By the start of June all your plants for this year’s show will probably be planted up, so this month’s priority is maintaining plant health.

Observation underpins all integrated pest management strategies and helps you to catch problems early, so keep an eye out for things like holes in leaves and distorted growing tips that are indicators that pests are around even if you haven’t seen the little critters themselves. Strong plants are better equipped to fight off pests and diseases so watering and feeding will now be important.

If recent summers are any guide, it will be necessary to water the thirstier crops.  Do remember that water is required at the roots, simply wetting the surface doesn’t get water where you need it and can be counter-productive as it will encourage weed seeds to germinate. Using watering systems that deliver the water underground are much better than spraying a hosepipe around.  In most vegetable plots a full underground irrigation system is unlikely to be a practical option, but there are simple ways to get water below ground level.  The “Rolls-Royce” option is probably using Gro-Pots, but simply sinking a 2 litre flower pot into the ground next to a tomato, squash or courgette will help to get plenty of water straight down to the developing root system.

Squash in a Gro-Pot

Watering pots in sweet corn bed

Root seedlings (parnsips and carrots) need a little bit of water to get them established, but once they are growing try to avoid too much watering as you really want the roots to be driving down searching for water.

As well as water many plants will also require feeding.  We tend to push fruit and vegetables quite hard to get them to crop in a short window, so they will need a bit of extra help.  For leafy crops a general feed will work well, but for fruiting crops (tomatoes etc.) June is the time to switch to a high potassium feed to encourage flower and fruit formation.

Keep pinching out the shoots growing from the axils of the main stem on tomatoes to ensure that you have one solid stem transporting water and nutrients to the swelling fruit. Similarly if you are growing a giant pumpkin, pinch out all tendrils, side shoots and flowers until you have a long, strong main stem (4-5 metres if you have the space) before allowing just one fruit to develop.

After the normal “June drop” thin out the fruit on apples and pears even further. Thinning out will give you much better quality fruit and reduce the risk of diseases (such as brown rot) which can be spread by overcrowding. This will give fruit that are better for eating and storing as well as showing!

June Drop

May is an important month for a September show. Towards the latter part of the month we should be confident that the last of the frosts will have been and gone (this year we had frost on the allotment over the first weekend in May).  The end of frosty nights will mean that all of the more tender plants such as tomatoes, peppers, courgettes, squashes and pumpkins can be planted out and French and runner beans sown. Vegetable plots, greenhouses and allotments will all start to look full again.

Allotment planted up in May

Last month we mentioned that parsnips make an impressive addition to the “top tray” collection class, another option is late peas. Most peas are sown early and are likely to be in the ground by now with a view to harvesting before the pea moth season (June-July). However, a late sowing at the end of May or early June will give plants that flower too late for infestation and not only give a delicious late harvest, but an extra option for the show.

Across all of your plants keep weeding to reduce competition for moisture and nutrients and to reduce the hosts available for pests and diseases.

Tomatoes will start to produce side shoots, so keep pinching these out to create a strong main stem that can carry water and nutrients to the flower trusses to maximise fruit production.

Side shoot for pinching out

Pinched out

If you are planning to show some dahlias have a look online to find some guides to getting the best possible blooms and don’t forget that there is a class for very small blooms as well as the big blousy ones.  Where better to start than the National Dahlia Society.

After a few months of largely indoor activity, April should see the show growers getting active outside again.

The soil should be getting warm enough to start sowing roots, but both carrots and parsnips can be reluctant to germinate in the cold, so pre-warming the soil by covering with a cloche for a week or two can help.

Sow carrots thinly so that later thinning out of seedlings doesn’t attract carrot root fly. Sowing parsnips in stations rather than rows (3 per station, with only the strongest seedling left to mature) leaves the roots plenty of space to develop. There isn’t a specific class for parsnips, but they make an impressive addition to the “top tray” collection class. Serious show growers use containers for roots.  Controlling the growing medium means that there is less chance of stones causing distortion of the roots.  If Cookham residents still have their old recycling bins (the black and purple ones) these are a pretty good size to have a go at growing carrots in a contained environment.

Re-using the re-cycling tub

Warmer weather means more weeds, so keep weeding your onions, shallots and garlic, when young the alliums are easily out-competed by broader leaved weeds.

A weeded onion bed

As the weather warms up, your potatoes should start to show, but make sure that you keep them earthed up, as well as increasing the overall yield and preventing green potatoes, this will protect the emerging shoots from late frosts.

Earthing up potatoes (May 2011)

Over the past couple of years, there have been more entries in the fruit and vegetable classes than the flower ones, so don’t forget about the flowers. It is a good time to take Dahlia cuttings and propagate more of your best plants. Chrysanthemums can be planted out by the end of this month as well. With classes for annual and edible flowers, why not sow some of these too?

Can you beat these?

March is a big month across the garden. Notwithstanding last year’s late cold snap, spring is on the way and growth is starting. In show terms it is six months until the Cookham show and there is plenty to be getting on with.

March is a good time to plant potatoes in our area, by the time the shoots start to appear the risk of frost should have pretty much gone and earthing up will protect the shoots from any late snaps. Serious show growers use containers for potatoes, a controlled growing environment helps with pest and disease control and because you don’t need to dig the potatoes fewer will be damaged in harvesting. Aside from being good for showing, less damage means that the tubers will store better, however you get a smaller crop in containers and you have to be assiduous with watering and feeding. Sinking bags into the ground so that feeder roots penetrate into the soil can help, but also allows the slugs in.

this year we are trialling growing potatoes in open ground and in bags next to each other in the same bed.

Potato bed

Previously we have tended to go for just a few potatoes in bags, focusing on bringing on some early potatoes in the greenhouse to get the first crops by the end of May.

Potatoes in a sack – early May

There is plenty of seed sowing due in March, and towards the end of the month you can get the squashes, courgettes and pumpkins going, all of which have classes in the show.  these will all be quite big plants by May, when it should be safe to plant them out, so if you don’t have anywhere frost free to bring these plants on, then it may be best to hang on for a couple of weeks.

On the flower side, Dahlia tubers will be showing signs of life, so these can be potted up ready for planting out later, just make sure that any new growing tips are protected from frost.  As the new shoots emerge in a month or two, it is a perfect time to propagate your best plants by taking cuttings from these vigorous new shoots.  in a heated propagator, these will root in just a few weeks.

Sprouting dahlias – early May

Weather-wise, don’t be fooled by the warm weather we had at the end of February.  there are still going to be plenty of frosts, so don’t be too eager to get plants outside and be careful with unheated greenhouses, plants can still get frosted in them.

A key part of growing for show is timing, you want your produce to be at its best on show day, but for most of us, the temperamental nature of the weather will be a bigger factor than all of our best laid plans.  As we only show at one small local affair, we focus more on growing to eat and then hoping that if we do this well that there will also be stuff ready to show.  This approach means that with January in the rear view mirror and the days definitely getting longer there is plenty to be getting on with to be ready for spring.  There is still likely to be plenty of cold weather around for the next few weeks, so a lot of activity will be indoors, for those lucky enough to have facilities like a heated greenhouse, you can really get going.

A heated propagator is a great way to kick start seeds and these are available in all sorts of shapes and sizes to suit different budgets and the space available.  We have one that is about seed tray size that we use when we need a fair bit of space, for example it will take a full root trainer kit loaded with sweet corn, but we love the versatility of the slimmer modular ones that fit neatly on a window sill and the separate trays allow us to bring on a reasonable number of a wide variety of plants.

“Super 7″ propagator

February is an important sowing month for us, with many of the greenhouse crops starting now. Tomatoes, aubergines and peppers will all be sown before the end of the month. With unheated greenhouses we don’t plant out until early May so this does mean that there are some fairly hefty seedlings on window ledges by Easter.

For a September show it might be better to sow tomatoes a bit later so that they are at their cropping peak then, but from an eating perspective the earlier they are fruiting the greater the chance of a crop in a bad blight year.  We have found that aubergines need a long growing period, not to mention a hand from the weather, to fruit successfully in our area, so the bigger the plants that go out, the better our chances of a crop.  Similarly to ripen sweet peppers we also reckon that we’re going to need quite mature plants by planting out time.  with a bit of luck sweet and chilli peppers will both be at their peak by September for the Cookham show.

Chilli Peppers in September

Outdoors it is a good time for ground preparation. Increasingly more and more fruit and vegetable growers are moving towards no dig and February is a great month for mulching your beds with bulky organic matter as there should be plenty of moisture in the ground from winter rains, so you will be sealing it in ready for planting out later.

If you haven’t pruned fruit trees and bushes yet, make sure that you do this before growth re-starts, but hold off on stone fruits like cherries and plums until the summer.

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.