AGAINST ALL ODDS

I have always been an avid grower. Dating back to when I was a child, I was given a small piece of garden which I proclaimed was “my vegetable plot”. From those early days I was hooked and from that moment my passion for growing has stayed with me. However, last year’s growing season, as I was going to discover, was to be totally different and somewhat of a challenge in more ways than one.

A frisson of excitement enveloped me as I cleared the dining table, covered it with a plastic tablecloth and set down my bag of seed compost, cell trays, flower pots and a variety of seed packets: sowing red and yellow tomatoes, cucumber, lettuce, aubergine, runner beans, courgette, basil, lemon basil, thyme and various flower seeds.

I didn’t have any pepper seeds, so several weeks prior to