CONTESTANTS:
The Greenhouse Competitions are open to any Commercial Greenhouse Grower or Marketer. The contestant or their designate is responsible for delivering their produce to the competition site at the appropriate time, and for being present at the awards ceremony.
REGISTRATION:
The contestant must register their produce on the designated registration day of the competition between 10am and 1pm. We ask for a minimum of 2 flats of each product with the option of providing additional flats as a donation for Gleaners. Entries must be delivered to the R.E.A.CH. Greenhouse Competitions location which will be communicated by email. All produce registered must have the entry fee of $100 per entry paid before entries will be accepted. All registration fees are non-refundable.
A double-blind system is used during registration. Each contestant will be given an entry number but then the produce will be brought into a closed building to be re-labelled. This new label will have an alpha-numeric value, known only to a select few of our registration volunteers. Any persons/contestants trying to violate the double-blind system will be disqualified.
Please help us ensure a completely fair competition and help us protect the integrity of this event.
OFFICIAL JUDGING:
Our expert panel of judges are committed to impartiality. They evaluate each commodity on a strict, carefully designed set of criteria. The scores in each criteria are entered into an algorithm to determine the final winning scores for each category. Neither the judges, volunteers or data entry clerks know the contestants who submitted the entries. This ensures a fair and impartial evaluation.
We strive to have a panel of professionals in food production, preparation or farming that are NOT connected to any greenhouse grower to ensure the competition is fair to all contestants. REACH International will on rare occasion train unbiased volunteers to step in as official judges in the event that there are not enough judges for a fair evaluation.
PRODUCE CATEGORIES:
Our contest categories have been set up to ensure that the produce can be judged with similar products. Here are the official category descriptions:
· Beefsteak: This category is for standard beefsteak tomatoes. Smaller sized beefsteaks should be entered in the Specialty or Cocktail category.
· TOV/Cluster: This category is for the larger on the vine tomatoes. Bite size or cocktail tomatoes that are distributed with the vine attached DO NOT qualify for this category.
· Roma: This category is for standard Roma tomatoes. Mini Roma tomatoes DO NOT qualify for this category. They should be in either mini, cocktail or specialty categories.
· Bite-Size: MUST be one bite tomatoes.
· Cocktail: Should be a mid-size tomato: larger than a grape or cherry tomato, smaller than a standard beefsteak.
· Specialty: All tomatoes that do not fit in any other category or can be marketed as a specialty product.
· Yellow, Red and Orange Bell: Standard bell peppers. Mini bells DO NOT qualify for this category.
· Specialty Bell: All other coloured standard bell peppers such as chocolate, green or purple. Mini bells DO NOT qualify for this category.
· Specialty Mini: All sweet mini-peppers.
· Specialty Long: All sweet long peppers.
· Specialty Hot: Painfully self-explanatory. Lol
· English Cuke: Standard large seedless English cucumbers.
· Cocktail Cuke: Small, pickle-sized cuke.
· Mini Cuke: Mid to small sized cucumber but larger than a pickle.
· Strawberry: All Greenhouse Grown Strawberries
· Specialty Berries: All Greenhouse Berries except Strawberries
Please note that a tomato CAN be entered in 2 categories if it qualifies for both of them. For example, a contestant may want to enter a bite-size tomato in both Bite-Size and Specialty category. All pepper and cucumber categories are quite specific and only allow entry into one category.
AWARDS CEREMONY:
The official awards ceremony date and time will be communicated by email. If the contestant cannot attend, we recommend that they send a designate in their place to receive any potential trophies.
