About 3 weeks ago I filled this old water tank with sieved compost from my compost heap, topped it off with sieved bagged compost and sowed a few rows of beetroot Pablo with a view to timing these (hopefully) for Malvern at the end of September. The class at the Midland Championships calls for 4 roots so I will have to pull the whole bed to even hope of getting a matching set. At village show level I may have to pull 20 or so and even then I will be struggling to find a set of 3 that match, so I will have my work cut out if I'm expecting to get a good set of 4 from this lot.Growing this way I hope to be able to pull some globe beet with nice long tap roots coming exactly out of the centre of the stem. I shall also be able to carefully top up the tank with more compost in order to cover the shoulders of the beet and hopefully prevent the corkiness that can downpoint you. I shall be watering from time to time with a salty solution which I'm told will help to improve the colour and making sure they don't go short of nitrogen. Beetroot is one crop that, surprisingly perhaps, requires quite a lot of nitrogen.
Last year the winning beet at Malvern caused a bit of a stir when it soon became obvious after the judges had made their decision that the grower had oiled his roots with some foreign substance. They were still bright and shiny when everyone else's had dried out. You tend to keep your beet wet when you put them onto the showbench, wrapped in damp cloth until just before you have to vacate the tent. Clever judges will leave the beet until later on in the judging process for them to dry out a bit when it is easier to see any blemishes in the skin finish. At Malvern I can only assume the class was judged early on and this competitor's underhanded action went unnoticed. By late afternoon on day two they were still in pristine condition and it was glaringly obvious to see. A pity as the guy in question is a top grower.
On the other hand was it really cheating? Wasn't he merely exhibiting his produce to maximum effect. We talc our onions and that's accepted. And the night before a show I will soak my beet in buckets of weak vinegar solution to improve the colour. Am I cheating too? It's a contentious issue and I for one am not the sort of person to start an argument. Amen!
3 comments:
Have seen this done a few times over the years and they always seem to be the winning exhibit.Its always an oily film and if you touch them u can taste what it is. You dont show your onions covered in talc and in most rules, there is a rule to cover putting foreign substances on exhibits. I think the judges are to blame as they would have lifted them and it does leave a oily feel to your skin. This shows the problem in the lack of quality judges, as most of them are useless.
Well I don't know about judges being useless but I think it's probably a bit unfair. I once judged a very small village show where the quality wasn't that great and I was surprised at how much pressure I felt under to get the result right, even though in most cases it was fairly obvious what the 1-2-3 was.
Multiply that pressure to Branch and National level and I do feel a lot of sympathy with them, especially when they get things wrong as in this case. Presumably whatever this chap used wasn't that obvious upon handling especially when all the other roots were wet also. The onus has to be with the exhibitor and his conscience as the judges have a limited amount of time to rattle through the benches and beetroot is always heavily contested. By Sunday afternoon it was overwhelmingly, glaringly obvious. Personally, if I had been the exhibitor I would have been embarrassed to have been caught out. Did he think the substance would fade perhaps? If he keeps doing it I think judges will cotton on to him and 'NAS' him sooner or later and then he'll lose a lot of respect from his fellow growers. Either that or he'll get one heck of a kicking!
Simon i could put on here what i think is used then anyone could do this. I know some of the judges in Scotland will wait till last before judging beetroot, but have also seen the same substance used on carrots.If they handled them they would have felt it. The problem with judges is they are over-whelmed with whats in front of them at major shows because a lot are not used to having to judge, such quality at local shows. I have showed all over Britain and have only seen 2 instances of this. Maybe a manager at last.
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