A Day Filming

Had the TV people here today. They were supposed to come yesterday but the weather was grotty so we re-scheduled. The aim was to do a series of tips, only a minute or so a time so I’d been racking my brain over the weekend for what to do.

Did manage to come up with a few things that lend themselves better to video than anything.

First ‘tip’ was removing the side shoots from tomatoes. It’s one of those things that’s really simple when you see it done but very hard to grasp from a book. Now I remove the sideshoots every week at least so we were hard pushed to find enough.

The problem is we have a wide angle, a re-take, a close up, another take and finally run through it all again as there was a plane going over and the sound track is off! I’m beginning to have a lot of respect for anyone on TV now.

Oh, and the cat jumped on the table as well to see if she could help – CUT!

We did a few more things at home and then off to the plot. The first tip was on how to use a hoe. I’m so boring I could make a half hour program on hoeing but they want 2 minute tips. Oh well, good job I’d saved them a few weeds to demonstrate with.

We then did watering, planting leeks, and my measuring stick. That’s a really useful bit of kit, my measuring stick. It’s just a length of 2×1 marked out in 4″ on one side and 6″ on the other. Simple but so useful when planting out.

Over in the greenhouse we took a shot of my pot growing Egyptian cucumber plant. So far we’ve had over a dozen really nice fruits from this one plant and it’s still going strong. They’re small fruits, but that’s OK. Most people have a problem getting through a large cucumber before it goes soft and these are perfect for 2 people.

We went over to the other plot and I demonstrated thinning the carrots in my barrels. We had the thinnings that evening and they really are delicious. Wash, top & tail and then steam lightly. You’d pay a fortune in a restaurant for them.

We wrapped up around 2pm and we all headed off home. Unfortunately one tip we missed was “wear a hat when the sun is shining strongly”. I felt quite dizzy and washed out so ended up asleep in the chair until the evening.

Never mind, I thought, I can head down to the plot and finish up a few jobs now I’m feeling human again. So the sky went black with cloud. Somedays you lose and others you just can’t win!