Four or five years ago I bough some horseradish to plant in the veg plot. It was only a piece of dried root about 6 inches long. I thought I could plant it in a quiet corner and if I was lucky there would be a scrape of horseradish to go with some been come autumn. It grew well the first year and we had a piece of roast beef to eat with it in October.

Since then it has been difficult to get rid of. Every piece of the spilt root is enough. This year I made a concerted effort to eradicate it. When i dug over the patch in spring I made sure that every last vestige of root was pulled out sometimes digging down a foot or more to get to the end of it. Over the summer I have pulled out every shoot as soon as it broke through the surface and made sure that I got the root as well.

It hasn’t worked. Four weeks away and it is everywhere. The whole patch was overgrown and gone to seed the remaining courgettes gorged heavy monsters.

As I pulled at the vegetation all I could smell was the  nose tingling horseradish and the pepper of nasturtium.

In the meantime we have been left with too many apples than we know what to do with, the trees are bent double with them, and I have starting on preparing to cook for a big meal later in the week.