21 Today

My largest Onion is now taping at over 21" with its ugly sister about an inch behind, thankfully the splitting seems to have stoped,They also have 21 leaves each.I had a message from dan the other evening and he reckons 23" weighs roughly 7 Lb so hopefully I may break the 10Lb mark if nothing goes wrong.

Harvested my Garlic this week as the tops were falling over I am pleased with the size of the bulbs considering I bought the ones I planted from a normal veg shop as I did not get good results from seed garlic last year so did not want to waste money this year I will save 3 or 4 bulbs to re plant for next year as I have read that if you keep growing the same strain in your land it adapts to your conditions and the results are better every year.I will save the biggest ones as these may come in handy for a collection of veg under 15 points which there is a class for in leeds in September.

After lifting my overwinter Onions I topped up the raised bed with some compost and a couple of barrows of good top soil donated by a neighbour who was going to dump it anyway this was then tilled to a fine texture with the Mantis Tiller I intend to grow Beetroot in this bed.Hopefully the soil mix is nice and fine and deep to allow the tap root to penetrate and keep straight.I have planted 2 earlier sowings of Pablo in to this bed and have 2 more sowings to follow on giving me a good selection to pick from.

Top tip it is a great idea to grow Courgettes and marrows up trellis or posts but remember to secure the trellis to something firm to avoid this happening.

Finally just seen on Blickys blog that he has already lifted his first vento which started to panic me as mine are nowhere near ready measuring only 6" round,so I looked back at last years entry in the blog regarding Vento lifting and realised that i did not lift mine till the end of June at 9.75" panic over,as you can see from the photo they are doing just fine.