STOP PRESS: MINIATURE VEGETABLE CATEGORY ANNOUNCED

In these sad days of trendy 'multiculturalism' and the nanny state gone mad, next you'll be telling me you want a Halal chicken category! But the committee did see fit to bend to local community pressure on one 'politically correct' part of the show. (Partly because we were told the funding for our Bermuda fact-finding trip would be withdrawn otherwise.) So now, instead of asking for the biggest veg, we're looking for the sizeably-challenged vegetable of the year. It breaks my heart to do it, I have to say. It makes me sick how great British values and traditions such as page 3, celebrity-bashing and giant marrow growing are being pulled down by these namby-pamby Eurocrats. But nevertheless, please send your bonsai vegetable pictures to me, I'll be sitting here reading the Daily Mail so I can find out what's really going wrong with this country of ours. And eating a chicken tikka sandwich. 

Our first miniature vegetable entry comes from Linda at An Artist's Garden (USA).

I cannot fundamentally see how anyone is going to produce tinier tomatoes than that... Wow! 

Look! Another really tiny sweet veg, this time a butternut squash from VP. She says: "Here's something to make you laugh - my largest butternut squash from last year's harvest. The jury's out on whether I'll triumph again this year as those darned slugs keep eating the flowers."

Juliet enters the category now, which is good because we did actually invent it for her. She writes, "Here's my first entry for the Emsworth village show - for the miniature vegetable category. The vegetables I am entering - one miniature carrot and two miniature potatoes - are in the bottom half of the photo. As well as a ruler to show their size, I have put them together with one each of my normal sized carrots and potatoes, as evidence that I didn't just plant the miniature ones last week - they have been growing as long as the others. I did also have some miniature French beans, but I'm afraid I ate them before I got around to taking their photo (doh)."

They are sooooooooo cute!
 

6th Sept FINAL UPDATE

James A-S sent this which I lurve, "My entry for teensy,weensy,tiny vegetable. One mini-chilli."

Ahhhhhhh......!

I honestly find it almost impossible to judge which one of these tiny veg are my favourites because they are all SOOOO SWEEEEETTTT. But this one, oh my god!!! 

Artist's Garden Karen says "I hope I am not too late with my entry for the smallest veg -I planted carrots alongside my onions in April this year to keep off the carrot fly – and when I dug up my onions – also also pulled up my carrots, as you can see for 4 months in the ground they are ... well minuscule (that is a five pence piece next to them) – I was going to give them to Patient Gardener for lunch – but instead I thought I would save them for the Emsworth Village Show."

Then Easygardener at Greenforks sent these, awww, she writes,  "Potatoes and way too small for trendy purple chips or crisps."

Squeak! Look at this from Ms B!!!!

And these miniature white cucumbers from Mr Cleve West (I believe his allotment site is open 19th September under the NGS - well worth going and have a nose I reckon).

And this titchy tomato from Mr Mark Diacono who, as a published and probably any minute award-winning vegetable book writer, should KNOW BETTER!!!!

And one last stop press entry from Venetia, which actually made me cry with laughter, and I award this certificate to all entrants, well done to all! She writes, "Minta said to send you some of my allotment/village show entries for your website, frankly not sure they are up to scratch, but thought you might like this one for mini veg category, complete with judge's comment from when we entered them into the village show "Sorry these should be larger".....

Am now thinking of re-naming the category for next year, Sorry These Should Be Larger.