Still, there were the highs.  Like the surprisingly fecund cucumber plant, the plentiful salad leaves and the treasure trove of potatoes that I unearthed to cheers from the kids.  Last week, I picked the one fully formed squash to be produced by the monstrous plant and roasted it with thyme.   Although I stubbornly polished off every last bit myself, the truth of the matter is that it was absolutely disgusting.  Why? After so much love and organic compost?

And yet, I already find myself drawing up more ambitious plans for next March – maybe jerusalem artichokes this time, maybe a different type of courgette to the bizarre and strangely tasteless yellow fingers that I’ve been proudly stir frying.

It’s time to face facts: I’m a vegetable-growing anorak.  I can pinpoint the exact moment when this realisation dawned on me.  It was at a newsagents in Cornwall, where I was stocking up on light reading to enjoy while sunning myself on the beach (Ha!).   I’d passed quickly over the Heats and Hellos, lingered over Eve and Red – and then I spotted it …Kitchen Garden!!!!  Maybe it was the picture of the windswept woman inhaling worm-ridden compost, or the headline that screamed “Reaping the rewards – time to bring in the harvest!” but I just knew that this was the magazine for me.  And so it was that, huddled behind a straining windbreaker, I read up on the latest compost shredders, commiserated with Lesley’s problem of rusty leeks and marvelled at Des’s impressive squash.

Now where’s that organic seed catalogue…