I think the vegetables are winning. I have completely and utterly lost the plot. There are beans and tomatoes and squashes everywhere. My freezer is bulging with tomato sauce. My kitchen overflows with runner beans. The carrots are also ready, and the sweetcorn, mounds of potatoes, more peas. Some spinach, again. Enough leeks for a year. All this while the annual distraction of wild apples and blackberries explodes around me. Suddenly I’m not sure I even like vegetables.

I don’t know what to do about the burdock; all of us had forgotten about that. And here are Brussels sprouts, broccoli and cabbages for the winter. Now the next lot are arriving in the post for autumn planting: more onions and garlic and something called mizuna lettuce.

I am receiving advice from all sides on what to do with the excess: cook it, sell it, freeze it. A kind reader recommended Jane Grigson’s book on vegetables. Another tells me I can sell surplus veg to “Bill’s produce store” in Lewes or Brighton. All very helpful, but I still have to pick it and get it there, or cook it. Had we but world enough and thyme… I have gone back to wailing that one cannot combine a vegetable plot with work and children; certainly not at this time of year when everything is, well, so much.

So next year I think I shall downsize the plot. It is unmanageable. Unfortunately, Nicola intends to expand it. And I do have my eye on a pretty chilli plant I saw at West Dean Gardens, and some celery. And I want to grow aubergines…

So I pick up my hoe and poke at a few more weeds. Apparently we can stick the onions in where we’ve dug up some of the potatoes. Wearily, I put down my pen and begin to clear the earth again… until next year, good luck, and goodbye.

Find out more about storing and cooking your produce: How to Store Your Garden Produce by Piers Warren (Green Books), available from BooksFirst priced £4.70 (RRP £4.95), free p&p on 0870 1608080; www.timesonline.co.uk/booksfirstbuy; The Complete Book of Vegetables, Herbs and Fruit by Matthew Biggs, Jekka McVicar, Bob Flowerdew (Kyle Cathie), available for £15.29 (RRP £16.99); Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book (Penguin) at £9.89 (RRP £10.99).

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