In a week where the internet was even more distracting than usual and the news more alarming, the plants kept growing and there was food to be harvested, beds to be built and new experiments to embark on. We’re now up to 22 beds, not including the ones in the tunnel. There was brief pause when we ran out of compost but on Thursday truckloads of compost arrived – literally, two truckloads – letting Alex continue his bed-building workout. (I do help but it’s not where my strength lies.) The new space was quickly taken by broccoli and onions. Expert (internet and household) opinion seems divided about whether onions can be grown during autumn/winter here. Time will tell.

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One big win this week was harvesting carrots, which had been testing our collective patience. We have three beds where we planted carrots, each following a slightly different – and progressively more time-consuming – technique. The first hardly germinated. The second was uneven and weeks behind the spreadsheet’s predicted harvest date. When Alex wasn’t looking, I thinned them out to be closer to the seed packet’s instructions, yielding a big bunch of (delicious) baby carrots. The third bed looks pretty good, with five clear rows of green tufts but we will have to wait longer for a taste test. On the topic of patience, we trimmed the tomatoes of all “excess” foliage in the hope that this focuses the plants on fruit as various gurus suggest. We also thinned the apples to focus that tree, with the reward of a big bag of fruit to dehydrate.

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The collection of organisms living on top of our fridge also expanded further with fungi, kefir and sauerkraut joining the sourdough starter over the course of the week. The fungi arrived after a workshop on low-tech ways of growing mushrooms. A combination of kitty litter (recycled paper – who knew?!), water with lime and mushroom spawn in a ziplock bag was suitably low-tech and achievable alone. Kefir came about after a chat with a friend which was followed by that powerful thought: “why not”. Water kefir’s crystals are much prettier than a slimy kombucha scoby. Sauerkraut was always going to happen – we have about 30 chinese cabbage destined for jars – but the timing was hastened by an online Kraut-a-thon by Sandor Katz. Because of the coronavirus, an event that I had declared too far away was replaced by this convenient Facebook livestream. It’s funny how a tiny prompt can kick a project into gear. But it does mean more little things to try to keep alive now!

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On the flip side, we continue to troubleshoot new and old bugs, with the latest being black thrip on the pattypan squash and yet-to-be identified little bugs eating the beetroot. Hopefully their predators will find them in the coming week! Seed propagation, harvesting, and planning that we didn’t get to this week will give us a break from the news and remind us how lucky we are. And the plants will keep growing, oblivious to talk of infection, social distancing and quarantine.