I’ve been trying to get up-to-date in the garden this week so in between my kitchen and job seeking activities I’ve been popping into the greenhouse and planting stuff. All of my propagators are fired up and full of seed trays and pots, with four different types of chilli and four of tomatoes.

When I got out there, I realised that I’d got some small plants still in a propagator that had been planted before Christmas in a crazy bid to get ahead with the gardening. I read somewhere that you can start off cabbage plants by starting them on heat in December then you get a crop starting early summer possibly inside “the hungry gap”.

These little ones are red cabbages, strangely very green but I’m sure the colour will sort itself out. I use a lot of this stuff shredded into salads all year round so am hoping that by starting them off myself, bringing them on in pots until they’re a bit bigger then planting them out with my newly-discovered slug defences…..who knows what will happen. Maybe I will have a success story to report on later this year.

Whether the plants are strangely green or not, they are rather fetching little things.

The hungry gap is a fruit and veg growers term for April/early May, when there’s little to eat from the garden, with last year’s crops all gone and the new ones not yet properly going. There is a lot of thought going into filling it and finding things that can be cropped then.

Following a bleak feeling late last week about finding a job, I've decided on changing the direction in which I'm going to cast my seed.

Looking at my pic online, it looks weird - sort of artificial. I'd like to state categorically that it's completely natural and more-or-less as it came out of the camera, except for a few stray sensor dust spots.