This photo may not look like much but it’s deeply satisfying for me. You see, I’ve scrubbed all of these pots in a fit of horticultural hygiene brought on by necessity.

When we moved into this house it was (and frankly, despite seemingly interminable trips to the dump, still is) full of Mad Maureen’s junk…..and indeed probably the junk of several previous occupants of the house I suspect. So, in order to get growing, we took a risk that has backfired on us a bit. We took all the rubbish out of the greenhouse to the dump then just used what was there to get us going because we didn’t have the luxury of a few weeks to clean and sterilise. Some might say that was a potty thing to do but it was a calculated risk.

We knew it was a risk but decided that if we’d not just jumped in and grown stuff then we’d not have had anything this year at all. To a large extent it’s paid off – we’ve got gluts of courgettes and squashes (started in the greenhouse in dirty pots, although we did have problems with some of the small plants damping off), wonderful corn on the cob, lots of peppers, chillis and aubergines, all started off in the dirty greenhouse.

BUT although we’ve had lots and lots of fantastic, sweet tomatoes, we’ve had a dose of potato blight on them and they’ve all had to be pulled up and burned. We don’t know if it was the dirty greenhouse or the fact that we planted too many, too close together or even if a combination of the two things caused it but either way, we’re taking no chances for next year so I’ve spent two weekends sat in a garden chair with a wheelbarrow full of Jeyes Fluid, sterilising pots, while listening to my wind-up radio playing radio 4 (a small piece of heaven if ever there was one). Now the pots will be left outside to get really cold over the winter so hopefully, if there is anything nasty left on them then the frost will sort it out!

Next on the agenda is digging out some of the soil and replacing it with new, along with washing down the structure of the greenhouse itself with Jeyes and a good spray of copper fungicide which is what my hero, Geoff Hamilton recommended in his ‘Successful Organic Gardening’ book.

So, along with a trip to the dump with yet another car full of MM’s old tat and I feel as though I have had a productive and useful day. I’m a simple soul and that’s all I ask of life so I’d say today has been a success.

……Well, until I was putting away my stuff, got my trouser leg caught on a ladder and took an almighty tumble, culminating in cuts and bruises to both legs and a wrist….why can’t I be like normal people and be able to stand on my own two feet? I don’t know. I do know that this inability has been part of my life for the whole of my life and I doubt it’s going to stop now.

Milly was rifling through stuff last year.