Until recently I was feeling virtuous that I wasn’t really planning to do much experimenting (or messing, as my family would call it) this year. Moving some of the more decorative vegetables in to the borders, and the usual selection of new varieties from the HSL would be the extent of it. I should really have known better. It all started with Marks & Spencer and their little bags of heritage potatoes. Last year we killed Mr Little’s Yetholm Gypsy, Shetland Black and Salad Blue by not watering them enough/moving it out of the greenhouse early enough. So this year we were going to do a row or two of earlies, enough to provide some early summer goodies, not too much trouble.

Kaffir limes, ginger, galangal and eddoes (clockwise)

Unfortunately I now have half a dozen Mayan Twilight keeping the Pentland Javelin company on the windowsill. From there it all went downhill. I saved a few more seed from a tin of tomatoes, “just to see”, (I’m sure it can be done) and decided to sacrifice a long-opened packet of Gardener’s Delight to an effort to see if/how/when they would germinate in an unheated greenhouse compared to a heated indoor propagator – 15 seeds in each pot. Last night we came completely undone. On a trip to the Chinese supermarket we returned with galangal, eddoes and kaffir limes as well as enough ginger to count as an offensive weapon. The last two, we’ve grown before but the kaffir lime plants have died. The first two, we haven’t even eaten until now.

Woe is me.