Not so small potatoes.

Just dug up half a row (5m) of Charlottes and got 18kgs worth.  Didn't get that from the whole bed last year!
So... should get at least 72kgs per 1.6x10m bed for the total harvest.  Commercial growers get an average of 42 tons/hectare, which equals 67kgs per equivalent bed, with all the gubbins like tractors, fertiliser, pesticide, etc, etc, which costs thousands.  I have a spade that is older than my grandad and cost £5.

Losers!

Double dig, add 5 barrow loads of muck, plant 6 ins down, earth up until the ridges are at last a foot high, water religiously and keep an eye on the blight.  Job done!

Just got to crack the rest of the veg...

More gite progress: nearly there at last!

 Main bedroom with hand forged iron door bits on a hand planed (you can tell by the super-rough finish!) ledged door that wouldn't look out of place on the front of a castle.

Shot from the small bedroom to the big one. 

 Inside the big bedroom.  Bit mock-tudor, like...

 Wee bathroom finished.

 Stairs nearly done at last.  Finished in "Essex Theme Pub Rustic Oak That I Wish I Hadn't Bothered With" woodstain.

 Bit gloomy due to the shutters being shut to keep the bloody cats out and off the paintwork!

K's annoyingly good first attempt at tiling in the kitchen.

Wee tastes of success at last.

One day I'll have the time to use this!

Took a while and four thousand trips to the water cistern, but things are finally looking like vegetables.  It even rained for ten minutes this morning!

 Very neat, but where's the food?

 Food just coming along now... broads are promising a bumper harvest.

 Sunflowers that are meant for salad greens, but I thought I'd try them for chicken feed.

 Buckwheat for chickens just peeking out of the rock-hard clay.

 Spuds looking very good indeed.  We've been eating them for about 3 weeks now.  

Such a relief to get them right!

 Tomatoes coming on a month earlier than last year - that'll be the heatwave.

 Bonsai okra flowering.

 Winter stuff holding out in the sunshine.

 Soft fruit!  Look!  No caterpillar ravages!

Garlic batch no.1 harvested and drying in the hangar. 

...and a mystery polytunnel inhabitant with no legs that's on the peppers and aubergines.  Not spider mite, not broad mite (too big).  No idea!