I’ve been carefully nurturing a selection of brassicas since I took delivery of them as plug plants several weeks ago from organicplants.com. They have been potted on, fed regularly, manually de-slugged and de-snailed and covered with Enviromesh to keep the cabbage white butterflies at bay. Now, however, the time has come to release them into the wider world. Andrew has taken the majority to the allotment and the surplus are going to friends, while I will restrict myself to just three cavolo nero in the home plot. I have to say it feels a bit like sending my babies off to school – it’s time for them to grow up and see if they are strong enough to cope with all the things I have protected them from. I had no idea I could feel sentimental about broccoli and curly kale!