As regular readers will no doubt have realised, vegetables and produce are not things that feature highly in our garden (unless you can count ornamental fig trees for example), but as we were both working in London yesterday we thought it might be fun.The show isn't as large as the usual plant fairs we attend, only taking up one of the RHS halls rather than both, and as expected it was heavy on the veg. Not just heavy on the veg, but also heavy veg with the RHS Giant pumpkin competition.
Now how much pumpkin pie would that make, according to the sign this beast weighed in at 478kg or 1054lbs, and won the grower, Stuart Paton a £1,000 prize. You can just make out in the photo that its resting on a wooden pallet, presumably to help move this thing about. Whilst this is quite impressive, I wondered what the worlds record holding pumpkin would weigh... and it seems that this one is just a tiddler in comparison to the record breaker - 911kg (2009lbs) (see here for a photo).
As well as serious displays of veggies there were several stands by local schools, most of which went for a semi serious stand, personally we liked this one, a pumpkin tea party!
Noughts and crosses... almost, i really wanted to re-arrange the soft fruit!
Autumn colour?
Prize winning hamper
Theres only so many ways you can photograph a table of apples
This was another of the stands, I love the way these look, although I cant see us digging up our plot to grow pumpkins... maybe on an allotment one day!
Lonely toms
As well as competitions for giant veg there were ones for the best grown etc, this entry caught my attention, more for the 2 little tomatoes on a plate than any other reason. I guess presentation is dictated by some rules, but they just looked a little sad sat there all on their own, poor things... all together now awwwwww :)
Prize winning leaks
The show has quite a fun feel to it, and the "London Vegetable Orchestra" were on hand to play musical veg (of course... dont you play tunes on your carrot?)
All around the hall were stands selling food, and the smells wafting across the hall were far to tempting, and whilst all the veg was nice, we were far more taken by one particular stand...
Anyway, after something of in identity crisis as a veggie blog, Alternative Eden will be back to a more exotic feel next time!
To play us out, heres the London Vegetable Orchestra!
Gaz
