Veg4Show

My marrows (table dainty) and courgettes (tosca) have just been planted in some cells which i have covered with some polythene. You can just see them at the back behind the hanging basket plants:



Watch out for any mice!!

My large cabbage are growing away nice and i have about 25 of these to plant out which will all require protection from slugs, birds and rabbits.


I have quite a few other cabbage in and some cauliflowers for eating. Cauliflower's for show need to be planted later and this depends on when your show is. It is notoriously hard to get good cauliflowers on show day, they are either to large, to small or don't match. In theory if you have a golf ball size cauliflower two weeks before your first show it should be just right on show day. The only way to ensure you have cauliflower's ready is to A: plant them at the correct time and B: plant as many as you can. Depending on what variety of cauliflower you grow will depend on when it matures, i personally grow mine 70, 80, and 90 days before the show. I do find that growing them under cover in a tunnel produces excellent cauliflowers, yet when planted outside they seem to be pretty poor quality. I don't have much room left inside the tunnel so i will fit as many as i can inside and the rest outside.

The pot leeks seem to be picking up but they seem to have a lot of virus in them (the yellow streaks in the leaves). The roots look much better now and they have been in there 5 inch pots for about 2 weeks now. Many leeks have virus in them and it tends to grow out as the season progresses, but if its still there at a mature stage it really does render the leek useless as it just looks awful.

My short carrots are in, you may be saying thats a tad early for short carrots but i grow a re-selection variety of a chantenay red core carrot that reach quite a size and tend to take longer for the stump to actually form. They are not as long as other short carrots and are a lot stumpier and carry more weight at the top than the bottom, reaching in some cases 5 inches across at the top. They always look great on the show bench next to all the ordinary stump carrots, they also grow very uniform so making a set should be very easy.



Ive also managed to get some of my long carrots in before i ran out of sand, so the rest will have to wait until next weekend.

I'm growing a re-selection of "new red intermediate" long carrot which i rate as the one and only long carrot to grow for showing. This variety produces long heavy roots perfect for the show bench.

The mix i am using this year posted on Simon's blog (smithyveg) is David Thornton's mix and is as follows:

45L sieved compost (Irish moss compost)
15L vermiculite
10L sieved coarse sand (silver sand)
6oz Vitax Q4
3oz Lime
3oz Seaweed meal

I have used Westlands Irish moss compost and silver sand in the mix, this is all passed through a shredder 4 times and sieved. (man does vitax q4 stink).

Finally managed to get the shallots planted out at the weekend (well 60 of them anyway). The weather has not been kind and it just seems to rain every weekend so the ground was still wet but its now or never as I wont have time to plant them for another 4 weeks so they are in. They should be ok even tho the ground is not ideal because its wet it will settle down.

Before planting i applied some calcified seaweed and some seaweed meal and they are growing in a medium manured soil based ground. Shallots are tricky to grow to a good standard and its really about timing. You need to thin them down to 4 and ensure they have space to grow by teasing them apart, when the time is ready i will show you this. At the end of the season it is crucial that you pull them at the correct time when new shoots are still forming to avoid double growth (pregnant bulbs), this can also happen with a sudden uptake of nutrients so do not feed your shallots and ideally lift before any heavy rain when at the correct size to avoid sudden growth.

When it comes to thinning them down you can save any thinning's that have roots on them and plant them in a pot, they will produce nice picking shallots.