I escaped to the coast for most of the bank holiday to get some essential swimming prep under my belt, but today I was free to catch up on some much needed admin on the plot. All the spuds have been dug and bagged, the mid summer peas have been ripped up and the gasping tomatoes were watered.

The outdoor tomatoes have been decimated by blight but I haven’t dealt with them yet because I’m not sure what to do. Ideally I’d burn them but my arson skills are limited and I have a whopping great mound of blight invested potatoes haulms to deal with first.

I had a little helper on the plot today. He watered my spinach and kohl rabi and then emptied my sack of spuds as I tried to fill it. I boiled up a delightful cob of corn but he wasn’t interested and opted instead for a couple of yellow french beans and a load of shelled peas.

It feels great to share real food with little kids, so many people in cities haven’t a flipping clue where food comes from or what it looks like. This one now knows the joy of a freshly podded pea.

So June has been and gone and I can’t believe I managed to miss the summer solstice. I was pleased to discover while putting together this months - Month in Pictures, that I was at least on the plot on the 21st - sowing more carrots. If the summer solstice is also known as midsummers day, that would also suggest that I missed the whole of the first half of summer, I’ve been assuming we were still in spring - when does summer actually start?

June was a good month on the food front, the broad beans were finished with but were replaced at the end of the month by runner and borlotta beans. Spuds were worth digging up from the 2nd week, although I’d probably have got some earlier if I’d taken some anti slug measures.

Seeds germinated at break neck speed this month, it’s worth remembering next year that I shouldn’t stress too much about getting all my plants in early - they soon catch up.

I’m already planning next years seed order, I suppose it’s a bit too early to send the order off but I’ve made my choices of squash, pea, bean and tomato seeds from the Real Seed company. I’m going more exotic next year and avoiding some of the poor choices from this year.

I’m not bothering with Feltham First next year, they may over winter well and crop early but they are gross. In fact I am wiping all smooth peas off the drawing board - only wrinklies will enter my seed box from now on. I think I could manage 3 rows of broad beans as well, I’ll stagger two sowings of Aquadulce and then try something different for a late spring sowing.

The kitchen waste bucket has been overflowing and Shakti was complaining that I haven’t collected hers for a while either and was in a similar state. Compost pressure forced me to get out of bed to go and fix the tyre on my bike so I could take the trailer on a neighbourhood sweep, collecting food waste before heading to the allotment.

It was threatening rain all day but I had a very productive afternoon on the plot. I dug up an entire row of Maris Peer so I could clear some space for another row of peas. I’m risking a late sowing of Kelvedon Wonder as I’m desperate for a taste of the sweet peas of my childhood rather than the starchy offerings I have to put up with at the moment. I’m a little worried about my glut of spuds though, I’ll probably be 3 stone heavier by the end of the summer, I seem to be eating a combination of potato salad and spinach and potato curry for breakfast, dinner and tea.

I took the cloche off the solitary carrot bed to remove more weeds and discovered that what I thought was lush parsnip growth was actually radish, swollen to elephantine proportions.

Shame I missed out on those, they were too hot to handle at this size and had to go on the compost heap.

I’ve found a couple more carrots in the bed and have replaced the weeds with yet another sowing of carrot seeds. I’ve taken advice from all quarters and followed the following procedure, practically guaranteed to result in a carrot bed worthy of the name:

Prepare drill
Soak drill thoroughly
Sow the carrot seed
Top off with potting compost
Do not water for a fortnight (to prevent capping)

I like the tram line effect.

I stripped the gooseberry bush bare so I could make jam but thinking there weren’t quite enough fruits to bother with, I pulled a few sticks of rhubarb to bulk it out.

Back home, an exhaustive search of the interweb failed to reveal anything useful on the subject of Rhubarb and Gooseberry jam, although there were plenty of recipes on the individual versions. I considered the possibility that jam makers of the past had tried the combination and declared it vile and constitutionally un-jam-like but rejected the notion and proceeded to knock up my own recipe.

It went something along the lines of, 1lb gooseberries, 1lb rhubarb both simmered in juice of 1 lemon and 1/2 pint of water. The resulting puree seemed very watery and I considered draining but didn’t. To this I added 1 bag of sugar (1kg) and then boiled for ages and ages as the damn thing refused to set. I was hoping to boil off enough excess juice to give the setting process half a chance but then I got fed up waiting and wanted my pan back so I could make yet another batch of spinach and potato curry, so just slopped it into my waiting jars.

It’s been a few hours now and it still pours like very runny honey. Tastes damn fine though.

A lot of my crops have been cleared from the ground this month. I’ve just about eaten all the onions, both rows of broad beans have been scoffed and the remains have filled all three of my compost bins.

The plot is looking bare but at least the garlic looks promising.

The strawberries have gone nuts producing runners faster than fruits so I’ve lopped most of them off. This particular variety are so tasty that I’ve kept a few back to propagate some more plants.

The peas won’t last an awful lot longer, Feltham First was a good variety for an early crop but they aren’t particularly tasty. They are very starchy and taste like marrowfat peas when they get a bit bigger. I might use them again for an overwintering crop but I’ll have to hunt around for a sweeter spring sown variety.

My squashes have not done at all well this year and if I don’t find myself buried under a glut of courgettes by mid Summer then I will have to declare myself an allotmenting failure.

I didn’t help myself very much by sowing 7 year old seed as the germination rate has been exceptionally poor. The fresh gherkin seed didn’t do too badly but my little plants were swallowed whole by the slugs and I’ve been forced to start again.

Last week I planted my single successful courgette plant in amongst the sweetcorn, inter planted with climbing french bean “Blue Lake” in the classic Three Sisters arrangement. Since then it has done nothing but rain so I arrived at the plot this morning, convinced that a silvery trail would be all that was left of my gardening pride.

Thankfully the squash survived the week. I seemed to have provided an unintended decoy when I planted out my cauliflower seedlings on the same day. Every single one of them has been gnawed down to their flimsy little stumps. I had a few more left in the seed bed so these have gone out, along with a scattering of almost the entire packet of blue pellets. Slugs make me very angry.

I removed the earliest row of broad beans today, they were just about finished and I needed the space to plant out my purple sprouting broccoli and other assorted brassicas. I left the roots of the bean in for the nitrogen but the stalks have filled all 3 of my compost bins. I hope they compost down quickly as I’ll be removing the second row in a few weeks time.

The garlic next to the beans are looking very sorry for themselves. All the foliage is badly covered in rust and although I must be a couple of months too early I have started to lift some of the bulbs.

They are drying off in the greenhouse now.

Lunch was an al-fresco delight today. I boiled up peas and broad beans on the trangia and tossed them in garlic and olive oil before adding a selection of the plot leaves - rocket, mustard, beetroot, spinach and mixed lettuce.

Finished off with a tonne of strawberries. These particular strawberries are so delicious I’m even prepared to share half with a slug, non will go to waste.

Thought I’d test the progress with the spuds today. There has been so much rain that I imagined whopping great sacks of juicy tubers sitting under the mounds of earth.

My Mum had advised gently exploring the soil around the plant rather than digging the whole thing up but I didn’t find anything with my first tentative reccy, and thought what the heck, they must be buried deep.

In went the fork and out came 5 creamy coloured peas. Perhaps I should wait another 6 months before I try again.

Progress report for April

What a crazy month its been, at the beginning I was so worried about the broad beans that I resorted to exhaling over them in an attempt to thaw the snow cover and by the end of the month I was blistering in the sun.

I’ve planted out loads of the over zealous seedlings from the front room nursery and so yet again I am watching the weather with crossed fingers. Surely we can’t have a frost in May? I have the feeling that April is the pivotal month in the gardening calendar, we are so vulnerable and yet the temptation to get a head start with the tender crops is almost irresistible.

Here’s a quick spin around the plot (as at 27th April 2007) so I can compare progress this time next year.

Starting next to the shed we have the spud bed, most of these have peaked through the surface but I am still able to keep on top of the earthing up process.

Spin to the right and you get the fruit area - strawberries, rhubarb, gooseberries and blackcurrant.

Then the second sowing of peas are coming though.

These are the cabbages I planted way back in week 1, I’m not terribly impressed with them. The blue ones are incredibly strong and need boiling for about a week before you can serve them. Some are riddled with white fly and most have juicy slugs living in the cosy hearts. I imagine I will compost these soon.

Next to them I have a few onions left but I’ll have eaten them all in a couple more weeks. As they go I am planting parsnips and carrots in their place, not having much success with either of these though, the carrots won’t germinate and something is eating my parsnips.

Here are the broad beans I’ve been so protective over. They seem to have survived although Ive probably lost some flowers and therefore productivity with the snow but I’ve eaten all the tips so far and started on the small pods.

Next to these we have the garlic - 2 forgotten varieties and the 2 overwintering onions.

I’m happy with this section.

Under the cloche are the ruby chard plants which are beautiful and tasty and productive which makes them number on my list. Next to it are my second sowing of broad beans, also now in pod.

Right at the bottom of the plot I have the first sowing of peas with a backdrop of pear and plum trees and a selection of holes awaiting my squash plants.

On the other half of the plot we have the pond, a predominantly empty bed with sowings of french bean, kohl rabi and turnips.

Under the cloche are transplants of greyhound cabbage, they are pathetically small though.

Finally we have the bed with the 99p cloches. I’ve mostly got salad crops in here - mustard, rocket, radish, lettuce etc.

I reckon this is going to end up being a picture post, I’m far too shattered to string words together. The day was glorious but after about 6 hours on the plot my skin is tightly shriveling with the sunburn and I need to spend the next month in a vat of E45 cream.

My seedlings have been going crazy in Shakti’s front room nursery, the beans are threatening to smother everything in sight and the tomatoes need staking. None of these things go well with toddler sized birthday parties so they need to go. Not wanting to shock them into submission with an immediate relocation to the outside world, I’ve been hunting down one of those mini greenhouse affairs to act as a coldframe. I spotted something even better from Wilkinsons though, a full on walk-in greenhouse complete with staging for £40.

Considerable rearranging was required to squeeze it onto the plot. The compost bins were pushed to the corner shaded by the hideous ivy which seems like the best spot for them considering nothing else will grow there except for slugs. More problematic was the wigwam I planted up last weekend with some 7 year old experimental peas. It’s quite a palaver trying to retrieve ungerminated green orbs from a patch of soggy soil.

Given my unchallenged bodging tendencies, I’m quite surprised but pleased to say, the greenhouse went up relatively well. It only has one little tear in the polythene and I’m sure that existed before I took it out of the box. I’ve piled the edges up with soil, staked, pegged, clipped and tied down anything threatening to flap and if it’s still there tomorrow morning I may well do a little jig.

I’m going to plant the tomatoes in grow bags around the base - anything to try and keep the structure anchored, and I think the chilli peppers and aubergines will be overjoyed.

Before the construction started we (I had Shakti’s help today) transplanted the greyhound cabbages from the seed bed and sowed a row of yellow french beans. We also managed to acquire a load of broken paving slabs from the site skip and have a veritable highway laid out between beds. Unfortunately the new compost bin and greenhouse layout, blocks all access to the bottom of the plot. I haven’t a cat in hells chance of accessing the peas if they decide to crop.

We left with a sack of multi-coloured delights for tea - Ruby Chard, Broad Bean tips and some of the overwintered onions.