The Bucket Growing Competition 2024

No, not a competition in which we harvest buckets grown from bucket seeds.

I mean:



Yes, I mean The Stamford Hill Estate Community Garden's annual bucket growing competition!

We started it yesterday and we invite you all to participate too.


Judgement Day will be in early October, weather permitting.

Here are the rules for those of you new to the bucket challenges:


All crops must be grown in 14L buckets or in any container holding up to 14L of compost/growing medium.

There are no restrictions on which cultivar of crop seed you can use.

There are also no restrictions on the growing medium - whether you choose to use compost, garden soil, sand, straw, shredded paper or other custom mixtures is all up to you.

Fertilizers, whether it be type, strength or dosage is all up to you.

The Spud in A Bucket Competition
The aim is to produce quantity according to weight - to grow as much as possible from just one seed potato in a bucket.

The Tri-carrot Challenge
Demonstrate that you can produce a uniform quality crop.
Produce three carrots, each at least 7cm in length, cleaned and with the green tops neatly trimmed to 25mm. The main taproots should be unbroken.
Remember, the main criteria is uniformity - it will not be judged on anything else.


Why not join in with the fun and earn potentially massive kudos and bragging rights on the way.

Since you will all be my direct competitors, I won't wish any of you good luck. In fact, I hope you all fail miserably, muhahaha!

 

Here are the previous winning entries in case you were wondering:





All perfectly achievable by the ordinary person (well, maybe not the huge potato yield).

 

For those of you following along.




The potatoes and carrots are all pretty much at this stage of growth - that's only if you've been keeping up with the watering and feeding.

 

And, finally, the results of Judgement Day which took place last weekend to coincide with some good weather:



The Spud in A Bucket Competition

Gold medal winner


Silver medal winner


Bronze medal winner



The Tri-carrot Challenge

Gold medal winner


Silver medal winner


Bronze medal winner

 

Here are some pictures during the harvest just in case you think that the massive potato yield of the winning entry was impossible to achieve.

 

Which potato variety was it please @misterQ ?

 

Those carrots look excellent!

 

Agreed, the carrots do look good.

Of the two competitions, growing for quality is definitely much more difficult than it is for quantity.

The variety was Autumn King but if you want to join in next year then I would recommend a candle type variety to grow.

 

The seed potatoes were ordinary potatoes bought from Morrisons supermarket.

They were both described as a multipurpose variety potato: 'Rooster' and 'White Potatoes' (Melody), to be exact.