THE ultimate harvest festival - the Malvern Autumn Show - is just over a week away.

The show, sponsored by Westons Cider Visitors Centre, will host a feast of family entertainment, artisan produce, and food and gardening royalty.

Along with one of the well known TV chefs, Tom Kerridge, and Strictly Come Dancing’s Anton Du Beke, the UK National Giant Vegetables Championship, sponsored by CANNA, will be headlining the harvest show of the season.

It’s believed this will be bigger and better than ever before and many of the thousands at the show, which runs over two days - Saturday and Sunday, September 24 and 25, are expected to flock to wonder at the broad variety of oversized vegetables on display in this record-breaking area of the show.

Interesting facts and figures of past giant veg at the show include -

• Show regular, Peter Glazebrook who is famed for growing a colossal cauliflower weighing in at 60lb, measuring 6ft wide. That’s an ‘unbe-leaf-able’ 20 times heavier than your average supermarket staple.He is also famed for his giant onion, an eye watering 8.16kg crier, weighing the equivalent of a Canada Goose.

• Snoop Dog, the infamous American rapper, once scooped up some growing advice from the shows’ very own record breaking veg grower, Ian Neale. Snoop congratulated Ian on his enormous swede, giving him VIP tickets to his tour. Ian spends a staggering 70 hours a week nurturing his bumper crop of giant vegetables.• The world’s heaviest marrow weighed in at over 14st, that’s equivalent to the weight of sporting Rugby legend, Jonny Wilkinson. Current world record holder, Brad Wursten from the Netherlands smashed this record in 2009.

• Some vegetables are better suited to growing to enormous sizes. These include the Mammoth Zeppelin Cucumber, Super Heavyweight Hybrid Pepper, Atlantic Giant Pumpkin, Old Colossus Heirloom Tomato and the Carolina Cross Watermelon to name but a few.

• Most giant vegetables are grown for bragging rights alone and are not usually eaten. Many growers are known to donate their veg to people with rabbit or horses, and the swede and beetroots go to livestock.

• Giant vegetables are not just enormous in size, but also often unrecognisable to their namesake variety – these are not just any vegetables, these are GIANT vegetables! Anyone can grow their own giant veg, with seeds from the UK’s largest ever marrow being sold for as little as £10.

• The UK National Giant Vegetables Championship moved to the Malvern Autumn Show in 2013, and has now been running for almost 20 years as a highlight of the season. Last year’s championship saw a record number of entries with over 300 giant vegetables competing to win the highly coveted accolades. Last year three world records were smashed.

Tickets for the show at the Three Counties Showgrounds are on sale with avanced tickets at £16 for adults and £5 for children. Tickets are available on the gate at £19 for adults and £7 for children. Family and group tickets are available.

For information on ticket prices, please visit www.malvernautumnshow.co.uk or call 01684 584924.