The saying ‘it’s not what you know but who you know’ is very true and I had it in mind when I went to our friend Paul and Anita’s house to organise the transport of long bean supports. He works with wood and has a huge supply of different kinds of wood, all shapes and sizes. They will be moving and he has to sort out his amazing amount of wood. The sticks were, I think, the first item to go.

I started with a number of fairly deep trenches, filling them with all possible vegetable peels, offcuts, anything that would normally go on the compost went into the trench.

It is amazing how much can one trench swallow! I’ve been filling my three trenches the whole winter and only now completed the first one.

I was very happy with the result and can’t wait to get growing.

The next job was to use the collapsed cold frames. They suffered quite a bit during the winter and the high winds were the last straw. But all was not lost. I managed to take them apart very carefully – I did put them together so I knew how they were constructed – and used the side panels to build a ‘raised bed’. well, not exactly but it a nice area for growing whatever crop that might need protection either by putting some fleece or a net over it.

That is the best part of allotmenting – you can make something out of almost nothing and nothing is wasted. An ideal situation for a hoarder like me.