Blimmin cutworms

 Yesterday morning I noticed that two whole rows of lettuce seedlings in my high raised planter had disappeared overnight. I assumed slugs or snails were the problem so nipped out with my torch last night.  To my surprise there were two huge cutworms and a load of baby slugs cheerfully munching their way along the rows. They've all been dispatched and it grieves me to say that I have resorted to using slug pellets. I'm just not prepared to lose any more of my food crops. The planter is three feet high and has a tunnel cloche on it so the slug pellets aren't going to harm the local bird and  hedgehog population.

I've just picked my first celeriac to add to a nice warming frankfurter and vegetable soup. It wasn't very big but is really flavourful so will add a nice hint of celery to the soup. It's simmering away as I type and once it's cooked I'll leave it until tomorrow so that it can develop more flavour. I added a couple of shredded sprout leaves and stalks and a handful of baby carrots all fresh picked from the garden. I need to grow more onions for next year as I m now resorting to shop bought ones until my spring onions are a bit bigger.  I did plant plenty of them and will simply cut the top three quarters off and leave them to push out new shoots so that I can have a couple of harvests from each one.

It's a lovely sunny day today and we are hoping to go and gather some leaves to make leaf mould. It's been too wet until now and we have huge amounts of wind blown leaves gathering in vast piles in our neighbourhood.