Welcome back my friends to the epic gardening podcast. I'm extremely excited to talk to today's

guest or this week's guest. This is Gerald Stratford on the podcast this week, also known I believe

as the Veg King, but I believe I found you Gerald on either TikTok or Twitter and I have to say

first of all, I'm obsessed with giant vegetables and also your fashion sense. It really captured

me. So I'm excited to have you on the show. Thank you very much. Thank you. So how did this all

begin for you? I've spoken to a few of the giant vegetable growers over in the UK, Kevin Forty,

for example, and it seems like it's really a culture over there. Was giant vegetables,

was that how you got into this or how did your story begin? I've always been a gardener,

but my main hobby through my younger and middle years was fishing. I love fishing, but

me and my partner Elizabeth moved up into this little bungalow in the cock swolds in the UK

six years ago, just over six years ago, and I just basically got bored with fishing. I still do a

little bit of trade fishing, but not like I used to, and I got a lovely big blank canvas and massive

great big back garden, and we both love gardening, so I said it's only fair that in our twilight

years, we just do gardening together, and that's what we've done. And I thought straight away,

when you're a fisherman, you always want to try and catch one this big or this fat, you know,

getting bigger and bigger, and I thought, I'm going to see if I can do the same with my veg,

and I've read up a little bit about it, and I spoke to Kevin Forty and wanted to other people

who grow giant veg, and I thought I'll have a go, but it's only a side chute to just enjoying

my garden, you know, it's not the be all an end or just growing giant veg, you know, it's just a

part of my life. Right, right, it seems like, and I don't go into, I don't go into world records,

I work on PB's personal best, if I can grow something just one ounce bigger than I did before,

I'm improving all the time, and I work on that theory, because if you sort of work on

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