'Mr Chris': Best 200 by Terry Morris.
'Laura Jay': Grand Champion by Alan Mumby.
On Friday night I found it quite hard to sleep as I was judging the gladioli at Huddersfield the next morning and this being quite an early show for gladioli, I can never be sure whether it will be not much of a show with poor quality spikes or a full house with lots of judging to do, or anywhere in between. Plus I'd not judged there before. High anticipation rather than trepidation kept me awake. As it turned out there were just over 100 glads to look at which is quite good for an early show. At the National for example, on a really good year, you might have over 300 glads to judge but these smaller shows don't usually come up to that number.
So this was the Yorkshire Gladiolus Society Open Show held within the Huddersfield Flower, Vegetable and Handicraft Show in a nice big marquee in Ravensknowle Park.
There are certain glads that flower early and it's these that you need for a show around this time. Big glads need to be early Dutch ones like 'Sophie', 'Ice Follies', 'Oasis', 'Extasy' (sic). The primulinus types, like 'Marina' above in the first photo will also flower around this time if you plant them in May. The exact time to plant them to hit a show date is only arrived at by trial and error and the dates for your garden or allotment may be very different from others at different altitude or with more or less shelter from the wind.
My own plot is a complete pain in this respect, situated on the West Pennine Moors about 500 feet up with cold winds a feature in the spring. My dates are much earlier than most. I also have to 'bumpstart' in pots any glads that flower normally elsewhere in mid or late season, and then plant them out when it's warm enough. Even the primulinus (or 'prims' as the growers call them) have to go in early for me. If I were to plant stuff in the ground, it would not flower in time for many shows and sometimes won't even be ready for Harrogate which is around 15th September.
The schedule (list of classes) for this show is a little different from most and above is a picture of the Florists' Class, Class 3 'Five florists' gladioli, any cultivar. To be staged in one vase.' the schedule explains that these should have between three and five florets open and resemble the quality of flower one would get from a florist. Incidentally, a 'florist' was originally an exhibitor of flowers at a show. One of the oldest societies in Britain, in York, is called something like the Ancient Order of Florists.
Another class you don't see outside of glads shows is the floret box class. Above is a typical box of six 'Blue Frost'. In this class you are looking to catch the public's eye with colourful florets. They should really be all the same shape and size. 'Blue Frost' is quite useful for this purpose. As an exhibition glad it is not very good, being a bit wayward in the placement of the florets on the spike and having rubbish attachment: this means that when you stick it in the vase the florets can sometimes drop off. Not what you want.
This was the overall winner of the two floret box classes. Shown by Peter Forrow who grows lots of prims. The cultivar is 'Lady Penelope' a reliable prim from Holland.
Above we can see four more prims: two 'Lady Penelope' on the left and 'Laura Jay' and 'Sue' on the right. I gave the right hand vase the Best Exhibit award. They wouldn't have won that in a really big show but here they were good enough.
There were of course plenty of other glads in the larger sizes but we'll see more of those in the next shows I'm judging which are Southport on Thursday morning and the National at Hartlepool on Saturday morning, two very different shows.
Southport has big prize money and attracts growers from Scotland as well as more local folk. The National is where members of the BGS and others show their flowers for very little prize money but lots of glory. However, some of our top exhibitors are running late with their flowers this year, so this will give others a chance to do well at the National. I'm doing a lot of judging this year because I decided to have a break from showing a year or so ago and have been concentrating on breeding new glads which means working to a very different timetable and using very different growing methods. I will have to be up early for Southport as the judging starts at 7.a.m. I'm sure it will be worth the effort.
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