Glory or scurvy awaits!

Last day where I can buy vegetables and I'm cooking a roast tonight to use up the last of everything in the house. It's a little bit worrying, as the garden is yet to conclusively be providing. I see salads in my future, as the lettuces are the only things producing reliably.

Windowsill lettuce! You are my only friend.

There is the promise of carrots, but I've had the promise of carrots before, only to discover that the massive great green heads are there because no energy has gone into growing the tasty orange bit. I'll be pulling them up tomorrow to either be elated at the bounties of the eart or distraught at the prospect of a month of pasta bakes and rice-based meals served with needle-thin carrottettes.

Schrodinger's Carrots - the cat is both alive and dead at the same time until it is pulled from the earth by its green leafy tops

Aside from that*, I'm vegetableless. The cauliflowers and cabbages haven't grown as quickly as expected and the mangetout that should be producing now is instead recovering from being mostly eaten by slugs. This month, I are to be mostly eating carrots.

I did have a few tempting thoughts of delaying the challenge for another month, or even calling the whole thing off with some comments about how silly I was being. However, I've put quite a bit of work and planning into this and I refuse to be thwarted in the first month. Needle-thin carrots for dinner it is, every night!

On the bright side, the new daylight bulb and reflector is working great. Due to the dim weather of late, the latest set of seedlings has been pretty much solely under artificial light and they're doing great. Much better than under the old system.

This is especially important as these are swedes for Oct/Nov, purple sprouting broccoli for Feb/Apr, chard for Nov-Jan, and kale and spinach for Jan-May. And pumpkins, just cause I can. Basically, this is the seed tray to make sure I'm not suffering from deficiency diseases** at the start of next year, even if I will be a bit tired of leafy green winter vegetables.

I'm off to go cook my last broccoli for 2 months and my last parsnips for 4 months and I guess we'll see the state of the carrots tomorrow. Wish me luck.

PJW

*Well, there's some new potatoes that won't get used tonight, which is kinda cheating, but I'm not going to throw them away on an arbitrary rule!
** On a side note, my daughter's food will be separate from this challenge if I do run short of vegetables!