Saturday, 26 November 2011

Chillies and marrows

Well today was the local craft fayre and I had a stall to sell my Spitfire Sauce (a chilli sauce that I have made for the last 4 years) and also a Guess the Weight of the Giant Marrow competition to raise funds for McMillan Cancer Care.
Although my stall was not in a prime location this year, I sold 60 jars of sauce (and I know I can shift the rest with three phone calls tomorrow).
To guess the weight of the marrow cost 50p a guess and I raised £26.00 - not a huge sum I know but every little bit helps.


Anyway, the weight of the marrow was 46.5 lbs and the winner was Sandra Smart from Portmahomack, witha guess of 46 lbs. Sandra used to be impressed with my cucumbers - God knows what was going through her mind when she saw this beastie!

Monday, 21 November 2011

NVS Scottish Branch Seminar 2011

I attended my first NVS event on Saturday - the annual Scottish Branch Seminar, held at the Moredun Institute ay Penicuik. Fantastic day !
I am becoming a regular on their members forum and it was really good to meet up with other forum members and put faces to names. Everyone was really friendly and the speakers were very good - we had a talk from Peter Glazebrook on how he grows his giant onions, including his recent world record onion (which it has to be said may be the heaviest but is far from being the best looking onion you'll ever see). A lot of what he spoke about could be put into practice for growing large exhibition onions but other aspects are, to me at least, beyond obsession. I just can't see me ever having a canister of Carbon Dioxide releasing a controlled jet of gas every ten seconds in my tunnel.
There followed a photo slide review of both  the NVS Scottish Branch and National Championships.
After lunch we had a talk on Biological Soil Management and finished with the best speaker of the day - Jim Pearson -  who gave us a very informative and extremely amusing talk on how he grows his exhibition cauliflowers. Once heard, never to be forgotten !
I picked all my pre-ordered goodies and have also brought back some of Ian Stocks peas and french beans for next season, as well as some Heathfield exhibition Broad Beans supplied by Frank Taylor of Grampian DA.
Thanks to all who made this a great day and I'll be making this an annual pilgrimage from now on.