Longest runner bean, Woodbridge Horticultural Show
Sixty-three and a half centimetres of Enorma, grown up a cane in a back garden in Woodbridge, ending a nine-year winning streak belonging to a man named Colin.
Competitive vegetable growing is a serious business conducted almost entirely by people who will not admit it is a competition.
The long runner bean class is judged on length, but not only length. The bean must be straight, unblemished, of even thickness, and fresh — a bean that has been hanging on the cane for an extra fortnight to gain a centimetre will have gone stringy, and the judges will know, because the judges have been doing this since before I was born.
I grew Enorma, which is the obvious choice and slightly looked down on for being the obvious choice. Six plants, a deep trench of manure dug the previous autumn, and a discipline about picking everything else off the plant so it puts everything into four or five beans. Water at the roots. Never let it dry out and then flood it, which splits them.
Colin
Colin had won this class nine years running. Colin grows a variety he raises from his own saved seed and will not name. Colin has a greenhouse with a thermostat.
I beat Colin by eleven millimetres.
He was extremely gracious about it, came and shook my hand, asked what I had used, and then asked a second, more specific question about my trench, and I understood that I had about eleven months to enjoy this.
He won it back the following year by four centimetres.