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The man who grows big veg (and models for Gucci at 72)
Giant vegetable grower Gerald Stratford takes fame and fashion in his stride, finds Tomé Morrissy-Swan
Gerald Stratford is “a little bit tired”. The day before we speak, Stratford, 72, had an eight-hour round trip to Leeds for a daytime TV show; after our call, he will guest on a podcast. His hectic schedule, including five hours of social media per day, sounds exhausting, especially considering that he spends as much time gardening now as he ever did before he went viral. How long is that? “How long is a day?” he replies.
We’re speaking two weeks after his latest endeavour. He is the star of a recent Gucci campaign on environmentally focused attire, Off The Grid. “I was treated like a god,” he laughs.
The filming took place over two days, with Stratford sporting brown wellies, green dungarees, blue shirt, beige flat cap and shovel in hand, alongside several young models. “It was a shock to me, it’s just starting to come home now,” he says. “It was incredible. It was freezing cold, and we were not dressed for the cold, yet they didn’t bat an eyelid. Everybody was so professional.”
Learning a script was tough: “I’m not an actor. I was expecting one or two ‘takes’ and that’s it. But 21 times later, it’s just finally getting right. It was surreal, I was overwhelmed. I look at modelling now totally differently.”
Stratford found fame later in life, after a tweet of his in May 2020 went viral. His social media posts – optimistic messages about gardening, accompanied by images of him wearing bright clothes and funky braces that wouldn’t look out of place in the more hipster sections of east London – have captured the global imagination. “I don’t like using the word, but I’ve become famous. I’m still Gerald Stratford, though, and I don’t want to change.”
Who, then, is Gerald Stratford? After growing up in Worton, a hamlet in Oxfordshire, Stratford had several careers: as a butcher, Thames barge controller, and sports groundsman (and model). His lifelong passion is fishing.
Stratford started gardening at a young age, after his father gave him a small plot and some seeds. The first things he grew successfully were radishes. “It was amazing to see something you seed pop out of the soil, then grow leaves,” he recalls. “My father was the greatest gardener in the world. Unfortunately, he died when I was 19. My brothers and myself took over to keep mother supplied with veg.”
Since dialling back on angling to spend more time in the garden with his partner, Elizabeth, Stratford has become “almost self-sufficient” for vegetables. The pair, who live in Milton-underWychwood in the Cotswolds, pickle, preserve and dehydrate their way through produce from their 22mx22m garden and two allotments, and donate surplus to a local care home.
Fishing has had a surprising impact on Stratford’s gardening. “When I was younger you always wanted to catch the biggest fish. I started thinking, how long can I grow a carrot, how big could I grow a tomato?”
So Stratford immersed himself in the giant veg community (though he prefers the term “big veg”), engaging with likeminded horticulturalists in real life and on social media, which he used as an online forum to exchange photographs and tips. His weekly posts trundled along until that day in May, when he posted a picture holding some Rocket potatoes, captioned: “My first early rocket very pleased”. Over the next 72 hours his Twitter fandom grew from under 100 followers to 9,000 (there are now 300,000), and he earned 78,000 likes: “It just gained momentum, went on and on.”
“Big veg are grown slightly differently. It’s not harder, just different,” Stratford explains. He grows parsnips and carrots, for example, in 200-litre barrels, which he fills with sand, making five or six long holes down to the bottom with a crowbar, then fills with compost. Seeds are planted in twos, and when they germiCovid-19,
“Big veg can grow very fast. When you are growing from seed in the greenhouse, be sure to check the root system regularly. They need potting on before they get root-bound, as this will seriously check their growth, which is the last thing you want.” nate one is snipped off with scissors, so as not to damage the root system. “You just look after it and water it once a week. It grows and grows. You end up with a very long parsnip, or carrot.” It is a “fallacy”, says Stratford, that oversized vegetables lose flavour.
“It would be easier for me to tell you what I don’t grow,” Stratford continues, although not everything he plants is geared towards size. “I like growing root vegetables because everything you’re trying to grow is below the ground. You don’t really know how big it’s going to be until you lift it.” Something can be lush and abundant in foliage above ground and tiny underneath, or vice versa.
But Stratford will have a go at anything. “I love growing large tomatoes and cucumbers. I’ve had a cucumber of 9lb, 31in long. I’ve had a 3lb tomato, a one and a half kilo potato. That’s a plateful!”
He has had success in competitions, too, though maintains he enters for quality, not size. Many events over the past year have been cancelled because of but in his last local competition, Stratford submitted 21 vegetables and had 11 firsts, five seconds, two thirds and three no-scores. “I was quite happy with that.”
While he maintains that his internet fame is a mystery, Stratford believes the timing was right. When the first lockdown hit, millions of Britons sought comfort in nature, including gardening. “A lot of people were very worried and frightened, and I think they see my pictures talking about veg, nothing horrible, there’s a beam of light. I don’t do negativity, my glass is always half full.”
This outlook has seen Stratford through some difficult times. “When I’m out in the garden, all my worries are gone. I had prostate cancer five years ago, which shook me rigid. There was a lot of worrying, but when I was tending to my garden, I wasn’t worrying about that cancer. I think that could happen with all types of mental illness. Thank god this year the oncologist phoned me up and said, ‘Gerald, we don’t need to see you anymore, you’re free’. I could’ve kissed him.”
Despite the recent surge in interest in gardening, Stratford believes it is a skill most people are losing. “You can go in a supermarket and get whatever you want. When I was a nipper, that wasn’t the case. Any shop-bought vegetable will never compete with a fresh vegetable, that’s a fact.”
This is why Stratford has made it his mission to impart as much information as possible, just as his father did. His hours on social media, between gardening sessions, are spent answering questions. In September Stratford will publish his first book, Big Veg. He says: “It’s basically how Gerald does his garden.”
Television is a possibility, too. “Gardening at times doesn’t get a fair deal compared to cooking. Without vegetables, there would be no cooking. I’d like to see a specific gardening programme with vegetables. If I was in this position when I was 40, I really think I’d go for it.”
Stratford doesn’t expect to front a series any time soon, but what if he was asked? “I’d have to, wouldn’t I?”
This year, Stratford plans to grow a snake gourd for the first time, and hopes to get a “very big marrow” to 80lb. Despite his newfound fame, between answering all the tweets and the TV appearances, one thing is certain: “My garden won’t suffer. Because without my garden, I have nothing.”