- Digger
- Northern UK
- 18 Jul 2005
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4,743
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Ha, You've missed the point, it's nothing like the village largest pumpkin competition, the idea is to produce the perfect condition vegetable and thereby demonstrate to the judges your ability as a grower and shower. Showing vegetables has nothing at all to do with tasting the vegeatbles it never has done and never will do. The vey idea is totally absurd!
Tatse is a totally individual matter and cannot possibly be legislated into the judges criteria. Most schedules will call for for a given number of vegetables and they must be uniform in size shape colour and general appearance, yes a dodgy looking deformed tomato may taste good in some peoples opinion but it's not pleasing to the eye and doesn't demonstrate that the grower has put in the required amount of time and skill that would be needed to produce an ideal perfectly formed blemish free tomato, indeed some supermarkets have decided to sell deformed vegetables to cater to the needs of some people, but the fact remains they don't look nice. Many of the cultivars that are grown by vegetable exhibitors are from supermarket led strains because of the unifomity and good characteristics. Ordinary cheap cultivars are readily available for home growers and do provide good eating, but the vast majority of show cultivars are grown for the showbench and nothing else. Imagine letting in the fee paying public to view a showbench full of half eaten dried up vegatables on a plate looking like leftovers? The vegetables are presented in pristine condition demonstrating the skill, ingenuity and ability of the growers to be able to produce fine quality products sometimes way out of season, all in perfect condition on the day of judging. Of course you can have your opinion but could I suggest that you read the RHS judging and showing guide that defines the criteria for judges and also the NVS show guide. The primary purpose as you say may be for you to eat them for their taste but the primary purpose of growing exhibition vegetables is to be uniform, pest free perfect specimens.
Maybe you could hold your own show for out of shape dodgy looking specimens of veg that don't look fit for human consumption and then you judge them yourself based on your personal preferenc of taste? because you won't get a qualified judge to do it for you! that's a fact. Your idea is just not feasible imagine a flower judge dismissing an exhibit merely because he or she doesn't like the particular colour of the flower? regardless of whether it's a good speciman or not I will downpoint it because it a yellow flower?
I am afraid that you are wrong wrong wrong, the primary purpose of growing vegetables FOR A SHOW LIKE CHELSEA is appearance, condition colour and uniformity, nowhere in any of the recognised show judges guides are the words flavour or taste mentioned????
digger 
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