This weekend sees my last show of the season at a village in Lincolnshire. Although only a small village the show is quite a large concern and this will be the 119th annual show which is some going!
There are many classes including root and corn classes as it's a rural farming community. The large swedes and mangolds are quite amazing. I hadn't heard of or seen mangolds until I went here....they're like great ugly beetroot that are used as sheep feed (see pic above).
There are also several classes for cacti and succulents. I have started to acquire a few of these in the last couple of years and grow them in my conservatory where they require the minimum of attention. You just water and feed every couple of weeks in the summer and give them a dribble of water every month or so in the winter. Some of the choice specimens may require a little more cossetting but by and large they are trouble free, and the vast amount of different shapes and forms makes them very interesting I think.
One particular class at this weekend's show which was introduced last year was for a display of cacti or succulents in a space 20"x20". Now this allowed my creative side to 'kick in' and rather than just taking several pots of various cacti and plonking them down on the show bench I had a metal tray made at work that I could fill with sand or grit to hold the pots in place. The made the display quite different from the rest and earned me first prize. The only problem was it weighed a tonne and was a bugger to carry from the car. I wasn't even sure the benches would stand the weight. So this year I've modified it slightly by packing around the pots with polystyrene and putting a lyer of grit on top of that. It's much, much lighter as a result. The pic above is last years entry on the car park floor outside the show hall.
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