I just couldn’t wait any longer. I’ve been itching, and fair scratching, to dig up some of my new season’s spuds to see what, if any, action was going on underground. So when Jason wasn’t looking (he’s come over all territorial about these orderly rows of tubers), I snuck out with the spade and dug the last plant up from the first row of ‘Jersey Benne’ potatoes. The plants have only just started to flower but they’re ready to eat: I hauled eight waxy white tubers out of the soil. We boiled them with sprigs of fresh mint and ate them straight out of the pot.

The pink tubers are the self-sown sprogs of the third-generation ‘Desiree’ potatoes that keep coming up in my asparagus bed. I thought I’d defeated them last summer, but I was wrong. At least we got a free feed from them.

And the little dark purple marbles are ‘Purple Heart’. Guess they’re still a while off yet.