We grow to eat.  We’ve never shown vegetables, in part this is because we’ve never got organised, but another factor is that we grow relatively small amounts of individual crops, to make sure that we’ve always got a variety of culinary options and not too much in the way of gluts.  The small quantities mean that we wouldn’t have many individual fruits or vegetables from which to select show specimens.  However, the competitive juices do start to flow a bit around this time of year as there is a best kept allotment award.

The set up of our plot would probably not please the purist as our open centre could be seen as wasted growing space, but we wanted to develop a plot that not simply productive, but relatively easy to maintain – hence the bed structure and also a nice place to simply be an enjoy – hence the bench.  We’re not going to make structural changes to please a potential judge, but the local competition does provide an incentive to do some thorough weeding and tidying, both of which will help to maximise the crops, so it is not simply a cosmetic exercise.

Anyway, after our recent efforts, it doesn’t matter what the judges think, we like what we’ve achieved.

15 July

16 July