A look at my Show Vegetables at Home.

Sunday 24^th June 2012

Having just returned from giving a talk for Raymond Blanc at Le Manoir I have to say that I am reasonably pleased with most things in the garden.  That is mainly due to my son Alwyn and my daughter in law Alina, they have really taken to this gardening hobby and they both take a lot of the weight from my shoulder these days.  The onions were again planted a little late and the necks are too long for my liking, I don’t think they will make very large specimens. However, having said that, the best measured today 15½” around.  These are primarily intended for my displays with the first one coming up at the Royal Welsh in a month’s time. At this time of year you should and can expect an onion to expand at the rate of a ¼” a day, let’s say an inch a week. This hopefully should allow me to harvest a set, though a little green, at around 18 to 19 inches in circumference, 15 of them should look reasonably good on my display.

My leeks, Pendle Improved, for Malvern and possibly the Welsh Championships at Bridgend on the 1^st and 2^nd of September are on 18 inch collars and looking well.  I have reverted this year to my old way of blanching by starting off when the plants were in 5 inch pots and much younger.  I do find with the Pendle that if you let them put on too much weight with a small collar, they are very reluctant to pull upwards when you are late putting the 18 inch collar on with a couple of flags yellowing, rather than extending.

I pulled my first ‘Centro’ onion yesterday, this was the biggest in the bed, as I normally do, I like to find out what measurement I should be pulling up the remainder at.  It so happened that after cleaning the onion down to one whole skin, removing the top, leaving a stem of about two inches also trimming off the roots, the onion was 10.625 in circumference. This is 10 and five eighths and as you can see, it weighed in at 246 grams, just about as good as you can get The remainder will now be harvested at this size.

This ‘New’ Centro onion certainly looks as if it could be a serious challenge to Vento, it’s got a nice shape and I have plenty more to harvest in the days ahead from the Link-a-Bord beds of nearly a hundred. To be honest I was a little greedy when planting out and I have too many in reality growing in a square metre.  Most will make good onions but I do struggle now that the foliage is so powerful, to get in amongst them to clean up the dying and split skins..

My long carrots are about the best I have had for a number of years and this lot is expected to be ready for the Royal Welsh as well as possibly the Welsh Championships. The stalks are strong and they have good colour and when I try and pull them gently by the foliage, they seem to well rooted in their bore holes.  The same applies to my new parsnip to replace Polar, this has very strong stalks and should have some heavy roots below, given time!  I was speaking to John Branham who also grows this new selection and he thinks it’s possibly the best he has grown  so far, time will tell.

Finally my stock plants of my own selection long carrots from New Red Intermediate are the best ever with plenty of large heads which should yield some of the best and biggest seed from well set heads.  The bumble bees have now realised they are there and they certainly help to make every flower set as seed.

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What crazy weather we had during July, I have never seen so much rain in all my life.  I built my house 35 years ago and one afternoon during early July, the rain was  so heavy that it was within a whisker of coming in through the back door, and our house is nearly on top of a hill!! The humidity that followed the rain has certainly caused havoc and I have never seen potato blight so bad.

Hampton Court

A number of growers who came on to my display stand at Hampton Court were all devastated by both Blight on their potatoes and Downey mildew on their onions. The latter is becoming a major problem for the amateur grower as there are is no effective fungicide treatment that can be used.  The former however can be controlled, to some extent, by spraying quite regularly with Dithane 945. I have never had the need to spray potatoes in my garden at all as I never had any blight. This year however I was well and truly caught out as were a dozen rows that I had in my field.

Once you have been caught out with the blight there is only one thing you can do and that is to remove the haulms as soon as possible after the leaves show signs of it.  To really get the best information available on this I phoned Dr David Shaw from Bangor University who is accepted as a world authority on blight. David’s advice is to remove the haulms and leave the potatoes in the ground for a three week period before lifting them. This will allow the skin on the potatoes to set and prevent any blight spores from entering the potato through any fine scratches into the flesh.

David has been working for a number of years now with the Sarpo family in Czechoslovakia on blight resistant potato varieties and I am certainly going to plant these in my field next year. This year will also be a real test on his varieties to see how well they do stand up against the ravages of this disease.  The Sarvari Trust that operates from Bangor, and controls the Blight free potato material, are holding an open day there tomorrow so I am looking forward tremendously to that visit and I shall be writing a report to Garden News about it.

What crazy weather we had during July, I have never seen so much rain in all my life.  I built my house 35 years ago and one afternoon during early July, the rain was  so heavy that it was within a whisker of coming in through the back door, and our house is nearly on top of a hill!! The humidity that followed the rain has certainly caused havoc and I have never seen potato blight so bad.

A number of growers who came on to my display stand at Hampton Court were all devastated by both Blight on their potatoes and Downey mildew on their onions. The latter is becoming a major problem for the amateur grower as there are is no effective fungicide treatment that can be used.  The former however can be controlled, to some extent, by spraying quite regularly with Dithane 945. I have never had the need to spray potatoes in my garden at all as I never had any blight. This year however I was well and truly caught out as were a dozen rows that I had in my field.

Once you have been caught out with the blight there is only one thing you can do and that is to remove the haulms as soon as possible after the leaves show signs of it.  To really get the best information available on this I phoned Dr David Shaw from Bangor University who is accepted as a world authority on blight. David’s advice is to remove the haulms and leave the potatoes in the ground for a three week period before lifting them. This will allow the skin on the potatoes to set and prevent any blight spores from entering the potato through any fine scratches into the flesh.

David has been working for a number of years now with the Sarpo family in Czechoslovakia on blight resistant potato varieties and I am certainly going to plant these in my field next year. This year will also be a real test on his varieties to see how well they do stand up against the ravages of this disease.  The Sarvari Trust that operates from Bangor, and controls the Blight free potato material, are holding an open day there tomorrow so I am looking forward tremendously to that visit and I shall be writing a report to Garden News about it.