The big, bold and the beautiful of vegetables

Lisa Wisler's winning entry in the Presentation Basket Fruit and/or Vegetables category at the last Katikati A&P Show.

Have you grown the largest tomato in Katikati? What about the largest onion or the heaviest zucchini in the Western Bay?

Now is the time to show off your beloved home-grown produce. It’s A&P Show time this weekend, so now’s the time to enter your vegetables in the vast Home Industries competitions.

There are extensive categories for preserving, all kinds of produce, baking, flowers and a handcrafted section.

Children have their own categories, but can also take on the adults in the open categories.

Virginia O’Leary, one of the Home Industries conveners, says the Home Industries section has mostly been a show staple since its inception, although there was a hiatus.

“It’s been resurrected and is still popular with men and women alike,” Virginia says, “and men in particular can be very competitive with their vegetables.”

She says judges are looking for produce that is well-grown - not always the biggest (except for in the categories for the biggest produce), but the best quality.

Virginia says the funniest category is the ‘fruit oddity’, and that is “any fruit that has grown to look rather particular... sometimes they look like people. That can happen with carrots, and even avocados can look a bit odd”.

At the last Katikati A&P Show in 2019, the inaugural competition for the biggest onion saw Kirsty Duynhoven win with her Italian Long Keeper onion, which weighed just over a kilogram.

Kirsty’s winning onion was propagated from Kings Seeds’ stock and was grown to seedling stage by Grower Direct in Te Puna. With the help of blood and bone, sheep pellets and (when she remembered) a liquid fertiliser, the onion flourished in her home garden.

Virginia says to check out your vegetable garden for potentially enormous red or white onions, yellow Spanish onions or just everyday brown onions.

There’s also the largest tomato competition, listed among 19 categories in the vegetable section. The tomato that was judged the largest in 2019 was grown by Janice Tyrrell.

Janice says she didn’t know the tomato’s name, only that it was a beefsteak variety and it was “perfect, red and round”. Virginia says neither the biggest onion or tomato entered need to be named varieties – saving seed from the best of the home garden is the sustainable way to go.

Monique Amor won the heaviest zucchini with a 5.3-kilogram rampicante zucchini and also took the prize for the longest zucchini that year. Any zucchini variety is capable of winning one of this year’s top prizes.

The category for the roundest zucchini was won by John McGuinn and the weirdest zucchini was won by Amara Wisler, then just 12 years old.

Virginia says the challenge is out to all local gardeners to take stock of what is in their garden. She says the competition is not just vegetable gardeners looking for a win.

“There are prizes and the thrill of winning in baking, preserving, hand-crafts and flower growing.”

Schedules for the A&P Home Industries competitions are available from Katikati i-Site, the library or resource centre, Omokoroa Library, or they can be downloaded from: katikati.org.nz/business/katikati-a-p-society.

■ Entries must be taken to the A&P hall in Mulgan St on February 4 between 10am-2pm for judging. All entries will be displayed at the show on February 5, whether or not they have won prizes.