January Meeting 2016

First of all, a big (and belated) "Happy New Year" to everyone!

Our first meeting of the year is this Wednesday, 13th January 2016.  Our topic is "Alpines" and will be given by Gillian and Tim Ingram, from the Alpine Gardening Society.  They also open their garden for the NGS, and have a website which may be seen by clicking here.

Just a reminder that our annual subscriptions are also due at the meeting, so if you haven't already sent back your early renewal form (and why not?), then do remember to blow the dust off your wallets and purses and bring them along with you!  Our programmes are all ready for you in their bright new carefully-chosen coloured covers (actually, the only colour that Lorimers had enough of in stock - Ed), giving you your show schedules and agenda for the year.

As usual, we will be at St Agatha's Hall with the talk starting at 8.00 pm.  We look forward to seeing you there.

2015 Competition - The Longest Chilli!

Measurement was along the full length of the chilli as
many were heavily curved. 
This particular chilli type is typically upright and bushy.

Back in the early part of the year, we announced that the theme of the 2015 competition would be the "Longest Chilli", and sold a number of small chilli seedlings to members for them to bring on through the year.  Participants were asked to bring in their chillis (whether individual fruits or the whole plant) to the AGM for judging.  When sold to the members (at a token price to cover a rather paltry prize), and in the spirit of true competition, no hints on growing or cultivation were given.

We do have to admit that the subject of "Longest Chilli" was a late decision, as the original intention was to be "Most Fruits On A Chilli Plant".  We duly planted about 50 seeds of Dorset Naga which is supposed to be the hottest variety bred in Britain, and began to raise them to a decent seedling height for distribution to the members.   Sadly, one of the cats wandered into the conservatory and saw a tray of fresh earth on the floor, prompting her to do what comes naturally to a cat, and bringing the annoyment of kitty dirt from the outdoors to the indoors as well.  The Dorset Nagas ended up strewn across the floor and we could not rescue enough for a competition.  Those that were left had a distinctive odour, although they were at least well fed and fertilised.

Therefore, frantic replanting of another variety that we had to hand meant that the theme had to be changed.  The Chilli chosen (or more accurately, still available) was Joe's Long Cheyenne.  This has the distinction of being one of the longest chillis available, and in commercial propagation will often grow over a foot long (30 cm, for our more modern readers).  This chilli is listed as being of "medium" heat, and is significantly less hot than Dorset Naga.

After highly scientific collation of results involving a piece of string and a child's ruler, we are pleased to confirm that the winner was Vicky Regan, who managed a chilli of 10.5 inches!  She won a rather small box of chocolates, which are estimated to have survived less than 10 minutes.

Most growers recommend that chillis are grown under glass for larger fruit, and to ensure that they ripen sufficiently in our climate, as they are used to longer, hotter summers than are typical here.  Joe's Long Cheyenne is also a tall bush variety on account of the length of the fruit, and does need staking and some room to develop.  We did however discover when talking to the participants in this "trial" that there was little to be determined from the results on whether the plants were best grown under glass or in the open (so long as they did get some decent sun and heat).  Some of the smaller plants were grown under glass, and some of the longer in the open.  The moral is therefore that, if you want to grow chillis (and they are quite easy), but don't have a greenhouse, don't get too hung up on their final position as you can get good results wherever they are placed, at least in our part of Surrey.

Thanks to all the competitors: although many of the initial entrants fell by the wayside - typically going on holiday and losing the original plant (!), which should teach them a salutory lesson for next year - the full results are below:

Name	Length (inches)
Vicky Regan	10.5”
Jilly Ball	10.25”
Ken Jobling	10.0”
Sandy Berry	9.5”
Jeremy Ball	9.25”
Richard Dove Mary Hutchinson	9.0” (tied)
Jane Firmin	8.5”
Julie Mitchell	7.5”

November Meeting 2015 - Our AGM

Madam Chair Jane addresses the 2015 AGM

The 11th of November saw us hold the Annual General Meeting for 2015.  Thank you to all those who attended; the business of the Club does need to be discussed and the AGM is the right place to do it.

Sadly, we were informed that Shirley Istead, our President for many years (and before that, our Chair), had decided to resign from her post owing to ill health.  Jane, our Chair, thanked her for her hard work over the years, and proposed that Shirley be given Life Membership.  The members resoundingly passed this resolution.  In addition, and in particular as Shirley will be a hard act to follow, the members agreed that we would operate without a President for the time being while we examine the way forward.

We were also presented with the accounts of the Club from the Honorary Treasurer, which show us to be in good financial order, and to an report of the shows from the Honorary Show Secretary.  Following the move of the show back to Hurst Green this year, the members agreed that we would continue to hold the shows in St. Agatha's Hall and that we would continue to invite "The Grow With Us Club" (LODHS) to take part and to show alongside us.

Attendance was good this year - nearly 50 of the members were in the hall.

Partly as a result of discussions at the AGM, the Committee understand that the Rules of the Society are rather outdated and inaccurate; it is therefore the intention of the Management to redraft the rules and to present them to the membership at the February meeting, so that they may be voted on at the March meeting which will be in part an Extraordinary General Meeting in order to do so.  Although we are a relatively small Club, it is essential that the Rules are accurate, and this is the first time for a number of years that they have been looked at properly.

Nibbles and a social!

There was a good attendance at the event, as you can see from the photographs.  This may have been in part because the Committee has learned, over the years, that bribery goes a long way, and that most of our members respond well to the prospect of free drink and food!  As usual, therefore, members brought along a plate of nibbles each, and mulled apple juice was also served; the second half of the AGM being a thoroughly enjoyed social!
 
We also held the "Longest Chilli" competition at the AGM; the results will form the subject of another post.

October Meeting 2015 - Tulip Mania

The subject of our October meeting was "Tulip Mania", and was kindly given by Lesley Chamberlain. Tulip Mania refers to the massive interest in Tulips in Holland, in the early 17th Century, resulting in the first recognised economic "bubble".  Some rare tulip bulbs could command up to 10 times a skilled craftsman's annual salary, and many fortunes were made and then quickly lost when the bubble suddenly burst.

Particularly expensive types included the striped varieties (actually created through tulip mosaic virus.)  The effect of the "bubble" was so great that even today we still associate Holland as the land of the tulip.

Incidentally, do remember that we have introduced a few tulip classes to the Spring Challenge against Godstone.  They are ideal planted in pots (which means they can be moved into the sun or back into the shade to speed them up or slow them down as the competition draws near), and would make a very good introduction to showing if any members would like to  give it a go!  They also look pretty, and huge numbers of types and colours are available.  If youu grow them in pots, they can also be moved into a prominent position when in flower and then moved back to a more hidden place once the main show is over.

Una Eaton - A Goodbye

Una in her garden several years ago.
Many thanks to Malcolm and LODHS for permission
to use this photograph.

We are sure that most members will be aware that Una Eaton, wife of Roy and one of our long-serving members, has passed away.  Una was also a valued member of Limpsfield and Oxted Horticultural Society, who have posted a lovely farewell message on their blog.  Una will be sorely missed by us, and there is nothing that we can say to fully express our thoughts on this loss to both of our clubs.  There is also nothing that we can say that LODHS has not already expressed better than us, and we therefore are posting a link to it here.  The post is "A Fond Farewell to Una Eaton" (click to read it).

Our thoughts and best wishes go to Roy and his family.

Our Annual Autumn Flower and Produce Show 2015 - A Report

The 2015 Show before opening- well filled with a good number of
entries both in the horticultural and the domestic classes.

We are pleased to report that the annual show was a resounding success!  It will not be news to most of the membership that the Committee was rather worried about the show this year, as a combination of the weather and the absence / illness of a number of the more prolific exhibitors meant that the numbers of entries might have been somewhat low. However, an appeal went out to everyone a few days in advance asking for entries (begging, pleading, imploring, even threatening, more like - Ed), and you all responded magnificently!  It would be invidious to name anyone, but we even had some members who were going on holiday raiding their gardens the day before traveling (as if they didn't have enough to do), and leaving entries for the Show Secretary to put in on their behalf.  On the subject of the Show Secretary, please extend a round of virtual applause to Jilly for her organisation of the show, and to her team of little elves (you know who you are) for cheerfully undertaking the work that is needed to put it on and run it on the day.

Our silverware for the occasion, all
beautifully polished and presented.

The show had not been held in Hurst Green for four years, partly because we have held joint shows in Oxted on the last few occasions, but we took the decision to return to Hurst Green this year, and we were ultimately able to put on a good show for the village, and to do ourselves proud.  It is down to the membership as a whole and your willingness to put in entries that the show was a success.  Even if you were unable to put in an entry or two, we had a good turnout for tea and cakes and had a number of visitors who were not members, but were interested and impressed by what they saw - so a good result all round!  Putting on a show such as this is hard work for the Committee, and it is very pleasing when everyone responds so positively and appears to be so interested - so a big "thank you" again to everybody.  We do hope you enjoyed yourself on the day - the photos certainly suggest that you did, and we feel that it vindicated our decision to hold the Show again in St Agatha's Hall

Some of the show winners with Chairman Jane (in the centre) and
Malcolm Young from LODHS (far right) who kindly
agreed to present the prizes.
Alan Essex (far left) won the Fruit classes, Margaret Edwards (next to Alan)
took the Domestic section cup, and Jeremy Ball (between Jane and Malcolm)
won the Vegetable section.  Congratulations to the other cup winners
who unfortunately could not attend the prize giving.

We would also like to thank those non-members who came along to visit the show, and who also made entries; we had a number of members of "The Grow With Us Club" (LODHS) from Oxted, both for tea and for competition.  We extended an invitation to them to enter the show, and it was very good to see a number of them responding.  We do hope that they enjoyed themselves and will continue to enter in the future; we already have close links to Godstone for our Spring Challenge show, and it is good to be on such friendly terms with Oxted as well for the Summer and the Autumn shows.

Teatime!  Very popular, with good cakes!
Many thanks to Lesley and Joan for
holding the fort in the kitchen, and
to everyone who donated a cake.

We also had some independent entries from local growers (including a past member who came out of retirement especially for the occasion.)  In fact, we had nearly 40 individual entrants, and this meant that all of the prizes were hotly contested, with much of the scoring being very close indeed.  I hope that many of the new exhibitors will take heart that their scores (if they are counting) matched or exceeded those of the "usual suspects", and that the distribution of awards was varied across the whole of the entrant base with cups going to people who have never won before.  It is also a good point to mention that, in a change to previous years, we decided to ask visitors to vote for the "audience participation" classes using a coin.  The money raised from this will be donated to Multiple Sclerosis, and we think that we will continue this system in future shows.

Our final results were as follows, but please remember that many of the awards were won by a whisker! We do look forward to welcoming you again next year, and now that so many of you have shown a willingness to exhibit, we hope that the 2016 show will be even bigger and better.  You have all responded well and shown that you can do it, and now the Committee is going to expect you all to keep going!

However, the real aim is to look at lovely flowers and produce, and so, on with the pictures...

Award	Description	Winner
Crewdson Cup	Best horticultural exhibit in show	Richard Dove
RHS Banksian Medal	Overall winner of the horticultural classes	Jeremy Ball
Leonard May Cup	Most points in the flower classes	Ted Riches
Crewdson Challenge Cup	Most points in the vegetable classes	Jeremy Ball
Brenda Cup	Most points in the fruit classes	Alan Essex
MacEwan Cup	Most points in the domestic classes	Margaret Edwards
Mrs L Wettern Cup	Most points in the Dahlia classes	Ted Riches
Sykes Coaster	Most points in the floral art classes	Sue Kempton

A very well deserved "Best In Show" for Richard Dove,
with his collection of 4 or more vegetables. 
The photo (as usual) does not do this trug sufficient justice.
This award is restricted to the Horticultural classes, by the way.

Dahlias - glorious at this time of year.  There were a number of entries
in hot contention for "Best in Show", and the entries
compared very favourably to the Edenbridge and Oxted show
held a few weeks before, which is a large regional show with
a number of national-standard exhibitors.

Arrangements of flowers and shrubs from an exhibitor's own
garden are always popular.

The Foliage and Cacti classes.  Note to self - succulents are meant
to be in the foliage class and not in the cacti!  A rather
embarrassing reminder to check the schedule, especially when you are
supposed to be stewarding the show to get the entries correct ...

Fuchsia heads (single) make a lovely display, and the
class for doubles is also glorious.  We must do something
about the water trays though - there was a lot of water spilt!

We even managed to get a few entries for the roses classes - although many
members mentioned that there would have been more if only
the show had been held a week later!

An overview of many of the vegetable and fruit classes.

As you can see, runner bean is a popular - and well populated - class! 

Tomatoes and "any other vegetables".  Although there were red entries
for the cherry tomato class, the weather meant that many exhibitors' larger
tomatoes had split (apparently due to the fluctuations of hot and cold).
Purple tomatoes were therefore an exhibit of choice as these are
apparently more resistant to splitting. 
And yes, they are purple all the way through!

Floral exhibits are always a delight and allow creativity to shine out.
This year's theme was "Afternoon Tea".

Miniature floral art - always an eye catching class!

This year we re-introduced "flowers in a tankard".  Originally
meant only for men, our well-known feminist principles
opened the class to women as well this year.

The Domestic section.  There was a very good turnout in this; jams, jellies
and preserves in the foreground, then cakes (ginger cake), handicrafts,
and photos at the far end.

One of the handicraft sections.  Despite splitting a single "general handicraft"
class  into a number of specific smaller classes such as "soft toy" or "knitted",
we still had many entries across the handicrafts making decisions difficult.
The winner of "any other handicraft"is the glass terrarium in the middle,
hotly contested by many others including the wooden walking stick.

Autumn Flower and Produce Show - September 5th 2015

My sweet peas all beautifully arranged and ready to go for
the show,.  Oh, alright, these are the sweet peas
at Ightham Mote - mine all have downy
mildew and have snuffed it.  So that's another class
I won't be competing in ...

Now that the rain has come down, and we have had one of the first mists of the morning, we can say that Autumn is truly coming in - that season of "mellow mists and fruitfulness" as Keats would have it (see, a little bit of class and education from a blog author often accused of being bereft of both, usually by my own dear wife - read the poem by clicking here).

This means that it is time for our annual big show, the Autumn Flower and Produce Show, at St Agathas on the Green, on September 5th 2015.  Staging of entries is from 8.30 to 10.30, and the show itself opens to view from 2.00 to 4.00 pm.  Entry to see the show is free, and there will (of course) be cakes and tea for sale, to make the show a good social event as well.  Schedules are in your yellow programme, together with hints on exhibiting, and copies of the schedule only are available from the link on the right (or click here).

The show is open to all members of the public and entries into the classes may be made for free by anyone.  Please do therefore encourage any of your friends to enter even if they are not members (I would, but apparently I don't have any friends any more.  Thanks for pointing that out as well, dear wife).

This year, there are rumours that a number of our normal major exhibitors are either suffering from illness or are away on holiday.  While our best wishes go out to all those who may be ill, this does mean that we are trying to encourage entries from as many other people as possible, even if you have not exhibited before, in order to make a decent show (without you, this show cannot happen), but does have the advantage that the awards are far more open to anyone to win! Have a good look around - there must be something that you can find!  Please do not be put off if you have not exhibited before - we were all novices once and it is nowhere near as daunting as it might seem - as we are ultimately a friendly local show with the aim of displaying nice flowers and veggies for people who like looking at them, rather than meeting exacting national standards!

Entries may be made by email to ball.jillian@btinternet.com, or to hggardeningclub@gmail.com, by telephone to 01883 715896, or by post/hand to Ivy Cottage, 65 Hurst Green Road, Surrey, RH8 9AJ.  Do please also contact us if you would like advice on entries or any encouragement to put some in!  Entry forms are not strictly necessary so long as we know who you are and which classes you want to enter, but may be found on the right or by clicking here if you prefer to use them.

See you there - WITH your entries!

August Meeting - Organic Pest Control

Our August meeting was on "organic pest control", given by Mrs Rae, ably assisted by her husband Dr Rae.  The talk focused in particular on a number of biological controls, using examples such as nematodes to control slugs (always of interest to Hurst Greeners, gardening on  clay), and parasitic biological controls for cabbage whites on brassicas.

One of the very informative and useful pieces of information was that biological controls are not meant as preventative measures, in order to stop an infection happening in the first place, but are for treating any infestations as they initially require the pest to be present in order to be effective.  These biological controls limit any infestation from becoming a massive outbreak by creating a more harmonious equilibrium between the pest and the control species; at many garden centres that sell these products, you would be forgiven for thinking that nemotodes (or other species) should be introduced to prevent the pest, and if you bought on this basis you would waste quite a bit of money.  The biological control species needs to feed on the pest, and will simply starve to death if there are none there to start with!