Bitter Harvest

everything's growing, including the weeds

Blimey. I went away for four days and it seems like everything in the garden has doubled in size. Pods have formed on my peas, my broad beans are almost pickable, my solitary lettuce is looking nervous and I’ve had my first proper harvest:

nature's bounty

Two handfuls of potatoes, my neighbour’s surplus-to-requirements shallots, and a pea plant that got uprooted (the leaves made an impromptu lunchtime snack). Given that new potatoes have also spent the intervening time halving in price, this adds another massive 37p to my spreadsheet totals.

Unfortunately, it looks like my potatoes have got what professor Google has diagnosed as blackleg. I wish plant diseases didn’t have such grim names – they are quite bad enough as it is without having to sound quite so mediaeval. I’ve dug up the worst affected plants and salvaged quite a few good tubers, but I think the harvest is going to have to accelerate to keep up with the advancing plague.

Meanwhile, I’m not sure quite when to pick the broad beans. On the one hand, I don’t like them in their pods so I want to wait until they’re big enough to shell. On the other, I don’t want to wait too long and end up watching them die a lingering death of leprosy, or the King’s Evil or whatever ills it is that broad beans flesh is heir to (although not blackfly, at least so far, so I’m spared that).

Who was it that told me growing vegetables was fun? Oh yeah, that’s right, it was you lot…