Fruit Forum


Diary of a Fruit Showman

Best Collection in Show, November 2014
Best Collection in Show, November 2014

Adrian Baggaley has told us about some of the techniques he uses in his Nottinghamshire garden for growing fruit for exhibition in ‘Growing Fruit for Competition'. Now he gives us an insight into the pressures of the show day itself: his preparations, staging and the awards he won at the Royal Horticultural Society’s annual ‘Autumn Fruit and Vegetable Competition’ held on 7–8 October 2014, in the Society’s Lindley Hall in London at Vincent Square, Westminster. This year, Adrian beat his own record for the number of prizes he won. He had already swept the board at the RHS Summer Fruit and Vegetable Competition at Tatton Park, Cheshire, where his plate of red currants won the prize for the ‘Best in Show’. Again, he took many prizes at the RHS ‘Late Autumn’ competition, held in RHS Wisley Garden in Surrey on 7-9 November.

My show day began long before Tuesday 7th October, the opening day of the Royal Horticultural Society’s Autumn show and judging time for the ‘Fruit and Vegetable Competition’. Beforehand, I spent four, long - eleven to twelve hour - days harvesting the fruit and selecting six perfect, matching samples of each variety for the different classes that I was entering. By 6.00 p.m. on Monday evening several hundred fruits were individually wrapped in kitchen paper, labeled with their class number and variety name and packed in cardboard boxes. After a meal and four hours sleep, it was time to pick up a friend, who was helping me stage the fruit, and head off to the other side of Nottingham to rendezvous with the coach that was to take us and many other competitors and their exhibits to London. At 12.30 a.m., when I set out, it was pitch black, foggy and barely morning with a long way to go ahead of us. Once the coach was loaded up, it would take more than three hours to get to the exhibition hall in Vincent Square.

Basket of Fruit
Basket of Fruit

 

Departure time for the coach was meant to be 2. 45 a.m. People arrived from Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, some with their ‘coffins’, large boxes, containing long parsnips and carrots. The coach driver proudly showed off his new £140, 000 coach to us, but then promptly banned my already made up ‘Nell Gwyn’ basket of fruit from the safety of the inside of the coach; I could not risk putting it in the hold with the boxes. My strong protestations that the whole basket was securely wrapped in cling film, so nothing would fall out, made no difference whatsoever. There was no way that I was going to leave this behind. Finally he had to give in and it was locked into his sleeping accommodation. Then one couple, delayed by overnight road closures arrived thirty-five minutes late.

We were falling behind in our very tight schedule. The time allocated for staging exhibits in the RHS Lindley Hall is from 5. 30 a.m. to 8. 15 a.m. and we had lost over half an hour already. There were more delays, followed by road works for miles along the M1 motorway and to cap-it-all a wrong post code put in the ‘Sat Nav’ by the coach driver found us going over the Thames to Lambeth and Battersea, instead of making our way to Westminster. Another half an hour was lost and staging time reduced to one and three quarter hours. In that time, around sixty five plates needed to be positioned in various places on different show benches and entry cards (face down) and cards bearing the variety name also put in place. All of this must be completed before the nearly four hundred fruits can be unpacked and arranged on the plates, or dishes as they are known in the rule book.

The more time lost to staging the greater the stress. A whole year’s work will be on the plates, plus all the time spent picking, packing, labelling and boxing up. I ask the show secretary for more time to stage. We are given fifteen minutes. I think we cannot do it. Alan Mansfield was coming in to help at 6.30 a.m., but he is an hour late, because his train was cancelled. Things are definitely not going to plan.

Class 11: 9 Dishes of Apples and Pears
Class 11: 9 Dishes of Apples and Pears

I decide to unpack the pear classes first, as most of these are in one box. It was a great relief to see fruit on plates. Only five more boxes to go, but two of these are very big, because they contain large cooking apples, which take up a lot of box-room. By 8.00 a.m., things are very hectic. I see that the ‘veg’ lads are also under severe pressure. By 8.15 a.m., we should be leaving the Hall, but I have still one large box to go, mostly ‘cookers’. Alan goes around checking my exhibits and those of fellow exhibitor Bill Harrison, counting the number of fruits on the plates; it is easy to miss one off, as I know to my cost with Class 11 in the past. Class 11 calls for nine plates of fruit and with six fruit to a plate, that is fifty-four fruits in total. In 2007, the best fruit year ever, I left out one fruit on the plate of Monarch cooking apples and had NAS written on my entry card (not as schedule) and disqualified. The missing fruit was found nicely wrapped and labelled in the bottom of a cardboard box when we arrived back in Nottingham.

At 8.30 a.m., the judges arrive. We should be out of the Hall and run the risk of disqualification if we linger. I have a friendly chat with some of them and quickly disappear to the local cafe for breakfast - time to unwind.

Cass 59: Pears, 4 Dessert Cultivars
Cass 59: Pears, 4 Dessert Cultivars

The show opens at 10. 00 a.m. Just before, the public come in, we can find out the results. Did I do enough, how many mistakes did I make when rushing about, I wonder, but it is too late now. The entrance cards have not yet been turned over with the results. The judges are in a huddle deciding the best collections and best single dishes in the show. They appear to be looking at some of my exhibits and I stay in the background. At last we are allowed in. Class 11 – ‘A collection of 9 Dishes of Apples and Pears’ - is the first class we look at. I am cock-a-hoop! I win with my three plates of cooking apples, three plates of dessert pears and three plates of dessert apples. A good start, but I have five more collections to go, plus lots of single dishes. Class 14, six plates of six different varieties of dessert apples, is the most difficult to win. There are three other entries. I approach cautiously and, yes, first prize. I made late changes to this entry and took out the plate of Red Ellison’s Orange and replaced them with Pinova. These apples were literally picked in the last hour on Monday. Pinova is a slow grower throughout the season and its beautiful colour increases daily on the tree; this plate of lovely Pinova, perhaps, tipped the balance in the judge’s decision.

Pinova
Pinova

Class 40, four plates of cooking apples, won me a first and the award for the best apple collection in the show. There were firsts for Class 41 - three plates of cooking apples, Class 60 - three plates of pears, and for Class 59 - four plates of pears, which also won the award for the best pear collection in the show. My Doyenné du Comice won the best single plate of pears and Herefordshire Russet the best plate of dessert apples in the show, which also received the E. J. White Trophy.

The total number of first prizes came to twenty-eight, one more than my best ever and a more than satisfactory result in what has been a very difficult year. The trophy presentation was at 12.00 p.m. by Director General Sue Biggs and in time for me to receive my award before the northern contingent of exhibiters made their way back home. It is 12. 45 p.m. and I see the coach driver in the Hall, which is the signal to pull out the empty boxes from under the show benches, load them into the coach and head north. The fruits remain on display until the show closes when they are given away to a charity.

Adrian Baggaley

'Growing Fruit for Competition' by Adrian Baggaley see: http://www.fruitforum.net/growing-fruit-for-competition.htm