One of the great advantages of being in the country is having the space to grow veggies. I’ve played around in the past with some herbs and well-placed tomatoes in pots, but nothing of a serious scale or variety.

This week was a major milestone in my gardening adventures, with the installation of four large veggie beds – I think they are about 2.5m x 1m each, anyway, a generous size for me to play with.

In a flash, ably assisted, I fully planted out two of the beds – one with a mix of berries – raspberry, blackberry, youngberry, boysenberry, blueberry, elderberry, loganberry and, of course, strawberries. The other a bit of a mix – broccoli, leeks, radishes, asparagus (which I believe takes a few years to harvest, but then is bountiful for years to come), brussel sprouts, beans, celery.

Next weekend I plan to plant out another box under instruction from the neighbours with winter root veg – parsnip, turnips, swede, onions, carrots. I’ll then make the difficult choices about what will go in the last planter. I’m sure I’ll end up wishing I had five or six beds towards the end. The plan is to organise culinary exploits around the fresh produce available. I’m imagining summer puddings of berries, berry ice-cream and hopefully some berry liquers.

Whilst I’ll end up with a massive surplus (at least I hope so, otherwise it means I’ve massacred plants!), it’s an exciting stage for the Convent and me as we take a small step towards supporting ourselves and offering some hospitality to guests and neighbours.