Jeni – that used to be a trick we used but sadly the dogs have yet to grow out of their plastic bottle fetish!

Stoney – I know what you mean. We’re terribly new and futuristic composting all our humanure for the garden, when in fact my Mum grew up with a father who used all the family poo just the same.

When I moved to the UK, I kept the same approach and soon discovered people thought I was an “organic” gardener/grower, or a disciple of John Seymour. It left me quite bemused as I didn’t really realise there was another way of growing things. It’s only been in the past couple of years that I’ve bought/been given a few gardening/self sufficiency books and discovered what all the fuss was about.

To me, it’s surprising that’s all so new and exciting. I have Victorian and Edwardian gardening books that cover much the same ground, I have books and magazines from the ’60s and ’70s that rediscover the same things, and I have books and magazines from the early ’80s that make the same discoveries.

And here we go again. We really are a short-sighted species!

I’m lucky I don’t have a problem with birds but I have those wood lice flummoxed after they kept eating my Courgette Seedlings. A 5 litre bottle with the ends cut off and placed accordingly had them well confused.