Preparations...

I’m going to have to change my posts from ‘I just nipped to the Hill…’ to ‘I slogged my way on my bike to the Hill where I had to go & have a little sit down to get my breath back…’ if I keep up this cycling lark! Phew!

So tonight (once I’d had a little sit down), I dug up the majority of the red onions, & I will now have to go & look on the internet as to how to present them to show – my main question is how many scrobby layers of onion can I remove so that the onion looks really good? (Rather suspect that the answer to this is ‘none’.) Anyway, they are drying on the mesh now, & I’ll see if they are fit to enter later in the week.

I would have brought them home with me, but once I put them in the front basket I realised that I had a bit of a logistics problem with retaining forward visibility whilst riding home. I also needed to make room for the Coleus which I had just dug up & stuck in a 2 litre pot to take home to make ready for the show.

I’m on a bit of a learning curve here – I’d never heard of a coleus until treasurer Mike said ‘here’s a free coleus which you grow on & enter in the show’ – sounded good to me, so I took it in it’s dinky pot & planted it out by the sunflower.

Then I found out that it’s a pot plant & you pot it on, pinch it out, feed it & generally pamper it. Well, it takes its chance round here, so it’s had a happy time in the open air for a couple of months, & now I’ve potted on, fed it & given it new compost, & we’ll see on Sunday from the others what they are supposed to look like. Live & learn.

I planted out four more CAULIFLOWER (all the year round) that I’d bounced around in the front basket, then picked some FRENCH BEANS (tendergreen) – I do feel somewhat in limbo at the moment as I don’t want to eat any potential prize winners ahead of Sunday! Mind you, there isn’t a category for squash, so I had one of those for tea once I had cycled home…