On November 17, Minsk /Kristina Kurlovich - BELTA/. A pumpkin weighing 92 kg became the winner of the republican competition "Giants on the Garden Bed-2011". 35 people received prizes in various nominations for giant vegetables grown in their gardens. This was announced by Valery Barkovsky, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of "Narodnaya Gazeta", today at the award ceremony for the competition winners, as reported by a BELTA correspondent. "The competition is being held for the eighteenth time, but interest in it is not waning. The number of participants is growing every year, as are the results they show. This year, 150 people from all regions of the country took part in the XVIII annual folk competition," said Valery Barkovsky. Olga Ustinova, a resident of the Sharkovshchyna district of the Vitebsk region, grew a 92 kg pumpkin in her garden. Competing for the title of vegetable giant with the giant pumpkin were, for example, a table beet weighing 6 kg 400 g, grown by Anatoly Fesenko from Zhodino, and a cabbage weighing 13.5 kg, grown by Lyudmila Serbenko from the Minsk region. The judges were impressed by a half-kilogram apple (grown on the tree of Alexey Yakubovich from Luninets), a 416-gram pepper (grown by Valentina Ezerskaya from Minsk), and a 55 cm long green bean, boasted by Vitaly Kozyabo from the town of Starye Dorogi. The efforts of Mikhail Makovsky from Shchuchin, who grew a tomato weighing 1 kg 120 g, and Nina Zhdanova from the Rogachev district, whose garden yielded a two-kilogram cucumber, were also recognised with awards. The republican competition "Giant on the Garden Bed-2011" is organised by "Narodnaya Gazeta" in conjunction with the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, the Farmers' Union, and the Scientific and Practical Centre of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus for Potato and Vegetable Growing.-0-

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