The Plovermarsh Horticultural Society has voted to stop eating what it grows, after a season in which films of the harvest were watched by more people than the harvest itself was eaten by.

The motion passed at the October meeting by a show of hands, with two abstentions and one member asked to stop filming the vote. From next season, the club's raised beds will be maintained for the camera, and vegetables for the annual supper will be brought in from a grower two villages over.

"The numbers were clear," said Mrs Enid Craddock, the society's chairwoman. "A film of a marrow is watched to the end. A marrow on a plate is eaten without a word, and nobody thanks you for it."

What changed

The society, which meets in the old butter hall, began filming its harvests three years ago for a channel of its own. This year the channel outperformed the supper, the show and the seed swap combined, according to a comparison the committee performed and described as rigorous.

"It was humbling," said Mr Gerald Pym, who has held the same allotment plot for a long time and asked that its exact age not be filmed. "I have fed this village for decades. It turns out I was feeding it wrong."

Under the new arrangements, beds will be weeded on Mondays, watered on Wednesdays and left undisturbed at weekends, when the light is best. Club members have been asked not to walk through the frame during picking hours, and a rope now divides the vegetable garden from the rest of the site, including the shed from which the vegetables were formerly eaten.

The supper

The harvest supper will continue, using imported produce, and will be filmed. A first table of town cress and bought broad beans has already been posted, and the society said it performed as well as anything it has ever grown.

"We considered serving nothing and simply describing the meal," Mrs Craddock said. "But a plate with food in it is what people expect, and expectation is the whole of the craft."

Miss Ivy Halloway, the society's youngest member, abstained from the vote and has begun a separate channel in which she eats what she grows. The society said it wished her well and would not be watching.

What happens next

The society will review the decision after the next filming season. A proposal to stop growing altogether and film other people's gardens was defeated, on the grounds that the beds photograph well and the soil, members agreed, had never looked better.

"We are a gardening club," Mrs Craddock said. "The gardening continues. Only the eating has been rationalised."