Knobbly spuds competition, anyone?

The weather was good today - a couple of big grey clouds in the morning but no rain and then sunny skies later. I spent over 3 hours at the plot today. I was just going to pop over for a brief visit but I decided to do something about the main crop potatoes. The Pink Fir Apples were looking decidedly brown and sad so I dug them up. The word 'dug' is misleading - there were easily harvested by hand. No signs of blight in the tubers, which were on the whole extremely knobbly, but about a fifth of the harvest had green bits. Shame. I cut back the foliage of some of the other main crops. I took the potatoes home, dried them off, and they are now in a paper sack in the shed. I hope they store ok.

I dug roughly over the patch for the raised bed. Installation will wait until next weekend. I did redo some of the screws so they don't stick out so much. Still not pretty but perfectly functional (hopefully).

As well as the potatoes, I harvested 4 Summer Squash, 3 courgettes and 2 cabbages. I stir-fried one of the cabbages and it was good. The heads are small but each is perfect for one. One of my fellow allotmenteers, who I saw on my way over (he was carrying home 2 bags of runner beans and a very large marrow) told me to watch my brassicas as his were covered in caterpillars. Mine seem to be ok. They were covered with a mesh tunnel cloche until a few weeks ago. I think that did the trick of preventing the butterflies laying eggs on them. It may have been the two nearby Hyssop plants though...