That’s shallot! Champion Jim told veg contest has died off

Kingdom’s most famous grower won’t get chance to defend his crown for this year

Fife’s victorious vegetable grower is artichoked at being told “that’s shallot” by Fife Council.

For a staggering 26 years Dalgety Bay gardener extraordinaire Jim Thomson has sampled the swede taste of horticultural success.

With a shedload of silverware and a mushrooming reputation for being un-beet-en, the 90-year-old has been left in a bit of a pickle.

The former civil servant, who has spinached in first place in the Beautiful Fife veg garden competition in the large patch of west Fife for years in a row, was brought down to Earth when the news leeked that the competition will not be run this year.

Council budget constraints means the contest for fantastic floral and voluptuous veggie gardens across the kingdom will be left fallow in 2017.

For Mr Thomson, the unwelcome news cropped up out of the blue after a winter of spade work at his home in The Beeches.

“It just came as a bolt from the blue,” he explained.

“Normally at this time of year I get a letter asking to hand the cup back but instead it was telling me this.

“A lot of people will be disappointed about this. This is the time we get started on our gardens.”

And he doubted the competition would sprout once more in 2018.

“I don’t see how it could have cost very much and I think this looks like it’s the end of it,” he said.

However, he has promised not to rest on his laurels and will keep a date with locally-run shows to turnip and demonstrate he still knows his onions.

It just came asabitofa bolt from the blue. A lot of people will be disappointed about this

Picture: Steven Brown. Above: Jim Thomson is disappointed the competition is being cancelled. Below: past fame in The Courier.