The beginning and middle of autumn is the time for traditional harvest festivals, flower shows and competitions for the largest vegetable around the world. Last year, in mid-September, the traditional autumn flower show was held in Harrogate (Yorkshire, England).
The Harrogate Autumn Flower show 2019 is the main autumn gardening event in the UK. Here, residents of the country, who are mostly partial to gardening, are offered everything you need to create an ideal plot, as well as impressive achievements of English horticultural art and a lot of expert advice on cultivation.
According to the established tradition, the event started with its famous competition of giant vegetables. Every year, gardeners and gardeners from all over Britain compete for the top spot, growing the largest fruit in many vegetable categories.
Colossal cabbage, monumental pumpkins and huge tomatoes – you will not find such an abundance of vegetable “monsters” as at the exhibition in Harrogate. They can hardly be called beautiful, but they are certainly large and heavy. And all of them are participants in the competition for the titles of “the heaviest and longest in 2019” at the most famous vegetable competition in Britain, which can be safely called the “battle of the titans”.
The winners are selected in 13 categories, including pumpkin, zucchini, parsnip, leek, cabbage, potato, beetroot, carrot, rhubarb, string beans, onion, tomato and cucumber.
At the exhibition of giant vegetables, master classes are organized for novice gardeners, giving inexperienced gardeners a chance to try to grow their “vegetable monster”.
Harrogate has hosted the famous national heaviest onion championship for many years. Since the competition began in 1983, 12 world records have been set. Ambitious British gardeners every year dream of setting a new world record to push the current champion-Tony Glover from Birmingham, who won his title in 2014 with a huge onion of an incredible weight of 8.47 kilograms.
This year’s heavyweight contenders included a nearly 300-pound pumpkin and cabbage so large that it had to be carried in a wheelbarrow. I must say that this year is not the best for growing large pumpkins. A mark of 300 kg – long passed in other years. For example, in Russia in 2017, a pumpkin weighing 432 kg was grown.
Very large pumpkins grow overseas: American and canadian “pumpkin monsters” exceeded the 1 ton mark. A world pumpkin record holder was grown in 2016 in Belgium – its weight was 1190 kg!
So the result of this year’s exhibition in Harrogate is quite modest. But, whatever you say, a pumpkin weighing even 300 kilograms makes an impression! And other vegetables at the exhibition were not far behind: some weighed so much that it was necessary to lift them on the scales in groups of up to four people.
Event organizers posted a message on Twitter that some vegetables were so heavy that they broke the scales, requiring the intervention of an engineer. The engineer arrived at the scene before the scales went pumpkin “monster” weighing 291.7 kg,which eventually took the first place.
Autumn has just begun. And British gardeners have already reported on their garden success. But surely we are waiting for other exhibitions and new records!
In General, stay with us! We will watch these exciting competitions together.
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