It’s amazing how utterly addictive gardening is and how quickly it can eradicate all other interests from your life; I have barely played my PS4 and Xbox One lately (thank goodness for my Nintendo Switch on business trips!) and I’ve hardly binged upon my usual TV serials at home (apart from an occasional episode during my lunch breaks at work!).

OK, so I exaggerated a bit about giving up the Geek lifestyle.

My pride and joy these days is my veggie trough; the planter was a Christmas gift from my Mum via my local garden centre, into which I have planted cauliflowers, carrots, mixed salad leaves (rocket and such), cucumbers and tomatoes.

Once I’d figured out the best place for it to sunbathe, I lined the trough with a membrane, added some broken up polystyrene and pebbles for drainage, then filled it with decent soil mixed with some compost.

Due to traveling overseas so much for work lately, I was not able to grow everything from seeds, so I opted for Plan B and purchased some young plants from my garden centre. I now have a little plastic greenhouse and will be ready to become the Germinator next year!

The universe wasn’t particularly kind to me in late April, when an unexpected harsh frost killed my poor cucumbers and left me with only one tomato plant from the four I had planted; fortunately, I left a tomato and cucumber plant in my greenhouse for such an event and added this to the trough.

Next year I will add some frost netting!  By jove I will!

Anyway, this is what the trough looks like at the moment, you can even see the pot of coriander growing next to the Christmas tree!

• The carrots are about 2 weeks away from harvest, give or take.
• The tomatoes now have flowers and are ready for the bees to do their work before the plant begins to bear fruit.
• Cucumbers are almost ready to open their flower buds, so the bees can do the same thing.
• Cauliflowers are massive!  But have a long way to go yet before I can harvest them.
• The the mixed ‘salad’ leaves which have totally grown out of control, since I scattered a load of seeds on top of the soil.  The rocket and mixed leaves are ready to eat and bloody nice!  Yum.

I’ll add some updates soon!