Me & the Boy

Well as the weather is really ##i## I thought I'd put a rugby post up.  here is one of my oldest lad & me after we had played and won the Brin cup at the beginning of May.  It's a great feeling playing in the same time as your son.  We both play front row and I can't explain the feeling of joy we had that day as it was our old adversaries RAF Lossiemouth we thumped.  Happy days.

 

The above picture was taken earlier in the season when we played St Andrews Uni.  Unfortunately we lost that game which would have gained us promotion to the Caledonia 1 .  Anywho I think the lad got a bit of a shock as I ran over him. 

Blight Warnings

With all this humid weather my e-mail has been pinging away on a regular basis with warning of the dreaded potato blight.  Here is a link to one of the services which will alert you when there has been full smiths period conditions in your area.  Remember prevention of blight is the answer. This service is free and is used by a lot of commercial growers. http://www.potato.org.uk/fight-against-blight.  I've already give my tatties their first spray, as I live between two big seed growers I have to be very aware of the problems this disease could have for them.

AAAhhhh. F*******g AAAhhh

Having spent the Saturday morning working at the Royal Highland show

I had the pleasure of visiting a fellow grower and member of the NVS (Mr Muirhead's) garden on the way back home. Neil & I have become acquainted and friends via the NVS forum and the Scottish branch seminar(all be it we are more than 3 hrs apart). Having thoroughly enjoyed my chat with Neil I headed back up the A9 thinking my onions were as good as his and I might have a couple of carrots  and peas that were growing ok. AAAhhh. Between leaving home on Friday morning and returning on Saturday evening 2 of my large onion plants had decided to throw up flower spikes. This happened to be two plants that were just over 10 inches and very well shaped.  This means I have only 10 plants to pick from.On the plus side my tatties appear to be growing on strongly and I will be applying a foliage feed of calcium Nitrate next week.  I have also had a Blight warning from the potatoes board. As I am growing between two large seed growers I need to be very careful regards blight and intent spraying both my tatties and my tomatoes at the first chance I get.       

  

 Thought I'd put a picture of my coloured tatties up to show the contrast in height of halum and colour of foliage. As you can see there are four different varieties in the picture. from left to right Blue Belle, Amour, Purple eyed seedling & Kestral. I'm happy with how they are growing just now.  I water once a week regardless of the rain fall. 

 The above shows my pea set up with peas from two different sowings. They are spaced 9 inch apart and the rows are 2 foot apart. One plant per cane, the canes are 8ft tall and I attach the plant to the canes using pea rings (sweet peas or velcro ties. As you can see my earliest plants are about 2 ft high now and will be flowering any time, (I hope)    

This is one of the onion plants that decided to throw up a flower spike.  They were both nice shaped plants and weighed just over 250 gms   Not sure what I have done wrong here but obviously the plants have become stressed at some time and  decided to go to seed.  I thought about trying to dry the bulbs off for the 250 gms section but was not sure if this was feasible.  Before I could get advice from more experienced growers, my wife had them in a stew for later this week.  Waste not want not.  Its disappointing when things go wrong but the most enjoyable part of this weekend was the couple of hrs bleathering to Neil and comparing different methods of growing the same veg.

Shallots have twins, " dad not happy"

This week has been particularly disappointing as I started to lift my shallots.  These plants had been started away in the greenhouse way back in December 2011 and I had high hopes that I would be able to crack the 45mm barrier and produce some quality shallots for showing.  How wrong could I be?  On Tuesday evening I noticed new shots on one or two of the larger shallots and on closer examination they had started to split again.  I lifted a number of the largest that night and have continued to do so every evening,as you can see from the sample below I have a number of nice shaped bulbs but no real size.  The really cold weather and snow just after I planted out in April will not have helped them and I think I let the bed get too dry.  Anyway hopefully I will get a nice set for the local shows and plenty to choose from for next year.

This picture shows quite nicely that the bulb in the center and on the left as you look at them have started to split again.  You can see the three growth shoot very plainly on the one in the center. This meens that as it drys it will go out of shape.   

Today I also changed the collars on my Celery.  This is my first attempt at growing show celery and although the plants are health enough now they are not as big and strong as I would have liked.  Again I think it is down to me not getting the out soon enough and possibly not having the ground strong enough.  By that I mean not enough organic matter and FYM in the site where the Celey is growing. 

 Here is a quick photo of the Kelsae onions in their 25 kg pots.  The onion shown has a diameter of just over 10 inches. I only have 12 of these onions kindly supplied to me by an NVS grower (Helen V)   They are growing on strongly with them all between 8.5 and just over 10 inches, but don't know if they will be ready in time for first my couple of shows. 

 This is just to give you an Idea of the set up in the green house where the Kelsae onions and my Globos.(for the 250gm  class) are growing in pots.  Globo are in the fore ground with the Kelsae behind them. I am trying watering the Kelsae using watering spikes set in about half way down the pots with fizzy drink bottles attached.  They hold about a litre of water .  I am currently only giving the "big" onions about 2 ltrs of water per week.  The Globo are on gravel trays and receive about a litre just now.  again I don't think the Globo will be ready for the first few shows but we will wait and see.

Will my Shallots be "pregnant" this year, is size everything!!!

Well I really hope I'm a better veg grower than I am at mastering this blog technology.   Things have been moving on a fair bit since I last blogged. My Shallots have finally recovered from their snow "bath" in early April and are growing on quite nicely.  I am however a little worried as it was about this time last year that they decided to start going double, which is of course no use for showing. Traditionally the lifting date is the 21st June.  My largest shallots are about 5 inch in circumference so I need them to put on about another inch plus in the next week!  I've also got my pea area set up and my first sowing growing up their poles with another sowing well through in the green house and my final sowing going in tomorrow.  As you can see I've 8ft canes secured 9 inch apart with the peas trained up the canes. My stump carrots (Sweet Candle) have finally started to move on now after taking over 4 wks to come through.  They are fairly strong but I'll be without them for my first 2 shows.  As I will with my parsnips (Polar).  The stronger ones are about 6 inches high with the later ones about 2 inch.  I've include a pic of my show tatties which are working away quite nicely.  I'm currently watering them once a week. Each bag gets the spray gun for 25 secs in a hope to keep the moist and deter common scab.

I've also had a wee bit of luck on the Vole front with a number of adults captured and relocated!

Peas

Shallots

Sweet Candle

Coloured Tatties

 Polar Parsnips