Rekha Mistry’s gardening career has been full of surprises. Two years ago, she applied for an allotment in her home town of Harrow, thinking she would be on the waiting list for a very long time but was delighted to be allocated one almost immediately.

Then last year, after watching the first series of BBC’s The Big Allotment Challenge at home with her family, she decided to apply to be a contestant on the show, half expecting to be turned down because she only had a couple of years’ experience and had previously only grown vegetables and not flowers, but on Friday night we watched her planting, digging, growing, and cooking with the eight other contestants in the first episode of the second series.

“I was a bit shocked to hear I’d been accepted,“ laughs the businesswoman, who has always lived in Harrow. “I haven’t got that many years of experience, I just like to grow things, so I didn’t think I would get in. It was a nice surprise.“ Rekha and the other contestants spent 12 weeks last summer preparing and tending to their allotments in the grounds of an Oxfordshire manor house before the six sessions of growing, eating and making challenges – before judges Jim Buttress, Jonathan Moseley and Thane Prince – began.

Which is when Rekha, and her fellow gardeners, got another surprise – how long it takes to film a TV programme.

“It shocked us all,“ says Rekah, who runs a bathroom showroom and company in Rayners Lane. “A clip of a few minutes on our potatoes took about three or four hours to film. We thought we’d be back in the hotel having our dinner!“ Rekha made it safely through the first round of challenges, but says the nerves were palpable for all of the gardeners as they waited to hear who was going to be sent home, after 12 weeks of hard work.

“Anyone could have gone, it was definitely tense,“ she says. “We didn’t know how the judges were looking at it, how it was going to be done. I really felt for Matt, going home first.“ Rekha watched the show at home in Harrow with her husband, three teenage children and mother-in-law, but the episode was also being avidly watched by her work colleagues, fellow school governors, her children’s school friends, the people at the swimming group she helps at out, and the members of the 1454 (Harrow) Air Training Corps, where she also assists, as well as her fellow allotmenteers at the West Harrow Large allotment site.

“When you help out a lot in the community, they noticed when I stopped turning up to meetings and things last summer,“ Rekha laughs. “I had to tell a few white lies until I was allowed to announce it!“ Rekha’s family have had another nice surprise thanks to the show – her own allotment is now producing flowers and they are getting to sample lots of vegetables they haven’t tried before.

“I’m now growing a lot more vegetables that I saw my fellow gardeners grow on the show. I used to mainly grow things that we liked to eat – potatoes, courgettes, spinach, peas, tomatoes, onions. Now I’m trying things like kohlrabi, a type of cabbage, and patty pan squash. They’re not too difficult to grow, and I like the challenge.“ l Rekha is in the next episode of The Big Allotment Challenge is on BBC Two on Friday, January 9 at 9pm.