I think I may be pampering my strawberries too much. Not only have I put down a bed of straw for them I have just spent time (and a bit of money) putting up a netted frame to keep the birds away. During my last visit to the plot I spent quite a long time going along each plant making sure each berry was on the straw, not the soil. So the berries on the whole are looking very clean and very happy. Just look at this beast!

But with gardening it seems you solve one problem only to discover another. The recently constructed compost heap which is next to the strawberry bed is providing shelter to a mouse. Said mouse seems to be happily feeding on the big juicy strawberries. No cheap flimsy net will keep a determined mouse out. Looks like I’ll have to up my defences.

Whilst weeding the spinach patch this little fella came out of the vegetation looking a bit startled. I’d been amazed by how little slug damage there was on the fresh tasty green leaves of the spinach. It seems like the local newts have been helping me out.

This is Triturus vulgaris, or Smooth Newt, which is the commonest newt in Britain. In its terrestrial phase it will eat slugs, worms and other insects, although it is usually only active at night. This could be a male or a female. The males have a wavy crest in the breeding season but as we are past that now they look the same as the females.

I’m so lucky to have this sort of wildlife at the allotment.

I’d not been to the allotment for over a week due to other commitments so I was pleasantly surprised on Monday when I popped in to do some watering.

Everything, and I mean everything, is growing like crazy. The strawberry fruit have swollen and there is masses of fresh green growth. The rhubarb, which has been very slow this spring, has finally taken off. Even the weak rhubarb has recovered and is doing well (must remember to leave it to gain strength strength, even though it looks so tempting!). Even the raspberries that I moved in March have begun to fruit, which I did not expect in the first season.

The potatoes clearly recovered from the frost scare and are really going for it. All of the rows are up and growing fast. Some of the plants have little flowers on, but it is still too soon to harvest (as I discovered when I pulled one of the plants up for a quick look - I couldn’t resist a sneaky peek!).

The broad beans have doubled in size and are full of flowers, although still no sign of bean growth.

The mangetout have gone wild! They too have doubled in size but have not yet grown any flowers. Last year they were pretty small plants, so it must be the soil from the compost heap which has made the difference.

Of course the weeds have gone mad too, but we don’t want to see photos of that do we?

A kindly friend donated some straw for my allotment this week. Just in time to protect the bulging strawberry fruit from the dirt beneath.

Last years wet summer caused havoc with the strawberries. The fruit got damp and muddy by the continuous rain which meant we had a poor harvest. This year we have done the sensible thing and put straw under the fruit to prevent splash-back.

It’s good to know people with straw.

It’s always interesting to turn over damp logs…

I found these two chaps when I was clearing away the junk from the overgrown part of the plot ready for spraying. They are hiding in a hollow cut into an old door frame. They are each about 5cm long and did not like being disturbed at all! They tried to crawl deeper into the crevice once I had turned it over. These boys (or girls!) are so welcome on my plot, they do a great job of keeping the slug population down. So that they would avoid the spray gun I moved them to the log pile at the bottom of the plot. There should be plenty of slimy beasts there for them to munch on as its overgrown with nettles and brambles. Keep up the good work chaps (sorry about the disturbance)

I didn’t plan the allotment to be organic but we haven’t used chemicals on the plot since we took it over 18 months ago. As we cleared the first half of the site we managed to dig out the weeds and cultivate the soil without using and man made products on it. This is largely due to the black plastic which covered half of the land. You see we cleared this half first.

And although it was bloody hard work pulling out plastic sheets that had been in-situ for about 5 years and had brambles and couch grass growing through it, once the sheets were gone all that was left was to dig the man made junk out of the soil. This took a long time and was very frustrating but there was no other way of doing it.

We cleared the pile of rubbish in the corner of the plot over winter - again a long job, but not one that could have been done any quicker.

Over the last 6 weeks the task has been to clear the final part of the plot. This didn’t have any plastic put on it so the weeds are thick. Very thick. The progress to clear it has been painfully slow and has now ground to a halt.

Thus, the decision was made to us weedkiller. Now as I say, I had no specific intention of having an organic plot but seeing as we had got this far without spraying it was a hard decision to go chemical. The alternative was to spend days pulling out weeds, for which I have had enough. I generally quite like the digging and the pulling out of weeds, but when the weeds are so deep and so dense then I’m willing to admit defeat.

So on Saturday, a beautifully sunny day with no wind I sprayed the patch of weeds with Roundup. There is still a load of junk in the soil to dig out but the herbicide should kill most of the weeds and give us some breathing space to dig. I’ve used a herbicide that breaks down as soon as it hits the soil and one that is as environmentally friendly as possible. I didn’t spray where I knew the frogs and toads were and made sure the wind was not blowing so as to keep the spray on my plot. That said, I did feel a bit bad using the chemical. But it will allow me to clear the final part of the plot with slightly less effort than before, which means I can spend more time doing more enjoyable jobs on the plot. After all, allotmenteering is meant to be a pleasure, not a chore.

According to eattheseasons.co.uk aubergine is the seasonal food of the week. Well I don’t grow aubergines. My seasonal food of the week is spinach.

Boy, do I have a lot of spinach! This lot is perpetual spinach that I planted just over a month ago. I’ve been pulling leaves off it for the last two weeks but it just keeps growing and growing.

Luckily I really like spinach ( I don’t like aubergines).

I’ve been alerted to the story of Jim and his allotment by allotment 5 1/2. It’s a story I’ve been following for the last couple of months as 5 1/2 has kept the world updated. In summary, the story goes like this…

Jim is 76 and has been allotmenting for many years. Last year he put up a plastic greenhouse so that he could extend his growing season. All sounds perfectly reasonable doesn’t it?

Except the parish council have just served Jim with a notice to quit his plot because they don’t allow plastic greenhouses on their allotments!

This is ludicrous in a number of different ways:

1. An allotment is not a show garden. It is a place for growing food. It doesn’t need to look pretty - it should be productive.

2. A poly tunnel extends the growing season which allows Jim to eat more fresh veg for longer and provides him with more physical exercise - two things we all need lots of.

3. Plastic greenhouses are not a nuisance. There are loads of dodgy plastic greenhouses on my allotment, Some people have even built greenhouses out of spare double glazing windows! It doesn’t spoil my enjoyment of allotmentering and does not produce too much (if any) noise.

4. Jim has the full backing of the National Society of Allotment and Leisure Gardeners who say that the council have no legal right to object to his greenhouse (the council disagrees with this point).

5. Jim is 76 and enjoys allotment gardening. If he is kicked off he is unlikely to find a new allotment and start again. What positive purpose does this serve?

There is a website in support of Jim here.

If you are a facebook fan then you can join a group to Save Jim’s Allotment (I have!).

So thanks to 5 1/2 for sharing this with us. Having an allotment is hard enough, especially when slimy good for nothing creatures try to spoil all of your hard work. As for the slugs…

The best thing about the allotment at this time of year is realising that all of the hard work you have put in over the last couple of months is beginning to pay off. Nowhere is this this shown more visually than in the flowering fruit and veg.

I love eating strawberries; they are one of my favorite fruits. But I get just as much pleasure from the plants at this time of year when they are in flower. The tiny plants we put in just over a year ago have grown into big flower-producing machines and are looking fantastic. We rather foolishly took cutting from the runners last year (as you’re supposed to cut the runners off a strawberry plant in the first year to let the plant put all of its energy into growing). But from those cutting we have managed to fill two whole beds. A bit extravagant, I know, but hey, I like strawberries.

It’s not just the fruit who are putting on a show at the moment. The broad beans are in full bloom also and are capable of being spectacular.

I like most types of legume flowers, whether they have edible fruit or not. But broad beans score bonus points for satisfying the palate as well as the eyes.

When living in Ireland I used to collect and cut wood for a fireplace I had in the living room. Someone once told me a folksy saying about collecting wood for a fire. ‘Wood warms you three times; once when you collect it, again when you cut it and a third time when you burn it.’ I think a similar analogy can be used for flowering fruit and veg. They give you joy when you plant them, more when they grow and flower, and more still when you get to eat them!

We’ve had a few cold nights this week. They seem to have had an effect on some of our potatoes. The leaves of some of the plants have turned brown at the edges and have dried up.

It’s not too widespread with less than half of the plants affected. Those that have felt the chill don’t look like they’re done for, but it’s worrying none the less. We have three varieties in the soil, all of which have been affected to some degree .

Those that haven’t been affected are looking great. Just thinking of those tasty tubers growing under the soil is making my mouth water!