Growing Fruit and Vegetables, early summer, salads,new potatoes and strawberries.

On the allotment, the fruit and vegetable plot. Early summer.

In the fruit and vegetable garden and on the allotment my early summer is a busy time.

Harvesting of salad leaves and strawberries has begun. The first early potatoes are ready or almost ready to be harvested, when will depend on the part of the UK they are planted in (the North is usually later than South) and also the weather conditions in the spring time affecting your planting times.

It is best not to attack a whole row of potatoes with a garden fork in an attempt to discover if they are ready to harvest and to use. Instead follow the old fashioned tradition of ‘ furtling’ to check if your new potatoes are ready and large enough to be useful. To begin with this way of harvesting may provide enough potatoes to go on your plate and you can leave the rest of the row to mature and develop to a larger size.

New potatoes are like many own grown fruit and vegetables at their optimum in taste when harvested and eaten the same day. New potatoes in general do not store well, so I usually harvest the amount I need for a day or two. If that is not possible dig up a row or one weeks meal requirements at a time. It is not a good idea to harvest first early potatoes and leave them sitting in a damp pile in a shed. The flowering of first early potatoes will be your first clue that they may be mature enough to check out their size and culinary potential.

The first meal with your own grown new potatoes on your plate is almost impossible to put in to words. Serve them boiled, with butter melting over them, if you wish you can add a sprig of mint to the cooking water. Do not over cook them, they should not fall apart. Salad varieties of new potatoes are so tasty when served in this way.

You can still sow seeds in the vegetable plot at this time of year. Things like salad leaves should be sown an intervals through out the growing season to maintain an adequate supply.

Keep a watch for disease as you work on the vegetable plot, especially later in the summer. At the first sign of blight on potatoes or tomatoes you need to take action to stop the spread.

The strawberries that I have not managed to cage or cover with net are disappearing as soon as they ripen. The birds seem to know just the right time to enjoy them at the sweetest and juiciest. Not a good way to thank me for digging over the vegetable patch and providing them with a feast of small wriggling creatures in the colder months. However, it is my fault not theirs for not protecting my crop from their sharp eyes and eager beaks. Next year I will invest in some proper fruit crop protection. I plan to put money in a jar when I harvest the crops and do not have to spend that cash at the supermarket. Then next summer I will have no excuse next year not to spend the money saved on adequate fruit protection netting or cages. Pea seedlings need protesting too as they are a great favourite of the wood pigeons. I use cut down plastic bottles over the emerging seedlings, the pigeons seem to stop attacks later on when the pea plants are larger.

There is a reason I do not want to net them with the cheap plastic net I used last year. After spending over an hour fixing the netting in place over the strawberries last summer I saw two young birds, not much more than fledglings trapped inside a similar construction. They were frantic with fear and were fling themselves about in a panic. Needless to say I then spent another three-quarters of an hour dismantling the netting over the strawberries on my plot. I never did get a single strawberry from the allotment last year. Thankfully my garden provided me with a bumper crop. Rest assured, I got someone to help me release the trapped birds. I could not do this myself as I am not good at being near birds that are flapping about, some sort of silly fear from a childhood experience.

The endless trips to fill the watering cans and then water the fruit bushes and seedlings continues, even though it has rained, the soil is of the sandy type that does not retain moisture well. The only solution that I know of is to add as much humus as possible in the autumn. This will have to come from the compost heap and if I can find a supply of it I will have to get some well rotted horse muck delivered to the allotment in September – October time.

Going to check my strawberries now, they are hay-berries this year as I have used that beneath them to save money. I have been told it is not a good idea as it will seed, but in the grand scale of things what are a few more weeds when I am already very generously supplied with all shapes and sizes of them at the edges of the plot that are still wild. Mostly on the growing area I now have annual weeds that I just hoe down, and the dreaded minor bindweed has magically appeared which will have to be dug out at some stage.

Oh, and not forgetting the return of the odd bramble or two in the raspberry patch. Which is all part of the struggles and joys of an allotment holder, in the third year of the battle with the weeds. These are the down side of taking on a ten rod allotment, the reward is to eat tasty food that you have grown yourself. You need to try it to fully understand the pleasure it brings to the meals you eat. Salad leaves are an easy starting point and can be grown in a seed tray or flower pot on a balcony or deck.