It’s been a busy weekend at the plot, the highlight of which was harvesting the first of the main crop potatoes. We really didn’t know what to expect, so were excited to see pinky red tubers come tumbling out of the trug as we tipped it onto the earthy bare area in the middle of the lawn.

Half of them - 1.2kg - looked fantastic. Unfortunately the other half was rotting at the bottom of the trug, and had blistered in the earth. I wonder whether it was blight. This was the crop showing brown edges on the leaves, after all. Anyhow, we rescued what was good and took them home to eat, and they were far better than the new potatoes we harvested last time around. If we took red salad potatoes to be the closest equivalent and bought them at Waitrose, they would have cost £3.82.

Rotten red potato

We took down the last of the bean vines, and found the French ones having a last-gasp attempt to produce some flowers which would, eventually, have turned into a few more beans. Too late, really. Especially as the dwarf French beans are not growing so well.

We harvested some tomatoes and broccoli (and were eating the tomatoes five minutes later in soft white rolls), moved the cabbages into the plot and then set about transplanting the squash, which are now far too big for the 9cm pots in which we started them, into trugs behind the greenhouse.

They look quite jaunty there now, and hopefully now have enough room to spread their roots and produce some decent-sized fruits. Looking at the prices in Somefield the other day, if they produce as much as the seed packet promised, and each one survives, they could be a crop worth £100.

Which means we’re going to have to start making soup in earnest.

Squash plants in trugs

Well, maybe not end of the beans entirely, but I’ve picked off the last of the French and runners today as we wait for the dwarf French beans to start producing. That’s an early end-of-season, really, which is most likely down to the fact they were grown in pots rather than the ground.

So, I snipped off the last few tonight - another 560 grams of runner and 40 of French - and left the remains of the crop that had somehow slipped past the point of eating on the plants until I take them down. Apart from the potatoes tucked around the corner, that’ll be the patio cleared and ready for Andrew to start construction of the loggia, which will eventually be home to vines, which I’m hoping should be fruiting grapes by next summer.

The broccoli is growing incredibly quickly now and looks like it should continue supplying an almost unbroken crop as the eight plants, between them, are regenerating as quickly as I can harvest them.

Today was an exciting one, as the first batch of tomatoes was finally ready for picking. It’s a lovely thing to do, as the vines smell so good when you snip them, and of course you get the bonus of a colourful bowl of fruit, too.

In terms of the whole crop, I didn’t take much - just 335g of the yellow Golden Sunrise, and 200g of the Gardeners’ Delight cherry tomatoes - as the other are not yet quite ripe, but that was still a bowl of 30 or so by the time I was done, and the taste is extraordinary.

They are so tomatoey they almost turn your mouth inside out, and it catches in your throat, all of which is far nicer than it sounds. If the rest of the crop is this good, it’s going to be difficult going back to shop-bought ones in the autumn and winter.

Was it worth it, financially? Absolutely. Organic cherry tomatoes on the vine at Sainsbury’s are presently £7.96 per kilo, so just this first 200g, worth £1.59, has paid for the entire crop of 500 or so tomatoes already, without the others having yet been picked (or even, in most cases, ripened).

The closest equivalents to the yellow tomatoes I could find were yellow cherry tomatoes at Ocado, which are £7.16 per kilo (although currently unavailable). That would make today’s 355g haul of yellows worth £2.54.

So, in total, today’s snipping of the vines was worth £4.13, which is a very good start to the crop indeed.

I’m having some problems with nibbling nasties on the plot. Something is eating my lettuces, and it certainly isn’t me.

Here’s what most of them look like:

And here’s what one once-fine specimen now looks like:

That was taken a couple of days ago, and now the tiny remnants of that plant have totally disappeared. And yet whatever is eating them is impossible to see. I’m putting down slug pellets, and the plot seems to be slug and snail free, so they’re obviously doing their job.

I’ve seen one single caterpillar, but that was at the other end of the garden so I don’t think it was the culprit, and although the sun brings out a confetti shower of pretty white butterflies they spend their whole time excitedly fluttering around the broccoli and sprouts, and don’t seem even to have noticed the lettuces.

They’re going crazy for the sprout leaves, but seem to be leaving alone the heads of broccoli, which are now coming on faster than we can eat them, much like the beans did.

So I’m left scratching my head. Unless one of the neighbourhood cats has turned vegetarian and is sneaking in at night to nibble my greens, I can’t see or work out what is munching the lettuce.

If I can’t find and stop them, there will be nothing to eat with the tomatoes, the first harvest of which is scheduled for Friday.

Freshly-pulled beetroot

Another two first-time harvests this weekend, after five and a bit hours of shovelling five tons of shingle from the front drive to the very back of the garden.

First was broccoli on Friday night. You cut it off as individual florets, rather than taking off the whole head in one go as they do for the supermarkets. That way you encourage further growth down the stem. Only trouble was, we didn’t have any short knives to hand as I still haven’t unpacked everything yet (having not moved in). So, we had to take to it with the bread knife, which while effective, wasn’t as accurate as it could have been.

Anyhow, all-told it yielded 200 grams of edible florets, which we had for dinner with some more of the home-grown potatoes. Value? Not enormous. Sainsbury’s sells 300g of broccoli for 99p, so it was 66p all told, proving once again that home growing is more about enjoying what you’re doing and knowing where your food comes from than it is about money saving.

The beetroot, on the other hand, was far more profitable. We pulled four roots, each about the size of a tennis ball, and twisted off the leaves (you don’t cut them, or else they bleed). These totalled 600 grams, which with Ocado selling organic beetroot at £3.38 per kilo, roughly works out at £2.03. Already that’s more than the whole crop cost to grow, as we got 51 seedlings for £1.99, and around 30 of them were strong enough to make it into the patch.

They were delicious. We boiled them for just under two and a half hours, and then peeled off their skins and ate them while they were still luke warm.

I do need to find out how to make beetroot cake before the whole crop is pulled, though, as I promised Rich I’d make some. I’m also rather keen to try making borscht…

Our broccoli in the steamer