In which Vicky gets REALLY excited about The Pot Gang

I used to scoff at the idea that gardening was good exercise, but I scoff no longer. This weekend (and last weekend) I clocked 10,500+ steps and used every single muscle group multiple times.

Conservative estimate of earth moved: a lot.1

Have some more gardening stats:

• Worms eaten by the chickens: approximately 3,493.

• Grubs eaten by the robins: approximately 842 (they’re smaller)

• Cups of tea consumed: 9

• Water consumed: not enough

• Biscuits eaten: a packet of chocolate hobnobs

• Hats worn: TWO! Spring is here!

• Weed mat pegged down: 9m2

• Greenhouses cleaned out: 1

• Pots emptied of last year’s casualties: 17

• Brambles hacked at: 4

• Nettles yanked up: an infinite and never-ending number

• Seeds planted: 0 (sad face)

I’d just like to share our before and after pics really because I think that says it all.

Before: a wildly unkempt and sadly neglected formerly glorious vegetable garden.

After: a cleared, tidy, weed-matted space ready for a magnificent vegetable garden.

I was really excited about planting my February and March seeds this weekend and diving into my new Pot Gang subscription but my brain sabotaged me AGAIN. I don’t know why I’m surprised — I think if I outline my plan for Sunday, you’ll be staggered that I thought it might be remotely possible to do all these things:

• Go trapeze training at the studio for 1.5 hours at 10.30am ✅

• Meet my friend Josh back at The Dingle to do some filming for my business promos ✅

• Eat lunch with Josh and Joe in the garden ✅

• Clean the bathroom ✅

• Clean the cabin ✅

• Put up a shelf in the cabin for the expanding cactus collection ❌

• Do more weed matting around the greenhouse ❌

• Clean out the greenhouse ✅

• Empty the pots ✅

• Make focaccia bread ❌

• Make scones ❌

• Have afternoon tea ❌

• Pot the Pot Gang seeds ❌

• Go for movie night at our friends’ place ✅

Then I got sad because I thought I’d failed. I need to write down the stuff I do more often so I can look at it and remind myself that I’m absolutely batshit and need to calm down.

Here’s the greenhouse before and after:

Anyway, let me tell you about the Pot Gang. My friend Sarah told me about them and they’re bascially brilliant.

Sam Smith decided during lockdown in 2020 that he wanted to grow his own vegetables and discovered that most gardening stuff is written in jargon by gardening snobs.2

Like me, Sam looked at instructions like “pinch out your tomatoes”3 with bafflement because — what does “pinch out” mean? Which bits? HALP!

So he did what any self-respecting entrepreneurial type did and solved his own problem, then sold it to the rest of us who were also gagging for a solution.

Which was — a monthly subscription box that contains seeds appropriate for planting that month — plus the simplest, easiest step-by-step, phase-by-phase instructions for gardening noobs or people who, like me, are terminally overwhelmed and disorganised but very enthusiastic.

You can see the whole thing here but let me just tell you — everything about the Pot Gang is delightful. The packaging, the newsletters, the instructions, the marketing… It all just makes me smile. And isn’t that the point of doing anything like this?

Building this house, creating this garden — yes, sometimes we want to set the whole lot on fire and give it up, but 99% of the time, everything just makes us smile.

We’re so lucky. We really are. We walk out into the garden and the daffodils we planted grin at us. We meander in the woods and just look at each other and say, “Can you believe we LIVE HERE? CAN YOU?” Even after nine years, it’s still a surprise and a delight.

So, yeah, this weekend has been a lot and it’s also been a lot of joy.

Peace and peas out.