A long time ago I read somewhere that nasturtium seeds can be pickled and used as a replacement caper. I love capers but don’t feel so upbeat about the price of the tiny little jars so I’ve been wanting to try out this cheapskate trick for ages.

I’ve got a few plants started in the front room nursery and have just scattered a few more seeds around the plot today. Nasturtiums are a really useful plant, they are beautifully gaudy, attract blackfly like you wouldn’t believe - thereby saving the broad beans from suffocation by the black beasties and the leaves add a peppery pungent taste to salads. If the pickling trick works, nasturtiums could easily make it into my top 5 desirable plant list.

Here’s the recipe I’m going to try:

Collect as many green nasturtium seeds as you can muster - you pick these after the flowers have dropped but before they dry out, soak them overnight in a salty brine and then drop them into the boiled and cooled pickling concoction. I’ll keep these in jars and shove them in the fridge but may update the recipe and storage instructions once I learn some pickling techniques.

1 mug white wine vinegar
2 teaspoons salt
1 small onion, thinly sliced
A few slices of lemon
1 bay leaf
Pinch of mustard seeds
2 cloves garlic
6 peppercorns

I went to Shakti’s house yesterday to see how the seedlings were, I thought they’d be drying out and need a little freshening up, but how wrong could I be?

She has taken this nurturing responsibility very seriously. I found her sitting in the brightest house in the neighbourhood, trying to watch the telly in her sunglasses because the seed trays were on the floor soaking up the rays in front of her industrial sized anti-SAD daylight bulb.

She is doing a wonderful job. The sweet peas now have multiple leaves and don’t even look too straggly, every other seed has germinated as well except for the two pepper varieties which I imagine will pop up in a few days.

I gave myself a day off the running so I could enjoy another leisurely session on the plot. I carried on where I left off yesterday and weeded most of the remaining beds. The peas are getting a bit lanky as well so I stuck some titchy sticks in to keep them on the straight and narrow til the weather becomes more stable and I can remove the mesh cover. There were quite a few empty stations where the peas either didn’t germinate or were swiped by meeces so I popped in a few spare seeds, hopefully they’ll come along soon enough and pad out the row.

Before I came down to the allotment this morning, I passed by Shakti’s for breakfast. She posed the question “If we ran out of money tomorrow, what would we live off from your plot?” About 3 months ago she sowed the pea seeds that I supported above and can’t quite believe that we aren’t eating fresh garden peas yet. I don’t thinks she’s altogether too impressed with the DIY food malarkey, life is just a little more instantaneous down at Tescos.

On arrival I surveyed the crops with a hungry mind but was somewhat disillusioned. I think the only currently edible produce is cabbage and some other critter already seems to have eaten way more than I will ever get to enjoy. Don’t these look like a pitiful bunch?

So in answer to the question, I think we would survive for about a week on limp cabbage leaf. Life would then get tough unless I could find an inspiring recipe for roasted bind weed and couch grass roots. I’ve got enough of those to keep us cooking on gas til the peas start cropping!

More seeds went in today as well, I’ve sown half a row of carrots - early nantes that came free with “Grow It” magazine and a full row of parsnips. Both have gone in the space I cleared yesterday by removing the salad leaves.

I’ve also started a batch of aubergine and tomato seeds in individual modules. My flat is no go zone for anything green, within 24 hrs every living form of plant life collapses in an irradiated heap. Quite concerning but I seem to cope unscathed. Anyway, the seeds need to live somewhere warmer and brighter than the shed, but safer than my flat so I’ve sent them to germinate at Shakti’s house. She accepted them willingly so I’ll see what other delicate little seedlings I can pass into her care. She’ll soon discover the joys of DIY food growing.

Great weekend, the sort that requires another weekend to recover from though.

The widely forecast snow didn’t rear its head in London, in fact Saturday was a gloriously sunny day. I was free in the afternoon so headed off to the plot with my newly delivered peach tree. I bought this from Blackmoor Nurseries and the variety, Avalon Pride, is apparently resistant to leaf curl. If I can plant it against a SW-erly wall I should be rewarded with juicy fruit some years hence.

My shed is approximately SW facing, if you are a glass half full person, so I’ve decided to train it as a fan underneath the bird box. This required some brave and ruthless pruning. The stump you see in the photo is the result of two days of nervous nibbling with the secateurs. It seems such a tragic waste to hack off hard grown branches, especially when the tree cost £25, I’ve already relegated about £10 quids worth to the incinerator.

Today wasn’t such a great day, cold and flippin windy but I managed to get quite a lot done. You’ve got to love sheds, regardless of how bitter the day is, you’ve always got a little retreat. A perfect home from home. Everyone should have a strategically placed shed with a supply of tea bags and digestive biscuits, it’s practically a human rights issue.

So I started with a bit of digging - I still haven’t cleared that peculiar ridge of bindweed and couch grass roots that I mentioned a few weeks back, and then I chose to start building a path.

At the moment I seem to be wandering haphazardly across the plot, compacting the area I’ve already dug, so I need to add some order. I nicked the bricks from another pre-existing but almost buried path and will need to go on a hunt for suitable hardcore material before I can organise the whole plot properly.

After a couple of hours hard labour, it was back into the shed to start the sweet pea seeds off in the toilet rolls I’ve been collecting for months.

I don’t get a huge amount of light through the glazed windows, so I hope they don’t get too straggly before it is safe enough to send them outside to face the big bad world.

I’m using one of my old coke bottles as toilet roll specific watering device. It was a heck of a lot harder to construct than you’d imagine - I knocked a nail through the lid after a couple of severe bashes with the hammer but I had one hell of a job removing it again. The plastic on those lids must be about an inch thick!

This month was all about the shed, I fell in love with this place - a true room of my own. Most of my plotting time was spent inside looking out but I did manage to complete a few shambolic construction projects, and sow some early seeds in between brewing the tea.

I didn’t think I’d get to the allotment this weekend but while I was in the park, trying to squeeze in a long run for my half marathon training, it struck me what a great gardening day it was. Didn’t take much for me to cut the run short and head off to the plot.

What a lovely day, plenty of signs of spring, vibrant colours bursting out of the soil.

My legs were aching a bit too much for digging (I’m full of excuses) but I did do something productive - seed sowing has commenced! I know I am way too early but I’m working on a tip off from my Dad who has suggested I might get away with an early batch of spring onions, radish and greyhound cabbage.

My early broad beans and peas have quite a spacious row between them so I’m trying to utilise the cosy spot under the cloche for bringing on the seedlings. Hopefully the existing crops will provide some protection for my seeds and not grow so quickly that they turn in to the neighborhood bullies.

I left with another sack of rocket. It’s starting to taste very strong though and I’m not such a fan of bitter salad leaves so I may check out some cooked arugula recipes, I’m bound to be able to do something pasta related.

The seed order has arrived on the plot and it looks like I might have gone a tad overboard.

Having laid the exciting little packets out on the bench I was tempted to throw a sign up on the front door of the shed and declare my very own garden centre well and truly open.

Where the heck is all that lot going to go?

I’ve developed a bit of a head cold over the last few days so I only planned to do a little pottering today. Ended up buying a bargain foldaway chair from Homebase (£7) on the way down so my couple of hours pottering turned into a couple of hours reading the paper in the shed. A hot cup-a-tea wouldn’t have gone amiss but other than that I think I have this gardening malarkey pretty much sussed.

After finishing with the paper I tore it up, along with the cardboard from the chair, chucked in a few of my manky tissues for good luck, stirred them up in a bucket of drain water and left to soak into pulp. I’ve just ordered a cheap logmaker from ebay so the pulp is to make my own recycled paper logs. Apparently they make pretty good firestarters and it is certainly satisfying to see all your junk mail go up in flames.

I don’t have an open fire at home but I need something substantial and hopefully flammable to get a good roaring fire going on the plot, the couch grass roots just don’t seem to incinerate that well on their own. If they work out well, I’ll make loads and offer them up on freecycle, minus the manky tissues of course.

Just before I left the plot I managed to stir myself to do a bit of muck spreading. Five of these sacks didn’t seem to go that far but I’m sure the spuds will appreciate what little I can offer. I don’t think we can get deliveries of the loose stuff on our plot which is a shame as I think my Dad managed to get a couple of tonnes of the stuff for the price I paid for my sacks.

After last weeks struggle with the compost I decided it was time to invest in a high tech conveyor - a wheeled contraption is required for lugging the heavy stuff.

This particular model is the Revolution Cargo trailer by Edinburgh Cycles. It normally goes for £125 but I managed to source one on ebay and save myself a fair sum. It is pretty impressive, very manoeuvrable and can carry 50 kg, which is a lot of compost. Now I have to go in search of things to carry, perhaps I should cancel the veg box and set up my own scheme delivering fresh produce from the back of the bike.

Yesterday the trailer showed its worth by carrying two whole seed packets to the plot. My freebie pea and bean seeds had been delivered so I thought I’d better get them in before the weather got much colder. So thats another double row of Aquadulce and a row of Feltham First. It also means the whole of one side of the plot is now completed, where am I going to put all my plants next year? I think I may need another plot already, I can imagine the remaining side will be filled by squash plants as I have in the region of 7 varieties of seeds and I haven’t even started on the spuds and carrots and……

Shakti (pictured sowing peas in her posh gardening clobber) has offered me her garden shed for use on the plot. How exciting is that? The next few weeks are going to be taken up with dismantling crises, as we try and take it apart, balance it on the bike trailer and deliver it the allotment ready for reconstruction. The whole family have been called in to help with the construction part so it will make for some Heath Robinson style photos as I don’t think any of us are that talented in the DIY department.