Tom & Barbara Would Be Proud

If Tom and Barbara were real people they would be proud. This year we are growing courgettes, baby sweetcorn and chillies (same as last year), plus lettuces, radishes, tomatoes and potatoes. And a bunch of herbs - basil, thyme, oregano, dill and mint (the bastard). Mint steals the candy from all my babies.

So on the herb front mint is going for it, albeit in a very scatty, unorganised and disruptive way. Dill was doing fine until mint came along. Basil is doing fine, though not as good as last year, and we have loads of oregano and some good stalks of thyme. In terms of veg things seem to be going okay. Last year was a bit mixed and while we had quite a few courgettes, we only had one unripe cob of baby corn from several over-sized grassy-looking plants. I don't think Scotland is the place for baby sweetcorn or any corn for that matter. We don't have a greenhouse. We don't even have a vegetable patch - just bags of dirt in a shady garden and a bunch of things in miniscule pots indoors. Anyway, like I say things this year seem to be going okay.

So, to our first crop of the season, the radish, that lovable little magenta brassica. Apparently, we are not good at growing them. From five plants we have one radish, pictured above. This is our punishment for having little faith in our shady garden and Scottish weather, and for not doing any research whatsoever. We only put one plant in our garden and this is it. It went from being a very sad and limp seedling into a bushy 20-30cm plant in such a short time that we weren't even sure it was the radish. It wasn't until I was out resuscitating our potatoes (not mouth-to-mouth thankfully) from their battering by the wind that I noticed a big pink thing poking out of the ground that I knew we had some degree of success. We ate it a couple of days after and as predicted it was rubbery and old, but also hot and peppery, just the way my new husband likes them.

Our second success is hopefully going to be with our 'Catriona' potatoes which have shot up pretty quickly in one of those bags which you just keep adding soil to. They have been growing pretty steadily since we planted them, until a week or two ago when the wind broke every stem. They were just coming into flower and although we probably should have supported them with some bamboo ages ago, I'm of the if-it-ain't-broke-don't-fix-it persuasion. Well, they broke and I fixed it. I've been out watering them today and checking they are still standing and whilst I was at it and I decided to have a root around in soil and see if I could find a potato. It took some digging, but this is what I found with it's "attractive purple eyes" just like the packet said it would. Now I'm wondering whether or not it's a waste of electricity to boil just one bite-sized potato. I don't think Tom and Barbara would like that.