By Victoria Plum 
By Victoria Plum
This week’s Summer Show of Reepham & District Gardening Club was a riot as always, a friendly get-together with the wonderfully democratic judging system whereby everyone chose the exhibit they thought best in each class, and then the scores were added up by the committee to establish the winner of each.
But, there’s the rub, how to choose? One container of six herbs looks much like another, so in our judging are we swayed by a pretty vase, a bit of ribbon, a list of varieties, the surreptitious use of a little oasis?
With vegetables, surely it must be uniformity and freedom from blemish. But how does that equate with taste?
So how should I look at a plate of three potatoes? Have they been washed, should they be washed, should the scab be scraped off, should the soil be left on so that I can’t see the scab, should the variety be named?
If the soil on the potato is very black (for instance), did the grower fill his trenches with black peat (where did he/she get the peat?), because for ecological reasons we are not supposed to be using peat?
We know of course that a Gardening Club member wouldn’t have cheated by buying in potatoes from the Fens, where the soil is very black, so you see it all gets very complicated. And then we should cook the potato and everyone eat a bit to test the flavour?
It’s just as well that it’s a light-hearted evening!
There were two quizzes, too, one on garden plants. Would you have known why Pinks are thus named? It’s because the zigzag edges look as if cut with pinking shears.
And would you know that the botanical name for autumn crocus or naked ladies is Colchicum autumnale (not a true crocus) and that it is poisonous?
Coincidentally, the next Reepham & District Gardening Club talk on 18 September (7.45 pm in Reepham Town Hall, Church Street) is on Norfolk Saffron, which comes from Crocus sativus, an autumn crocus, hopefully not poisonous.
Below: Dianne Lambert, winner of the Reepham & District Gardening Club Trophy 2018. Photos: Tina Sutton
Geoff Fisher