Prize Winning Vegetables

It’s been a challenging year for growing anything and vegetables have been no exception.  Thankfully, here at The Lint Mill we have our polytunnel, so Colin can work away, whatever the weather.

It’s been a challenging year for the organisers of rural events too, and everything from Badminton to the Scottish Game Fair has been cancelled due to the exceptional rainfall.

Here in our village at the annual Carnwath Show, the horse classes and livestock classes were all cancelled but the Industrial tent gamely went ahead.

Colin decided to enter some vegetables in a competition for the first time this year.  Never having exhibited his vegetables before, some research was called for and it seems that the whole business is fraught with rules and conventions (a fact we suspected having visited many village shows over the years, seeing onion tops neatly tied with twine and such like! ).  So, with the help of HC Harrison’s article ‘Exhibiting and Judging Vegetables’, Colin learned that his cabbage would have to have ‘a solid head, heavy for it’s size, free of blemishes and insect damage’, that his beetroot should be displayed with the ‘tops trimmed to ½” to 1½” long with the tap root left on’, and that his celery should have it’s ‘excess tops squared off at 10 to 12 inches’.  So he got up early, selected his produce at the last minute for maximum freshness and prepared his entries according to HC Harrison’s advice.

A last minute dash to the local newsagent for the requisite white paper plates for display and the entries were in at 9.20am.  Judging was to happen at 10am.

Imagine our delight when we returned to the tent to discover Colin had won all of the classes he entered!  There was prize money too, which he spent on some more plants for our cottage garden from the lovely Dippoolbank’s open garden day today.  This year Carnwath, next year Chelsea!!!