I spent a couple of hours yesterday planting Japanese over winter Onion setts, regular readers will know that I do this every year in order to have a set of 3 out of the ground and ripening a month before the spring planted ones.I have won the class and respective trophy for the past 3 years. I have decided to try a different variety this year mainly because the shape looked good on the packet. The variety i have chosen is Troy from Thompson and Morgan I bought 2 packets and picked the biggest 50, these have now been planted in one of my unheated tunnels and spaced around 6" apart
I also planted out in the garden 50 cloves of Elephant garlic these are purely just to build up stock for future years.
I have harvested next years runner bean seeds which were selected by leaving all the remaining pods which had nice hooked shaped ends on the plants till they turned brown and the seeds dried out,I ended up with around 30 nice uniform sized beans to plant next year
I also harvested some onion seeds which were from the 10.5 lb onions I grew in 2011 and re planted this spring they produced loads of flower heads but not many ended up getting pollinated due to the poor summer and lack of bees I still managed a couple of hundred seeds some of which have been sent to Dan as he is going to have one final go at the 10lb club. I intend to use some of the rest for my large exhibition onions for next year,these will be sown at the end of November and grown through the winter under lights the parent plant had a great shape so hopefully the resulting onions will replicate this. more on this as i get underway
Due to my leeks not producing any grass this year I have ordered 2 punnets of plants from Dave Metcalfe which i will be collecting late November or early December I will now await his call.