The World's Most Expensive Pumpkin

What in the name of all things black and furry (me) are those two idiots up to? First they have this great big metal monstrosity covered in bubble wrap put up (I’m told it’s called a keder house) then Graham starts digging a great big trench down one side and filling it with bracken and nettles. And he says there will be another one down the other side as well. I can see no purpose for this other than as a mass grave for all of the vegetable plants they tried to grow in the bags left over from the tree planting.

They had some sweetcorn which produced a few small cobs, lots of courgettes which struggled for a bit and then went mouldy, some green tomatoes, lots of squashes that insisted on producing fruits that grew to about three inches then rotted – and no amount of hand pollinating could persuade them to do otherwise – and lots of runner beans that grew to a prodigious height but produced only three beans. Or was it four? No, definitely three. Oh, and lots of pumpkin plants that produced… a pumpkin. Just the one. It was quite small. Eleanor put it in a risotto, and Graham discovered that he doesn’t particularly like pumpkin.

Things might have gone better if Graham hadn’t been so stingy with the compost, but at least he has learned that old river sand is not the best growing medium.

I’m told that next year the bracken and nettles will have rotted down in the mass graves and will improve the soil so that stuff will actually grow. I remain sceptical.

To be fair, the kale is doing quite well (yay, kale). When are the blueberries coming? That’s what I want to know.

The Clerk of Works is also rather unimpressed and has told me that she plans to shake things up over the next year.