Judge Wayne DeWerff held class for any exhibitor who wanted to listen in as he judged vegetables at the Pratt County Fair Wednesday morning.
“The kids learn a lot from him,” said superintendent Karen Kumberg. “He makes it fun.”
Several 4-H’ers were present when cherry tomatoes were being judged, and DeWerff asked them to give their opinions of the entries. Katelyn Kumberg earned reserve grand championship in 4-H vegetables with five perfectly round, perfectly ripe, perfectly matched cherry tomatoes. She also earned the grand champion ribbon for a treasure chest of vegetables.
DeWerff praised Colin Kumberg’s carrots as being well-presented. Carrots can be hard to grow, he told Colin and Trevor Hassler, a fellow Glendale Reaper 4-H’er, because you can have a well-manicured garden and all of a sudden there is a lot of crabgrass in one little section. That’s where the carrots are, and if you pull the grass, you can also pull the carrots before they’re ready.
Colin didn’t bring his kolrabi, a vegetable similar to a turnip, that he was growing for the first time this year. He said it tasted good when the family sampled some earlier, but when they dug just before the fair, the vegetables had turned woody.
The nearly 100 4-H and open class vegetable entries was up a little from last year, but similar to a five-year average and way down from an average 20 years ago, crops and gardens co-chair Bob Schmisseur speculated. Fewer people are gardening, and the weather has presented some challenges this year.
It’s been a “heck of a grasshopper year,” and heavy rains have kept plants wet for several days. That can lead to diseases, he said. It also creates a situation where roots don’t develop well, especially with green beans. Several adult gardeners reported a poor year for green beans; however, earlier in the week 4-H’er were seen snacking on raw beans brought to the fair office by someone who had too many.
What a gardener wants is a good soaking rain, then days of sunshine so the plants dry out. In Kansas, though, gardens depend on supplemental watering to keep them healthy. Schmisseur said he is running a broadcast sprinkler now, instead of the usual drip irrigation — if Mother Nature hasn’t given plants a good washing in a while, he thinks they need water on their tops and not just at the roots.
He also passed on some advice he received from a longtime garden department employee at Skaggs who recommended planting rows north to south so each side of the plants would get sunshine.
As for the grasshoppers, Schmisseur said he’s willing to share a little with the bugs, but also sprays with Sevin, a readily-available insecticide.
