This weekend, in between accepting deliveries of slabs in preparation for the shed’s Friday erection (it’s currently stacked up on the patio as a series of panels) we gave the plot a good clear out.

We took out the dwarf French beans, which had come to nothing, the pepper trees that had succumbed to the frost, and the last of the beetroot, which we boiled and skinned and sliced into bags for freezing. That’s a bit of an experiment, really, after we read about freezing in an allotment book; normally we’d have turned to pickling but as we still haven’t broken into the first batch we’d pickled we don’t yet know how successful we are on that front.

We also gave the bramble a short back and sides.

The squash plants are now all dead - even the one in the greenhouse. That’s surprising as the high-low thermometer claims it hasn’t yet dropped below zero (although I have my doubts) and the lavender plants in there are back in flower and positively flourishing.

So we only have four crops left in the plot right now: about two-thirds of the carrots, plus all of the leeks, Brussels sprouts and cabbages.

I don’t know how successful the cabbages will be as they’re looking a bit bug-nibbled around the edges, but I think the hearts are coming on well. The sprouts are going great guns and are probably ready for their first picking. The leeks are quite slender and the carrots, after a few blackened ones in the second pulling, are something of an unknown quantity.

The value of this year’s harvest so far stands at £172.68. Most of that’s from the tomatoes, but I’m hoping that there’s £18 worth of crop left to harvest before the end of December and push the total for the first year (of only 8 months) to just over £200.

Fingers crossed.