I always feel when I’m gardening, and particularly when I’m planning to garden, that I am just beginning. This morning, as I plan to make a plan, even more so. It as if I have never done this before. And yet, on this wet December morning there are ropes of garlic in the kitchen, onions and potatoes in the shed, with a few squashes. There are also shoots of broad beans popping up in the allotment, and the garlic is starting to show little sharp shoots – these two were sown and planted on November 5^th. There is also a bit of kale and some beetroot and some leeks.

So I must have done something right, (although my focus is on what there isn’t – no purple sprouting, not enough kale, no carrots anywhere!)

I’m planning, or planning to plan, or writing about planning to plan. And I feel like a complete beginner.

My actual gardening beginnings took place a long time ago, somewhat inauspiciously when instructed to get out all the white bits (ground elder or bindweed, maybe couch grass?) in the vegetable garden at the age of twelve. It put me off for fifteen years, until I decided that being self-employed would be good, as a friend was a freelance gardener. So it wasn’t plants that bought me to gardening, but the possibility of freedom. I was studious, and went to college, passing all my exams with distinction. I had a small gardening business, then worked for the National Trust before becoming Head Gardener at Winchester College, with a walled vegetable garden and five under-gardeners. And after a mid-life reset where I achieved a Creative Writing degree, another gardening business. All along I thought that gardening would be a better hobby than a job, and now I am retired that turns out to be true.

But the lack of confidence when it comes to growing vegetables is rather silly. Yet it really does feel as if I’m a beginner every year. And the truth is, I am a beginner. I’m learning all the time. And this year (next year) I want to do better. One of my problems is how to plan. I garden in a ‘what needs doing today’ sort of way. What has to be done today?

And on a wet December morning, not much has to be done. So I’m planning. Ah! have I discovered the problem? I don’t regard planning as an essential activity. All I seem to do is make lists or order seeds. I’m trying to save as much seed as possible this year, so one of the things that needs doing is to know what seed I have. The seed order that I usually make does not seem to correspond to what I sow. So this year I have not ordered a big lot of seed. I am hoping that I will have what I need. But as I don’t know what I need until the morning dawns when it is necessary to sow spring cabbage, say, it makes it hard to plan.

See what I mean? I don’t. But whatever I did more or less worked last year, so I expect it will more or less work again this year. What I have actually done today is check that I have ordered seed potatoes (I have), had a look at the seed in my store cupboard and decided it is too complicated to sort today, switched on the propagators in the greenhouse to check they are working, wondered where my other min/max thermometer is, and found out that onions don’t need to be grown in the rotation (in an old favourite book) and doubted that to be true.

Oh, and written this.

I think the truth is that gardening, growing food, is both easy and hard, and I get joy out of walking past the ropes of garlic hanging in the kitchen every single day.

So I will keep growing vegetables and keep fretting over failures and celebrating successes, year after year.