Medwyn Williams juggles growing root veg
Long carrots quickly followed my December-sown parsnips. I grow my long roots in steel oil drums and a local garage owner found eight new replacements for my rusty old ones, and kindly welded off their tops and bottoms.
After thoroughly working over the whole bed below them as deep as possible, the drums were positioned with the edges sitting on concrete blocks. I had 10 tonnes of clean concreting sand delivered from a quarry and as I filled them with sand, I tapped the side of the drums with a piece of wood to bed it down.
In the growing section by the greenhouse door, long beetroot is going in five plastic drums on a raised concrete block bed, two blocks high. Each will have four stations to give 12 for my display.
It’s also time to chit my Chelsea potatoes and, to break their dormancy, I place them in a seed tray, rose end upwards and cover with black and white polythene, black side up. After about two weeks on a bench in a heated greenhouse, shoots should emerge from the eyes. The potatoes are then planted in 2-litre pots of M3 Levington growing medium and returned to the bench.
In another fortnight, they’ll pop their heads through the compost and keep going until the haulms reach 23cm (9in) high and start to flop. Around mid-March I’ll plant them in my cold polytunnel, covered with a double layer of winter grade fleece. Show-quality specimens should be ready from early May.
I want six varieties, not late or maincrop because they need to develop quite quickly. I’ve chosen white ‘Winston’ and ‘Casablanca’, red ‘Bluebell’ and ‘Mozart’ and pale pinksplashed ‘Bonnie’, which has one of the best skin finishes, but I’m still pondering over my sixth! l Follow me on Twitter @ medwynsofangles.