GROWING gooseberries is a painstaking labour of love.

Avid gardeners need patience and tenacity to nurture this delicate fruit against all the odds.

Heavy rain or too much sunshine is the least of their problems as they fight to protect their crop from mildew and all sorts of birds, wild animals and insects including pigeons, rabbits and wasps.

Veteran grower Malcolm Quayle, who has been growing gooseberries for more than 50 years, described how many difficulties they face.

The 83-year-old won the most points for his wonderful crop of different berries at the Holmes Chapel Gooseberry Show at The Victoria Club on Saturday.

Premier berry winner was David Monks with a millennium berry weighing 27 pennyweights and 10 grains.

"It is a bit of a challenge," said show secretary Malcolm, delighted to receive the Benson Shield for clocking up the highest overall score of 33 points.

"People have had problems with just about every creature at some point - rats, squirrels, blackbirds and wasps.

"I spray fungicidal spray to try and control the insects. With caterpillars I just squash them."

Dedication is the key as pruning starts when all the leaves fall off the trees.

"In spring you start feeding them and weeding," said Malcolm. "If there is a lot of heavy rain you have to cover them up to make sure they don't get too wet or they can split."

After months of meticulous care, growers are on tenterhooks until judges weigh in their precious berries, using old fashioned scales in a ritual dating back to the Middle Ages.

The fruit is measured in pennyweights and grains, like jewellery.

"Until you get to the show you don't know what other people have got," said Malcolm. "Sometimes I think all my berries are not very good and they do exceptionally well. Other times when I think I've got some nice berries someone comes in with better ones."

Strict rules ensure that competitors can only enter their own produce.

A witness watches each grower pick their berries the night before the show and put them in a box sealed with wax and string which can't be opened until the weigh in.

Holmes Chapel Gooseberry Show will be celebrating its bicentennial in 2024 and members are determined to ensure it continues.

Assistant show secretary Andy Anderson, 46, said: "I'm one of the youngest members. I came out of politeness 14 years ago because someone asked me. It gets under your skin.

"You realise people have been doing this for 200 years.

"We've never missed a show even through the First World War, Spanish flu and the Second World War. We managed to hold a show last year during the pandemic at a private venue using my wife's dance studio."

Only eight shows now survive in Cheshire, one of the last remaining places to champion this tradition.

"If you go back 100 years and were a farm labourer and grew the biggest berry, the prize money was equivalent to a month's salary," said Andy.

"It really was a big deal.

"It was a working class tradition in a lot of mill towns and agricultural places in the north west. We are the last enclave for it.

"It is a living history. We are always looking for new members."

Anyone interested can call Andy on 07990 576104.