MEET THE BLOGGER A RISING STAR

Ellis Lewis is just 17 and destined for an exciting career in horticulture. He has already been making great strides to that end. Here’s what he told us...

- Ellis Lewis

You took on your first allotment with your Nan when you were 11 years old. What first got you hooked and made you want to keep growing your own?

I definitely got hooked by the fact that I had my own space to be endlessly creative. Being able to grow my own vegetables and flowers from seed, and watching them develop through the seasons, really inspired me. Although everything was an experiment at first, I soon caught on and began to learn a lot, developing my green fingers along the way.

What fruit and veg are you growing this year? Are you hoping to try anything new?

This year I’m growing the same vegetables as last year, with a few exciting additions. For the first time I'm trying garlic, aubergines and melons. At the start of the season I bought my first polytunnel, which I'm hoping will give me better harvests of cucumbers and chillies and provide the space to grow aubergines and melons properly. I also built a fruit cage earlier in the season and planted bare-root strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries, rhubarb and a few fruit trees. I'm hoping that in a few years my allotment will be full of home-grown fruit.

You're on the committee of your local horticultural society and have won several prizes at the society's shows. Do you have any top tips for growing prizewinning veg?

There are a few key things that judges look for:

Uniformity is the most important – your vegetables should be as similar as possible in size, shape and colour.

Display matters too – make sure everything is clean, neatly trimmed and well presented. Using something like black card underneath can really make the colours pop. I once used flour in a show and got a bit of a telling-off from the judge! I took it in good spirit – he suggested using card, sand or nothing at all instead.