ONIONS LEEKS AND PARSNIPS ETC

It’s been some time since I posted a Blog as I have been rather busy. I am now on Twitter at least once a week and you can follow me on Medwyn Williams (@medwynsofanglesey). I thought that when I retired I would have more time to do other things, no such luck I’m afraid! I had six young plants from Bill Jones of Wrexham during early January and they are now growing away really well in 50 litre pots. There’s no doubt that watering is critical with onions, they certainly don’t like having their feet wet all the time, neither do they like having water soaking around the root plate. The six onions, including another 26 of my own

are all watered along the inside rim of the pots. I have never really had a good go at growing these heavy onions but Bill has certainly wetted my appetite now. What I would like to do next year would be to grow all the onions from the same sowing time as Bill does his in the hope of getting ten bulbs, each weighing 10lbs to stage on my display at Malvern. They would be 100 lbs. in weight on the display stand, just hope it can take the weight.  The best of the large onions was measured this morning at 10 inches circumference which I’m very happy about and I’m looking forward to seeing how big it really gets.

My leeks are ready now to go into their final pots and these have always been 30 litres capacity. This time however I’m going to pot up half of them (10) in 50 litre pots and the other 10 will remain in 30 litre pots. This should really prove whether or not the larger pots, and the extra expense of more compost, will give me any better and larger blanch leeks. They are currently in 4 litre pots and are already on 15 inch collars having pulled them when they were as thick as a pencil.

You really have to do this otherwise once the leek puts on weight without being pulled young, you will never extend it afterwards. The six pot leeks that I’m growing for Malvern are now in their 30 litre pots. The variety this time is what’s called the CSC (Cumbrian Sammy Cross),

this was recommended to me by John Soulsby who says it grows really well in pots, time will tell. I also had three Betty Black pot leeks from Bill and they are now in 10 lire pots prior to being planted outside in raised beds. There’s no doubt that this one can be a really massive leek with tremendously long flags.

I have over 250 Sweet candle carrots growing in the raised bed, all in cored holes and filled with Ian Stocks mixture of 1 bag F1S, 12 ounces of ground calcified seaweed, 12 ounces of my Complete Base fertiliser and 3 ounces of Superphosphate. They are now well ready to be thinned out, I will leave two seedlings in each station and these will be thinned down to one later on. I used to thin down to one straight away but then realised that the odd few would collapse on me later on, hence the thinning in two stages. The long carrots were sown later than usual on Friday last week but they should still make good carrots for my Malvern display during the last weekend in September. The Victor Parsnips are really doing well with 11 drums of four I should have some decent ones to pick from, hopefully for the Welsh and National Championships. I’ve had panes of glass a few inches above the parsnips this time, this is to prevent the drips from the opening roof rotting some away as happened last year. This coming week I shall remove the glass completely as they are now nearly five inches tall.