Whilst I was staging on Tuesday morning at Westminster Dave Thornton suddenly said stop what you're doing and come and look at this. He led me to the fruit section as he wanted me to see this set of three lemons exhibited under the name of the Duke of Devonshire.
These were without doubt the biggest three lemons I've ever seen together since I witnessed Medwyn talking to Ian Stocks and Gareth Cameron last month. They barely fit on the plates provided by the RHS and carried off a first prize in the any other fruit class. The only thing I don't like is that the gardener who grew these doesn't get the recognition he deserves because I doubt very much whether the Duke of Devonshire ever kicks off his privileged slippers and actually sets foot inside the glasshouse at Chatsworth!
There were several exhibits of blanch leeks at Westminster but I had to look twice and have a sly giggle at Dave's anorexic set which were incredibly long but only smartie tube thickness. Still, at least his hadn't gone to seed like all of mine, the foliage was clean and I think they got him a 4th!
And I made a note to look out in the seed catalogues for this variety of turnip, the winners in the class, variety 'Oasis'. I've found turnips quite awkward to grow successfully for the showbench. They either get slug damage, the leaves get nibbled by caterpillars, or they split underneath rendering them useless for show. They are also prone to the tap roots getting brown marks and looking very unappetising so this exhibit really shone out on the showbench in London. I can only assume they were grown indoors in raised beds filled with good quality compost as they were absolutely gleaming.
There is so much to see in London these days and shortly after a quick whizz round Harrods where I was very tempted to buy one of their bling-bling watches for the knockdown price of £45,500.00 I was very taken by this 'living wall' of the Athenaeum Hotel, Piccadilly. This is watered by 3000 integrated drip feeders and looked very naturalistic indeed. By the way Oscar now points at me and shouts 'cock'....he's actually pointing at my £22.50 Sekonda watch.....I think!
2 comments:
Simon,, i grew Oasis a few year ago and got some some cracking turnips out of them. They were the best white ball turnip i had ever seen
Thomson and Morgan had them this year. There were a few little uns on The Scottish Branch entry in the Interbranch Competition at Malvern. Absolutely beautiful. I don't know if they are unattractive to bugs and beasties but I normally can't grow turnips without signs of damage and they were very clean
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