyle - now that Muslims know what an actual virgin looks like they are not so keen on going to paradise.

F1 hybrid

My first grandson, Oscar, born at 1.07pm today, 6lbs 4oz.

A grand day out!

Never has man travelled 600 miles in one day and had so much fun before. I know I keep banging on about the NVS but if you're remotely interested in growing veg to show you have to join and throw yourself into their activities. And so it was that Saturday morning found me getting up at 4am and travelling up to the Pentland Science Park just outside Edinburgh to listen to Sherie Plumb give an excellent lecture on how she grows her spuds to almost undeatable standard.

The Scottish Branch of the NVS hold this annual seminar and what an event it is. I came away with a bag full of goodies that you won't be able to find at your garden centres and which I hope will help me in my quest to get a ticket at next year's National.

I made copious notes on Sherie's lecture and the best tips I shall be divulging during 2011. However, I shall be leaving others to try and topple Mrs. Plumb because the main purpose of my visit was to try and glean as much information as I could about growing peas to exhibition standard.

Whilst exhibiting at Westminster Charlie Maisey took me to one side and advised me to concentrate on 4 or 5 veg to try and grow to the highest standard possible. I don't necessarily agree with it as there are certain growers who can just about turn their hand to everything but I know what he means. Why try growing everything reasonably well when you grow a few things exceptionally well? With this in mind I've decided to try and grow peas with a view to getting a set of 12 on the bench at Llangollen in 2011 and will be devoting an obscene amount of effort to them next season.

And this is what I have to beat. Here is Ian Stocks winning set from Dundee this year. As you can see I don't have much to beat as the 4th one from the left is virtually yellow and the two on the far right aren't even peas!!!

I'm joking of course. Speaker Ian Simpson (National Champion twice) felt this set deserved to be considered for best in show but most judges do tend to go for the the big 'show stoppers' such as leeks, onions and parsnips when considering where to award the gong for best veg.

When I informed Dave Thornton today of my ambition to bench a set of peas at Llangollen he said "only poofs grow peas". Having met Mr Stocks at the weekend he is built like a brick shithouse so i'm immensely looking forward to seeing Dave's neck get stretched next August.

Peas are '20 pointers' along with long carrots, parsnips, leeks, onions, caulis and potatoes which reflects how difficult it is to grow them, especially as mildew is a real problem and makes it very difficult to grow them here in England beyond early August. But I have a few tricks up my sleeve thanks to the seminar and my new friends in the north!

Own seed

I've had another iffy year with long carrots and I was at a loss as to why this has been so. I've used the same mix for many years and if anything I've been more meticulous the last couple of seasons in making sure all my ingredients were properly mixed. The boreholes have all been the same size and good quality seed has been used. Whilst pulling carrots for Derby Show last month I even extracted this weird looking specimen which was huge at the top and had no less than 14 three foot long tap roots!!!
















Whilst lying in bed one morning last week something popped up! It suddenly struck me what the problem might be and it's the octopus above that gave me the answer. When I pulled it virtually the whole of the compost 'cone' in the borehole came up with it and it was absolutely dust dry despite all the rain we had recently had.

I'm now thinking the answer may be to water the mix slightly before filling the boreholes. I've always dribbled the mix into the bore holes dry and assumed that by watering the surface the whole bore hole mix would be wetted. If you've ever tried to water compost that has really dried out you will know how difficult it can be, and if you scratch down the top few centimetres you will very often see that it is still dry beneath. I think the compost in all my bore holes, for stumps and long carrots, were just too dry a few inches down despite my watering them during and after germination. I know a few growers will water their mix and add a dash of liquid nutrimate so I will do something like this next season....not too much that it is too wet as I want to be able to sprinkle it easily into the boreholes, but just enough that it won't dry out completely as it evidently did this season.

At Derby David Thornton's allotment buddy Charles Cooper actually beat him in the class for 3 long carrots (much to Dave's annoyance...it was very funny!) and Charles insisted I took his winning set of three and try to grow them on for my own seed. To do this you cut the top 4 inches or so off thus......












......and plant them in a large bucket of compost thus. With a little luck I shall be harvesting my own strain of champion seed next summer with a view to growing these on for show in Olympic year 2012. These are in my greenhouse and will be left to their own devices over winter.















This weekend I am really looking forward to driving up to Scotland for the annual seminar of the Scottish Branch of the National Vegetables Society where Sherie Plumb will be giving a talk on growing potatoes for show. Ian Simpson will be also lecturing on growing peas to show standard which is a good job as I have duly vowed that I will become National pea champion at Llangollen in 2011, thus ending a six thousand year reign by Scottish growers.

In the past I have always managed to grow excellent show standard peas.......in early July! Getting them to look good at the end of August in England is a whole different proposition so I need to learn quickly. God loves a trier!

Again, I would urge anyone remotely interested in growing for show to join the NVS as I will hopefully be getting furnished with a few seeds of championship winning strains of long beet and peas whilst I am at the seminar. I'm always gob-smacked at the generous nature of fellow growers who are often champions at National level and who fall over themselves to give you advice and goodies! Where else do you find that sort of thing in this day and age?

And today's speaker is.....

I've been asked if I'd be interested in giving a talk on growing tomatoes to a group of like minded extremists. It's something I've often thought about doing but at the moment I don't have the facilities or the time. But it's made me think about what I would say if I did have to stand up in front of a group of veg enthusiasts and talk about tommies.


With this in mind I've come up with the following bullet points.

• Varieties.....at the minute Cedrico is the one to beat. Gold Star has thin skins and tends to split easily. Sow indoors mid Feb for August shows and mid March for September shows and beyond. (Midlands UK timings)



• Grow in bottomless pots sunk into the greenhouse border soil. Fill the pots with good quality compost and plant strong, healthy plants, preferably with the first flower truss just visible. Push a strong cane into the pot, down into the border soil at the same time.




• Sink a lemonade bottle upside down into the border soil between each pot. The bottom of the bottle, in effect now the top is cut off creating a sort of funnel. At first watering is into the bottomless plant pot but as the roots get down into the soil water into the lemonade bottles which seeps into the soil going straight to the roots. Each plant will need a good couple of pints each day in mid-summer. The border soil surface needs to be dry towards harvest time. Tomatoes like a hot, dry atmosphere and keeping the soil surface dry helps. It also reduces the risk of moisture marking the skins or fungal infections attacking the plants.

• Two weeks before planting work a generous helping of blood, fish and bone and some seaweed meal into the border soil.



• Tie plants to the canes regularly and pinch out side shoots at 2-3". I also connect all the vertical canes to a horizontal cane about 3' up, which in turn is attached to the greenhouse framework. Too often in the past I've had plants fall over and canes break so now I don't allow this to happen.



• Start feeding when the first tomato on the bottom truss is the size of a pea. I use home made comfrey feed, homemade nettle feed and tomorite used in turn at EVERY watering. Little but often. From early August I now use soot water as a fourth feed. I'm now convinced this improves skin and calyx colour. You only need a dash of this jet black liquid in each can.

• Consider thinning out trusses to give fruits room to swell, by cutting out every other one when small. This will give you fewer, but rounder fruits and is an important consideration when being judged.

• You may also need to support the fruits as a heavily laden truss can rip itself from the main stem. I twine string around the truss and tie to the horizontal cane mentioned above. I find the upper trussses don't need supporting as not only are the fruits smaller there don't seem to be as many fruits on each truss.




• Examine your plants as often as you can to make sure they are looking healthy. Don't panic. You can often mistake the odd discolouration for something serious but I find the odd leaflet will go yellow at the tips. Look out for caterpillar droppings on the upper side of the leaflets. The culprit can often be found above the droppings but can be well hidden so don't give up til you find the f*cker. The south american tomato moth is the culprit and is moving across europe apparently. I found about four last season. The best deterrent is enviromesh over all openings, important if, like me, you like to leave the door open during mid summer at night for good ventilation during the hottest spells.




• If it's three weeks before your show and the fruits aren't ripening you can do a couple of things. First, cut back foliage to allow light in and also shock the plant into ripening some fruit. You can cut quite a lot of the bottom foliage back, say cutting the leaflets by a half to two thirds. Tired leaves are stripped right back to the main stem. By this time my plants have been trained from the top of the canes along strong strings up into the apex of the greenhouse so there is still plenty of foliage to keep the plants ticking along. This can make things quite dark so be removing some of the foliage all over the plant you are allowing light in. You can also hang ripe bananas amongst your plants. This is an old greengrocer trick and the ethylene gas produced by the ripe bananas wafts over the tomatoes and encourages ripening. The photo below shows my greenhouse before any thinning has taken place about mid-August this year. Not bad for an unheated 8'x6' aluminium greenhouse!

• The afternoon before the show you need to choose your fruits. Ideally they need to be about 60-65mm diameter so cut a couple of cardboard gauges to help you. I have one at 60mm and one at 65mm. As I pick the likely looking fruits I will check the diameter and put into a couple of sets, as very often I am looking for two sets, one for the main class and one for a collection such as Top Tray. They need to be as round as possible with fresh calyces, cut as far from the knuckle as you can. Any with skin blemishes are discarded. Ones with minor imperfections will be put to one side for consideration later if i'm struggling to make a set. I check the depth and shape from the side as well as from above as two fruits the same diameter can often be completely different shapes in side profile. You may want to take a few spares although I find this unnecessary with Cedrico as the skins stay hard for a long time. Gold Star was very prone to splitting between picking and staging.




• I pack each fruit carefully in tissue paper for transportation to the show. The most important thing I did this year was to make a compartmentalised wooden carrying box with a lid. I can now put other boxes on top of this without fear of the fruits coming to any harm.














• Before leaving for the show, 'stage' them in your kitchen for best effect and then place them back in the box in the order you will be staging them at the show. It also allows you to double check the condition of each fruit in good light. Do no polish or wash the skins if you can avoid it. Sometimes you may have a bit of dirt under the calyx so wet a cotton bud and use that to clean it you have to.

• At the show you can stage your fruits without stress knowing you have chosen the best possible selection.

• 

• After your plants are spent, remove them and burn. I very often have to extract a huge root system as the plants have gone way out into the border soil. Shake off as much of the soil as you can. The canes should be washed with weak Jeyes fluid solution and stored in a dry place for use next season. The greenhouse needs a good clean with Jeyes fluid or Armillatox and the border soil can also be drenched with the same solution. During the winter pour several buckets of rain water over your soil to stop a build up of salts. About every 4 or 5 years I would advise emptying out your border soil and replacing with fresh soil, say from your onion or leek beds.