Tim and I were both back on the plot today. Hooray! It was surprisingly sunny and we were back in our T-shirts, as if it were the summer. We finally removed the red egg aubergines from the greenhouse and were impressed with the side shoots on the jungle-sized tomarillo plants. I had bought some gutter pipe to fit the greenhouse so that we can collect all the rain water that falls on the glass roof into a water butt. I even bought a water butt tap so that we can drain the big blue barrel that Nigel had given to us when it's full. This is all part of our bid to become more environmentally friendly. In the summer months, due to the lack of rain, we would spend an hour each evening going back and forth to the water trough to water the sun-dried vegetables we seemed to be growing. This should, in some small way, help to curb our complete reliance on the water board and instead rely on nature.

We had a wander around the plot to see what was going on. We were impressed with the progress of our over-wintering onions and especially our garlic. Little by little the different varieties appear to be pushing through. We went to the top of the plot and began to dig the final section that had, until very recently, been growing carrots. With Tim with me the digging didn't take very long at all. We had a good old natter about us looking forward to next year's crop and having twice as much space to grow vegetables. We managed to get the earth dug by around 3pm and then we dug up the swedes because they had been in the ground for ages and had stopped growing any larger. We have put this down to the fact that the ground is a little too much like clay. Digging the top plot was so easy because it was less clay-based and seemed to have sand in it, which perhaps explains why the carrots did so well this year.

After collecting our bounty of swedes, we closed the greenhouse up and headed off home. The weather had been good all day. We were so pleased that digging our plot had taken a relatively short time in comparison to earlier in the year. It had taken us months to dig the entire plot, removing the bramble roots and rough-digging the ground. It had taken only around a month to dig it again. We're just hoping the second plot won't require so much labour.

Well, it's nearly the end of the year and we have come full circle as we decided to start digging the second plot. It's been quite incredible to think that we have been working on this allotment lark for 12 months. There were a few people who said that we wouldn't get anything out of the land in the first year but we have and we are delighted that we managed to achieve so much.

First of all I checked the gutter I had installed on the greenhouse to see whether the bucket had filled with rainwater – it had worked! It was only half full but that's not bad considering that it's been two weeks (and that it is only on one side of the greenhouse roof). I had also brought a load of vegetable peelings with me because of the Christmas meals we had over the holidays – the composter was very pleased.

For the past six months or so, Tim and I have been lobbying for a polytunnel that goes across our two plots. Unfortunately, we have been told that we can't do this because we need to maintain the integrity of the two separate plots. We decided to look at the possibility of putting a polytunnel on just one plot. We measured it out using bamboo canes but you can see the area of the polytunnel we hope to have with the photo on the right. We thought that it was big enough and are now quite happy to compromise our original ideal. If we find we need more space then we will get another one (after saving our pennies, of course).

We went to the top of the second plot to begin digging. It wasn't as easy as we thought it would be, however, as the plot seemed to have been used as a dumping ground. There was a lot of bindweed, glass, metal and asbestos in the earth. I even dug up a plastic clock, complete with battery, in the top section. It took a long while to get very far with the ground so replete with weeds and glass. I spent the majority of the time just picking out bindweed, glass and stones. Tim was digging up loads of grass on his side and dug up a door knob, including part of the door. It started to rain pretty heavily so we decided to call it a day and thereby called it a year. What an amazing experience so far. Bring on 2007!