December may not spring to mind as the time to be thinking about next year’s village show.  However, one of the great things about gardening is that one is always looking forward. Even at cold and dark times of the year, there are still jobs which can be done now to ensure you have some great produce for the show next September.

Fruit trees: Apples and pears can be pruned now to maintain and open, goblet shape, or trained to espaliers, cordons or fans.   Pruning fruit trees is one of the most satisfying jobs for the winter, the end result gives you a tree that looks ready to go for the next growing season.  Flowering buds will be in place and without leaf cover you can really see the shape of the tree and envisage how it will look in the spring when the blossom bursts.  Just remember that it is best not to prune if the air temperature is at or below freezing.  Now is also a good time to apply a winter wash to help get rid of overwintering pests.

Apple Tree

Fruiting buds

Pear tree

Fruit bushes: Winter is also a good time to prune gooseberries and currant bushes. Follow the standard rule of the “3Ds” first (removing Dead, Diseased or Damaged wood), then remove any low lying shoots that you don’t want, then spur prune all side shoots to about 3 buds from the base, and finally shorten branch tips by about a quarter to an outward facing bud.

There are lots of onion classes in the Cookham show, and indeed most flower and vegetable shows, and onion seeds can be sown now. You may not win the heaviest onion as this is often a class for the real enthusiast, but you ought to be able to get something pretty impressive if you get specialist seed. For the other onion classes, uniformity and quality are key, so why not have a go? our first attempts at growing show onions were in 2016 and are chronicled elsewhere on this website.  We’ve stuck with the general approach even if we’re not in the same class as the expert onion growers, we have found that careful growing is giving us better quality onions that store for much longer.  Our goose this Christmas will have sage and onion stuffing with our own onions.  For the ones that weren’t good enough for storing, many of those found their way into the Boxing Day chutneys.

Leeks can also be sown in January, and whilst there is no separate class for them, they do make an impressive “any other vegetable” entry.