Page 34 - Simply Veg Issue 1 2016

Medwyn’s Vegetable Master Class
Michael Osborn (Lancashire DA)
It is November again, the rain is falling
as usual in Llanberis the village sitting at the bottom of Wales’s highest mountain, Snowdon, a mountain I know very well from my fell running and climbing days, now a distant memory! I am sure there is more than one month of November in each year as I just could not believe it was twelve months since my last visit to this wonderful spot. This year’s programme for the Master Class looked very different from previous years but for me it proved to be one of
the best. As always I travelled down with David Metcalfe, a very frustrating journey full of hold ups due to the dreaded road works. This annual gathering is a wonderful opportunity to meet up with old friends, the show season over and the pressure gone for another year. A great opportunity to
sit down with a pint and chat about what might have been had the weather been more cooperative or
the spider mite not
infested the crop or
any one of a dozen
other pit falls that
seem to frustrate our
desire to grow quality
vegetables.
winds and rain still obliterating any views
of the impressive scenery, a good day for
the indoors. Following a hearty full Welsh breakfast we all assembled to hear a talk by Olive and David Peel entitled “The Story so Far”. David and Olive only started allotment gardening in 2008 and it was fascinating listening to Olive recount their journey from
a simple allotment growing vegetables for the kitchen table to where they are today, winning at National Shows and achieving Olive’s greatest aim winning the Master Gardener’s Class at Harrogate this year, an amazing achievement! Olive has a lovely presentation style with her gentle Irish accent still just showing through, this was for me an inspiring talk.
The second talk of the morning session was by Gerald Edwards and was titled Growing Apples and Pears on the Allotment or Garden. Gerald has a wealth of fruit
was terminally damaged by a storm but fortunately his insurance company funded
a new one for him. John, ve times winner of the Master Gardener Class at Harrogate, which requires a collection of fruit, owers and vegetables, so all round gardening skills are required John grows most of these in
his greenhouse as well as many other plants which he propagates through the year and John’s talk gave us a good insight into how he achieves the very high standards required to win the title Master Gardener.
The afternoon sessions second talk was
a departure from the normal vegetable
theme and was titled “So you think you
know Gladiolus” by Gill Hazel. I love growing gladdies as cut owers for my wife so I was quite interested to see what an expert had
to say. Gill told us how she fell into growing and owning a Gladiolus corm retail company quite by chance when she and her husband discovered that their normal supplier of corms was selling his business, which they went on to buy. Gill started with a review of the small wild species which are common in South Africa and the Mediterranean countries progressing through the task of breeding new varieties for the commercial cut ower business and Gill’s task of visiting and talking to the suppliers in Holland to select suitable varieties for the discerning grower and exhibitor in the UK. Throughout the talk Gill’s total enthusiasm for her passion came over very strongly and I will now be growing some of her delightful small species varieties in future. An excellent talk!
One of the features of the weekend is the copious amounts of food, all of a very good standard. So after a quick shower and a pint in the bar we sat down to enjoy a lovely roast leg of lamb dinner. It is worth saying at this point that the whole hotel has been refurbished since last year and it is a very comfortable place to spend a weekend.
Following dinner we sat down for our nal talk of the day and by this stage in the day you really wonder just how much more your brain can absorb but John Bebbinton’s talk “Brassicas from the allotment” was perfect. John was featured this autumn on Monty Don’s Gardener’s World with his prize winning brassicas which he showed at the Tatton show. John and his right hand man (grandson
Our rst talk on
the Friday evening
following a lovely evening meal was entitled “Plant Breeding” by Nick Bolton, Market Development Manager for Hazera Seeds. This was a really fascinating talk, Nick started with plant breeding way back in
the 1800,s right through to modern days and techniques. Modern techniques have given the plant breeder the ability to design plants to meet the ckle requirements of
the Supermarkets and us the modern consumer. Nick went into some detail on
the development of F1Hybrids and for the rst time I think I started to understand how this process takes place. The nal part of the talk touched on the very controversial subject of GM crops; Nick refrained from expressing any hard and fast views on the subject but gave us some very well thought out for and against arguments. This was a very stimulating talk and got the weekend off to a good start.
Saturday morning dawned with high
growing experience and as many of you will be aware has
just published, in conjunction with the NVS, the third book of the Getting Started series Getting Started Growing Fruit. Gerald, a committed organic
grower, took us through the complete cycle of this sometimes daunting subject and as someone who has just started growing top fruit I found the whole talk fascinating. Gerald managed to take some of the mystery of pruning the various types of trees for me. An excellent talk in which Gerald’s total passion for his subject came through.
Medwyn always schedules a two hour break for lunch time and you really need this to let your brain catch up a little. So after
a very nice buffet lunch, a stroll round the grounds of the hotel or a short walk into the village gets you prepared for the next session. Unfortunately the scheduled speaker was unable to attend and at short notice our old friend John Smiles stepped in to give his talk “A year growing under glass”. I have heard many talks by John over the years and his relaxed humorous style always make his talks interesting to listen to. John started his talk with a tale of disaster when his greenhouse
This annual gathering is a wonderful opportunity to meet up with old friends
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