I’ve learned that having an allotment by no means makes you self-sufficient. While I do, at times, bring home eye-watering quantities of vegetables, there’s no denying that two hungry people (one a veggie) can get through quite a bit of food.

I had a go at measuring my harvests in 2014, when I had just over half of my first plot up and running. I included what I brought home from hedgerow foraging and from picking Mum’s fruit. The results were pretty astonishing. I brought home just under 170kg of food. At supermarket equivalents that equated to almost £470, without taking off what I spent on the plot and definitely making no attempt at costing my time – this is a hobby after all!

In 2016 I had another go. Even though they are still very much a work in progress I wanted to see what my now 7.5 rods produce, together with my occasional foraging, and minus a) what I spend this year and b) the odd handful or two of peas/berries/beans/tomatoes which are needed to help my not-at-all-starved fingers with the picking.

I started with a deficit of about £140, made up of plot rent, seed orders, compost, new netting and realising I ‘needed’ my very own pair of telescopic geared loppers (ooooooooooohhh!) rather than pinching Mum’s each year.