Winter vegetables

All the tomatoes that I brought home have succumbed to blight, and I'm going to have to throw them in the dustbin. I don't know whether Joe ever did spray my broccoli, but not a caterpillar remains. We are now crossing over into winter, and I shall have to get used to puritan vegetables like cabbage. But the rows of Italian varieties of lettuce given me by Joe are flourishing, and look very pretty, especially the scariole, though I had to go and buy a canister of slug pellets, since the slugs have already taken a fancy to them. I bought some garlic (three bulbs from Sainsbury's cost 89p) and planted two rows. The Italians plant around ten rows, and I think I will plant more, because the six or seven bulbs I grew last year were infinitely superior to the dried out old stuff you buy in the shops.

I must confess I have started digging up the potatoes on the Salvation Army's half of the allotment. This is because they haven't been down for five or six weeks and I can't bear to see good food go to waste. The spuds are big and cook well, but I got my come-uppance last night when I was peeling one and out of a slug hole wriggled a 3-cm centipede. I ran outside screaming, and cut out the offending portion of potato over my lawn.