I couldn't resist any more, so I dug up one of my first early ("Maris
Bard") potato plants this afternoon. I've never grown potatoes before,
so I didn't know quite what to expect.

Well, there were five our size decent new potato sized spuds, making a
small serving for three, plus maybe 20 odd tiny marble sized spuds. I
felt pretty guilty about eating the tiny ones, but I've got plenty more
roots to come, and I'm happy to leave the rest for a little while now I
have a rough idea what's going on down there. And they tasted fantastic
boiled with mint!

Made me realise quite how much I've raised the soil level earthing up
all the time, but also I'm delighted how damage free they all were.
While I was preparing the bed I found lots of what I now know to be wire
worms, and my radish seedlings know to their cost that there are plenty
of slugs about, but for whatever reason they haven't touched the spuds.
Yet...

Not sure if I should be worried, but the tiny yellow flower buds I first
noticed back in April have come to nothing, and mostly seem to have
dried out and drop off when I look between the very topmost leaves.
Strange given how much rain we've had since then (and the soil was
beautifully damp all the way down). Each time I've seen a handful of
ants guilityly scurrying away from the buds, but there don't seem to be
a significant number of aphids to attract them, so I'm not sure what
they've been doing.

Peter