The Box is a major cultural and heritage attraction and archive, which opened in Plymouth’s city centre in September 2020. Its collection, formally the South West Film and Television Archive (SWFTA), is the regional film archive for the South West of England, comprising the combined programme libraries of Westward Television and Television South West (TSW). It also includes a significant number of donated film collections dating back to the early 1890s.
This film is part of Free
Giant Marrow
Pub punters celebrate the vegetable plot of the village
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Overview
Villagers of a pub in Devon celebrate a bumper crop in the shape of a very large marrow. Its weight and size are guesstimated as it is passed around. This quintessentially British pastime of nurturing vegetables until they reach enormous proportions and showing them up and down the country in September and October has in recent years drawn some international competition. The world record for a giant marrow is currently held by the Dutch. China and Malaysia are new threats.
The Oxford English dictionary has the first reference to a vegetable marrow in 1822 and the English vegetable marrow is one of the earliest forms of marrow squash grown, but has never been too popular elsewhere. Perhaps that is why it is grown for competition! Successful giant vegetables need to be heavy as well as big and world records are frequently set and broken. Since the sixties the growing world has developed new varieties, mega swede, twisted carrots, a giant runner bean but the enduring appeal of the marrow remains as together with the pumpkin it always exceeds expectation. Aardman Animations' film Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) features a Giant Vegetable Competition.
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