I hate this time of year

Everything sounds so easy in these magazines suggesting this time of year is an ideal time to clean and tidy the greenhouse and garden..Yeah right, with 3 poly tunnels and a large greenhouse with a shed full of 1000s of pots, and an allotment that you could fit two football pitches on I find it pretty hard going. I will work now until January getting these jobs done with the main task's being my onion beds and getting the greenhouse cleaned ready for winter.

Talking of onions; I will sowing some seed from a 14lb onion in late October which I will grow on under my new lighting system that is yet to be built.

More trophies

Finally managed to steal a few more trophies from the hands of those greedy professionals who should all be banned, just kidding barry micklethwaite.

Anyway the show I was going to enter this weekend is now a no go as my car blew a headgasket and the radiator. So this weekend instead of scrubbing veg and picking up shiny metal and cards with singing and chitchat, I will be lifting heavy lumps of metal about covered in oil and swearing at the top of my voice.

Trophies for:

Most points in members
Most points in open
Collection
err.. I will tell you this one when I remember what it was for lol. 6 trophies in total this year.

Peppers

Despite the Turkey attack on my prize peppers I still managed to stage these 3. They were by far not my best, every pepper I looked at to make a set I was one short because a turkey had pecked it. I picked two perfect shaped fat peppers and knew I had the third to go with it, I could have bloody killed them all there and then when I picked the third one. Never mind they came in handy for my salad dish.

The other enoying thing about it, non of this was my fault as I always remember to put the polytunnel mesh down but no one else has the brain power... either that or they don't care.

More entries please

Couldn't understand how a class such as "salad dish" could get so little entries, surley everyone grows some sort of salad?.

First time in quite some years that I have grown ridge cucumbers which I trained next to my marrows outside. Produced rather a lot of nice cucumbers and I didn't bother to look after them either, I almost forgot how good they do grow outside with little or no care.

Sweetcorn

Best sweetcorn I have ever had this year, I used some at my local show in the "Any other veg class" and it got a 1st. Fat and ripe right to the very tip, perfect for eating raw just how I like it straight from the field (I mean large allotment).

Saw a lot of newcomers this year making mistakes using sweetcorn, either stripping it back or removing all leaves. I never touch mine, instead I pick two corns off the same plant the same size and open one to check if its ready, the untouched one goes to the show, its a gamble but judges seem to prefer this as they will peel it back.

Over the weekend I picked up 4 trophies with 19 1st place cards and even got a few 2nd places with flowers. Not quite a new record for 1 show as I have been know to take 33 1st but I can live with it. I will post some pictures up later.