In "any other vegetable", the pumpkin came fourth out of eight - and the seakale beet won the top prize. Little has been written on the Crown Prince, but the 1994 edition of The Vegetable Finder says it should, when ripe, be steel-blue, which it was, and the flesh should be bright orange. So had the pair of Crown Prince squashes, although the judges had been courteous enough to append a little note explaining why. These were not, in their view, "fully mature" squashes.Without questioning the expertise of the judges, I believe that in this instance they were wrong.

The potatoes, tomatoes, leeks, parsnips and apples had gone unrewarded. The judging took place between 10 and noon, when the hall was emptied of all competitors. We returned when the show opened to the public to discover the worst. They won third prize, but he had even better ones in his collection of four vegetables, which won the major vegetable prize in the show.After laying out our offerings as best we could, we went home. He told me he had been nurturing them since the winter, growing them in a special kind of drainpipe that was no longer made.

Looking at the benches, my heart sank: we were palpably out- classed.I put my three sorry-looking leeks on the table beside three that were at least twice as long and thick, and immaculately blanched to boot. Their grower eyed me with frank alarm, as if fearing his precious specimens might catch something unspeakable from mine. Altogether there were perhaps two dozen exhibitors, nearly all of them - I judged by their familiar conversation - regular showers around the south. The average entry per class was about eight, although some, like the apple groups, attracted many more. Some exhibitors had staged their entries the night before and others were there before us. Finally, it had been a good year for the old apple tree (Worcester Pearmain), so we decided to take half a dozen of its fruits along.On the big day, the Guildhall was open from six am for the staging of exhibits; we were there by seven. By midsummer they were rampaging all over the allotment, producing several enormous fruit.We had two entries for "any other vegetables".

A Jackpot pumpkin, only slightly misshapen, had ripened earlier than usual, and there was a succulent crop of Fordhook Giant, a variety of seakale beet (sometimes called Swiss chard) resembling spinach. And I found three parsnips that were not too bad and were fairly well matched.Even I did not have the gall to exhibit my celery. A supposedly self- blanching variety (self-blanching celery is the greatest myth in gardening), it was straggly, tough and a dark shade of green. To make up for that, we made a surprise entry in the marrow class. The class includes other squashes and in the spring Olga had planted pips from a large blue-green squash called Crown Prince she bought at the supermarket. I had sown mine outdoors in March, so they were skimpy, but I decided to let them take their chance anyway. To get six of roughly similar size, I had to rule out some of the biggest and best of both varieties.To produce good leeks in early September you need to sow the seed indoors well before Christmas.

I ended up, frustratingly, with several good ones that were just over the top, and others that would have been fine if the show had been a day later On some, the calyx had withered, which judges do not like. A medium-fruited variety called Dario that I was growing for the first time was shaping up well, so were the cherry-sized Supersweet 100; but with tomatoes timing is all They must be ripe, but not dark red and squidgy. In his book Growing for Showing, which I had kept from my 1978 venture, George Whitehead recommended picking some every day for the week before the show, as they were turning orange, and selecting the best on the day. But my wife, Olga, and I decided none the less to exhibit one variety each (you are allowed only one entry per exhibitor in each class).We had high hopes for our tomatoes.