In keeping with yesterday, there is a great deal of dirt and ugliness in our home today. I think that both of these things apply to this celeriac, which was lying on the kitchen worktop earlier, still with leaves, when DM said ‘what’s that knobbly thing on the side?’ I had to confess it’s a celeriac and now I’m worried he’ll pick it out of his dinner tonight. I hope not!

I must be honest, I really hate picky eaters – you know, they watch you put something in a dish then spend the entire meal poking about on their plate making sure they don’t ingest any……gggrrrrr.

Although it’s been another vile, muck-filled day, I am proud to have this to photograph because it’s home grown in case you couldn’t tell – for tonight’s supper, we’re having split pea and veggie curry and there are going to be four major home-grown components – the chilli (wow, we now have some so fiery that they make your eyes water), courgette, sweet peppers and this celeriac. This makes me very happy considering that in the spring I dashed a few things into the ground when I had a few moments to dig over a bit of soil and we’re still eating the fruits of those labours.

I don’t think we’ve had more than a handful of meals in the last 4-5 months where we’ve not had something home grown as part of it.

It’s not the biggest root and I’m not even sure whether the rest of the dozen or so in the ground still will get any bigger or not because this is the first year I have ever grown these vegetables – I tried them once in the sandy soil in Sandhurst but they keeled over and died within a couple of weeks of planting.

I’m not sure if these are small because:

a. I planted them too close together
b. I have pulled it too early
c. The soil is not fertile enough
d. They got planted too late
e. I planted them through weed-control matting.

I need to do a bit of reading up and see where I went wrong (if indeed I have gone wrong – I may just be being over sensitive about size)….if it turns out to be the most delicious thing we’ve ever eaten I won’t complain about size of any of them.

One thing I need to check on urgently is whether they need pulling before the frost because we have one forecast here for mid-week.

Last year, I was pondering on 'to dare is to do'