By Victoria Plum 
By Victoria Plum
When visiting my children in the West Midlands recently, they showed me photos they took at the Malvern Autumn Show this year: the most jaw-dropping marrows and largest, heaviest, longest vegetable competitions.
Many sorts of apples were displayed, too, which reminded me of a fascinating TV programme about apples with garden designer Chris Beardshaw.
He showed how the traditional orchards of Worcestershire were rooted up and turned over to farmland because France flooded the market with cheap Golden Delicious apples and our farmers couldn’t compete.
There is now a resurgence of interest in apples and pears, too. There is a new (about 10 years old now, but these things take time) community orchard at Hindolveston, and Apple Day at Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse.
The October meeting of the Reepham & District Gardening Club cheered us up with an amusing and lively talk on “Cottage Cures and Superstitions”, mostly from Lincolnshire, from garden designer, nurseryman and lecturer Andrew Sankey.
We heard about willow and meadowsweet for headaches, mouse pie for whooping cough, cobwebs to bind your cut finger, greater celandine sap for warts and urine for chilblains.
Ely Markets supplied opium from opium poppies (they also grow in my garden: I enjoy them, but I never planted them, they just arrived) for the “ague”, which was malaria, flu and a variety of other ailments.
Our speaker made the point that many of these “cures”, which we might think of as old wives’ tales, have been scientifically investigated and substantiated. If you think about it you can see that the cures that worked would be reused; those that didn’t wouldn’t.
It was vital for girls to find a husband, so many games were employed to try to find out who you might marry.
One way was to peel an apple without breaking the skin, turn around twice, then drop the peel over your left shoulder onto the ground: the shape made revealed the letter starting the name of your future beau.
After at the last gardening club meeting, many hands made light work of the refreshments as the kitchen was heaving with helpers. (Thanks to you all. It wasn’t hard work, was it?)
Some of our new visitors expected to pay and I had to explain that they didn’t need to: free refreshments are all part of the fun.
I look forward to seeing the kitchen full again on 21 November after the next talk on daylilies by Luci Skinner from Woottens of Wenhaston. If you visit her nursery, make time to visit St Peter’s church to see the amazing 16th-century doom painting, which shows Adam and Eve entering the Kingdom of Heaven and the Devil filling the bowels of Hell with bad people.
After the talk, which starts at 7.30 pm in the Town Hall, Church Street, Reepham, there will be the famous bag sale. Bring your surplus plants, labelled in a bag for someone else to enjoy, £1 each for club funds. Real bargains can be had.
Photos: Ben Sutton
Geoff Fisher