National Vegetable Society Meeting and Vegetable Growing Software

National Vegetable Society Meeting

Tuesday, being the second Tuesday of the month, was our meeting night and this one was at the chairman’s house in Middlewich. Now John Carver, the chairman, is a serious grower to say the least. His large back garden has, apart from the immaculate lawn and flower beds, an area larger than an allotment with deep beds, two huge polytunnels and, I think, three greenhouses.

John showed us around and gave some rather impressive onion plants away to us. His onions are in a double glazed, underfloor heated greenhouse with enough growlights to make the neighbours think they have Grace of the Saving Grace film living next door or maybe one of Steven Spielberg’s flying saucers. I didn’t hear the five tones though.

He’d got enough wooden stakes to keep Buffy going for a month, which are used to make holes in the chest high containers full of sand where he grows his carrots. The stakes are removed and the hole is filled with a compost mixture into which the carrot will grow. We are talking about four foot plus carrots here.

We retired to his workshop for tea and a raffle where John demonstrated his technique for growing onion bulbs on to produce his own seed. I thought I’d video this but I’ve not quite got the hang of my new camera. I did get a great twenty second shot of the floor,

More Digging

I managed a couple of hours on the plot on Wednesday and again today. Today I got on early but, of course, it started to rain forcing me off again. Anyway, I got a bit more of plot five rough dug. Larry helpfully pointed out this should be done in the autumn. What a nice chap! I was hoping to finish before the threatened snow arrives so I can rotovate after it thaws.

We had three chaps from the council on the site. Apparently we’re getting a toilet and they were deciding where to place it. There is an obvious place near to the gate so I wonder where it will end up.

My pal the black and white cat was wandering the site as well looking for mice and other exciting things. He’s a bit wary of me but he’s probably wise to be wary of strangers. He reminds me so much of my Mr Cigs when he was young, but he’s not as good a hunter as Cigs was. He would have brought us every mouse and rat on the site plus a few pigeons.