18 pounds of potatoes and a pint of beer

I lifted the potatoes this afternoon. The tops were looking a sickly and mottled. Any sign of unhealth ’round these parts is considered to be the ‘blight’.

This is about one-fifth the total crop. That means a total of more than 70 pounds of lovely red desiree potatoes; steamed, baked and shallow fried.

That’s a pint of Pot Wallop from the Crealock Arms in the neighbouring village of Littleham. It’s reward for all the hard labour up at the allotment.

Novelty potatoes

Back in days of yonder, before the interweb, Sunday shop opening and decent food, Britain tuned in each Sunday night to watch a TV programme devoted to vegetables shaped like sexual organs and consumer affairs. What an odd mix that was.

In that vain, I offer a potato shaped like a duck … (use your imagination)

a potato(es) shaped like nothing really funny, but certainly odd shaped.

Sorry, no sexual organs.

Flesh eating slugs!

Just what we need: a new breed of worm eating slugs.

“We’re concerned that it might become a pest, but we need to find out more about it first.”

Oi, Einstein! Slugs=pests.

Chilli willy

Residents of southern England may have noticed a few spots of rain over the last few days. Exmoor, just up the road, had 58 mm yesterday. So, you can assume that we had about the same – 2 inches for those hard of metrication. The Met Office would have you believe that June was drier than normal. What’s more, the temperature was apparently near normal.

Hogwash! It’s cold outside.

But, it’s hotting up in the greenhouse as one of the chilli flowers has finally condescended to fruit. Just how do you spell it? Chili? Chilli? Voodoo Chile?

Rain, wind and cold aside, I emptied a couple of potato pots this afternoon as I waited for a heating engineer. (We thought we’d wait until the summer to replace the boiler. Summer 2007 that is – we’re still waiting for that one.)

The chillis have to compete with the tomatoes in the greenhouse. Like just about everything else here, the tomatoes are lagging behind. So far, so good though. We’ve got good strong flowering trusses on all the plants. I clipped off some of the lower branches today, giving the top growth more of chance to develop.

Probably not a surprise that I’m eating a lot of potato salads for lunch. I pack in mixed green leaves, baby spinach and rocket with the pots, a bit of cheese and shop bought tomatoes (boo!). I’m now having baby lettuce leaves from the raised bed too.

To complete my day off, I sowed yet more basil and marjoram.