Sets set

Once again i've had terrible problems getting my Vento onions to germinate this year. I'm convinced the hard green seed casing this particular variety is sold in hinders germination. I have sown a second batch of Vento but I have also taken out extra insurance in the form of these onions sets 'Setton' just in case the Vento fails again. Setton is a similar shape to Vento so I should be able to harvest at a similar diameter for the under 250g classes. A couple of 24 cell trays were filled with good quality compost mixed with nutrimate and Vitax Q4 and the onion sets pushed in to a third depth.



A common problem with onions grown from sets is premature bolting, or running to seed, so I shall keep an eye on night temperatures and bring the trays indoors if frost is forecast so they don't get a check in growth. Onions from sets is a popular class in my local shows. Whether I can grow them to a good enough standard to exhibit at NVS shows against onions grown from seed is a different matter but I think it is possible.

Most of my shallots are now showing green top growth although it is looking a little 'unhealthy' at the tips. I find this very often to be the case in the early days as the plants are often out of kilter whilst they find the correct balance between root and leaf growth. A good watering with rain water from the butt soon sees them greening up.

An important task through the winter months if you have greenhouse borders is to make sure you water them regularly even though you don't actually have anything growing in them. This mimics winter rains and ensures any nutrients are not locked away. I'm not into the science of it but it's called a 'build up of salts' and I will often pour several buckets of water over the beds to ensure I have a workable soil come Spring time.


This particular border is where I usually grow my cucumbers but a different method for cu's means I shall be able to try a few 'exhibition' onions here this season.

Bad wind

Best laid plans and all that! I was hoping to start emptying and refilling my carrots beds and drums today but instead I shall have to be cutting up this sumach tree which was blown over during last night's gales.

Luckily it fell away from my conservatory or I wouldn't like to think what damage might have been done. Just moments before it came down I'd decided to take the dog out on the front for it's nightly constitutional rather than the back lawn. It just shows what a fine line we all tread and my decision ensured there is still chance of an english pea champion at this year's National.

Two passions in one!

It's all about spuds for the next few days. I've got Dave Thornton giving a talk at my local hort soc tonight on the history of the humble potato so that should be an opportunity to catch up on some sleep. Then on Monday John Bebbington is also giving a talk at North Mids DA on the same subject. John is regularly amongst the cards at National and Branch level, very often coming second to Sherie Plumb so it will be interesting to see how his methods differ to hers if at all.

On Tuesday it's my intention to drive up to the Lake District and climb several mountains around Haweswater. It's the most unpopular of the seven mountain districts due mainly to it's fairly isolated position so I'm hoping to spend several hours in walking solitude with the fells to myself. The means to an end is to then go to Kendal DA in the evening to listen to Ian Simpson lecturing on stump carrots. Hopefully, I shall also be meeting up with Messrs. Bastow, Unsworth, Wlodarczak, Park (James....not Ji-Sung), Crowther (Chris....not Leslie) and Cameron (Gareth....not David) at the same meeting. Guys.....if I'm not there for 7.30.....call mountain rescue!

A good job done.

Yesterday I was able to empty and refill the last of my 7 drums where I intend to grow my parsnips this season, 5 borehole 'stations' to each drum.

These now have 6 or 7 weeks to settle until I sow my pre-chitted seed. I shall just top up with more sand as the top surface level sinks over the next few days. An all-important pane of glass needs to be placed over each drum to stop cats digging and doing their business, as I have found to my cost over the years that this is something they particularly enjoy doing. In the past they have walked across the top of the fence and jumped onto the drums for their daily constitutional. Now they will just get a shard of glass up their jacksies!

The pressure's off then in respect of that particular task, so I can now turn my thoughts to doing the same with my long carrot drums. As I won't be sowing carrot seed until well into April I have plenty of time to get this done. I can also start to think about doing a bit of winter digging and getting my veg beds looking neat and tidy. I never seem to get the digging done in the autumn as the text books say you should.

I also have to get a chainsaw to 4 trees that I planted 15 years ago when I was more into ornamental gardening, among them a 40' tall eucalyptus and a 30' beech. As the veg showing has required more land I have gradually moved up the garden and the result is that these trees now have to go, firstly to give my spuds more growing space and also to let more light into the garden. I will be looking to get rid of them before the birds start nesting.

I can't believe......

....I got up early on a Sunday morning to watch Scotsman Andy Murray let England down yet again!

Always learning....

I've been getting some conflicting information about brown parsnip canker which i've now declared to be my biggest enemy. According to NVS information God, Dave Thornton, it is an air borne fungus that manifests itself as yellow spots on the foliage during the growing season. When the spores 'sporellate' (his word not mine) they land on the surface of the growing medium, in my case sand, and then work their way into the parsnip via the crown.

There is also a black canker which would appear to be soil borne and which i'm fairly sure I don't suffer from. Both diseases do not like free draining soil which my sand obviously is, nor the application of lime which I include in my borehole mix. When you consider I didn't get a spot of 'canker' on my Pinnacle parsnips in 2008 i'm at a loss as to why I've suddenly suffered from it in the last couple of seasons. As I have said, I shall be drenching the sand with Jeyes Fluid when refilling the drums which should kill any overwintering spores in the sand....if there are any!

Another consideration is that parsnips can suffer from carrot fly attack and i'm now wondering if it was actually these little critters that have caused me the problem. I've searched on the internet and the signs of attack on parsnips doesn't appear to look the same as it does on carrots. They appear to be shallower (perhaps the grubs don't find them as palatable as carrots?) and brown rather than the black tunnelling you get on carrots. Either way it means I shall have to erect a physical barrier over my 'nips this season to prevent all possible scenarios. When I exhibited these parsnips at Leicester in 2008 a fellow NVS man reckoned they would have competed at National level and I would dearly like to get a set of 5 at Llangollen to compare against the very best. I always pull quite a few parsnips for a couple of shows on August Bank Holiday weekend but as I am now committed to having a go at the National I shall hopefully be taking some with me to Wales instead.

And just a quick word to wish Andy Murray all the best on Sunday as he bids to become England's first tennis grand slam winner in over 70 years. Go Andy!

Scots wha hae

In deference to my Scottish pals on Burns night this was my dinner tonight, a plate of haggis, tatties and peas (non championship strain!). And very nice it was too!

A mixed day for the Scots today however as Scottish football pundit Andy Gray was sacked from Sky Sports for his disgraceful comments on female assistant referee Sian Massey. Such sexism has no place in today's society and Andy Grey will do well to read the match referee's comments "Sian made a superb job of ironing my shirt before the match and the sandwiches she made at half time were absolutely delicious!". Sian was due to officiate at tonight's Crewe v. Bradford game but had to pull out as it's her period.

Meanwhile my Vento onions are causing me some concern as they are very slow to germinate. The seed comes encased in a little green ball that is some form of fungicide but i'm convinced it hinders germination as I've had this problem in the past. They are coming through slowly but very sparsley. The other tray is Red Baron onions sown yesterday. Both trays are on the kitchen table next to a radiator at night and are transferred to the windowsill during the day.

Alliums

Yesterday I noticed the first shoots on my potted up shallots in the greenhouse so all is well there. It was well into February before they got started last season so they are ahead of the game. I gave all the others a bit of a tug and all of them came up with the pot meaning they have all rooted. I should think this is one crop I will definitely be putting on the bench at the National in August.




















I pricked out 24 exhibition onion seedlings yesterday into a 24-cell tray. I always like to prick out at the 'crook' stage when there is only an inch or so of root, as the plants soon perk up after planting if you do so at this early stage. These are now under the same light as my leeks. This variety (from Scotland!) has a nice flask shape and I only intend growing 20 or so, giving them each as much TLC as I can in an attempt to get a nice even set. I shall pot on regularly, not allowing them to get too pot bound so that there is nice even growth throughout the season. I'll never be a good onion grower until I can afford a proper lighting chamber but i'd like to try and get some bulbs to the 3lb mark this season.




















The rest of the garden is still a complete mess although I did manage to get my two long raised beds at the bottom of my garden dug over where I grow my leeks and onions. I keep saying every year I will get a tunnel over these but I never seem to get around to it. There isn't much activity in nearby gardens for the time being but at least I have next door's inquisitive springer spaniels for company.





















And today I was given a dilemma as Dave Thornton asked me if I wanted to help him man the NVS stand at the Edible Garden Show at Stoneleigh Park in March. I had already agreed to go up to Scotland that weekend to do some mountain walking. Toss of a coin methinks.

Here is a link to the event

http://www.theediblegardenshow.co.uk/

Never mind the length......

For quite a while now I've been wishing I had another 6 to 8 inches. Quite a few people have have said I really need them including my wife so today I took steps to make sure I'm going to get them.

Whilst exhibiting next to Dave Thornton's parsnips at Derby Show I could see I had a similar girth to his, and good uniformity but that his were several inches longer than mine. Length in itself isn't everything and condition and uniformity always has to be the major point scorers but on a local level some judges can be swayed by extra length and size.

I usually rest my long root drums on the sand contained within the metal frames but settling and sinkage means the drums can either lean to one side or sink into the sand causing the bore holes to distort meaning your roots have the potential to kink rather than being bayonet straight.



Therefore, I mackled together these wooden frames that rest on top of the metal frames....

......the drums are then rested on the wooden frames.....

.....and this is a view from above looking into the drum. The drum is barely resting on the wooden frame, just enough to be supported. The drum is then filled with sand, the wooden frame stopping the sand from spilling out sideways.

You can quite clearly see the difference in height between the new method on the right and the old method on the left.

As I've said in a previous posting you have to empty and refill the sand each year for a number of reasons, such as aerating the sand and also to get out any residual tap roots way down in the drums. I found this 12 inch piece in the sand in the metal framework. You don't want vegetable matter like this rotting away and marking your roots.

As I refill each drum I give the sand a drenching with Jeyes Fluid solution every few inches to kill any lurking nasties.

Two drums down, five more to go (for the parsnips!). The sand will sink back a few inches and so I will top up the drums before I sow the seed into the bore holes during March. It's quite surprising how much topping up you have to do as the sand settles, so you want to be getting your drums done several weeks before you need them.

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.