I know, I know it’s a picture of a sprouting potato. It’s my diary.

Today we have been honoured to have the most glorious spring weather 20 degrees C. (Dad I can’t make a degree sign by holding down alt and typing 167 – what am I doing wrong?) It’s been gorgeous – shame I’ve spent much of the day in a dark room with no natural light.

For me, the perfect antidote to the job I do is to get some soil under my finger nails now that the evenings are getting lighter and especially today as we finish work a bit early on a Friday so we have a longer evening. I scooted out on time today because I felt as though I’d done my bit.

Off came the suit, on went the ‘grotties’ and off into the veggie garden I went. I’ve planted up my seed potatoes so that’s two of the beds now filled (three if you count the asparagus that’s permanently there) – on Sunday I braved pouring rain to plant spinach and broad beans into one of the other beds and this is the second one today.

Potatoes love a bit of tlc. They like the same thing I like, a nice soft bed and big piles of covers! So, after digging my trenches, I fill them with home made compost, push the sprouting potato down and then pile the earth back on top. This potato has been pushed down into the compost and is ready for covering up.

Sherri and I work as a team – I dig and she hops around on the earth picking out all the bugs and swallowing them quickly. She backs away a bit then I dig some more and so on. Today the other hens followed her into the veggie garden and helped – sometimes they’re not as brave as her. She’s a grand companion in the garden, I love chatting to her as I work.

Please note how beautiful my compost is. It’s dark, rich and crumbly. It’s another of the best things in life that you just can’t hurry. It takes two years to get like this. It’s a mix of rabbit and hen poo and sawdust (no dog poo, only veggie animals) as well as all the kitchen waste – eggshells, teabags, coffee grounds, peelings and anything organic that isn’t going into a pot basically. It’s also autumn leaves, plant tub compost, waste green stuff from the veggie garden and grass cuttings. Each year I am filling one bin and emptying the other so it’s a rotation system. David said he’d never seen home made compost actually work before but mine is really cool. It’s hard work digging it out but it’s worth it because it’s a great soil improver and it provides texture and moisture retention to my otherwise dry, sandy soil.

I work a rotation method in the veggie garden too, making sure the soil doesn’t get too parched of nutrients. I’ve got six beds, each four feet wide with paths running between. Each one has a wooden surround and I build the soil up inside. I don’t ever really need to do all that ‘double digging’ because my soil is so light and I never stand on the beds themselves because I can reach into the centre of each bed from the path.

My garden was a complete jungle, untended and overgrown when I came here. I have made this by sheer hard work and determination. It’s all to my own design and using my own skills and effort.

Over the next couple of weeks the potatoes, broad beans, spinach and asparagus will be supplemented by courgettes, climbing beans and sugar snap peas, broccoli and cauliflower. The greenhouse will fill with tomatoes, peppers and chillis. The herb garden is stuffed full of herbs already and in a matter of weeks we will be eating food that I know exactly where it came from and (more importantly) that it’s not drenched in chemicals. It will be on our plates and in our tummies within an hour of being picked.

Patti, you are right – I do know what’s important to me and it’s this. My garden isn’t a perfect, manicured place – most of the summer will see the veggie patch waist deep in weeds and the veggies will have to fend for themselves amongst them. I don’t have time to keep on top of that sort of thing BUT I put the food on our plates and I just know that there is no better.