The seed audit took AGES this year. I winged it last season. That carefully crafted plan went out the window around the time slugs woke, formed up arrow-fashion & aimed at my seedlings. My pick’n’mix planting style also meant that the master spreadsheet didn’t get updated. When you’ve a finely honed seed addiction, that results in a serious amount of chaos.

I am all updated now. Embarassingly my catalogue, which now runs to 10 pages, shows the extent of my addiction: over 110 varieties of tomato, 70+ of beans (dwarf and climbing though, so not too bad surely?), 50+ each of chilli and squash…plus everything else.

As someone said recently, come the zombie apocalypse I’ll be fine.

All the beans and peas are in an enormous pandoro tin. To be honest, the cake was only a minor reason for buying it. It’s very handy. Cataloguing seeds means everything comes out though, which is when I found Weevil City. Bleurgh! Lots of powder and little bodies, some still moving (for a short while). The motherload was in 3 packs of Stereo broad beans, all from the same, now defunct, seed company. Thankfully they hadn’t spread too much further. So now, instead of copying Jane Merrick’s marvellous idea of sowing many shades of broad bean, I have 45-ish Stereo seeds chitting away on the windowsill following the use-or-lose theory.

I’ve had something of a mammoth sowing session – though still sans plan, which makes me a little nervous. Nonna’s funeral in Italy last month meant the chilli sowings were postponed. Now I have chillies, onions, aubergines, cape gooseberries, and tomatilloes all in the propagator, which I hovver over every morning and evening to check for peeps of green. My growlights are at the ready…The yacon hasn’t popped up yet either – I’m trying my hardest not to poke about in there to see what it’s doing.

But over on the plot, rhubarb is on the move and has been given a blanket of manure as a reward. It’s a very welcome sign that these times they are a’changing.