All of a sudden it’s summer; the swifts screech overhead and the frosts are well and truly behind us – but there’s still plenty for the allotment holder to complain about and this time it’s drought! We’ve had a very dry spell and just when it’s peak planting time for french and runner beans, squash, courgettes and brassicas like brussels sprouts, cabbage, kale and broccoli. All this means that quite a lot of watering is required until the plants get established in their new homes away from the security of the plant pot and greenhouse and into a brave new world with pigeons and slugs to contend with. Nowadays the Wood Pigeon is a considerable pest with numbers having noticeably grown over the years. (Apologies to the naturalists and bird watchers – but this is a gardening column!) So our brassicas – which they love – stay under netting all year now. Slugs are a different matter but, since we sunk our old ‘avocado’ coloured bath into the ground at the allotment, filled it with water and welcomed some frogs to take up residence, we have not been much troubled by slugs as the frogs devour them before they become a problem.
The greatest delight of all at this time of year is the gradual ripening of the first strawberries – rather early this year on account of the warm sunny weather. We have been able to enjoy some very sweet and delicious fruit already with loads more to come (see photo). This is a newish strawberry bed, planted two years ago and this is the first full year of ‘production’. The plants were taken from runners from a variety of existing plants which is a very easy way to propagate strawberries. In the supermarkets we have got used to buying Spanish strawberries almost all year round, grown with heat under glass but nothing like as good as our own English varieties – in my opinion at least!
My ancient paperback ‘Vegetable Growers Calendar’ has a little saying for each month and for May it reads “Who weeding slacketh, good husbandrie lacketh”… Well the drought has one advantage at least – the weeds stop growing too!