Veg4Show

I know this inst veg, but is part of my life and infact everyones life if you eat turkey for christmas, just in a different way I suppose. I strongly believe in rearing and looking after animals for eating, knowing they will taste better and had a better life...

Well I have had my turkeys now for two weeks and they have really taken a lot of my time, mainly due to the idiot who hatched them.

I recieved 3 with splayed legs that should have been corrected at birth by splinting there legs (basically taping the legs together at the correct spacing. These 3 also have curled twos, again can be corrected when first hatched using tape and carboard to make a shoe.

I had to humanly kill/cull one that had no chance and the other two are currently in seperate cages with legs taped, but really don't have much chance. Thankfully the rest look really good and are putting on loads of weight, twice the size they were 2 weeks ago. In this picture you can see the brown one with splayed leg. In total I had 14, now 13. I will do my best for these guys but they are not like chickens who may well live a decent life like this, these guys can weight 30-40lbs and wont carry that weight. Will keep you posted on how they get on.

If you need it in bulk like I do then it's worth buying it from here, you can just buy 1 but its £4.99 p&p so wouldnt work out very cheap. Considering its £3.50 near me a bottle, and only £2.00 here, saved me quite a bit.

http://www.capitalgardens.co.uk/v3/bordeaux-mixture-p-6427.html

Tomatoes grow so quick, I decided to plant mine out inside the tunnel as they were getting rather big. I planted these really deep and will cover with fleece or let them die. 5 Gold Star and 6 Cedrico. I filled my other tunnel with peppers and tomatoes for the kitchen.

My show shallots comming along now;




Shallots in the allotment..yes we have had some really bad wind.

All my show potatoes are in, decided on 15 Winston and 15 Kestrel, plenty for me to look after. I also put a few rows of potatoes in front of them to form a slight wind block and also planted 10 other rows in the allotment.

Still growing well, the ones in the barrels look much greener and lush.

My onions are still growing which is good news, never get your hopes up tho as they go from great to disaster so quick. What happens, happens, all I can do is look after them as best I can.

I have been spraying with SB Invigorator, seems to do a good job.

Update on my carrots, all looking good..no problems so far. Managed to get a picture of my stumps aswell, only half of them as I couldnt be bothered to take off all the fleece.

Some pictures of my leeks planted last Friday. They are covered in fleece to ensure they don't get any sun damage on the flags. The 10% light drop is well worth it, having clean undamaged leeks is going to be key this year as size wise they won't be massive.

Heres also a picture of yet again more baskets inside this tunnel.

Most of my shallots have now been thinned, 4 per plant. You will know when they are ready when they have naturally split away and when pulled sideways come away very easy.
Don't force them out, wait a few more days as you will damage and rock the main root plate. Always thin bearing in mind space, you want evenly spaced bulbs and I always remove the center bulb which creates that natural gap for extra room. Pot any thinnings up that still have some root into 3 inch pots using a low nutrient compost such as old USED carrot/parsnip mix or john innes no.1 water and leave them to it. These will make great pickling shallots for showing so keep an eye on them size wise, measure every day twice when you think they are nearlly ready, size depending on show schedule.

I hope by next weekend I will posting a picture here of my potatoes planted as it seems to be taking forever. I have prepared 15 bags and I hope to finish at least another 15 this week.

I am determined this year to grow decent potatoes so have gone the extra mile and have really finely sieved the peat, and I mean fine. I always do everything right with potatoes except look after them, so I will spend more time on them this year by ensuring I have halm supports, water well and try to keep the blight off.

Good potatoes get good points and this is where I lost out quite a lot last year. I hate growing potatoes, so much work and then they get blight and even when they are ready you don't actually know for sure unless you tip a few bags out, rendering them useless for show as you need to leave them at least 2 weeks in the bags to set the skins.

The cost is painful, 1x100ltr bale of peat is £7 and this makes me; 3, maximum 3 ½; 17 ltr polypots. Thats almost half a bag of crap and lumps that cant be used in the bags. Note I whack the bags down to ensure they are actually full as they sink and compact after a while, otherwise this would make 6 unwhacked bags lol. I hope to get at least 50 bags done, but then again I change my mind a lot these days.