Taste the difference

Insects and beasties dwelling inside a peach might be enchanting when read in a children's book. But when you cut into your freshly bought supermarket produce (Taste the Difference? I nearly did), it's not quite as appealing.

World, the time has come to...

...push the button

















That's a real life TV quiz show buzzer.

Monday 15th Sep, BBc4, 8.30pm.

Papa's got a brand new camera

and - oh my - it does nifty things!

You're twisting my melons man....

Time for a belated garden update!

Is it Harvest Festival time soon?

Well there's no need to dig out a mouldy old tin from the back of the cupboard, because we'll be able to contribute some of our homegrown bounty.

After abandoning the growbag of death (it killed virtually everything that was planted in it), new runner beans were planted in pots and have been as successful as last year. Hurrah!

Our first potato crop wasn't quite the success I was hoping for, but we did get a few out of it and still have another two bags to dig up. Also in the potato bag was this scary clump of alien eggs.

Peppers are growing, just very slowly.

The time? Tomatoes o'clock.

But my attention has mainly been on melons. Write your own joke. After a few started sprouting from the wormery (more on that another day, probably), I tried growing them properly in home-made plastic milk bottle pots. To my surprise and delight, two out of three are doing really well and flowering. CP refuses to believe that I can actually get an edible melon from it but I'm optimistic! The third one would have been doing fine too if it hadn't been chomped at by a slug. It was probably looking for cigarettes, eh Moon?