You know you grow great tomatoes. Your family knows you grow great tomatoes. Heck, even your neighbors can’t wait to get their hands on your garden-grown goodies. So why not take your best vegetables to the fair for some official accolades? Like the fair’s other competitive events, a vegetable competition is a challenging opportunity to walk away with ribbons and some prize money. If you happen to have a natural competitive spirit, the bragging rights alone may be the best reward of all.
It’s as much fun as a Ferris wheel to enter a vegetable contest and be part of the excitement of a fair. In the days leading up to a contest you have to balance nervous anticipation with the daily gardening routine. Gardening for competition requires monitoring progress, dealing with wild weather, making adjustments, and trying to outsmart Mother Nature. Then, finally, comes the exhilaration of the actual event.
Winning ribbons for picture-perfect produce is a splendid reward for a season of working in the garden, but you can win prizes for oddball vegetables, too. One time I was tickled to take home the top prize for funniest mutation in the novelty vegetable class. Two of my tomatoes had grown together to form a perfectly round miniature derriére. I titled my winning entry How I Got a Little Behind in My Gardening.
That oddball tomato is just one example of what you might get from your garden. The tomato that seems to be winking owes its funny form to catfacing caused by weather that’s too cold while blossoms were forming. The carrot that looks like it’s wearing pants grew in rocky soil that caused the root to split in two. The cucumber with the long neck and small head grew into its strange shape because of poor pollination or inconsistent watering. So don’t worry if your vegetables aren’t picture-perfect. You can still have lots of fun, especially with a good sense of humor.
While searching through antiquated gardening publications for clues to the origins of vegetable competitions in America, I came across a book called The English Vegetable Garden. The editors of Country Life Limited, an esteemed British weekly magazine, published this classic guide in 1909, when fine gardening was a popular pastime.
Sandwiched between “Vegetables Neglected in English Gardens” and “Salads” is the chapter “Vegetables for Exhibition.” This chapter details how gardeners can grow and exhibit quality vegetables. “No branch of gardening deserves more encouragement than the culture of high-class vegetables,” the authors wrote. “Good vegetables are the necessities of life, and it is profitable and pleasurable to grow them to perfection.”
The emphasis on growing “high-class” vegetables is significant. In all previous years, judges rated vegetables only by size and weight. Color, uniformity, and other standards of perfection weren’t considered essential to selecting the winners.
Even weirdly shaped vegetables and funny fruits — like my ‘Glacier’ tomatoes — can win blue ribbons when entered in the novelty vegetable category at the county fair.
Since medieval times, fairs have been held to attract crowds. Some groups gathered together for religious purposes, others for trade and commerce, and many had educational aspirations. No matter the reason, all fairs eventually evolved into social and shopping occasions that included entertainment. Fairs haven’t changed much in all these years.
As agricultural exhibitions grew in America, organizers added attractions to boost attendance. Horse racing became popular (and money-making) entertainment at fairs, despite strong opposition from some quarters. The 1881 book How to Manage Agricultural Fairs specifies the buildings needed on a fairground, including the ring: “Without here discussing the question of racing and its moral bearings, we say that it is usual to lay out a ring of some character, to exercise and speed horses upon.”
It didn’t take long for other amusements to work their way into fairs. Today’s traveling carnivals started in small tents that featured games of chance and numerous “fakirs” to entertain (if not fleece) the attendants. There were also firework displays, band concerts, sideshows, and vendors selling trinkets, food, drinks, and sweets.
Despite all the added attractions, every fair’s purpose was to showcase improvements in farming and to award prizes to the best specimens of crops, fruits, and vegetables. The agricultural competitions converged with two other important developments: an increased demand for better produce in the marketplace, and plant breeders’ work to improve the quality, productivity, and appearance of many vegetables.
Have you ever wondered why first-place ribbons are usually the color blue? The use of blue to recognize high honors dates to England around 1344. That’s when King Edward III founded the Order of the Garter, one of the most distinguished military honors of knighthood. The Order included 25 knights who wore uniforms of blue cloth. Changes made to their garb over the years included the addition of a gold medallion, representing St. George and the dragon, that’s worn suspended from a blue ribbon.
Today’s gardeners would have a difficult time identifying the vegetables our ancestors ate. Wild tomatoes looked like yellow berries growing on bushes, and carrots were nothing more than white, rangy roots. It took years for vegetables to grow into the ones we recognize today. Gardeners owe a debt of thanks to those first farmers who dug tubers from the earth to feed their families and then kept the tastiest to transplant and grow again.
Compared to what gardeners plant today, early farms and gardens didn’t offer much vegetable diversity. If we were transported back in time and could peek into a medieval English garden, we might see beans, cabbages, onions, leeks, lettuce, and peas. Mercifully, the world of vegetables mushroomed in the 1400s when intrepid explorers transported plants and agricultural products from one part of the globe to another. That’s how corn (maize), potatoes, and beans from the Americas found their way into European dining rooms.
Agriculture took a giant leap forward in 1700s England when “gentlemen farmers” began to experiment with new concepts in tillage, cultivation, seed selection, and crop rotation. Informal sharing of ideas, inventions, and agricultural improvements grew into formal membership societies to encourage advances in farming. The Society of Improvers in the Knowledge of Agriculture was one of the earliest groups, started in 1723. The members of these societies met regularly for education and socializing. The larger groups held agricultural shows and awarded premiums for successful experiments, whether for cultivating the largest amount of land for growing early potatoes or for finding a cure for sheep rot.
A tiny grape variety called ‘Mexico Midget’ is perhaps closest to the wild plant all tomatoes are descended from.
Agricultural and horticultural societies of all sizes flourished during the late 1700s, and members were inspired to share their successes. Some of the largest flower and vegetable shows held in the United Kingdom today were started by these societies two hundred years ago.
Britain’s venerable Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) opened its doors in 1804. By about 1818, every kind of fruit and vegetable appeared “in its season” at exhibitions held during the society’s meetings. The society’s well-respected flower shows that flourish today began in the late 1820s as society floral fairs held at the Duke of Devonshire’s estate. There was so much interest in the exhibitions that British horticultural newspapers reported the results.
As these flower and vegetable shows became more popular, they evolved into bigger events. A classic example is the St. Ives Flower and Produce Show in Cambridgeshire, England. The first contest of the Cottagers’ Horticultural Society, staged on July 22, 1876, included 20 classes of vegetables and 11 classes of fruit.
Twelve years later, the St. Ives Flower Show had become an important fixture in the county and “the principal floricultural and horticultural exhibition in the shire.” The Hunts Guardian & East Midland Spectator newspaper called it “a brilliant success.” That show added extravagant elements like decorations of flags, fairy lamps, and Chinese lanterns. A flying trapeze took up a large part of the tennis ground, and the “Celebrated Yokohama Troupe” entertained the crowd with juggling and balancing acts. The Rushden Temperance Silver Prize Band performed twice in one day.
Around this time, at the end of the nineteenth century, the RHS adopted a set of formal rules for judging the quality of the specimens on exhibition. No longer were vegetables judged on size alone, but also on their general appearance and taste.
Corn-growing contests helped encourage a new generation of farmers near the turn of the twentieth century. The president of a county farmers’ institute in Illinois, Will B. Otwell, organized these contests to encourage boys to plant corn in spring, compete to grow the largest yield, and exhibit that fall. Hundreds of boys signed on for free high-quality corn seeds and the chance to win a $1 premium. These contests eventually grew into what were called boys’ corn clubs. The success of these clubs led to organizing tomato canning clubs for girls around 1910. These clubs were the forerunners of the well-known international network of youth development organizations we recognize today: 4-H.
Today’s county and state fairs are direct descendants of the agricultural shows and sales that began in early America as regular market days and fairs. As early as 1686 the first session of the New Jersey Assembly set aside every Wednesday as market day and the first Tuesdays in May and October for fairs, each lasting three days. Those early fairs included horse races, booths with streamers, and “a heterogeneous collection of articles for sale.”
In the largely rural, agrarian society of early America, people began to form agricultural groups, similar to the societies organized by the gentlemen farmers in England. Distinguished members of the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture included George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. Other societies followed with the goal of improving commerce, stimulating trade, and expanding the economy in a country that was still young and working toward self-sufficiency.
The annual sheepshearing events George Washington Parke Custis held on his Arlington, Virginia, estate were modeled after similar events in England. Watching sheep being sheared doesn’t sound like a reason to get all gussied up today, but in the early 1800s social occasions like these attracted a highbrow crowd.
America’s gentlemen farmers benefited from these livestock events, but ordinary farmers were too busy farming to take part. Elkanah Watson, a successful farmer and businessman, changed that in 1807 when he displayed two of his Merino sheep to the general public in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Showing off two sheep might not seem like a momentous occasion, but that event helped Watson earn his title as “father of the agricultural fair.” His Berkshire Agricultural Society started annual fairs and competitions that grew in the number of participants, contests, and prizes. He also added parades, plowing matches, and grand agricultural balls — many of the same elements that are part of county and state fairs today.
It was around 1840 that agricultural societies came into their own as a way to boost the American economy. During the next 20 years, almost a thousand societies sprang up as state or county organizations, all with the primary purpose of holding annual fairs.
These exhibitions and fairs were highly anticipated social events. Farmers and their families visited fairs to study new methods for raising livestock; watch demonstrations of farming equipment; learn about developments in planting, tilling, and harvesting; see the latest in the domestic arts; and compete for the “agricultural ideal” in crop and horticultural contests.
The resurgence of interest in fairs between 1850 and 1870 was so great that the founder of the Cooperative Extension Service at Land Grant Universities, Kenyon L. Butterfield, referred to those two decades as “the golden age of the agricultural fair.”
Most county fairs have a long history, and many celebrated their 100th anniversary years ago. But Denver, Colorado, didn’t get its fair until 2011. Back in 1863, Denver started planning for a fair on a 40-acre site east of the city, but budget problems and the ongoing Civil War caused delays. Almost 150 years passed between the idea of a county fair and the day the fair opened its doors. It took a pair of enterprising entrepreneurs to revive the county fair and give it an urban twist. By then, the original fairground site had become Denver’s City Park.
Today’s vegetable contests wouldn’t be as interesting if it weren’t for the work of plant breeders starting in the mid-1800s. American agriculturists and horticulturists were especially interested in applying Gregor Mendel’s principles for using genetics to improve crops.
It wasn’t long after Mendel published the results of his experiments with pea plants that Luther Burbank had his first important horticultural discovery. In 1873, the “gardener to the world” found a rare potato seed ball that became the famed ‘Russet Burbank’ potato, the same beautiful Idaho baking potato grown today. Burbank conducted his plant breeding experiments in California and introduced more than eight hundred new varieties of plants including hundreds of ornamental flowers and more than two hundred varieties of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and grains.
Extensive experimental work in plant breeding began in earnest at the turn of the twentieth century. Each year seed and plant companies promoted their new, improved varieties that were said to be more disease resistant, more productive, and better tasting. But the average farmer or gardener had no way to know if the seeds lived up to their hype.
If it weren’t for the work of Mendel and Burbank (who found and named the ‘Russet Burbank’ potato), we wouldn’t have such a vast number of vegetable varieties to enter in competitions.
Horticulturist W. Ray Hastings of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, recognized the need for a network of independent trial gardens for testing new flowers and vegetables. He started All-America Selections (AAS) in 1932 to help gardeners find reliable varieties that lived up to their claims of being “new and improved.” As president of the Southern Seedsmen’s Association, Hastings was able to launch the program one year and release results the next.
AAS announced 19 new varieties of flowers and vegetables in 1933, and the organization has named new crops of winners every year since. The sugar snap pea, introduced as a completely new vegetable in 1979, is one of the organization’s success stories. Prior to this introduction, there were only two kinds of peas: the English pea and the snow pea, but the sugar snap pea combined the best qualities of the two. AAS continues as an independent testing organization, coordinating the trialing process in test gardens across the country and recommending winners every year.
While new and improved vegetables are introduced to gardeners year after year, vegetable competitions haven’t changed much from those early agricultural contests. Farmers and gardeners work all season to grow a good crop of fruits and vegetables to take to a fair, judges make their selections, and the best specimens receive recognition.
The authors of The English Vegetable Garden understood this process, too. “Those who are thinking and hoping to excel in the production of high-class vegetables must remember that much work and forethought are needful,” they wrote. “Those who persevere are the ones to succeed. Success is not a matter of mere luck as some imagine.”