Vapourer Moth caterpillar

Went up the plot this evening to pick peas for tea - very pleased to find that these later-sown ones was much better than the early ones. That is, we only found 2 with pea moth larvae - much happier podding this lot!
I also had to pick a courgette which had grown too massive over the last 2 days so that'll be going to work!
We found this amazing looking caterpillar sitting (and eating) our basil. It's the vapourer moth caterpillar, but a bit disappointed to see the moth it develops into isn't anywhere near as interesting looking. Best looking caterpillar I've ever seen though!!

Raspberry Vodka

Well, now we know that the raspberries that we inherited when we took over plot 8A are Autumn ones - they're better than the harvest we got in Spring (not that we look after them at all). I picked as many as I could and we made up Raspberry vodka (raspberries, vodka and sugar) - should be good to drink in at least 3 months...

Manure and Compost

Nantes Carrots. Congo potato plants

We spent most of the morning on the plot. My friend gave us a big bucketful of well-rotted horse manure so we've put all the compost into the black composter - it's full to the brim now - and put the manure into the green one. There's a problem with some manures at the moment, due to contamination by herbicides. For this reason we're growing a bean in the manure before we risk spreading it across our plot.
Andy's confirmed that he's seen veggies growing in the manure without curled leaves so it should be fine - GOOD!
The Congo potato plants are still looking amazing. Jamie put his hand around the roots and didn't find any potatoes - hopefully they're there though!!

Some of the cabbages have got proper heads now but there's a lot of holes and I found another cabbage white caterpillar to flick off...

Picked some carrots and onions for carrot and coriander soup for tea and pulled another Orla potato. And Dave gave us a parsnip which we'll have along with a veg roast tomorrow. We've taken all the shallots home now and will make up another small jar of pickled onions.

Pickles and things

Here are our jars of chutney and pickles - stored away for a few months now so they should be lovely for Christmas.

The seasons seem ahead of themselves this year so hopefully we'll have some sloe gin to add to our store quite soon - though some say they need to be frosted before they can be used.... We DON'T want frost yet!!

Ladybirds & a spider

We've spotted (sorry for the pun!) these two ladybirds on the plot over the last couple of days and there are masses of 7-spot ones. There's a good ladybird website and they're surveying so I sent them some info.

22-spot 

14-spot

 Oh, and Jamie found this amongst our spuds... it's crawling up his tee-shirt sleeve!!

wolf spider