Potatoes and beans

We had a couple of hours on the plot today. It was pretty sunny and warm still, though it's meant to be cooling down significantly with rain on the way - sad to say, we do actually need it!

We pulled our first chopin potatoes - I say pulled, we always excavate them. Can't bear it when we chop into one so definitely can't use a fork to lift them like some people do! The chopins are lovely looking white potatoes which are apparently good to use for mashing and even for roasting. We got about 1kg from one plant and I delved underneath the next plant to pull a couple of extra spuds from there.

We also picked our first beetroot - haven't had a lovely fresh beetroot for months; we've still got some pickled ones from last year at home. Also picked some more broad beans to have in a curry tonight. The broad bean pods look like the beans should be big but we're finding, as others are at Marsh Lane, that the beans aren't filling out much. We have to squeeze each pod to check what's in there before picking - there are still plenty left on the plants.

We took our bucketful of shallots home for pickling tomorrow as they've had time to dry out in the lovely sunshine this week.

I sowed a row of purple kohl rabi - they were really tasty when we tried some before but they are a favourite of slugs and pollen beetle so we've put a cover over them..

And I spotted this little moth - I took a photo of a very similar looking one in May. I am not absolutely certain, but I think they're related but different varieties of mint moth. This one appears to be Pyrausta purpuralis whereas I think the one in May was Pyrausta aurata - from what I've seen on the UK Moths website.