So much has changed in my approach to gardening this year, as I’ve seriously transitioned to growing less food for less people. After 10 years of focussing mainly on harvests I was feeling the strain. It wasn’t that I wasn’t enjoying the gardening, I was still loving it, but I was struggling to balance my love of gardening with all of my other interests (multi-day hikes and bikes rides are two of many examples). I’m also getting older - who isn’t - so I knew that as I approached 70 I would need to put more dedicated time into looking after my mind and body and that time would have to come from somewhere. I’d known this for years, I’d been tinkering around the edges of a solution, but not really changing much.

This year I was gifted the opportunity to do some re-thinking. Debbie’s mum was taken seriously ill and had to stay with us for 6 months, I lost access to the car and so I decided to focus more of my time on the allotment, rather than travel. Debbie was busy caring, so more of the allotment, garden and house work fell to me and that provided the impetus to really cut back on harvesting, which had previously been a - time consuming - highlight of the week.

Spending more time on the allotment gave me chance to really mull over what I wanted from the plot beyond harvests and although it seems obvious in retrospect, for me it was a bit of an eye opener. I concluded that I wanted to spend more time enjoying the tranquility of the space, relaxing, reading, chatting, pottering, making. One of the big constraints on spending more time there was comfort and that set me thinking about the shed, but more on that later.

I’d already decided that I needed something to distract myself from the extra stress at home, something constructive to focus on, so I decided to build the gym in the garden, but a gym was too selfish and too easy. I got everyone involved in the design process, the grandkids wanted a playroom, I wanted a gym/home cinema/dance space, Debbie wanted a shady summer garden room and we all wanted to move all of our outdoor play equipment (tennis/badminton, beach games etc) into one easy to access storage space. So a friend and I soon had that built and what a joy that building project was!

More than just a project though, it was another piece of the garden jigsaw, without much of a plan I’d started to transition the garden from growing space, into space for living.

Last year we’d built the sauna and in summer we also added an outdoor dining space and reading nook.

Not long after I’d finished the garden room, this ‘space for living’ idea really started to crystallize as my new objective for the house (plus workshop & utility) allotment and garden. growing food contributed a lot to living well, but there was so much more that these spaces could provide.

So at that point I made a few big decisions. I wouldn’t just replace my rotten shed, I’d build a great shed, inspired by my love of beach huts and I would grow more flowers. I would redesign the infrastructure of my plot and I would grow less food to take home and more food to eat on while I was on the plot.

Although I’d designed all of the garden buildings, the shed was the first project where I designed and sourced every piece of wood, screw and nail and where I did most of the work. I loved making it but I love the result more.

I had three big objectives: create a space where I could relax, eat, read and take an afternoon nap in comfort.

Create a harvest store, so that we could free up a lot of space in the utility/workshop at home.

Finally, I wanted a nice little workshop/desk/food prep area. Basically all the luxuries of home, but in a very compact cabin like experience. Fitting solar and batteries was the final luxury.

The last big piece of the allotment puzzle is moving my compost bins away from the plot entrance and creating a new outdoor workshop and wash and pack station. The workshop is what I’m really after, because I’m itching to rebuild all of my 10 year old mesh and polytunnels and cold-frames, as well as lots of fun future projects.

I’ve been a little shocked to discover just how much joy, the addition of my little cabin has brought. It really has delivered on the space for living, objective. I spend more time on the plot now but do less in that time, ie I relax more. But I’m also able to interleave some of my other interests into my allotment and my home gardening time.

The final change was to rethink the greenhouse, or more accurately return to my original plan for the greenhouse. When I first built it I’d always intended for it to be a multi-functional space, but I got carried away by the novelty of greenhouse gardening for a couple of years. Now it’s hard to believe that I made that mistake, because the combination of half sunroom and half greenhouse makes so much sense. Both roles complement each other so well. I neatly side stepped the problem that I was growing too much food in the greenhouse for us to eat and the equally frustrating problem that the outside seating was only being used for a 30 days a year.

So that’s where I am now, after 6 months of redesigning my spaces to fit my lifestyle. I have freed up about a day a week of - must do - gardening time and replaced it with - if I want to - gardening time. I’ve created a garden health club and family relaxation and games space, with a media room thrown in as a bonus. I’ve turned the allotment from a place where I grow food, to a little haven of tranquility, with my own ‘cabin in the woods’. I can now happily spend a day there, doing a hour or two of gardening, mixed with: chatting, working out, an afternoon nap, ice cold drinks, lunch in the shade, family picnics and relaxed reading and writing.

Another big bonus for me is that I now rarely need to take the car to the plot. I pop there on my bike or walk instead. My harvests no longer fill the boot and back seat of the car, they fit in my paniers. For me a great day is usually a car free day and I have a lot more of those now.

I still have a few more smaller jigsaw pieces to slot in and to be honest I will probably start another less challenging jigsaw soon but a lot of progress has been made.

Where are the Youtube Videos?

For well over a year now I’ve been growing tired of the Youtube platform, the hoops it almost demands you follow in order to get enough views to justify the effort, the constant need to recreate videos, when I already have perfectly good videos already made. So with Debbie’s mum’s illness happened and I got busy building, something had to give and it was videos. I missed it for a while, the feedback, the likes etc, even the creative process but after about a month it dawned on my how nice it was not to be making videos, not to feel any pressure to get specific videos made to a schedule. I realised that gardening was also more enjoyable when I could just get in the flow and not worry about making a video at the same time, not worrying about every plane or helicopter flying overhead or strimmer starting up. Life was better without making videos.

I’m not saying that I will never makes videos again, but I won’t be making them unless I have something new to say, something that’s not better said in this newsletter, or already said in the 1000+ videos that are already out there.

Gardening problems this week

Finally a week with no new problems, in fact quite the opposite. With the arrival of the rain lots of problems are dissolving in their own way. I’m sure there will be plenty more to come, but for now I’m celebrating their absence for a week.

First harvests of 2026

No new first harvests this week.

First harvests of 2026

Here’s the complete list of first harvests this year.

Last harvests

The sweetcorn is now finished, along with the flowering brassicas, which we won’t have now until mid-autumn.

Last harvests

Here’s a link to Last harvests so far this year

Sowings this week

Here’s a link to everything sowed so far this year

Not germinated yet

Nothing, everything has germinated now except this week’s sowings.

Germinated this week

Nothing this week.

Pricked out

Nothing this week.

Potted on this week

Nothing this week.

Planted this week

Nothing this week.

Here’s a link to everything planted so far this year

Greenhouse and garden progress

The only change this week in the greenhouse is I’ve now started a new book, which I’m really enjoying. One of the changes I’ve made this year is to have different paper books ready to read in each of my reading spaces on the allotment and at home.

I do also have flowers on the autumn tomatoes now and nice baby cucumbers on the autumn plants.

I’ve also scarified the lawn, given it a good rake, aerated all of the worst draining patches and re-seeded it using fine compost mixed with grass seed. August can be a bit early for re-seedings, but looking at the rain forecast for the next two weeks I think it will be ok!

I used a little Ryobi scarifier to do the hard work and it was excellent.

Polytunnel progress

Nothing to report really in the tunnel, except lots of tomatoes and not really too many. I’m eating a lot and sharing a few.

Allotment progress

I’ve finally started clearing beds! I removed two of our six courgette plants and we won’t miss them! Next week I will hopefully remove one of the early beetroot beds.

I have a lot of seedlings that will soon be looking for homes!

I’ve also applied slug nematodes to the beetroot and carrot beds, as well as the newly cleared bed and any beds that have, or will soon have salads. These are the top priorities. The beds with strulch don’t get nematodes because they have minimal slug issues once they are cleared in October. Finally I’ve started to apply some wood chip to targeted areas, the first of which is my perennial Elephant Garlic bed, the cloves and rounds are already planted.

This is the paper book that I’m currently reading on the allotment.

Waiting to be planted out

Chards for the winter greenhouse and to fill any gaps.

Sowings for next week

Nothing next week, then the week after the fun starts, sowings to go under cover for winter!

Weekly Harvest

Just daily harvests this week.

Useful links

Top level links

The website associated with this newsletter

My YouTube channel

My free eBook - Outgrow : The Art and Practice of Self-sufficiency

My complete gardening database real time access to everything!

My Amazon shop, which lists the gardening products I use, with comments

If you can afford it, you can buy me a cake or some seeds

The most useful lower level links

The reference info section of my eBook, lists what I actually sowed, planted, harvested each month, plus all of the tours and guide videos for that month

Monthly growing guides (what to sow, harvest fresh and eat from the store room each month)

Comprehensive growing guides to every type of veg that I grow

The section of my eBook that covers the basic tools and techniques of gardening (sowing, planting, pests, weeds etc)

The section of my eBook that covers the more advanced tools and techniques of gardening ( extending the season, successional plantings, spacing)

Using grow lights and alternatives to extend the season

Introduction to growing under cover with fleece, low tunnels, polytunnels etc

The chapter of my eBook that covers conservatory gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers greenhouse gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers polytunnel gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers cold frames and low tunnel gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers extending the season with fleece

The chapter of my eBook that covers outdoor gardening

A guide to my database, how to use it and how to take a copy of it

Useful database links

The types of veg that I grow, roughly ranked in my order of priority

The varieties of herbs, fruit and veg that I’m growing this year

Overview of all of the successions for year round gardening (I don’t grow/recommend all of them) main crops successions are the most reliable

What I’ve sowed so far this year

How long each type of seed typically takes to germinate

What I’ve planted so far this year

What I’ve harvested so far this year

First harvest dates for key successions

The pots and trays that I use with my comments and ratings

The nets and other covers that I use with my comments and ratings

Information on root depth for each type of veg

Information on germination temperature for each type of veg

Information on pesticide use for each type of fruit and veg

List of fruits and veggies that benefit from Mycorrhizal associations

How long seeds last for each type of veg

Which types of veg are heavy, medium and light feeders

How long seeds take to germinate

After two months without, we’ve actually had some rain, in fact about 75mm of rain, which on our growing areas translates into about 18,000 litres or 18 IBC tanks full, in just a few days. An amount that makes a mockery of the idea that water storage could ever be a substitute for rainfall on the allotments. It also nicely demonstrates how feeble hand watering is by comparison with rain watering. In a typical weekly water I might lay down 4-600, litres! So that much rain has done an order of magnitude more than I ever could and saved me a lot of time and effort!

I’ve used that time to have a very relaxing week. Debbie and I spent a day getting inspiration from a tour of the local garden centres. I don’t often buy much, but I love to walk around and I like the excuse to have a cheesecake from Barton Grange cafe.

One thing I like doing is scouting out the house plants, because although I’m no expert, I’m gradually increasing the number of house plants I have. My target spaces are quite demanding too, a hot and dry conservatory and a north facing window sill. So I’m planning on a display of succulents - a bit like the one below - for the conservatory. In the winter they will benefit from being on the grow light shelf (I will give them a few hours extra light a day) the lights are for me really, but the plants will benefit too. They will move onto the conservatory shelf in February/March when I need the grow light space for peppers and tomatoes.

In the library, on the north facing window sill, I’m planning to draw from this table of beauties, they will be able to stay there year round.

We’ve also had a lot of fun, taking the grandkids rock hopping at Cleveleys, where we made and decorated happy stones, which we placed strategically for other people to find and hopefully smile.

I’ve been doing a lot of short cycle rides, to rest my still very slightly injured heel, but I’ve tested it out on a decent hike too and it survived, so hopefully I will be hiking ready again next week. The upper reservoir at Rivington is looking very empty, but the lower ones are still in good shape.

I’ve not done that much gardening, but I’m preparing, because soon I start ripping out summer veggies and replacing them with winter greens. I’ve also started to design my spring flowers, read on …

Gardening problems this week

Nothing major to report this week, but there are always problems. Right now we are awash with cabbage white butterflies, so we will soon have eggs and caterpillars again. We have a short dry window of opportunity to deal with those. The hot weather and associated heat stress hasn’t been kind to the Brussels, both the red and green varieties have a dusting of mildew, but I think they will pull through.

The lettuce that stalled all through the heat wave has suddenly started growing like crazy and so after weeks of being short I now have a glut as two - and soon to be three - successions all arrive at the same time.

The dry weather has meant few slug and snail problems, but I’ve now harvested two of the savoy cabbages and each had a few slugs nestling in the outer leaves. At this point the damage is very light, but these are savoys that are meant to last us until winter, so goodness knows what they will be like by then.

First harvests of 2026

The main addition to our amazing summer diet this week comes in the form of autumn fruiting raspberries. I’m loving them and they are a welcome addition to the blueberries and blackberries we have had for ages. The pears are swelling nicely and this rain will have helped, but the apple crop is looking dismal. It’s not a new issue this week but in general out allotment site has very few apples this year, so the few trees that do have been decimated by codling moth, it’s also been a terrible year for plums, so thank goodness for pears!

First harvests of 2026

Here’s the complete list of first harvests this year.

Last harvests

Nothing new has finished this week, although we will soon finish our sweetcorn harvest.

Last harvests

Here’s a link to Last harvests so far this year

Sowings this week

Nothing new this week.

Here’s a link to everything sowed so far this year

Not germinated yet

Nothing, everything has germinated now.

Germinated this week

We’ve now got most of what we need to keep us well fed through autumn, with these leafy greens and reds and a lot of fruit and veg in the ground.

Pricked out

Pricked out

Potted on this week

Nothing this week

Planted this week

Nothing this week.

Here’s a link to everything planted so far this year

Greenhouse progress

The greenhouse is almost full of seedlings now, but bear in mind that I have a lot less space than last year for growing and a lot more space for living. The late cucumbers and tomatoes are just starting to flower.

Now that the nights are getting darker and the days are a bit cooler we are loving out new sun lounge and cosy night time retreat.

I’ve also just made up the greenhouse hanging baskets for later on in autumn.

The garden is looking quite happy after the rain and everything is growing well.

I’m enjoying having almost no watering to do when I come home after a day in the hills, cycle tracks or allotment.

Polytunnel progress

The tunnel is now delivering, huge numbers of tomatoes and the single surviving cucumber is quite productive again, providing just enough for eating fresh. The flowers have finished and need removing.

The tunnel is looking very lush and right now I’m just enjoying that lushness, rather than cutting all of the tomatoes leaves back.

Debbie has started making batches of passata, although we eat a lot less pasta now than we used to, so she will probably only need to make one more batch.

I’m eating huge numbers of cherry tomatoes and we have plenty for gifting too. I’ve settled on my tomatoes for next year, a very modest selection: in the greenhouse for early eating in late spring and early summer: Sungold, Sweet Aperitif and Santonio. Having initially decided to drop Santonio because it overheated in the greenhouse, it’s proven to be wonderful in the polytunnel and never splits, Sweet Aperitif sometimes splits a little but tastes wonderful fresh off the plant, Sungold splits like crazy but is my favourite fresh. I will add Nagina for the polytunnel for making passata, as well as the cherries. So only four cordon tomatoes going forward, very simple.

Allotment and garden progress

Almost all of the flowers have finished on the allotment now, but I don’t mind. I’ve plenty to focus on with fruits ripening and new plantings to watch grow and pests to look out for.

I’m very close now to starting to clearing beds. I will soon have cleared: the early red cabbages, the courgettes, the summer squash and the early beetroot, to make way for salad rocket, asian greens, baby beet leaves, lettuce and spinach. We still have courgettes at home.

Waiting to be planted out

Chards for the winter greenhouse and to fill any gaps.

Sowings for next week

Apart from the rocket these are just my winter lettuce test sowings.

Weekly Harvest

Just daily harvests this week.

Useful links

Top level links

The website associated with this newsletter

My YouTube channel

My free eBook - Outgrow : The Art and Practice of Self-sufficiency

My complete gardening database real time access to everything!

My Amazon shop, which lists the gardening products I use, with comments

If you can afford it, you can buy me a cake or some seeds

The most useful lower level links

The reference info section of my eBook, lists what I actually sowed, planted, harvested each month, plus all of the tours and guide videos for that month

Monthly growing guides (what to sow, harvest fresh and eat from the store room each month)

Comprehensive growing guides to every type of veg that I grow

The section of my eBook that covers the basic tools and techniques of gardening (sowing, planting, pests, weeds etc)

The section of my eBook that covers the more advanced tools and techniques of gardening ( extending the season, successional plantings, spacing)

Using grow lights and alternatives to extend the season

Introduction to growing under cover with fleece, low tunnels, polytunnels etc

The chapter of my eBook that covers conservatory gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers greenhouse gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers polytunnel gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers cold frames and low tunnel gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers extending the season with fleece

The chapter of my eBook that covers outdoor gardening

A guide to my database, how to use it and how to take a copy of it

Useful database links

The types of veg that I grow, roughly ranked in my order of priority

The varieties of herbs, fruit and veg that I’m growing this year

Overview of all of the successions for year round gardening (I don’t grow/recommend all of them) main crops successions are the most reliable

What I’ve sowed so far this year

How long each type of seed typically takes to germinate

What I’ve planted so far this year

What I’ve harvested so far this year

First harvest dates for key successions

The pots and trays that I use with my comments and ratings

The nets and other covers that I use with my comments and ratings

Information on root depth for each type of veg

Information on germination temperature for each type of veg

Information on pesticide use for each type of fruit and veg

List of fruits and veggies that benefit from Mycorrhizal associations

How long seeds last for each type of veg

Which types of veg are heavy, medium and light feeders

How long seeds take to germinate

We had a lovely few cooler days here, perfect for walking, but still dry and fairly sunny. Debbie and I took advantage of those few days to do some exploring. On the first day we walked from Chorley to Blackburn along the Liverpool to Leeds canal and then spent a few hours exploring Blackburn.

Then on the second day Deb explored more of the cathedral and arts scene and I continued along the canal to Burnley, making 40 miles for me over the two days.

Both days were stunning walks, especially if you appreciate the varied landscape of the canals: a mix of old industry, modern housing, farmland and distant moorland, as well as the ever present canal itself.

Debbie met me in Burnley and we returned home on the train, to another heat wave! The heat has stayed with us for the rest of the week. Which means it’s been early morning cycle rides, allotment watering, playing on the beach and eclipse watching for the rest of the week.

I’ve also taken advantage of a few days at home to work through my list of home maintenance jobs, including sealing the sauna roof ready for the return of rain.

Gardening problems this week

Despite being in the greenhouse with door chains the tatsoi and brassica seedlings have suffered from moth caterpillars, those tiny ones that I never manage to see until it’s too late. They seem to have departed now though and the plants will probably survive.

We’ve picked some sorry looking calabrese and cauliflowers from Debbie’s plot, the beetroot on there is all mildewed due to water stress and the leeks have rust. On Debbie’s plot we just can’t keep up with the watering, partly due to time and partly due to cost.

We’ve had no significant rain here now for months and being on sand there’s no way to retain water in the soil for long. Even Charles Dowding who famously hardly ever needs to water - growing as he does in silty loam on top of clay - has been putting down over 2000 litres each day to keep harvesting.

On my plot watering is easier, I have the infrastructure and my beds are mostly deep mulched, so harvests are still strong, except for lettuce, which is really sulking!

First harvests of 2026

Despite the challenges on Debbie’s plot we have managed to harvest the first of - hopefully many - savoy cabbages - which are still in great condition. I’ve harvested the first of the Red Lodero cabbages too, the Red Drumhead were ready ages ago. We’ve also been picking lots of sweetcorn, immature winter squash as well as all of the usual suspects.

First harvests of 2026

Here’s the complete list of first harvests this year.

Last harvests

We’ve now finished calabrese and cauliflowers until about October, so right now the only brassicas we have are kales, savoy and red cabbages. Our first batch of sweet corn has finished, the second batch is close to ready.

Last harvests

Here’s a link to Last harvests so far this year

Sowings this week

Lots sown this week, I’m a bit late with the Toughball onions, but they and everything else should be fine.

Here’s a link to everything sowed so far this year

Not germinated yet

Just this week’s sowings.

Germinated this week

Nothing this week.

Pricked out

Nothing this week.

Pricked out

Potted on this week

Nothing this week

Planted this week

Nothing this week.

Here’s a link to everything planted so far this year

Greenhouse progress

The tomatoes for autumn are growing like crazy, the cucumbers are slightly slower, but still making good progress.

Polytunnel progress

The tunnel is now delivering, huge numbers of tomatoes and the single surviving cucumber is quite productive again, providing just enough for eating fresh. The flowers have finished and need removing.

Allotment and garden progress

If you squint you can just about see the autumn salads have all germinated, some are a bit patchy, but I think we will have enough, if they survive the pests.

Waiting to be planted out

Chards for the winter greenhouse and to fill any gaps.

Sowings for next week

Nothing next week, but it’s worth looking at everything I’m sowing for the rest of the month:

I sow direct a large collection of beet/chard leaves, basically using up all of my old seeds. These will be ready in November as baby leaves for salads. Making space for them will mean clearing beds, probably courgettes. I will also test sow all of my winter lettuces and use them for a bridging harvest from November - December if they germinate. I sow my winter lettuce from about 10th September onwards, otherwise I have too big a glut and the lettuces don’t age well.

Weekly Harvest

Here’s a sample daily harvest

Useful links

Top level links

The website associated with this newsletter

My YouTube channel

My free eBook - Outgrow : The Art and Practice of Self-sufficiency

My complete gardening database real time access to everything!

My Amazon shop, which lists the gardening products I use, with comments

If you can afford it, you can buy me a cake or some seeds

The most useful lower level links

The reference info section of my eBook, lists what I actually sowed, planted, harvested each month, plus all of the tours and guide videos for that month

Monthly growing guides (what to sow, harvest fresh and eat from the store room each month)

Comprehensive growing guides to every type of veg that I grow

The section of my eBook that covers the basic tools and techniques of gardening (sowing, planting, pests, weeds etc)

The section of my eBook that covers the more advanced tools and techniques of gardening ( extending the season, successional plantings, spacing)

Using grow lights and alternatives to extend the season

Introduction to growing under cover with fleece, low tunnels, polytunnels etc

The chapter of my eBook that covers conservatory gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers greenhouse gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers polytunnel gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers cold frames and low tunnel gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers extending the season with fleece

The chapter of my eBook that covers outdoor gardening

A guide to my database, how to use it and how to take a copy of it

Useful database links

The types of veg that I grow, roughly ranked in my order of priority

The varieties of herbs, fruit and veg that I’m growing this year

Overview of all of the successions for year round gardening (I don’t grow/recommend all of them) main crops successions are the most reliable

What I’ve sowed so far this year

How long each type of seed typically takes to germinate

What I’ve planted so far this year

What I’ve harvested so far this year

First harvest dates for key successions

The pots and trays that I use with my comments and ratings

The nets and other covers that I use with my comments and ratings

Information on root depth for each type of veg

Information on germination temperature for each type of veg

Information on pesticide use for each type of fruit and veg

List of fruits and veggies that benefit from Mycorrhizal associations

How long seeds last for each type of veg

Which types of veg are heavy, medium and light feeders

How long seeds take to germinate

It’s been a much cooler week and a very welcome one. For me it’s also been a change of pace, after a few weeks with lots of activity I had to slow down a bit because I rolled my ankle while hiking last week. It’s not a bad sprain, but I can’t afford to be injured, so I’ve taken the opportunity of some slightly wild weather to rest. Given how much I’ve been sneezing the pollen count is either very high, or I have a touch of a summer cold too.

So for me it’s been gentle bike rides to Blackpool, lots of walking around town and pottering around the allotment, doing the kind of jobs that I always struggle to motivate myself to do, so lets get into that!

Gardening problems this week

Nothing new this week. We’ve had about 10mm of rain, but that quickly evaporated, so water stress continues to be the issue I’m managing. We’ve also had some fairly windy weather, which hit at exactly the same time last year. The French beans suffer the worst because they’ve become conditioned to calm, warm and sunny.

The summer squash and courgettes are starting to suffer badly with mildew, I’m removing the affected leaves, but I will take the plants out by the end of the month, because I need the space for winter plantings and by then we are so over anything resembling a courgette.

Open days this year

We had our final open day last weekend, the weather was perfect, we had a steady stream of visitors from all over the country, many of them readers of this newsletter or YouTubers and the committee did a fine job of the cakes and refreshments. We used it as a family day out and the two local grandkids had a lovely time. Willow - now 5 years old - relished the opportunity to be the main tour guide. A lot of the visitors are now regulars, having visited for several years and so for them the evolution of the plot over the last few years adds more interest and that will continue for a few more years.

First harvests of 2026

Not much new this week. The last of the tomatoes in the polytunnel ripened and we started picking any young Crown Prince squash, because we have plenty of mature ones now and young ones are lovely to eat and will almost certainly die off before reaching maturity.

First harvests of 2026

Here’s the complete list of first harvests this year.

Last harvests

Nothing new this week.

Last harvests

Here’s a link to Last harvests so far this year

Sowings this week

It’s been a good sowing week. I usually sow almost everything into modules and transplant, but this week I have beds reconditioned and ready to go, so I decided to try sowing direct. I sowed a big batch of salad ingredients, all of which will be cleared and re-planted later in October.

Here’s a link to everything sowed so far this year

Not germinated yet

Just this week’s sowings.

Germinated this week

Nothing this week.

Pricked out

Nothing this week.

Pricked out

Potted on this week

Nothing this week.

Nothing this week

Planted this week

I’ve started to replant the greenhouse now with it’s autumn crops. A couple of cucumbers and just three Sun Gold tomatoes. I’ve also finished replanting the whole of the kitchen garden.

Here’s a link to everything planted so far this year

Greenhouse progress

As mentioned above, I’m just adding a few plants into the greenhouse for autumn this year. I’m focussing on keeping it bright and airy and primarily a social space. Just two cucumbers on the grow bench and a few tomatoes in the corners and flowers in the hanging baskets.

Polytunnel progress

Last week the tunnel was full of shallots and onions drying, but this week I used a windy day to process them all and they are now stored safely in the shed. I’ve left little USB fans running, to provide some airflow over the cut ends.

The polytunnel is back now to its ordered normal state, definitely the tidiest it’s ever looked in summer and very easy to look after as a result. All that remains now is to clear the last few flowers out, to make space for the August plantings. Having removed all of the leaves from the cucumbers due to spider mite I was surprised to notice that one of the plants burst into life this week and I’ve already picked three fruits

Allotment and garden progress

The old onion bed was direct sown with a nice selection of salad ingredients for autumn, these help bridge the gap until the under cover beds (full of tomatoes and peppers and courgettes right now) are ready to harvest.

This bed will become the carrot bed next May, so I will replant it with baby lettuces in late October, or early November for a harvest in spring

I finally put in the nine floor vents that run all around the sides of the shed. Since the shed is raised off the floor these vents allow cold air to be drawn into the shed and they have a fine mesh under them, to keep insects out.

The shed has a large roof vent running under the eaves, for the warm air to escape.

Drilling these vents was a horrible, awkward job that I’d been putting off for a few weeks. I’d also been putting off pruning the cherries and plums, but that got done too.

The return of windy weather meant tying in the winter squash, some people net them, but I’ve always found a loop of string does the job perfectly.

The garden was looking a bit bare, so it was a relief to get it all replanted.

The plot is looking good though, just coping with the water shortage and low maintenance.

Waiting to be planted out

I had a good planting week, so there’s nothing in the queue this week.

Sowings for next week

The first of the over-wintered onions, two batches, ideally grown in a location with good light over winter. Some fast growing Asian greens and socket for the earky autumn salads. Lambs lettuce for the winter salads.

Weekly Harvest

I’m still picking daily, some days are bigger than others, this was yesterday’s.

I also processed three crates of red onions

and a crate of shallots

Useful links

Top level links

The website associated with this newsletter

My YouTube channel

My free eBook - Outgrow : The Art and Practice of Self-sufficiency

My complete gardening database real time access to everything!

My Amazon shop, which lists the gardening products I use, with comments

If you can afford it, you can buy me a cake or some seeds

The most useful lower level links

The reference info section of my eBook, lists what I actually sowed, planted, harvested each month, plus all of the tours and guide videos for that month

Monthly growing guides (what to sow, harvest fresh and eat from the store room each month)

Comprehensive growing guides to every type of veg that I grow

The section of my eBook that covers the basic tools and techniques of gardening (sowing, planting, pests, weeds etc)

The section of my eBook that covers the more advanced tools and techniques of gardening ( extending the season, successional plantings, spacing)

Using grow lights and alternatives to extend the season

Introduction to growing under cover with fleece, low tunnels, polytunnels etc

The chapter of my eBook that covers conservatory gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers greenhouse gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers polytunnel gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers cold frames and low tunnel gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers extending the season with fleece

The chapter of my eBook that covers outdoor gardening

A guide to my database, how to use it and how to take a copy of it

Useful database links

The types of veg that I grow, roughly ranked in my order of priority

The varieties of herbs, fruit and veg that I’m growing this year

Overview of all of the successions for year round gardening (I don’t grow/recommend all of them) main crops successions are the most reliable

What I’ve sowed so far this year

How long each type of seed typically takes to germinate

What I’ve planted so far this year

What I’ve harvested so far this year

First harvest dates for key successions

The pots and trays that I use with my comments and ratings

The nets and other covers that I use with my comments and ratings

Information on root depth for each type of veg

Information on germination temperature for each type of veg

Information on pesticide use for each type of fruit and veg

List of fruits and veggies that benefit from Mycorrhizal associations

How long seeds last for each type of veg

Which types of veg are heavy, medium and light feeders

How long seeds take to germinate

Anyway we’ve now reached August, I’m fairly well rested. I’ve enjoyed my two weeks away from too much gardening and that’s just in time to start replanting for autumn, winter and spring.

Open days

This year was very unusual, but it likely to be typical from now on, because in July we had the RHS judging, the National Open Garden’s Scheme and our normal open day. For me this meant three full days on the allotment preparing for each of these events and 2.5 days on the allotment on the day of the events. They provided the extra motivation for me to get on top of the plot and having the new shed provided some very welcome extra luxury and logistical convenience too.

Heat waves and drought

June and July also brought two heatwaves, with hot weather in between and essentially no rain. Not for the first time was I very thankful of the investments I’ve made in water management and water retention on the plot. The 6-8” of wood chip on the paths provides a huge moisture reserve under them and since I plant a lot of my climbers directly adjacent or through the paths, that helps a lot. The thick strulch mulches help in all of the under-cover beds and the thich compost mulches help a little on the rest of the plot. Over winter I store about 5,000 litres of water and I replenish about half of that in spring and summer, so I’m able to be fairly generous with my watering, although I do have to top up from the mains as well.

The plots still suffered in the drought though, the summer lettuces hardly grew at all in full sun, we’e not managed to water the brassicas enough, so they are all looking a bti sorry for themselves, a lot of the beetroot has gone to seed, the trees in containers and the flowers in containers have all struggled. The melons looked great, until they didn’t, when mildew took out every plant within a week and the leeks have rust.

All is not lost though, the onion and shallot crop was acceptable, the garlic crop was good and the elephant garlic was great. The winter squash looks to be one of our best and the carrots have been great so far. Although the autumn beetroot struggled the summer crop has been excellent and the winter and spring succession looks good so far. The second early potato harvest was one of our best and the main-crops are still going strong. The new food store in the allotment shed is full!

Gardening in August

Jobs: Pinch out the tops of climbing beans. Cut out last years growth of summer fruiting raspberries, while it’s easy to distinguish old and new wood. Continue taking strawberry runners. Lift onions and plant (or prepare for) your next succession, in our case that’s spinach, turnips, radish and salad greens for autumn.

Although in summer and spring timings don’t really matter, they become critical for veg that will be eaten in autumn and winter. Just a few weeks late and your plant’s won’t mature in time, so you might need to experiment with these dates for your micro-climate. Occasionally you will sow too early, in which case it’s easy to sow a few spares a week or two later, just in case! It’s useful to remember that a typical veggie might take 4 weeks in October to grow as much as a week in August and it only gets worse in November.

• Early August is key for module sowing spring onions to eat in autumn, late August to mature in late winter/early spring. Be sure to germinate these somewhere away from summer heat

• We sometimes do a last sowing of Kale at the beginning of August, destined for either the polytunnel or one of our low tunnels. It grows slowly in Autumn, but by late winter it’s taking over from our outdoor plants and it lasts into May, when the outdoor plants have gone to seed (we eat the flowers though)

• If you like to grow over-wintered onions (Japanese) sow them in early and mid August and plant out in late September or October, we find that staggering them slightly reduces the risk of them all going to seed in a bad year. If you want these as early as possible we sometimes put some of ours in a low tunnel, which we remove some time in March, letting the onions fend for themselves. The tunnel goes over early French beans for example, which need it a lot more!

• If you want some extra variety in your winter salad mixes sow claytonia, mustards, pak choi and salad rocket. August is perfect for planting outside, but early September is better if you will be growing under cover. Recently we’ve discovered that Claytonia does extremely well under cover too, so well in fact that I only grow claytonia under cover now.

• Early August is the time to re-start sowing true spinach, so that it’s ready to replace the New Zealand spinach by the first frost. Spinach does fine sown in September too, but will often not be ready for harvest until March unless it’s grown under cover.

• Through August is also the perfect time to sow a few batch of autumn and winter lettuces, these will provide a great harvest through September, October and November, by which time our September sown lettuces will be ready. We will protect our August sowings with low tunnels and cold-frames towards the end of September or early October depending on the weather. I like Flashy lightning butter oak, Navara, Little Gem, Canasta and the best of all: Grenoble Red.

• Late August is the last time to sow corn salad (lambs lettuce), if you want it to mature in January, which is when we really need it! It’s one of the few salad leaves that survives outside, so it’s great for filling up patches of bare soil! Sowing corn salad can be tricky though , sow it too early and it tends to get mildew, sow it too later and it might not have time to mature by winter, unless it’s growing in full sun. I generally sow in early and mid August and keep well watered!

• We also restart sowing turnips and radish in August, to mature in the cooler weather of autumn.

• Towards the end of August I also sow a mix of perpetual spinach, chard and beetroot. I direct seed them at high density and grow them under cover, with the objective of having a big harvest of baby beet family leaves for salads all the way through autumn, winter and early spring.

• Finally we sometimes sow a batch of carrots in containers, which will stay outside until October and then mature for a winter harvest in the polytunnel. In late September we are also growing spring carrots in the ground, after great results last year.

All of the details

You can find all of the details of my plans for August in my sowing log, which is updated in real-time, as is my planting log. Here’s the visual summary. This year I’m planning to sow a few of my purple sprouting broccoli late, in the hope that I can plant it out after the ground has cooled enough for club root risk to have diminished.

You will notice three batches of lettuce in August, taking advantage of how growth slows down through September, so that even 2 weeks difference in August translates into the lettuces maturing over a month apart in October.

If you are new to my newsletters, then you will find all of the specifics of what I’m sowing, planting, harvesting etc in my gardening week newsletters.

Problems in August

There are a few problems that plague me in August, the first being wind, in fact it’s very windy today and the French beans that have grown enjoying only only light winds and sunny days are looking very battered and bruised. The squash too are being battered, but the squash themselves are almost ripe already.

The next big issue is getting the lettuce to survive the first few weeks of August, they are two enemies to contend with, the first being various moth caterpillars who are invisible until they’re not, within 2 days a beautiful lettuce is turned to mush. The second is lettuce root aphid, also invisible, until the lettuce just wilts and never recovers. I’ve not really found true solutions to either of these issues, however I almost always get a crop through a combination of planting more than I need, lots of varieties and a few locations.

The next issue I often have is mildew on the corn salad leaves, this often happens with my early august sowing, because corn salad likes it cold and wet and August and September are often warm and dry. There are two ‘solutions’ sow two batches, two weeks apart and water both well and grow outside. If you do find plants getting mildew plant them as soon as you can, the affected leaves often rot away to nothing and new growth is ok.

Then we have the poor old brassicas and their caterpillar nemesis. At this point most but not all of ours are uncovered, so we rely on inspection rather than prevention, although we might spray with BT once or twice, if we get a weather window when it’s not too rainy. We grow a lot more cabbages now though and once a good heart has started to form they are more more resilient to caterpillars, but also to whitefly and cabbage aphid. That’s the stage our savoys and red cabbages are in now, so at this point even though white fly is arriving I think we will get a good harvest this winter. Whitefly and cabbage aphid can still destroy kale at this point, but Brussels and Kalettes usually survive to harvest time.

Finally as we head towards September and rain returns, so too do slugs and snails, so I try and do whatever I can to keep my beetroot and carrot beds free of them, that means keeping nets on the carrots (also preventing carrot fly) and removing decaying beetroot foliage.

It’s been another exceptional week, essentially the perfect kind of summer week for me and a reminder why I don’t go away on many holidays. We’ve had a few days with a light wind and the odd rain shower, but those just make the sky more interesting and keep the air fresh. Those are the days when I love nothing better than walking through the dunes and out to the beach.

The council are raking our beach quite extensively now, so it has a strange vibe, half beach, half ploughed field! I like it, especially when I’m the first one to walk out on it and it’s not marred by footsteps.

I’ve been cycling too of course, almost every day, but only two longer rides. Just like last week I’m keeping to the cycle path that runs up the coast, because of the breeze, the cafes and the lower pollen count.

I often stop off at Blackpool on my way home, because it has an excellent M&S with a better range than our local one.

I’ve been putting the finishing touches to the greenhouse, which we are relishing as a sun lounge right now. In that role we want it fairly free of lush planting, but there’s enough going on in there to keep things interesting. My main focus has been evening cosyness, but also ventilation and insect control.

I’ve also been hiking, a wonderful day hike in the local hills.

So it’s been a busy week, but I did get some real gardening done too!

Gardening problems this week

Lack of water continues to be the main stressor, not so much in the kitchen garden, where watering is easy and on my plot, where everything has a deep mulch, but Debbie’s plot and the front garden are looking quite stressed. We’ve had essentially no rain now for 2 months, although it looks like we will get a modest amount next week. I might even be forced to stay inside for a day and to my tax return!

Within a few days, mildew rocketed through the melons in the greenhouse at a shocking rate. Once the foliage died back I did discover quite a few melons, hidden away, but I’m not sure they will ripen now.

After spraying with BT last week the caterpillars are mostly under control, the eggs have dried up and the few caterpillars that hatched fell to the floor. One cucumber plant did finally shoot again after it’s spider mite challenges, so I might have cucumbers on the allotment again soon. I was quite surprised to see it come back to life after a week of dormancy. I’ve got some predator mites to hang from the stem.

Open days this year:

We had our first open day last weekend, it was part of the National Open Garden’s Scheme and it was lovely. The weather was perfect, we had a steady stream of visitors from all over the country, many of them readers of this newsletter or Youtubers and the committee did a fine job of the cakes and refreshments. I enjoyed two exceptional cakes, especially delicious on a long hot day.

The second open day is on 1st August at 10am, this one is more family oriented - more fun - more plots are open and it’s probably a little busier and there are some sun things for kids, like the scarecrow competition.

As always you can find us at Shepherd Road Allotments, 91 Shepherd Rd, Lytham Saint Annes FY8 3ST. There’s no parking on site, so you need to park on the road side. You can find me by following the red arrows below, but there’s an abundance of lovely plots on site, lots of different styles of gardening on show.

If you want to find Debbie’s plot, follow the blue arrow and look for the wood chipped plot on your left, just after the tap :

Debbie’s done a lot of work on her plot this year to make it interesting for visitors and it’s very easy to find!

First harvests of 2026

As if they know open day is approaching, all of the polytunnel tomatoes are ripening! Which is great, because next week I’m composting the early hanging basket plants. This means I still have plentiful tomatoes to snack on. We aren’t making as many preserves this year, so unrestricted snacking is the order of the season. The peppers are ripening too at quite a rate, so the plot is starting to look quite colourful!

First harvests of 2026

Here’s the complete list of first harvests this year.

Last harvests

As mentioned, it’s the end of the early tomatoes this week. I’ve been so impressed by the Red Profusion and Tumbling Tom yellow’s, we’ve been picking them since the 27th May. It’s also the end of the early savoys, but fortunately we start picking the main-crop savoys next week, along with the red cabbages, this will make for a much nicer plate of leafy greens. This last week it’s been mainly red brussel sprout leaves and kale. We also picked the last few nectarines.

We have a white flesh and a yellow flesh nectarine, the yellow flesh is new though so I didn’t let it fruit, but it’s grown into a nice little tree this summer. We also have two apricots, neither of which fruited this year. One suffered a bit of die back, but they both look strong now.

Last harvests

Here’s a link to Last harvests so far this year

Sowings this week

Nothing this week.

Here’s a link to everything sowed so far this year

Not germinated yet

Nothing this week.

Germinated this week

Nothing this week.

Pricked out

Quite a lovely collection pricked out this week, to join the lettuces in the greenhouse.

Pricked out

Potted on this week

Nothing this week, but hopefully the tomatoes will be potted on next week.

Nothing this week

Planted this week

Nothing this week.

Here’s a link to everything planted so far this year

Greenhouse progress

The greenhouse has been such a joy this week. It’s now nearly full of plants and we are spending a lot of time in there too.

The peppers in the corners are thriving, but they will soon be replaced by the late tomatoes.

Polytunnel progress

Last week there were just a few Sun Gold tomatoes ripening, but it’s all change this week as every variety has an abundance. We are mostly eating fresh this year, so the shade sail is reducing the glut by slowing down one end of the tunnel a little.

I gave everything a good prune back this week and it looks so much better. I’ve also moved the onions and shallots in, they are almost dry now, so if rain arrives next week I don’t want to leave them outside.

Allotment and garden progress

I’ve now reconditioned the onion and shallot beds and the early potato bed, so I have plenty of planting space ready to go. It’s unusual for me to have bed space ready, but not planted, but since we are harvesting a bit less this year this is the way of it. What it means for me though is a much more relaxed pace.

The plot is looking good though, just coping with the water shortage and low maintenance.

Waiting to be planted out

I’m close to starting planting and sowing again now, but nothing that will definately need to go in next week, possibly lettuce.

Nothing this week

Sowings for next week

The the threatened rain should mean that I actually get around to all of this sowing!

Weekly Harvest

No big harvests this week!

Useful links

Top level links

The website associated with this newsletter

My YouTube channel

My free eBook - Outgrow : The Art and Practice of Self-sufficiency

My complete gardening database real time access to everything!

My Amazon shop, which lists the gardening products I use, with comments

If you can afford it, you can buy me a cake or some seeds

The most useful lower level links

The reference info section of my eBook, lists what I actually sowed, planted, harvested each month, plus all of the tours and guide videos for that month

Monthly growing guides (what to sow, harvest fresh and eat from the store room each month)

Comprehensive growing guides to every type of veg that I grow

The section of my eBook that covers the basic tools and techniques of gardening (sowing, planting, pests, weeds etc)

The section of my eBook that covers the more advanced tools and techniques of gardening ( extending the season, successional plantings, spacing)

Using grow lights and alternatives to extend the season

Introduction to growing under cover with fleece, low tunnels, polytunnels etc

The chapter of my eBook that covers conservatory gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers greenhouse gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers polytunnel gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers cold frames and low tunnel gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers extending the season with fleece

The chapter of my eBook that covers outdoor gardening

A guide to my database, how to use it and how to take a copy of it

Useful database links

The types of veg that I grow, roughly ranked in my order of priority

The varieties of herbs, fruit and veg that I’m growing this year

Overview of all of the successions for year round gardening (I don’t grow/recommend all of them) main crops successions are the most reliable

What I’ve sowed so far this year

How long each type of seed typically takes to germinate

What I’ve planted so far this year

What I’ve harvested so far this year

First harvest dates for key successions

The pots and trays that I use with my comments and ratings

The nets and other covers that I use with my comments and ratings

Information on root depth for each type of veg

Information on germination temperature for each type of veg

Information on pesticide use for each type of fruit and veg

List of fruits and veggies that benefit from Mycorrhizal associations

How long seeds last for each type of veg

Which types of veg are heavy, medium and light feeders

How long seeds take to germinate

It’s been a really lovely week! The heat has dissipated a little, but it’s continued to be sunny which has meant almost daily cycle rides for me and I’ve stuck to the breezy coast, avoiding the countryside while the pollen count is so high.

On day’s when I’ve not been cycling I’ve been hiking. I really dislike hiking in a heat wave and it’s risky too, so easy to get dehydrated and stuck in the middle of nowhere, so I’ve really missed it these last few weeks.

I’ve been lucky to choose the cooler days, which has allowed me to be a bit more energetic, getting out from beneath the trees and and running my hill repeats up my favourite routes.

I’ve also used up two of the hotter days this week, clearing out the greenhouse, giving it a good clean and re-purposing it as the multi-functional space it was always intended to be. In fact if you look in my original greenhouse design guide, you will find the following sentence:

The greenhouse was designed to be a multi-functional space, providing a large dining room, sun lounge and growing space.

We used it that way for a few months, but then as has so often happened in my gardening, my experimental nature has driven me to explore the art of the gardening possible. That’s meant years of trying to find what grows best at what times of year and trying to whittle down the list of great crops to grow in each season, in my space. Since my space is fairly shaded, my list probably won’t be your list. Anyway, this has meant a greenhouse chock full of plants every season of the year and my sun lounge and winter garden aspirations deferred, until now. The experiments are now done and so I’m confident that I can strike the right balance between using the greenhouse as a place to produce food and using the greenhouse as a space to spend time.

We designed the greenhouse from the start to be used as a versatile space, so the grow shelves are now tucked away under the trestle table and we have mocked up the layout we are going to enjoy through autumn, winter and into spring. We have still to finish dressing the space and making it beautiful, but you get the idea.

We are also screening both doors, this stops birds and insects flying in and less insects means less caterpillars on the veg and less spiders scaring the grandkids. The screens look lovely too.

Since I’ve been working in the garden for a couple of days, I’ve also cleaned the sauna and given it a yearly coating of sauna oil, it looks like new again.

So it’s been a busy week, but I did get some real gardening done too!

Gardening problems this week

We now have a lot of eggs on our brassicas, but not many have hatched. I’ve squashed a lot, but we have a lot of plants and we always miss some, so it’s the perfect time to spray with BT, while it’s not too sunny and before the rain.

Other than that the main problems are just lack of water. We are due a few mm of rain this weekend, but then it’s back to drought conditions, so this is an ongoing issue. My allotment has been designed to minimise watering, but I still need to water regularly, because being on sand the ground doesn’t hold water, no matter how much compost I add to the soil.

Open days this year:

We had our first open day last weekend, it was part of the National Open Garden’s Scheme and it was lovely. The weather was perfect, we had a steady stream of visitors from all over the country, many of them readers of this newsletter or Youtubers and the committee did a fine job of the cakes and refreshments. I enjoyed two exceptional cakes, especially delicious on a long hot day.

The second open day is on 1st August at 10am, this one is more family oriented - more fun - more plots are open and it’s probably a little busier and there are some sun things for kids, like the scarecrow competition.

As always you can find us at Shepherd Road Allotments, 91 Shepherd Rd, Lytham Saint Annes FY8 3ST. There’s no parking on site, so you need to park on the road side. You can find me by following the red arrows below, but there’s an abundance of lovely plots on site, lots of different styles of gardening on show.

If you want to find Debbie’s plot, follow the blue arrow and look for the wood chipped plot on your left, just after the tap :

From the database

I know a lot of people struggle to keep track of successions. My successions table provides lots of ideas. This is a tiny excerpt for July:

and this is an extract from August, both are for growing outside, without protection:

You can find the full table here and see what you can also grow under cover.

My ebook also has lots more details.

First harvests of 2026

As you will see in the last harvest section, the greenhouse tomatoes have all finished now and we’ve harvested quite a few which are finishing ripening. The polytunnel plants are starting to ripen in abundance now, so just in time and more luck than judgement. The only real addition to the harvest list this week is the golden purslane and what a fabulous addition it makes to the salad mixes!

Most of my salads are purslane right now!

First harvests of 2026

Here’s the complete list of first harvests this year.

Last harvests

As already mentioned the greenhouse now only has seedlings and a few chilli peppers in it now. All of the tomatoes are gone, everything else is outside, or composted. I tried quite a few new varieties this year and a few are keepers:

1. Sun gold are the best by far and continue to be my favourite, eaten straight off the plants, but I need another good cordon cherry that doesn’t split. I found one I really liked ..

2. Sweet Aperitif has been the find of the year, big beautiful fan trusses, lovely taste, no splitting, good colour, this is a real keeper

3. Crimson plum continues to be a big hit with everyone, good sized fruits, reasonable crop, good taste, blight resistant, works well cooked and fresh

4. Black moon is still worth growing, for it’s novelty value, but it’s a main crop plant really, not suitable for early harvests and best cooked

5. The hanging basket varieties: Red profusion, Tumbling Tom Yellow are both excellent, especially earlier in the year, if anything the problem is they are too productive, I probably need to only grow 3 baskets of these

So for early crops it’s Sun Gold, Sweet Aperitif, Crimson Plum, Red profusion and Tumbling Tom yellow, my needs are simple. All of these are suitable for main-crops as well and as you know, all of my main-crops are side shoots off the earlies. What I’m missing is a very sweet yellow plum, if anyone has any suggestions.

What didn’t make the cut?

1. Santonio, small trusses, deep red that over-heated on really hot days

2. Maskotka, very prolific, but horrible mushy taste

3. Yellow pear, also mushy and tasteless, although it looked nice and the odd one was ok

Last harvests

Here’s a link to Last harvests so far this year

Sowings this week

Nothing this week.

Here’s a link to everything sowed so far this year

Not germinated yet

Just the elephant garlic, no surprises there. I did sow about 50 of my beloved Flashy Butter Oak lettuce. When I sowed a few - two weeks ago - non germinated, this time with more seeds, they were slow, but I have maybe 6 on the way. I was prompted to try again because they are currently out of stock at Vital Seeds.

Germinated this week

The Flashy Butter Oak germinated after I grabbed this image!

Pricked out

Pricked out

Potted on this week

I potted on the Sun Gold side shoots, that will go into the greenhouse soon, for an autumn harvest. I’ve tried lots of tomatoes for autumn and the only ones that are sweet enough for me are Sun Gold

Nothing this week

Planted this week

Nothing this week.

Here’s a link to everything planted so far this year

Greenhouse progress

Last week the greenhouse was in a depressing state. I don’t like to leave it like that for long! We’d planned to convert it into a sun lounge in September, so we just brought that forward. I set to work, clearing out all of the plants that we’d finished harvesting, like the tomatoes and melons, composted anything badly infested with spider mites and moved the rest outside : peppers and aubergines.

I gave everything a really good wash down and steam cleaned all of the nooks and crannies and left insecticide bombs in overnight. Everything else moved outside onto the lawn and that all got a good wash down.

I went through all of my pots and trays and rationalised them.

Then the following day, everything moved back inside, all neat, clean and tidy.

I will soon re-introduce cucumbers and tomatoes, but I will use some spider mite predators, just in case.

I’m excited by this return to plan, it reflects a broader shift in my gardening. I’ve spent ten years focussed on growing the most food I can for the longest period of time. Now my focus is more balanced. I’m still growing year round, but only the very best crops and I’m not feeding as many people. This shift frees up more time for my other hobbies, but just as important it allows me to spend more time on one of my main interests, place making.

I love building and making places that people love to spend time in and so that’s where some of my energies are going, not quite as much focus on harvesting food, a lot more focus on enjoying spending time in the places where I grow that food.

Polytunnel progress

The cucumbers didn’t recover from the spider mite infestation and quite a few of the flowers were decimated too. However the tomatoes are looking strong.

I’ve now removed the early celery from under the trestle tables and I won’t replant those spots until the end of autumn. So the tunnel is looking very organised and tranquil and a lot less jungle like than in previous years. Even though we’ve had a drought I’ve noticed how easy watering has been.

Allotment and garden progress

The allotment and gardens are now fairly stable. Mostly planted, with just a few beds being harvested. This week I will be picking the remaining two beds of shallots and onions and watering in slug nematodes into those empty beds, the freshly planted lettuce beds and the carrot and winter beetroot beds. If I can keep these beds fairly slug free then it will be a big win.

I’m not immediately re-planting the beds that I’m clearing this year, consistent with my objective to grow a bit less food. We usually have a huge surplus in autumn, but this year I want to focus my attention on winter harvests.

I’m pleased to report that after a shaky start, the peppers are starting to ripen!

I’ve also topped all of the summer fruiting strawberries and they are all looking much happier. These few in the garden were the last to get refreshed.

Waiting to be planted out

I’ve cleared out and thrown away all spares, so I’m all planted up.

Nothing this week

Sowings for next week

I try to keep a good supply of lettuces in reserve, because at this time of year I sometimes lose a lot to caterpillars and/or root aphid. No signs of root aphid right now, but caterpillars in abundance on some of the older lettuces

Weekly Harvest

The store is filling up nicely with bulk harvests. I will give you a full update soon!

Useful links

Top level links

The website associated with this newsletter

My YouTube channel

My free eBook - Outgrow : The Art and Practice of Self-sufficiency

My complete gardening database real time access to everything!

My Amazon shop, which lists the gardening products I use, with comments

If you can afford it, you can buy me a cake or some seeds

The most useful lower level links

The reference info section of my eBook, lists what I actually sowed, planted, harvested each month, plus all of the tours and guide videos for that month

Monthly growing guides (what to sow, harvest fresh and eat from the store room each month)

Comprehensive growing guides to every type of veg that I grow

The section of my eBook that covers the basic tools and techniques of gardening (sowing, planting, pests, weeds etc)

The section of my eBook that covers the more advanced tools and techniques of gardening ( extending the season, successional plantings, spacing)

Using grow lights and alternatives to extend the season

Introduction to growing under cover with fleece, low tunnels, polytunnels etc

The chapter of my eBook that covers conservatory gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers greenhouse gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers polytunnel gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers cold frames and low tunnel gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers extending the season with fleece

The chapter of my eBook that covers outdoor gardening

A guide to my database, how to use it and how to take a copy of it

Useful database links

The types of veg that I grow, roughly ranked in my order of priority

The varieties of herbs, fruit and veg that I’m growing this year

Overview of all of the successions for year round gardening (I don’t grow/recommend all of them) main crops successions are the most reliable

What I’ve sowed so far this year

How long each type of seed typically takes to germinate

What I’ve planted so far this year

What I’ve harvested so far this year

First harvest dates for key successions

The pots and trays that I use with my comments and ratings

The nets and other covers that I use with my comments and ratings

Information on root depth for each type of veg

Information on germination temperature for each type of veg

Information on pesticide use for each type of fruit and veg

List of fruits and veggies that benefit from Mycorrhizal associations

How long seeds last for each type of veg

Which types of veg are heavy, medium and light feeders

How long seeds take to germinate

Just like the rest of the country we are still in a heat wave and it’s a seemingly endless struggle to keep everything watered. I’m not at my best in the heat so unfortunately I can’t spend the long lazy days of summer cycling or hiking, which would be my preference. Instead I’m spending the first hour of the day in the air-conditioned comfort of Caffe Nero and then cycling for an hour or two and then pottering on the allotment.

What a joy it’s been too, to have the allotment to retreat too, because I have plenty of shade and plenty of gentle activity to motivate me, lots of people to chat to and maybe too much time to spend watering. Fortunately most of that watering takes place on the much cool evenings, with the bonus that I’ve enjoyed some nice sunsets.

When I have been cycling this week I’ve chosen the promenade path that runs up the coast to Fleetwood and by the end of the week, I was enjoying a gentle headwind to Cleveleys and a similar tailwind home, which is about as perfect as a hot/sunny/humid cycling day can get.

If the weather forecast is to be believed the heatwave will break on Saturday, which is when our first open day is scheduled and that’s going to make for a really lovely day.

I’ve sent this newsletter out a day early, as a reminder, just in case you’d like to attend.

Gardening problems this week

We continue to have a few caterpillars, who doesn’t at this time of year. They affect the brassicas naturally, but also there are a few on the beetroot and a few of the peppers. I’m also watching carefully for problems with the lettuces.

This would normally be the perfect time to spray with BT, but right now it’s too hot/sunny so I’m being patient, if I can manage it I only like to spray a couple of times in a year, maybe 3 times in a bad year, maybe next week.

I doubt anyone doesn’t have a few stressed plants at the moment, I probably have too many to list, but they include the beetroot and brassicas on Debbie’s plot, I had to give those an emergency water a few days ago. On my plot I’ve lost the cucumbers to red spider mites and it looks like one bed of courgettes will soon follow.

I think it’s too hot for the peppers and tomatoes to set fruit, but fortunately we have reasonable fruit set already.

Open days this year:

The allotments are open twice this year. The first opening day is for the National Open Gardens Scheme, on Saturday 18th July at 10am. It will probably be quieter than the main open day and not all of the plots are open, mine is. However if you are visiting the area to see some of the other open gardens in Lancashire, then you could also just pop into the allotments for a look around and a chat.

The second is the main open day, lots of locals come and there’s more committee organised events, stalls etc. Again, my plot will be open. It’s on 1st August at 10am.

From the database

Right now this newsletter seems a bit embarrassing for the lack of planting that’s happening. I thought to redress the balance I’d surface the planted so far view from the database. That looks a bit better, see the database if you actually want to read it!

First harvests of 2026

It’s been quite a week for first harvests! The greenhouse melons, peppers, aubergines are ready now, although overall the greenhouse crop this summer will be poor, because the plants are struggling too much due to heat, pest and disease pressure. It’s quite a shock seeing the greenhouse emptying so quickly, but I console myself with a fabulous spring and June and a brilliant tomato harvest so far.

Just as I’m eating the very last few trusses of Sun gold in the greenhouse, the first polytunnel fruits are ripening, which is a relief because I love Sun Gold, fresh off the vines. I’ve also done the first big onion and shallot harvests. I’m about halfway through right now. I’ve also harvested the second potatoes from the ground, I only grow a small patch and they usually keep us going into autumn.

First harvests of 2026

Here’s the complete list of first harvests this year.

Last harvests

No new last harvests this week although I may have harvested the last of the aubergines, we will see. Debbie harvested the last of the Santa Cruz spinach too, it’s been harvested since the end of May, so close to 2 months in summer, with large leaves, but good taste, despite going to seed a while ago. The performance is so much better than Mikado that we are switching to Santa Cruz now for all of our late spring sowings and I will be sowing again in early August.

Last harvests

Here’s a link to Last harvests so far this year

Sowings this week

Nothing this week.

Here’s a link to everything sowed so far this year

Not germinated yet

The elephant garlic is planted, but it won’t surface until mid-autumn now. I’ve also left some of our green garlic bulbs in the containers, since we didn’t manage to harvest it. I’m hoping for lots of clumps of tender green garlic next year, but we will see. Unfortunately one of my favourite lettuces has failed me again, so I need to buy fresh seed, also the Entita salad onions are a bit slow, but they might germinate next week.

Germinated this week

It’s been lovely to see all of these new babies arrive. They are actually under grow lights in the air-conditioned bedroom, because full sun and 30c is just too much for them right now and I have more than enough solar power.

Pricked out

Pricked out

Potted on this week

Nothing this week

Planted this week

Nothing this week.

Here’s a link to everything planted so far this year

Greenhouse progress

The greenhouse is in a depressing state, fortunately I’m not. The tomatoes are finishing, although I’m leaving them in longer than I expected just so there’s something productive in there. The peppers are ok, just ripening now, but they would be happier outside. The cucumbers are long gone and the aubergines all have red spider mite, as do the melons. So by August the greenhouse will probably be empty of mature plants!

I do however have young cucumbers and rooted tomato side shoots to go back in, but I’m worried that the cucumbers will just get spider mites again!

Anyway, my plan for autumn has always been to make the greenhouse into a ‘winter garden’, ie a space whose focus is comfy seats, relaxing music, flowers and a few feature edibles. This fits with my strategy for the garden as a whole, gradually shifting the focus to beauty, fun, games and relaxation, with edibles that fit that theme. The allotment is also going the same way, but to a lesser extent and at a slower pace.

The lack of mature edibles just means that I get to spend august preparing. I’m going to thoroughly clean the greenhouse, varnish the trestle table and benches, clean and stow all of the pots and trays. Not having anything much growing in there will make this whole process much easier.

In mid-winter we will have quite a lot growing, but we are also going to have some fake displays up on the shelves and Debbie has been prototyping those.

Polytunnel progress

As you can see the polytunnel is looking very tidy this year and also enjoying its wide range of flowers. The tomatoes are slow with only a few ripe now and truss sizes are modest, smaller than the early plants in the greenhouse.

I’ve removed ALL of the leaves from the cucumbers, and thoroughly sprayed the stems with horticultural soap, in the hope that the plants recover, it’s a small hope, I will give them a week.

With the greenhouse returning to its original intended purpose as a winter garden, the polytunnel is taking back its roles as the primary growing spaces for my overwintered brassicas, alliums etc. To be honest the polytunnel is better anyway - just less convenient - because it’s in full sun in winter, whereas the greenhouse is mostly in light shade.

Allotment and garden progress

I did manage a quick tour video of the allotment this week. You will see some heat stress in action, but it’s not too bad, Debbie’s plot and the garden suffered the worst, but even they are coming back from the brink now.

My summer beetroot beds have finished growing now and are ready for harvest. My usual practice is then to snip off the leaves, so I can see how much I have to harvest each week, the leaves also regrow and make lovely smaller leaves for salads but the roots don’t grow huge.

I’ve also been chipping away at the outstanding jobs in the new shed. I’ve now finished varnishing the door:

and all of the internal finishes:

I’ve been spending a lot of time sitting out in the garden trying to keep cool.

Waiting to be planted out

I’ve cleared out and thrown away all spares, so I’m all planted up.

Nothing this week

Sowings for next week

Finally I’m getting started sowing properly again! You will see some of these are majestic - hopefully - plants for the greenhouse.

Weekly Harvest

Bulk harvests and daily harvests are the order of the day right now. I’ve also been eating a lot of fruits! Debbie’s been making a lot of fruit vinegars.

Picked the first big batch of potatoes, prior to this everything has been picked weekly from containers. We still have a few in containers, still to harvest as needed in winter. As you can see we are growing a lot less potatoes this year!

I picked two of these crates of shallots, which are drying now, I have one more crate to pick.

I picked half of the red onions.

I also processed the white onions.

The garlic

and the elephant garlic:

Useful links

Top level links

The website associated with this newsletter

My YouTube channel

My free eBook - Outgrow : The Art and Practice of Self-sufficiency

My complete gardening database real time access to everything!

My Amazon shop, which lists the gardening products I use, with comments

If you can afford it, you can buy me a cake or some seeds

The most useful lower level links

The reference info section of my eBook, lists what I actually sowed, planted, harvested each month, plus all of the tours and guide videos for that month

Monthly growing guides (what to sow, harvest fresh and eat from the store room each month)

Comprehensive growing guides to every type of veg that I grow

The section of my eBook that covers the basic tools and techniques of gardening (sowing, planting, pests, weeds etc)

The section of my eBook that covers the more advanced tools and techniques of gardening ( extending the season, successional plantings, spacing)

Using grow lights and alternatives to extend the season

Introduction to growing under cover with fleece, low tunnels, polytunnels etc

The chapter of my eBook that covers conservatory gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers greenhouse gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers polytunnel gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers cold frames and low tunnel gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers extending the season with fleece

The chapter of my eBook that covers outdoor gardening

A guide to my database, how to use it and how to take a copy of it

Useful database links

The types of veg that I grow, roughly ranked in my order of priority

The varieties of herbs, fruit and veg that I’m growing this year

Overview of all of the successions for year round gardening (I don’t grow/recommend all of them) main crops successions are the most reliable

What I’ve sowed so far this year

How long each type of seed typically takes to germinate

What I’ve planted so far this year

What I’ve harvested so far this year

First harvest dates for key successions

The pots and trays that I use with my comments and ratings

The nets and other covers that I use with my comments and ratings

Information on root depth for each type of veg

Information on germination temperature for each type of veg

Information on pesticide use for each type of fruit and veg

List of fruits and veggies that benefit from Mycorrhizal associations

How long seeds last for each type of veg

Which types of veg are heavy, medium and light feeders

How long seeds take to germinate

Just like the rest of the country we are back in a heat wave, but unlike June’s heat wave I’m not working full days in the sun, building the shed. This time I’m enjoying the fruits of this year’s garden and house improvements!

I will take you back to last year, when I was really suffering in the heat. I decided then that I needed to fix things. I’d already installed air conditioning in the bedroom, because sleep is already enough of a challenge for me. This year I installed blinds in the conservatory roof, a shaded outdoor seating area thats works until 2pm, a late afternoon outdoor seating area perfect for evening meals, we built the summerhouse/gym and I decided to leave shade cloth up in 1/3 of the polytunnel permanently. I also installed a outdoor table under a shade sail and a recliner under a canopy on the allotment last year.

Taken together these changes are enough to keep the house cool, provide plenty of outside shade but all this is not enough for a heat wimp like me to fully cope, that needs a bit of lifestyle change too. These are the key changes I’ve made over the last few years for heat waves:

• First thing in the morning we open all the doors and windows, leave them open until we leave the house, about 20 minutes later, this helps a little if the nights actually get cool (which they arn’t doing right now)

• I leave the bedroom air conditioning on all day, since we have solar panels this is free, which is a beautiful synergy. The hottest days, are the sunniest days and so they are the highest solar production days. On our tarriff we get paid for all of the solar that we generate, regardless of whether we use it or export it, so it pays to use it and on a sunny summer day we easily have enough to power the aircon from 7am until 4pm, the rest of the day costs about 40p. This gives us a cold room to retreat to.

• I cycle early in the morning, arriving home before 10:00 am, unless I stop off at the allotment for 30 minutes

• When I hike, I stick to forested lowland walks, even then I try and get back to the car before 1pm

• I eat smaller, more frequent meals, a lot of berries, tomatoes, leafy greens

• If I go to the allotment during the day, it for a quick visit only, unless it’s to sit in the shade and just enjoy being out in nature or a having a quick chat

• I prefer to go to the allotment in the evening, or early in the morning, that’s when I water.

• I skip my morning Caffe Nero visit and go at mid-day instead to enjoy the air conditioning there

• I drink a lot of water!

I find that I’m now almost enjoying heat waves as much as normal summer days, they are just very different days. This week I did as described. Enjoying a lovely lake side, forest hike.

I checked in on the reservoirs and they are - as expected - low, but they are nowhere near empty.

I cycled the country roads or along the beach promenade every morning when I wasn’t hiking.

I’m also really grateful for the fact that I finished planting and tidying the allotment and kitchen gardens earlier in the week. Ironically my last allotment job was to re-install and upgrade the water distribution system, after the shed build.

Gardening problems this week

No significant new problems this week, other than lots of stressed plants.

Open days this year:

The allotments are open twice this year. The first opening day is for the National Open Gardens Scheme, on Saturday 18th July at 10am. It will probably be quieter than the main open day and not all of the plots are open, mine is. However if you are visiting the area to see some of the other open gardens in Lancashire, then you could also just pop into the allotments for a look around and a chat.

The second is the main open day, lots of locals come and there’s more committee organised events, stalls etc. Again, my plot will be open. It’s on 1st August at 10am.

First harvests of 2026

We are now only waiting on the melons and aubergines, everything else we have in abundance, except cucumbers which are struggling under the combined pressure of heat and Red Spider Mite. It’s strange only having a few cucumbers, after having so many all through spring and early summer.

First harvests of 2026

Here’s the complete list of first harvests this year.

Last harvests

Our summer fruiting raspberries have finished now, but the mid season ones are ready and the first few autumn fruiters are making an appearance. We finished the early carrots, but the new summer carrot bed is ready now.

Last harvests

Here’s a link to Last harvests so far this year

Sowings this week

I finally did some sowing, a new batch of lettuce, late cucumbers for the greenhouse, fennel and the autumn/winter salad onions. I also popped a few Sun Gold tomato side shoot in water, they will root soon and be planted up for a late crop in the greenhouse.

Sowings this week

Here’s a link to everything sowed so far this year

Not germinated yet

Just this week’s sowings.

Germinated this week

Nothing this week

Pricked out

Pricked out

Potted on this week

Nothing this week

Planted this week

I filled a few gaps in the garden with some very old celery, lettuces and salad onions for autumn. All of the beds are full again now. I did plant some golden purslane, but it’s a rampant self-seeder so the beds it was in last year are also full of it.

Planted this week

Here’s a link to everything planted so far this year

Greenhouse progress

The greenhouse got a big tidy up. It’s too hot in there for seedlings now, so the trestle table is now empty and the tomatoes are slowly finishing. The Sun Gold and Lemon Pear Drop have almost been picked clean, as has the Maskotka, but these have been cropping for 2 months now. The other tomatoes are still producing strongly, so I’m hopeful that the earlies will stay in production until the main crop is ready. The early melons and aubergines are almost ready for harvest now too.

The strawberries are finished and need cutting back and moving outside.

Polytunnel progress

As you can see the polytunnel is looking very tidy this year and also enjoying it’s wide range of flowers. The tomatoes are slow with nothing ripe yet and truss sizes are modest, smaller than the early plants in the greenhouse.

To add a bit of colour and height to the tunnel I moved four hanging baskets of ripe tomatoes from the greenhouse.

The cucumbers are really suffering with spider mite, which is a first for me. I’ve tried to treat it, but with no success.

I’ve just finished drying my last tray of elephant garlic in the tunnel and that’s now in the shed.

Allotment and garden progress

All of the early alliums are dry and processed now and in the shed. The allotment is probably looking it’s best for a long time, provided you don’t look too closely at the peppers! They had a really bad start and although they are fully recovered now, they are not enjoying the heat and are a few weeks behind where they were last year. I’ve done a lot of tidying up earlier this week, to make the plot safe for visitors and removed most dead and dying foliage from the brassicas.

The kitchen garden suffered serious neglect during the three weeks when I was building the shed, but it’s all caught up now and looking acceptable. The parsnips are all established now and everything is looking like someone cares about it.

Waiting to be planted out

I’ve cleared out and thrown away almost all spares, so for probably the first time this year, I’m all planted up.

Nothing this week

Sowings for next week

Nothing this week

Weekly Harvest

Just daily harvests again this week, nothing worthy of photographs!

Useful links

Top level links

The website associated with this newsletter

My YouTube channel

My free eBook - Outgrow : The Art and Practice of Self-sufficiency

My complete gardening database real time access to everything!

My Amazon shop, which lists the gardening products I use, with comments

If you can afford it, you can buy me a cake or some seeds

The most useful lower level links

The reference info section of my eBook, lists what I actually sowed, planted, harvested each month, plus all of the tours and guide videos for that month

Monthly growing guides (what to sow, harvest fresh and eat from the store room each month)

Comprehensive growing guides to every type of veg that I grow

The section of my eBook that covers the basic tools and techniques of gardening (sowing, planting, pests, weeds etc)

The section of my eBook that covers the more advanced tools and techniques of gardening ( extending the season, successional plantings, spacing)

Using grow lights and alternatives to extend the season

Introduction to growing under cover with fleece, low tunnels, polytunnels etc

The chapter of my eBook that covers conservatory gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers greenhouse gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers polytunnel gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers cold frames and low tunnel gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers extending the season with fleece

The chapter of my eBook that covers outdoor gardening

A guide to my database, how to use it and how to take a copy of it

Useful database links

The types of veg that I grow, roughly ranked in my order of priority

The varieties of herbs, fruit and veg that I’m growing this year

Overview of all of the successions for year round gardening (I don’t grow/recommend all of them) main crops successions are the most reliable

What I’ve sowed so far this year

How long each type of seed typically takes to germinate

What I’ve planted so far this year

What I’ve harvested so far this year

First harvest dates for key successions

The pots and trays that I use with my comments and ratings

The nets and other covers that I use with my comments and ratings

Information on root depth for each type of veg

Information on germination temperature for each type of veg

Information on pesticide use for each type of fruit and veg

List of fruits and veggies that benefit from Mycorrhizal associations

How long seeds last for each type of veg

Which types of veg are heavy, medium and light feeders

How long seeds take to germinate

I don’t need to sow many seeds or do much planting; the focus is really on just keeping everything watered and fed and to keep an eye on pests and diseases.

It’s also a time when plants start to outgrow their nets and so I start to remove mine, let the plants free and use the regular watering and harvesting as an opportunity to spot problems. I prefer this approach, because otherwise I find that hidden under the nets there are often as many problems if not more problems than there would be with the plants uncovered. Also with nets on weeding is much harder, slug and snail control doesn’t happen and plants are less healthy.

However, if you do as I do and remove your nets you will need to keep a sharp eye on things and when, for example, you see those little butterfly eggs, you will have to squash them, or spray with BT. I do both, but when I use BT I do it sparingly; usually three times a year is enough.

Steady progress on the allotment

I’ve been very busy through June, trying to get my old shed removed, the old pallet fence chopped up, the ground cleared and my new shed built and I managed it just in time.

I used the odd breaks between building to try and lick the plot back into shape and I think I managed to give it just enough care for it to thrive through July, which matters to me, but it also matters because we have three events scheduled for July.

First is the RHS judging of the whole site, but the judges usually get given a tour of my plot. Then, this year, we are opening the site up for the National Garden Scheme.

I’ve considered opening the garden up for this scheme too, but thankfully I decided against it this year, because the garden is looking very neglected. This is partly due to me being very busy, but also because we are very short of water in the North West and so we’ve not watered as much as we would usually. The ground is very dry and some plantings didn’t really get a chance to get established before the heat wave. Anyway, I’m hoping to do better next year.

The third event is on the 1st of August at 10am and this is our normal Open Day, more of the site will be open and there will be more going on, with more stalls, raffles, games etc.

My plot will be open for all three events.

Gardening in July

As I mentioned there’s not much going on in July for me, but I still do a few things.

Jobs: Summer prune your plums and cherries.  Water heavily once or twice a week (depending on rain) to encourage deep strong roots, don't provide a sprinkle every day! Summer prune gooseberries, red and white currants. I’ve also summer pruned my apples and pears, so I can still get down the paths!

• Module sow a few cucumbers, to provide a late crop in the polytunnel or greenhouse

• Take side shoots off your tomatoes and root those, that way if you have a polytunnel or greenhouse you can have young vigorous tomato-filled plants in autumn, which is when I compost my spring-sown plants

• We don’t grow radicchio anymore because it’s too bitter for me, but if you like it, July is the best time to sow

• Sow a half dozen peppers, if you have space to overwinter them in pots in a conservatory or sunny windowsill. We harvest the last fruits in January and early fruits in spring

• Mid-July is a great time to module sow a large batch of loose-leaf lettuces. These will last you until early autumn, when under-cover lettuces take over, although they might benefit from some protection from mid-September. Be sure to germinate these somewhere away from summer heat.

• Module sow kohlrabi in mid-month, as it likes to mature in the cool weather

• July is the last chance to sow chard and perpetual spinach for autumn and winter, for winter leaves, although September is great for baby leaves for winter salads

• July and August are the time when you’d traditionally sow spring cabbages, to be planted out in autumn for a spring harvest. I don’t do that though because we have club root, and club root is still active in September, so I prefer to sow mine in September, overwinter in the polytunnel and plant them in February, they do just as well.

• Although we have a plentiful supply of New Zealand spinach until October, if you have space you can module sow true spinach again in late July, although it’s probably worth waiting until early August if you want your plants to last over winter. If you do sow spinach, plan on it going to seed and have something ready to replace it with

• I always replant all of my elephant garlic rounds in July, they go straight back into my perennial elephant garlic bed, deep under a wood chip mulch under trees, so I’m not wasting the space.

• If you have a sunny spot and enjoy a bit of luck you can also sow French beans, carrots and sometimes even beetroot and get a harvest, but all of ours are already in the ground by July

• Risk takers can also plant up a few potatoes for a ‘Christmas’ harvest, although the risk of blight is high, so I prefer to do mine in June.

• I also like to do salad onions in July for a late autumn and winter harvest, salad onions in August are better for harvesting next year and into spring.

• Finally you can give some Asian greens a go, if you don’t mind the risk that they will go to seed, personally I wait until August, because they do much better maturing in the cooler conditions of September, just like turnips and radish do

All of the details

You can find all of the details of my plans for July in my sowing log, which is updated in real-time, as is my planting log. Here’s the visual summary.

If you are new to my newsletters, then you will find all of the specifics of what I’m sowing, planting, harvesting etc in my gardening week newsletters.

Bulk Harvest highlights

We have already harvested our garlic and it’s been dried now and is in store, but if you’ve not done yours yet here’s my video guide:

I’ve also harvested my overwintered onions and they are in store too, but I won’t harvest my main-crop onions and shallots until the end of July, sometimes very early August.

I know some people like to leave their onions in longer, in the hope of slightly bigger bulbs, but we actively optimise for smaller bulbs because we find they keep better.

Problems in July

As I’ve already mentioned, the biggest issue for me in summer is the brassica pests; the worst of which is cabbage aphid which can destroy the growing tips within a few days. That’s one of the reasons, I prefer to remove nets because cabbage aphid is so easy to miss under nets. It’s also the reason why we grow more cabbages now, because once a cabbage starts to heart, they are much less vulnerable to pests. Anyway, I try to blast off cabbage aphid with water, remove the worst affected leaves, or squash it when I see it, if it’s just getting started. Whitefly is less of an issue unless it’s rampant, we generally ignore it because we’ve found no good solutions that work beyond a couple of plants.

For many, leaf miners are the next worst pest we have to deal with, we don’t have the allium leaf miner here yet, but the beet leaf miner can quickly decimate a beetroot, chard or spinach crop. Beets also often suffer from fungal spot on the leaves and the combination can leave them in a sorry state. My solution here is simple too, cut off the leaves, all of them! It seems dramatic but if the plants are well established the leaves soon grow back, clean and healthy. This is also a useful technique if your beets are getting a bit too large, you can effectively pause their growth for a few weeks in summer and get a lovely crop of leaves to eat too. In July this technique is only relevant for early sowings, that are large and well established by the end of June, for later sowings I find myself topping them in August.

The greenhouse in July

My greenhouse has been producing summer fruits since April, so a lot of the plants are tired now and finishing; in fact, the cucumbers have already been composted. The tomatoes always last until the main-crop tomatoes arrive, but their top trusses are ripening now, so they will only crop for another month or so.

At this point I will have new tomatoes, grown from side shoots, ready to go in and they will be ready in autumn, ideally October. I’m also sowing fresh cucumbers, which will provide a harvest in September and early October.

The aubergines are just fruiting now, so they will be finished in a month or so and the peppers will be gone by autumn too.

For the last few years my greenhouse had a single purpose: produce as much food as possible, for as much of the year as possible. This wasn’t the plan, I’d intended it to be a winter garden, but then I got carried away with enthusiasm for growing.

Over the years I’ve tested out a lot of season extension techniques on a lot of different types of fruit and veg and I’ve been whittling down my ‘worth it’ list. I’ve been comparing the conservatory, greenhouse, polytunnel, low tunnels and cold-frames to see which environment is ‘the best’ at which time of year for which plants.

These insights have helped me conclude that I can return to my original winter garden plan for the greenhouse, confident that I can still grow everything that matters over winter and especially in spring, because I’ve concluded that the polytunnel is the best place to overwinter brassicas, the greenhouse is the best place for early spring tomatoes and cucumbers, and the conservatory is the best place for early peppers, and that early aubergines and melons aren’t really worth the effort.

This small shift in thinking has completely changed how I’m planning my greenhouse. I’m planning to move my reading nook into the greenhouse, add a lot of cosy lighting, bring feature plants inside like beautiful kales and chard, as well as lots of flowers.

I love place-making, so this is a really exciting project for me and I will keep you informed about the planting scheme as we get closer to autumn.

The Polytunnel in July

This year I’ve decided to radically simplify the polytunnel. I’m not planning to grow under the trestle tables, I have almost no containers in there and I’ve tidied up the storage and moved it all into the new shed. I’ve got no veggies growing under the tomatoes either, but - through the Strulch - I have lots of flowers.

My hope is that the combination of Strulch and flowers will mean that the polytunnel beds stay moist all through summer, making it easier to transition in autumn to my winter crops.

I’ve also left my shade netting up permanently, so that I can sit out on colder days in comfort and the plants, so far, don’t seem to mind.

For more …

If you want to read more about growing in July, take a look at my ebook. I have a nice summary chapter on growing in July. My polytunnel and greenhouse growing guides both have sections on growing in summer.

It’s been quite a week! I’ve been almost focussed on finishing the shed build, as expected, although this week a lot of the focus was on the internals and all of those external details. I was especially pleased to finish the border adjacent to the shed, because this is what everyone sees when walking past. I put up a little fence, supports for my hose and temporary planting for the various open days.

As always with this kind of project, the framing and cladding takes no time at all, but the detailing seems to take forever, but it makes all of the difference to the longevity and lifetime of enjoyment, so it’s worth the effort.

Last night I did my first pass at sorting through all of my tools and other resources and getting those stored away in my new workshop area, always the first thing to be finished in any project!

I also gave everything it’s second coat of varnish, so that it was ready for the boxes to all return from the polytunnel.

This week though I finally managed to get some gardening done and the allotment is looking good now. The back garden is a little neglected and I’m way behind on seed sowing, but this rarely matters in mid-summer, a few weeks late isn’t a problem, managing my energy levels is the top priority.

This is the first shed that I’ve designed and built from scratch and I made a couple of mistakes, most of them were corrected during the build process, but one wasn’t easy to fix. It’s a minor detail, but if you look closely at these photos you might be able to spot it, I’m trying to ignore it!

Anyway, next week normal service resumes!

The shed that substack built

For the last ten years everything that I’ve invested in the allotment and kitchen garden has been covered by half of the savings off our food bill, ie it’s been self funding. This year - thanks to substack - I’ve been able to indulge myself with some investments that won’t every fund themselves, this shed is the first example, of a project funded by the people who subscribe to this substack newsletter, so a big thank you to all of you!

I hope you enjoy the newsletter just as much as I will enjoy the shed.

Gardening problems this week

We’ve had very little rain and some of the plants are still suffering from their excessive heat exposure and recent high winds but in the main everything is reasonable. The heatwave finished off the peas, the gales broke off a few climbing squash stems, some of the French beans are still struggling to find their canes, but I can’t really complain, it’s a miracle that everything has pulled through the combination of challenging weather and gardener neglect.

This year we tried a variety of cauliflower called multi-head, which was meant to provide a cluster of smaller cauliflower heads, it failed miserably, the plants were always weak, from seedlings onwards and the heads were very disappointing. Sticking with disappointing the Yellow Plum tomatoes are tasteless mush, fortunately I have lots of other great varieties this year.

First harvests of 2026

It’s been a great week for harvesting! In the end we didn’t run out of flowering brassicas, the autumn sown plants lasted us until the summer plants arrived. The carrots similarly worked well, the autumn sown Eskimo lasted almost until the April sown carrots were ready, so the three small containers that I sowed back in February and March filled the gap easily.

I’ve now got masses of fruit on the allotments, all of the currant, raspberries, gooseberries, blueberries and strawberries, but the cherries are the stars. I have two cherry trees, with very lush foliage and a modest cherry harvest, that the birds don’t seem to notice. I don’t net any of my fruit and I have very few losses.

The beans have arrived too, just as the peas finished and we have huge numbers of tomatoes now, more than we can eat and give away.

Here’s the complete list of first harvests this year.

Last harvests

The peas have finished now on the allotment, it’s a bit of a loss, but I’ve switched to eating berries instead and in their place went salad onions. The spinach has all finished now, Santa Cruz did the best, providing good eatable leaves for a very long time, even while it was going to seed, it was actually better than Mikado this year.

The asparagus hasn’t finished, but we stopped harvesting and let it grow on. I also removed the last of the onions that I interplanted into the bed and mulched it.

Last harvests

Here’s a link to Last harvests so far this year

Sowings this week

Unfortunately nothing got sown this week, but as previously mentioned nothing is really urgent at this time of year, especially as I’m not sowing purple sprouting broccoli this year.

Here’s a link to everything sowed so far this year

Not germinated yet

Nothing this week

Germinated this week

Nothing this week

Pricked out

Nothing this week

Potted on this week

Nothing this week

Planted this week

I did however do some planting! Since I failed dismally to motivate myself to work past midnight last week to get a proper newsletter published, I’ve included plantings from the last two weeks, to catch you up!

I was pleased to get the winter beetroot in the grounds. I like to try and keep these going until I need the beds for brassicas in February, at which point I will harvest them into storage. I’ve planted the autumn cauliflowers and calabrese, these struggled in the heat, but they look like they’ve established now. I also got my main summer lettuce bed planted, this is meant to be an important feature for the openday’s so it needs to grow fast!

Most of our leeks went in weeks ago, but this week I sowed a bed that I’m planning to harvest in autumn as slender baby leeks, leaving the older plants for winter and spring.

Planted this week

Here’s a link to everything planted so far this year

Greenhouse progress

The greenhouse tomatoes are amazing this year, I’ve loved the Santonio and the Sweet Aperitif have been the best cropper, but nothing beats the sun gold for taste.

The tomatoes are a few weeks away from finishing now, all of them are ripening their top trusses.

Beyond the tomatoes though, everything else is suffering a little from three weeks of neglect, I have a few melons close to harvest, but the aubergines are suffering a little and as often happens to me, I’ve lost one melon to mildew.

I focus the greenhouse on early and late crops, so right now I’m switching my focus to autumn and I will soon be taking side shoots from the best tomatoes and planting those out in August, by them we should be awash with tomatoes from the polytunnel and garden.

Polytunnel progress

The polytunnel has just been a store room and workshop for the last two weeks, access for watering and maintenance has been a challenge, but tomatoes in the ground are very resilient and they’ve not really cared. This week I finally got access to the beds again, trimmed off the lower leaves and gave the flowers a bit of light.

The flowers are really making a difference in the tunnel, they motivate me to water and they are starting to put on a good show now, hopefully they will look nice for the RHS judging next week and the two open days later in the month.

It would be nice to have some ripe tomatoes by the end of the month too, but no sign yet. I still have some spider mite issues on the cucumbers, but they are at least fruiting, but very slowly compared to previous years. We have however been gorging cucumbers since April, so to be I’m happy to be harvesting less!

Allotment and garden progress

While I was working on the shed roof I managed to get a few photos of the plot from ‘above’. Along the left edge the low tunnels cover my struggling, but recovering peppers. The low tunnel in the far distance and to the right cover courgettes, not because they need the cover, but because I need to store the tunnels somewhere.

I’ve now processed the early Toughball onions:

and the main-crop garlic:

These are both reasonably good harvests. Thankfully the Toughball are a bit smaller than last year, so they have dried better and will keep better.

The elephant garlic crop was good too and that’s just drying now:

I’ve also tied back the salad onions, to make space for a double row of lettuce:

I’ve done lots of tidying up, removing lower leaves from the brassicas and weeding them and the onions and shallots got another dose of nematodes to prevent - hopefully - onion fly. The onions are going to need another good 3 maybe 4 weeks of growing time by the look of it.

Waiting to be planted out

Nothing now

Waiting to be planted out

Sowings for next week

Just repeat successions. The most important are the side shoots from the greenhouse tomatoes, these will go in water, be planted in a few weeks, after the greenhouse earlies are composted. The cucumbers should be ready to replace the polytunnel plants when they are exhausted.

Sowings for next week

Weekly Harvest

I’ve been harvesting daily, as needed for the last two weeks, but Debbie has been making a lot of jams and fruit vinegars, here’s a tiny sample of he daily picks!

Useful links

Top level links

The website associated with this newsletter

My YouTube channel

My free eBook - Outgrow : The Art and Practice of Self-sufficiency

My complete gardening database real time access to everything!

My Amazon shop, which lists the gardening products I use, with comments

If you can afford it, you can buy me a cake or some seeds

The most useful lower level links

The reference info section of my eBook, lists what I actually sowed, planted, harvested each month, plus all of the tours and guide videos for that month

Monthly growing guides (what to sow, harvest fresh and eat from the store room each month)

Comprehensive growing guides to every type of veg that I grow

The section of my eBook that covers the basic tools and techniques of gardening (sowing, planting, pests, weeds etc)

The section of my eBook that covers the more advanced tools and techniques of gardening ( extending the season, successional plantings, spacing)

Using grow lights and alternatives to extend the season

Introduction to growing under cover with fleece, low tunnels, polytunnels etc

The chapter of my eBook that covers conservatory gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers greenhouse gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers polytunnel gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers cold frames and low tunnel gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers extending the season with fleece

The chapter of my eBook that covers outdoor gardening

A guide to my database, how to use it and how to take a copy of it

Useful database links

The types of veg that I grow, roughly ranked in my order of priority

The varieties of herbs, fruit and veg that I'm growing this year

Overview of all of the successions for year round gardening (I don't grow/recommend all of them) main crops successions are the most reliable

What I've sowed so far this year

How long each type of seed typically takes to germinate

What I've planted so far this year

What I've harvested so far this year

First harvest dates for key successions

The pots and trays that I use with my comments and ratings

The nets and other covers that I use with my comments and ratings

Information on root depth for each type of veg

Information on germination temperature for each type of veg

Information on pesticide use for each type of fruit and veg

List of fruits and veggies that benefit from Mycorrhizal associations

How long seeds last for each type of veg

Which types of veg are heavy, medium and light feeders

How long seeds take to germinate

Never has a newsletter heading been more true, because this week has been totally dominated by not just gardening, in fact there has been almost no gardening except for a lot of emergency watering!

This week has been almost totally focussed on building the new allotment shed, so this newsletter is going to focus on that for a change.

You might remember that I inherited my plot from the oldest gardener on the allotments, I think he’d been working, what is now, my plot for well over 50 years. he was a traditionalist, just tools and soil, with almost no infrastructure on the plot, no compost bins, no raised beds, no greenhouse, just a very little shed.

The shed was falling down when I arrived on the plot, but I didn’t have time to replace it, nor did I have any money to replace it, so instead I added a new internal skeleton, a new floor on top of the one that had rotted away and a new skin - of roofing felt - on the roof and walls. It lasted ten years and it might have lasted one or two more, but if might have gone in the next storm.

Having just recovered from a month of illness I decided to stay close to home and do a ‘little project’ and as little projects often do, it’s scope expanded and I discovered a lot of unexpected preparatory work needed doing. I also decided to go bespoke and so I designed the whole thing from scratch, bought all of the material myself, made the cut list and did most of the ground works and about two thirds of the construction. Fortunately a friend on mine, helped, especially with the roof, which is outside of my comfort zone.

Last week was all about demolition and clearing the ground. Getting back to the shell of the old shed took a lot of work, but once I was back to the original structure, it was easy to knock down the walls and push the shed over. I then chopped everything up with a circular saw and made many a trip to the tip to get rid of the tree I chopped down, the bush I chopped in half and the old pallet fence as well as a decade of accumulated rubbish. I eventually got to something resembling a flat work area.

My next job was to clear and level the ground, this was much more work than expected. The ground was far from level, I found layers of old foundations, paving slabs, large stone blocks, steel girders, metal spikes, glass, bricks and a lot more, but eventually I could make a start.

This was where I started this week, a patch of soil, that I’d roughly levelled. Lots of bags of harcore and levelling dust and two water butts to move.

I built a shed base on top of nine paving slabs, each with a concrete block on top. This raised the shed about 4” above ground level, which is important in this spot because it floods. In the image below, you can see the first four corners.

At this point help arrived and we quickly laid and levelled the remaining blocks. We put weld mesh between the blocks and held that down with spare pavers. The weld mesh should stop any animals burrowing under the shed. The shed base is then laid on top of damp proof membrane, which is on top of the blocks.

Then we added a 18mm plywood floor and a lot of screws!

My local timber suppliers took my cut list and pre-cut and delivered all of the timber, there was a lot and it took quite a few hours to arrange into kits for each of the walls and the roof etc. The polytunnel, my outdoor table, the paths and compost bins, were all piled high with timber.

It didn’t stay there long though, because framing is very quick work, when there’s two of you and the wood is pre-cut, by the end of the first - framing - day we had all of the walls up.

On the second day we got the roof on

I also installed most of the shelving supports and the frame for the sofa/day bed and my workbench.

All of this internal structure stiffened the building up a lot, but it still needs some internal plywood panels to finish the job. I am having a rubber roof, which is very robust, can cope with falling branches and should outlast me.

The building is being clad with Feather Edge, which is not the most watertight and long lasting cladding, but it looks good and is cheap. So we decided to wrap the building with breathable membrane, this is wind and waterproof, so it compensates for the feather edge.

This is the rear wall, half clad, I’ve not installed feather edge before, so I learnt on this wall, it’s not too bad, but I’m better at it now.

On Friday we finished the front wall. We couldn’t do the side walls this week, partly because we’ve have probably keeled over with heat stroke, but also because the timber merchant ran out of feather edge.

I’ve just got back from the plot on Saturday, having finished framing the door, I used an offcut of marine ply, to test out alignment.

I also installed the sofa/day bed and had a nap. I’ve been consistently napping for 20 years now and I’ve really looked forward to being able to nap on the plot. It’s all going to look a lot nicer than this when the plywood inner skin is added and the shelves are in and the green tarp is removed!

I also got frustrated with having my tools strewn everywhere, so I tacked together a temporary workshop. This is where my workbench will be eventually, but the actual look and feel will change quite a bit.

I also won’t be leaving all of my power tools in the shed overnight!

So that’s my non-gardening week!

I have also done a lot of watering, planted beetroot, leeks and lettuce, tied in a lot of squash, cucumbers and tomatoes and picked a huge amount of berries, tomatoes, cucumbers and courgettes.

The shed is 10’ by 12’ so not huge my shed standards, but large for an allotment shed. The economics worked for me. The shed will be mainly used for produce storage, with storage for nets, fleece etc, a workbench and day bed.

Being on an allotment rodents are always an issue, so the shed has weld mesh over the soil, weld mesh around the perimeter (to stop accumulation of leaves), stainless steel mesh between the foundations and the first two layers of feather edge, to prevent rodents gnawing through and sneaky insects. Ventilation is important too, so the eaves are open, again protected by stainless steel mesh and there’s ventilation grills in the floor, again protected by fine stainless steel mesh.

There’s only a tiny over-door window, but the shed will have solar power and hence good LED lighting and the door will be open most of the time. The roof has a deep overhang, so reduce rain reaching inside when the door is open, except in very foul weather. I try to avoid too much light in produce stores and windows are an invitation to thieves.

The door overlaps to reduce insect ingress and I have an insect screen inside the door. We have the same magnetic screens on the kitchen door, conservatory door and gym doors at home and they are brilliant, they stop almost all insects getting in and without insects there are essentially no spiders.

Since the shed is well ventilated and not insulated, it’s not suitable for over-winter storage of squash and all onions, so we will still keep some produce at home, but most things should be ok.

Useful links

Top level links

The website associated with this newsletter

My YouTube channel

My free eBook - Outgrow : The Art and Practice of Self-sufficiency

My complete gardening database real time access to everything!

My Amazon shop, which lists the gardening products I use, with comments

If you can afford it, you can buy me a cake or some seeds

The most useful lower level links

The reference info section of my eBook, lists what I actually sowed, planted, harvested each month, plus all of the tours and guide videos for that month

Monthly growing guides (what to sow, harvest fresh and eat from the store room each month)

Comprehensive growing guides to every type of veg that I grow

The section of my eBook that covers the basic tools and techniques of gardening (sowing, planting, pests, weeds etc)

The section of my eBook that covers the more advanced tools and techniques of gardening ( extending the season, successional plantings, spacing)

Using grow lights and alternatives to extend the season

Introduction to growing under cover with fleece, low tunnels, polytunnels etc

The chapter of my eBook that covers conservatory gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers greenhouse gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers polytunnel gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers cold frames and low tunnel gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers extending the season with fleece

The chapter of my eBook that covers outdoor gardening

A guide to my database, how to use it and how to take a copy of it

Useful database links

The types of veg that I grow, roughly ranked in my order of priority

The varieties of herbs, fruit and veg that I'm growing this year

Overview of all of the successions for year round gardening (I don't grow/recommend all of them) main crops successions are the most reliable

What I've sowed so far this year

How long each type of seed typically takes to germinate

What I've planted so far this year

What I've harvested so far this year

First harvest dates for key successions

The pots and trays that I use with my comments and ratings

The nets and other covers that I use with my comments and ratings

Information on root depth for each type of veg

Information on germination temperature for each type of veg

Information on pesticide use for each type of fruit and veg

List of fruits and veggies that benefit from Mycorrhizal associations

How long seeds last for each type of veg

Which types of veg are heavy, medium and light feeders

How long seeds take to germinate

The weather has improved this week, it’s still been showery but the high winds have died down, we’ve had some incredible clouds this week too, especially looking out to sea on my bike rides. The better weather and return to health has given me more time outside and I’ve used it to keep pushing on the allotment make over. This is the worst phase of any project, so much - seemingly - endless prep work, with nothing to show for it but car loads of rubbish heading for the tip, sore shoulders and a polytunnel that looks more like a builders yard than a vibrant growing space.

We are scheduled to start building on Monday, which only leaves me a few days to finally demolish the old shed and level the ground. Despite being rotten the old shed is stubbornly robust. It’s been patched so many times over the years. I’ve had to remove the old false floor, extensive internal framing that I’ve added over the years, lot of external storage, gutters, taps etc. I’m about to remove the roofing felt that provides it’s last structural layer.

Once the felt is off there’s no more careful dismantling that I can do, because all of the original screw heads have rusted away, so a crow bar and sledge hammer are the right tool for the job.

I’ve tried to balance my week as best I can, I’ve spent plenty of time with family, cycled hard a few times and slow once and kept up my strength training. I’ve kept on top of the kitchen garden too, it’s had two hours work this week, rather than it’s usual hour, so it’s working well as a place to relax in, rather than work on.

Gardening problems this week

This week everything is going to seed, well perhaps not everything! I’ve finished harvesting the early onions, and maybe 15% went to seed. This year we had no losses of salad onions over winter, in stark contrast to the previous year, when we lost 50%, so I have way too many, the oldest batch of those has gone to seed.

A few of the early beetroot have gone to seed but we are harvesting those and 90% of the beds are fine. The elephant garlic is throwing up it’s seed heads, I always leave a few of these for decoration, but most need harvesting now.

Some of the early celery has gone to seed, this is a first for me, apparently it doesn’t like nearly 50c in the polytunnel!

I also have red spider mite on one of the greenhouse cucumbers, or I did, because it’s composted now. I have a little on the polytunnel plants, so I’m spraying those with horticultural soap every week.

A combination of excuses mean that I’ve not got around to hand pollinating the melons, so they are mostly all leaf and no fruit, with a few exceptions.

Old new stuff

One of the comments I sometimes get when people visit my plot is that I don’t grow much fruit. In part this is because a lot of our fruit is on Debbie’s plot and at the garden at home. But on my plot I have extensive raspberry beds (summer and autumn), seven gooseberry bushes, a huge number of strawberries (April - October harvest) six large blueberry bushes, four pear trees, five apple trees, two cherry trees, a plum tree and lots of melons. Here’s our full selection of fruit, not too shabby.

First harvests of 2026

This week the real news is the arrival of fruits in true abundance. Although we’ve had strawberries since April, they are arriving in volume now, along with gooseberries, raspberries, blueberries, cherries and lots of tomatoes. We’ve had tomatoes for a while, but this week is the first week when we can keep up with demand. The cucumbers in the greenhouse have finished now, but we have a few from the polytunnel, just enough for the odd salad, but next week we should be back in abundance. Last week I harvested the last of the September sown carrots, this week I picked the first of the February sown ones, so that worked out well.

Here’s the complete list of first harvests this year.

Last harvests

We are now seeing some meaningful last harvests. We have stopped harvesting the asparagus, I did one large final harvest of the broad beans, the early calabrese and cauliflowers are coming to their end. We won’t have flowering brassicas now for a few weeks.

Last harvests

Here’s a link to Last harvests so far this year

Sowings this week

Brassicas for autumn and winter and cucumbers for late summer and autumn, when the polytunnel plants will be showing their age. I have a few Vita Noire potatoes to sow for a harvest in March/April time, as these are a firm favourite.

Sowings this week

Here’s a link to everything sowed so far this year

Not germinated yet

Only the parsnips I sowed last week, a few have germinated, but I don’t count that as success. Hopefully by next week they will all be up.

Not germinated yet

Germinated this week

Nothing this week

Pricked out

Nothing this week

Potted on this week

Nothing this week

Planted this week

Having harvested the broad beans, I immediately replanted with French beans in one of the mini beds that surrounds my seating area. I also popped some left over kales in after harvesting the early onions.

Planted this week

Here’s a link to everything planted so far this year

Greenhouse progress

The greenhouse is feeling very productive now. We have an abundance of tomatoes, plenty of strawberries, a few melons on the way and lots of green peppers. The aubergines are nowhere to be seen and one of the cucumbers has been composted. The second cucumber pot really needs to go too, but it might last for another week and we are low on cucumbers right now.

I made a video focussed on the greenhouse progress, which you can find below:

Polytunnel progress

The tomatoes are in that annoying phase, lots of work ‘tying’ them into their strings and, side shooting and generally keeping them tidy, but only flowers to show for it. The cucumbers are now in fruit though and the polytunnel is about to be converted into a wood store, so I’ve given it a good tidy up to make space. The shelves will be gone before the wood arrives!

The flowers are really making a difference in the tunnel!

Allotment and garden progress

We’ve started harvesting alliums now. The early Toughball onions are now all happily drying, some are quite small which is good, because they keep much better than the larger ones. As a rule I try for large numbers of small to medium sized onions, rather than large ones, which are great for showing, but not so good for keeping.

I’ve also made a start on the garlic harvest and cleanup.

I have a lot more to pick. If you want to see videos of me harvesting and processing garlic, I have plenty.

Waiting to be planted out

I have quite a stock of plants ready now, these will replace the autumn sown cabbages, cauliflowers and calabrese, which are almost finished now.

Waiting to be planted out

Sowings for next week

Just repeat successions.

Sowings for next week

Weekly Harvest

We are harvesting the last of the cauliflowers next week, here’s last week’s mighty heads!

Useful links

Top level links

The website associated with this newsletter

My YouTube channel

My free eBook - Outgrow : The Art and Practice of Self-sufficiency

My complete gardening database real time access to everything!

My Amazon shop, which lists the gardening products I use, with comments

If you can afford it, you can buy me a cake or some seeds

The most useful lower level links

The reference info section of my eBook, lists what I actually sowed, planted, harvested each month, plus all of the tours and guide videos for that month

Monthly growing guides (what to sow, harvest fresh and eat from the store room each month)

Comprehensive growing guides to every type of veg that I grow

The section of my eBook that covers the basic tools and techniques of gardening (sowing, planting, pests, weeds etc)

The section of my eBook that covers the more advanced tools and techniques of gardening ( extending the season, successional plantings, spacing)

Using grow lights and alternatives to extend the season

Introduction to growing under cover with fleece, low tunnels, polytunnels etc

The chapter of my eBook that covers conservatory gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers greenhouse gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers polytunnel gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers cold frames and low tunnel gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers extending the season with fleece

The chapter of my eBook that covers outdoor gardening

A guide to my database, how to use it and how to take a copy of it

Useful database links

The types of veg that I grow, roughly ranked in my order of priority

The varieties of herbs, fruit and veg that I'm growing this year

Overview of all of the successions for year round gardening (I don't grow/recommend all of them) main crops successions are the most reliable

What I've sowed so far this year

How long each type of seed typically takes to germinate

What I've planted so far this year

What I've harvested so far this year

First harvest dates for key successions

The pots and trays that I use with my comments and ratings

The nets and other covers that I use with my comments and ratings

Information on root depth for each type of veg

Information on germination temperature for each type of veg

Information on pesticide use for each type of fruit and veg

List of fruits and veggies that benefit from Mycorrhizal associations

How long seeds last for each type of veg

Which types of veg are heavy, medium and light feeders

How long seeds take to germinate

It’s been another week of sunshine, showers and high winds here. The brassicas are loving it, but I’m not and nor are most of the summer crops, which are feeling a bit battered. My chest infection has however finally recovered to the point at which I’ve been happy to go on some gentle hikes, although the wind has put me off cycling most - but not all - of the time.

What’s really been occupying my attention though is planning for the future. Since this year’s not gone to plan and is unlikely to go to plan any time soon, I’ve decided to double down on refreshing the allotment infrastructure and making a start on the full plot re-design. This unexpectedly busy year has cemented my resolve to reduce the amount of food we grow. The rough plan over the next few years is to take 6 beds out of annual production, and since those 6 beds often get turned over 3 times a year, that’s 18 bed flips that I won’t have to do. That’s a significant reduction in my annual workload.

You can almost think of a bed flip as a day’s work, it’s not quite but it works for my point, which is 18 less bed flip means 18 more free days a year, that’s a lot, that’s enough to go on a few cycling holidays and do some of the training rides to build up my endurance. Those 18 days are also resilience, if I’m ill, or if Debbie or the kids are ill, or we have some other unexpected events like we have this year, so I have a lot more slack in my year.

Six beds out of annual production also means a lot more space, 2 of those beds will become my new composting area, but four of them will be transitioned to perennials, at a much lower density and much easier to look after. Debbie also likes looking after perennials (they suit her time availability well) so potentially that means I take over the annuals and Debbie does the perennials. As we make this transition I will also be prettying up the perennial growing areas, making them more woodland like, with wood chip mulches, more bulbs growing through the mulches, wild arches etc.

The result will be that the allotments are closer to meeting just the needs of Debbie and I and we should get to that point at when I reach 65, so perfectly aligned with me getting a bit closer to retirement. Not that I ever expect to retire, I will just change what I like to work on as I get older.

By that point I will have harvested about £100,000 worth of food and that’s enough of a gift to my friends and family. We will still grow a surplus of a few things and for certain times of year, but I have too many things I want to do beyond gardening and too many new gardening things I want to achieve beyond just growing a lot of surplus food.

Having finished the back garden now (except for a few cosmetic upgrades) my next project is the allotment shed. I will show you my progress later on, but for now this is the sketch:

It looks small, but at roughly 10’ by 8’ it’s just over three times the size of the existing shed, making space for a workbench, a huge wall of storage shelves for cabbages, beetroot, potatoes, alliums, yacon, celariac and more as well as storage for nets, fleece etc. I’m even putting in a little day bed, because I really need my afternoon nap after lunch and having this will enable me to work a longer day in comfort. The render below is roughly right, but shows about half the shelves for clarity.

Gardening problems this week

So far so good, no big issues this week. I’ve been shocked by the number of slugs in the lettuce this year, my worst every and in the bed that historically has had the lowest number of slugs and no reason for the increase.

The cauliflowers are also weeks late, I’m at a loss as to why, but as it happens it’s not caused me too many issues.

My clever trick with the bind weed proved to be 100% successful at killing it, but also 20% successful at knocking back the other plants in the bed, they only got a slight coating and I’m sure they will pull through, but even on the calmest of days, you get a little drifting.

Early tomatoes

Over the years I’ve been refining my early tomatoes (and cucumbers) and they are some of the most satisfying fruits to grow, if you like to eat your tomatoes fresh. If you are happy to freeze or otherwise preserve them, then it’s not worth the effort. These are the selection I’m growing early this year. The first three rows were sown in February :

All of my main-crops are grown from side sheets from these plants. Here’s some of the results as of 11th June. The best tasting are the sun-gold and they are ripening well now,

But of more interest is the 7th truss at the top, which is growing well. I’ve now pinched out the growing tips so the plants concentrate on ripening the fruits, not setting more of them.

The furthest on are the Maskotka, but these are fairly big unruly plants and although the yield is good, it’s smaller than the others.

The Tumbling Tom Yellow and the Red profusion in the baskets are my favourite, because they take so little space and the yield is huge, but they aren’t as early as Maskotka, or as tasty as the sun gold.

Growing from side shoots has been so easy too and the main-crop plants in the tunnel are growing acceptably, just starting to flower. So by the time they are in full fruit my greenhouse plants will have finished and I will have their replacements growing away nicely for a October harvest, I grow these from side shoots taken in July.

Old new stuff

First harvests of 2026

The cherries have arrived! We have a few varieties and so we get quite a delightfully long harvest period! We also now have golden beetroot, so I’ve composted what’s left of my beetroot in store. I inspected the beets for quality and the October harvested one are poor, but the March harvested ones were still excellent. I also composted the last of the carrots from store, they were also still edible, but we have lots of carrots now.

First harvests of 2026

Here’s the complete list of first harvests this year.

Last harvests

I’ve now picked the last of the carrots from my late September sowing, I’ve picked them for 5 weeks and we’ve got a week’s worth in the fridge, so say 6 weeks. That turned out to be a good result for early carrots. I could have improved on it in two ways:

• Sown at a lower density, because I had way too many and gave over a hundred away. I’d have preferred less but bigger

• Sown a better spring variety, like Napoli, rather than Eskimo

I’m also coming to the end of the September/October sown brassicas. We have a few white cauliflowers left and calabrese side shoots, but then we will be waiting a few weeks for the main-crop harvests to arrive.

Last harvests

Here’s a link to Last harvests so far this year

Sowings this week

Nothing sown this week and I’m a bit nervous because I hate to have empty beds.

Nothing this week

Here’s a link to everything sowed so far this year

Not germinated yet

Only the parsnips I sowed last week, but with all of this rain they should be ok.

Not germinated yet

Germinated this week

Only the salad onions

Germinated this week

Pricked out

In the end everything germinated, even the sickly little gens made it in the end. They are all pricked out now and I’t racing against time to get my big lettuce display bed ready for our week of open-days. We have the RHS in early July, The National Gardens Scheme open day in mid-july and the full allotment open day on the 1st August, quite a month!

Pricked out

Potted on this week

Nothing this week

Planted this week

I managed to squeeze in a few more plants from my “waiting to be planted” list. It remains to be seen how they've coped with the wild weather.

Planted this week

Here’s a link to everything planted so far this year

Greenhouse progress

The cucumbers almost went to the compost this week, but then new growth and flowers burst from those aged stems, so they got a reprieve for another couple of weeks. Most of the tomatoes have ripe fruits now and the strawberries are enjoying a very extended harvest period, but other than that it’s a waiting game.

Polytunnel progress

The tomatoes are well established now, but tomatoes don’t enjoy the combination of warmth and cloudy/rainy skies, so they have lots of floppy growth, small early trusses and not much else. The cucumbers are doing much better though lots of flowers now, good growth but a few signs of mildew. A couple of the early celery have gone to seed in that very hot week, that’s a first for me. The flowers are looking beautiful though, this is my favourite!

Allotment and garden progress

I’ve actually spent quite a bit of time relaxing in the garden now. This is my favourite spot, tucked in between the greenhouse and the summerhouse/gym. I have a shade sail now, which is essential!

The garden is looking quite lush now, lots of grapes on the vines, ripening cherries, garlic almost ready, early Toughball onions harvested and more to come and a great crop of blueberries on the way.

On the allotment I’ve started to clear space around my old shed, ready for demolition. I’ve also started to empty it out too.

I cut down half of the Laurel bush by hand and Debbie and I chopped and bagged it up.

Waiting to be planted out

Not much left now.

Waiting to be planted out

Sowings for next week

I’m sowing a few late potatoes and some kales for winter, I will also sow some new cucumber plants for the greenhouse. These will replace the existing plants and should be ready by August.

Sowings for next week

Weekly Harvest

A few highlights, hundreds of baby carrots like these

Lots of potatoes and asparagus

so much green garlic

The daily courgettes have finally arrived

and the usual mini harvest

Useful links

Top level links

The website associated with this newsletter

My YouTube channel

My free eBook - Outgrow : The Art and Practice of Self-sufficiency

My complete gardening database real time access to everything!

My Amazon shop, which lists the gardening products I use, with comments

If you can afford it, you can buy me a cake or some seeds

The most useful lower level links

The reference info section of my eBook, lists what I actually sowed, planted, harvested each month, plus all of the tours and guide videos for that month

Monthly growing guides (what to sow, harvest fresh and eat from the store room each month)

Comprehensive growing guides to every type of veg that I grow

The section of my eBook that covers the basic tools and techniques of gardening (sowing, planting, pests, weeds etc)

The section of my eBook that covers the more advanced tools and techniques of gardening ( extending the season, successional plantings, spacing)

Using grow lights and alternatives to extend the season

Introduction to growing under cover with fleece, low tunnels, polytunnels etc

The chapter of my eBook that covers conservatory gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers greenhouse gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers polytunnel gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers cold frames and low tunnel gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers extending the season with fleece

The chapter of my eBook that covers outdoor gardening

A guide to my database, how to use it and how to take a copy of it

Useful database links

The types of veg that I grow, roughly ranked in my order of priority

The varieties of herbs, fruit and veg that I'm growing this year

Overview of all of the successions for year round gardening (I don't grow/recommend all of them) main crops successions are the most reliable

What I've sowed so far this year

How long each type of seed typically takes to germinate

What I've planted so far this year

What I've harvested so far this year

First harvest dates for key successions

The pots and trays that I use with my comments and ratings

The nets and other covers that I use with my comments and ratings

Information on root depth for each type of veg

Information on germination temperature for each type of veg

Information on pesticide use for each type of fruit and veg

List of fruits and veggies that benefit from Mycorrhizal associations

How long seeds last for each type of veg

Which types of veg are heavy, medium and light feeders

How long seeds take to germinate

I spoke (wrote) too soon last week, my cold had just cleared up, but I was still coughing a bit, that cough developed into a nasty chest infection and that’s kept me company all week and it too is just clearing up as I write this. That means I’ve been ill on and off for 4 weeks, the 4 busiest weeks in gardening. That said, having finished planting the allotment last week, I was able to relax this week. The weather helped, because it’s been a typical early June, lots of rain, a couple of very windy days and short bursts of sunshine.

I’ve managed to keep myself busy though and I’ve enjoyed some lovely warm evenings and showery days in the garden. This bout of illness has really helped me to appreciate the garden, not just as a place to look at through the windows, but as a place to spend time in, relax in and potter around

I’ve been working towards this objective for a while, taking the garden beyond somewhere to play and entertain in and turning it into something more nurturing for the long term. Having the summer house (which is the coolest room we have) has proved to be a real blessing during the warmer days, it works fabulously as a place to relax and read and as a movie room, for those summer afternoons when the heat is too much for us.

Designing it so that it doubled up as a home gym has worked out so much better than I’d imagined, because the grandkids have loved it and I’ve loved it even more. What I’ve noticed is that on the - many - days when I’ve just not felt up to going to the health club, I’ve always enjoyed 20-40 minutes in the gym at home

While the summer house/gym transformed spring for us, the sauna transformed winter, so all in all, it’s been a great year of change. As I’m fond of saying in this newsletter, I like to live in my own little protopia, gradually nudging life in the right direction from year to year, working on projects that I can control and not worrying too much about a world that I can’t.

I’ve also been spending a lot of time researching my next trilogy of books and I’m well on now with defining their scope, approach and key themes, although too much of the content is still in my head. Research and writing has proved to be the perfect rainy day/feeling ill activity and I continue to expand my range of indoor hobbies, mainly to make winter more enjoyable. This last month I’ve been building out my AI assistant infrastructure, which has been a huge amount of fun, a great intellectual challenge and a good research assistant and time saver too.

I’ve also put up a shade sail in the garden, in the hope that we will have some sunshine this summer and we’ve had enough sun to test it out and it’s been another nice little - sunburn avoiding - upgrade

.I’ve walked and cycled around town and kept up mild versions of my strength training routine, a very gentle version of my normal week, but that’s all my sore throat and aching chest has been able to manage and I’ve kept the gardening ticking over.

Last week I was burnt out and a bit jaded, this week has been great and although I’m only slowly recovering my strength, I’m well rested mentally and physically and itching to get back to normal life, although it looks like I’m going to spend a lot of time dodging the showers next week.

Gardening problems this week

The main issue this week is that the October sown carrots have finally started to go to seed, the 20th March sown carrots are not ready, so I’m pleased I sowed three week’s supply in containers as a contingency

I learned two lessons though:

• first Eskimo are not the best carrot to sow in October for a spring harvest, but by the time they finish they will have fed us for 6 weeks and we’ve harvested hundreds of them

• second, growing in a cold-frame from a September 25th sowing worked well and if I’d grown Napoli - a faster grower - I’d have harvested them earlier

• i could have sown in February and be harvesting now too, but that only works in a very good year and i don’t like to take a risk with carrots

The next issue is that the carrots I’ve just mentioned overwhelmed the interplanted elephant garlic, over the last 6 weeks, so it’s looking a bit weak, however since the purpose of this interplant was only to turn elephant garlic gloves into rounds, I’m hopeful that I will have achieved that. These rounds will grow into bulbs for a harvest next year.

The next challenge this year has been the cats in the parsnip bed, oh how they love a freshly seeded bed! I normally lay mesh over, but I didn’t have time before stormy weather arrived, the cats didn’t care about the storm as much as I did. Anyway, I will probably be able to fix the damage.

Next up the strange case of the French beans. A month ago I planted early French beans, half the row were Cobra and the other half Algarve. this week I noticed that all of the Cobra have been stripped to the stems, but the Algarve are thriving. It doesn’t seem to be slugs or snails, and I can find no culprit. Anyway, I have new plants ready to go in the ground next week, fingers crossed.

I might have mentioned that one of the ‘wild’ perennial areas on my plot, along the edge of the green drive, was absolutely infested with bind weed this year. The result of neglecting to ‘manage it’ very well last year, it stored up some impressive vigour. Anyway I did an experiment. I poked about 20 canes into the bed and encouraged the vines to climb up them, it didn’t need much encouragement. Once the vines were hanging off the top of the canes by about 6” I pulled out the canes, stuffed the whole vine mass into a bag and sprayed glyphosate into the bag. It worked, the surrounding plants were untouched and the vines have shrivelled to nothing.

I treat weedkillers as a very useful tool, very rarely used, but in a situation like this they are invaluable. It’s very hard to eradicate bind weed from a lush perennial bed any other way

.Finally, I’ve been mystified by a plant that started to shoot up in the polytunnel a couple of years ago in early spring. It appeared to be very sturdy and deep rooted. I really had no idea how it could have got so well established under a polytunnel that’s been there for 7 years. I now know, it’s suckers from the plum tree’s roots. Having grow upwards from the roots it’s no surprise that they seemed to be deep rooted! Knowing helps, because at least I now I will just keep pruning them off and living with them as an unexpected downside of lots of lovely plums in summer!

Growing up with a garden

One of the unexpected pleasures of growing food with grandchildren around is that the harvest itself isn’t always the most important thing.

Robin and Willow have spent the last few weeks wandering through the garden and greenhouse, checking on things. They spotted the first tiny grapes forming on the vine last week and immediately wanted to know when they would be ready. The blueberries are swelling, the raspberries are flowering, and the cherries are beginning to blush. Every visit starts with an inspection tour to see what has changed.

In a world where almost everything arrives instantly, gardening gently teaches a different lesson. The grapes won’t be ready until autumn. The blueberries need a few weeks longer. The cherries are still changing colour. They can see the process happening, but they can’t rush it. All they can do is watch, wait and come back tomorrow.

The greenhouse is providing its own lessons. The cucumbers have been extraordinary this year, producing far more than we can eat, since April. The tomatoes are loaded with fruit but not quite enough to be self-sufficient yet. Every few days there are a few more ripening though. The children know exactly where the first ripe ones are likely to appear and check them constantly.

What I enjoy most is watching them help themselves. They’ll be playing in the garden one minute and then disappear into the greenhouse. A few moments later they emerge with a cucumber in one hand, a handful of tomatoes in the other, and strawberry juice running down their faces and no sense whatsoever that they are eating something healthy. To them it is simply treasure hunting.

The economics of the greenhouse matter to me because they make it an interesting challenge. I like the idea that the crops should broadly pay their way. But the real return on investment isn’t measured in cucumbers or electricity bills. It’s seeing kids learn where food comes from, how long things take to grow, and that some of the best things in life can’t be hurried.

Old new stuff

It’s hard to get good data on pesticide use in fruit and veg production. It varies a lot by country and farm. However I did my best and this is the result, a very rough ranking, with the worst at the top. Don’t take it too seriously, but I used it as an input into my decisions on what to grow myself and what to buy. It’s a long list so I cropped out the middle (see the arrows

You can browse the full list here.

Changes in the newsletter this week

If you are current with your emails, you will have noticed that a new newsletter arrived this week, the imaginatively named - The Gardening Month - and in it you will find information that used to be repeated in this newsletter every week of the month, like the section on pests and diseases is no more. These are now more neatly packed up in the monthly newsletter, keeping this one focussed on the weekly tempo of gardening. Look out some time soon for another new newsletter - The Gardening Season - which, not surprisingly, will cover the more strategic topics in year round gardening, focussing on each season in turn.

First harvests of 2026

We’ve been eating peas for 6 weeks now, but this week the first broad beans arrived. Now I much prefer sugar snap and mange-tout peas to broad beans, so I don’t really care, but Debbie and the kids love them. I can tolerate them when they are small and tender, not starchy, which is one of the benefits of growing them myself.

This week also marks the availability of significant numbers of tomatoes, not quite enough, but that’s for next week.

Here’s the complete list of first harvests this year.

Last harvests

This last harvests list is getting a bit confusing now, because at first glance it would seem that we have run out of for example, spinach, calabrese, peas, cabbages an d cauliflower. Those are just successions finishing though, we have new successions of all of these being harvested now, so we are not starving!

I’m almost at the point where I need to harvest the last of my spring cabbages, so I can plant the last of my melons, this is an endless race. I’m resisting because our next batch of cabbages is a few weeks away, but at some point I have to make the call. Other than that we are now in the season of true abundance and there will be very few last harvests, except of course the carrots I mentioned earlier and the spinach, which is currently lovely but will soon be flowers.

Here’s a link to Last harvests so far this year

Sowings this week

Nothing this week! I’m taking a rest for two weeks.

Here’s a link to everything sowed so far this year

Not germinated yet

Salad onions are always frustratingly slow to germinate, as are parsnips, gardening teaches us patience!

Germinated this week

It’s been a great week for seeds germinating. Almost everything is up, but the Little Gem lettuces are looking very feeble!

Pricked out

Yes, this is almost a repeat of what I sowed, that’s what happens when the timing’s right. Next week will be boring.

Potted on this week

Nothing this week

Planted this week

Planted the outdoor tomatoes and the outdoor chilli peppers, it’s warm enough but I hope they like the rain!

Here’s a link to everything planted so far this year

Greenhouse progress

One of my annual challenges is that the heated greenhouse should broadly pay for itself. Not because I need it to, but because it makes the whole thing more interesting. The heating and lighting are a deliberate indulgence, but I still like to know that the crops are earning their keep.

This year the experiment has worked particularly well. The early cordon tomatoes already have six or seven trusses on each plant, with the first few trusses close to ripening. The hanging basket varieties are further ahead still, and the Mascotka tomatoes are producing plenty of ripe fruit already. The peppers are carrying lots of fruit, the aubergines are large healthy plants just coming into flower, and the melons have raced away, with several fruits already set.

The real stars, however, have been the cucumbers. We’ve harvested hundreds so far, enough that the value of the crop has already covered the winter and spring heating and lighting bill. Everything else from this point on is effectively a bonus.

The tomatoes will soon start making their contribution too. By bringing the season forward under glass, we’ll probably enjoy six weeks of substantial tomato harvests before the main crop in the polytunnel really gets going. The value of those early harvests is difficult to calculate precisely, but it’s easily worth more than £100 in produce alone.

Of course, the economics are only part of the story. What the greenhouse really delivers is joy. The joy of harvesting cucumbers in May. The anticipation of watching tomatoes colour up while outdoor plants are just showing their first flower trusses. The joy that comes from challenges, like experimenting with melons, peppers and aubergines that would otherwise have a very short season in our climate.

The finances are satisfying, but the real reward is walking into the greenhouse each morning and finding that something new is ready to pick, not so much fun is watering it every afternoon when I arrive home!

Polytunnel progress

There’s been very little change in the tunnel, apart from the new routine of clipping up the cucumbers and training/side shooting the tomatoes every couple of days. This routine will soon be extended to the winter squash, which need tying in almost daily and they rocket up the climbing frames outside

The cucumbers - as usual - are the stars and they have their first fruit forming now. Just in time too, because the greenhouse plants are starting to show their age. As soon as the polytunnel plants can keep up with demand, the greenhouse plants are composted and new plants take their place for autumn.

I will soon finish harvesting the tunnel beetroot and that will make space for flowers. I’m working harder on flowers and herbs in the tunnel this year, hoping for a more relaxed under cover growing experience, trying to duplicate the joy of spring, autumn and winter growing in the tunnel. In previous years the polytunnel has been more chore than joy in summer.

Allotment and garden progress

The allotment is looking great this year, it finally feels like I’m delivering on the last two years of changes to balance food production with the pure enjoyment of being there. Food production is still huge of course and this week I celebrated self-sufficiency in courgettes, the carrots safely germinating, the main cauliflower harvest starting and the early red cabbages starting to form heads.

One thing I experimented with this year was growing my lettuce in this long bed, it in the most trafficked part of the plot and looks amazing, as good as any flower border. In fact I will soon be replanting it with a new batch of lettuce, ready for National Open Garden’s Day and two weeks later our main allotment open day

Waiting to be planted out

I’m now feeling much more relaxed about my back log of plants, I’ve found home for most of them and they will be planted next week.

Sowings for next week

Nothing next week, I’m taking a two week break from sowing!

Weekly Harvest

I spent a lovely few hours harvesting last week, I used the new allotment table and the veg stayed fresh in water, until it was boxed up under the protection of the shade sail. I also gave lots of veg away to fellow allotmenteers

Useful links

Top level links

The website associated with this newsletter

My YouTube channel

My free eBook - Outgrow : The Art and Practice of Self-sufficiency

My complete gardening database real time access to everything!

My Amazon shop, which lists the gardening products I use, with comments

If you can afford it, you can buy me a cake or some seeds

The most useful lower level links

The reference info section of my eBook, lists what I actually sowed, planted, harvested each month, plus all of the tours and guide videos for that month

Monthly growing guides (what to sow, harvest fresh and eat from the store room each month)

Comprehensive growing guides to every type of veg that I grow

The section of my eBook that covers the basic tools and techniques of gardening (sowing, planting, pests, weeds etc)

The section of my eBook that covers the more advanced tools and techniques of gardening ( extending the season, successional plantings, spacing)

Using grow lights and alternatives to extend the season

Introduction to growing under cover with fleece, low tunnels, polytunnels etc

The chapter of my eBook that covers conservatory gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers greenhouse gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers polytunnel gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers cold frames and low tunnel gardening

The chapter of my eBook that covers extending the season with fleece

The chapter of my eBook that covers outdoor gardening

A guide to my database, how to use it and how to take a copy of it

Useful database links

The types of veg that I grow, roughly ranked in my order of priority

The varieties of herbs, fruit and veg that I’m growing this year

Overview of all of the successions for year round gardening (I don’t grow/recommend all of them) main crops successions are the most reliable

What I’ve sowed so far this year

How long each type of seed typically takes to germinate

What I’ve planted so far this year

What I’ve harvested so far this year

First harvest dates for key successions

The pots and trays that I use with my comments and ratings

The nets and other covers that I use with my comments and ratings

Information on root depth for each type of veg

Information on germination temperature for each type of veg

Information on pesticide use for each type of fruit and veg

List of fruits and veggies that benefit from Mycorrhizal associations

How long seeds last for each type of veg

Which types of veg are heavy, medium and light feeders

How long seeds take to germinate

My life is finely tuned and I don’t have much spare time. My gardening tempo of an hour a day, or more typically 7 hours a week, through winter and early spring slots nicely into that life, but late April and May need more of me, some weeks as much as 20 hours and it’s hard to find those extra hours, especially if normal life fails to co-operate and this year, a whole month of cascading illnesses, lots of family commitments, helping neighbours and finishing this year’s big DIY project (building a gym) at home didn’t help.

It’s years like this, though, that cement my commitment to gradually reducing my gardening commitments each year and bit by bit I’ve delivered on that promise to myself. I’ve gardened for just over 10 years now and it’s been wonderful. I’ve learnt a lot and shared that journey in well over a thousand videos, my gardening book (which is really a trilogy), my database and this newsletter. Now I’m reaping the rewards of all of that learning and that allows me to grow enough food for Debbie and me, with plenty spare to share, with a lot less land under cultivation. So I continue to chip away at the annual beds, gradually turning more space over to perennials and leisure space.

This year though I’ve decided to make some even bigger changes and this is where June becomes relevant, because June is when I really make a start.

Celebrating Gardening in June

At the start of June, the allotment always looks a bit feeble, everything is new and just struggling to get established, especially after the recent heat wave, but June is an amazing month. Sunshine and showers power amazing growth and by the end of June, the gardens are transformed. This little video was shot on the 24th of June and for me it’s a very useful reminder of what’s in store for us, a celebration of June’s abundance in a well-planned garden.

For me, June is also when all of the summer fruits really start to arrive in abundance, especially from the early greenhouse plantings. May provided cucumbers and strawberries and the first few courgettes, but it’s June when a well-balanced harvest table really arrives.

Our little kitchen garden also comes alive and becomes a snacker’s delight and a great playground for the big and little kids. This photo was taken (from the house roof) two years ago, before the sauna and gym were built.

All change on the allotment

For most of my decade of gardening, my objectives have been to grow a lot of food, to grow it efficiently and to not spend any more than half of my food bill savings on growing it. Growing a lot means saving a lot, so I’ve been able to invest a lot, while making a tidy profit, which adds up over the years, since we’ve harvested £67k worth of food for the family.

Now though my focus is shifting. I’m planning for the next decade, at the end of which I will be 72 and my objectives will likely change again. So what’s changing? I’m refreshing the design and infrastructure of the plot. Here’s the big picture, which I will go into over the next year.

The primary objective is to make the plot safer, more of a pleasure to work, a pleasure to relax on, and a pleasure for visitors. All of these changes should eventually be aligned with the needs of 72-year-old Debbie and me. That means a new layout, new low tunnel and cold-frame tops (at 7-10 years old they are falling to pieces), more flowers, more trees, less maintenance, nicer sight lines. Most of the new infrastructure I’m building will outlast me, or will be designed to be easily repaired.

Specifically I’m reducing my exposure to flooding, the entrance path and shed currently flood most years. I’m building a new shed and making it suitable for storing produce (rodent resistant). I’m moving the compost bins to the back of the plot (no longer pride of place) and I’m making a whole new entrance work nd storage area. The new work area is the project I’m most excited about because it’s being designed to address my biggest annoyances with the plot:

• The entrance to the plot is always piled high with rubbish and uncompostables in bags (so I will now have under bench rubbish storage to keep the path clear) waiting for me to collect it by car (I normally cycle or walk).

• I have nowhere to work on projects and I have a lot of projects planned over the next few years, as I mentioned all new low tunnels, cold-frame tops, fruit cage, arches etc. So I’m building a large work table/work bench.

• I like to harvest on the plot, but I don’t have a good wash and pack station, so the work bench will serve double duty for that. I also want shaded space for produce during the harvest, to keep it out of the sun and in tip top condition for 1-2 hours until I’m finished.

• I currently have no good storage place for wood, bags, nets, canes, fence pins etc, so I’m building that under and over the bench too, freeing up shed storage for higher value items and produce. Some storage will also be incorporated into the new compost area.

• The entrance to the plot always looks a mess, now I’m planning for it to look great.

• I have no under-cover workbench, so I’m building that in the shed.

This all needs to be funded and I’m now in the fortunate position to be able to change my financial model going forward. I’m now going to make gardening a zero-cost hobby, not a profit-making enterprise. That puts my focus clearly on just indulging myself and having fun, creating a little oasis from the challenges of life and playing around growing and building things. I’ve already saved enough for most of these projects, so I’m excited to start.

Gardening in June

I always try to relax in June, after the hectic pace of May, everything is planted now and so I can afford to enjoy the gardens. We don’t have a hungry gap in spring, it’s one of my busiest harvest periods, so in June and July my harvest volumes actually drop a bit and that helps to reinforce that relaxed feeling. I also switch from a weekly harvest, to every few days, which suits the faster growth rate of peas, courgettes, berries, cucumbers, beans, tomatoes etc.

Debbie and I start visiting the plot late, enjoying the mild evenings to harvest and water and leaving the days free for projects and leisure. By the end of the week the fridge is packed full and we pick the leafy greens and that’s the harvest done.

There’s not that much to do, but we try and keep on top of the most important jobs. Here’s my summary for June.

Jobs: Summer prune your plums and cherries, ideally choosing a dry period. We grow organic so we don’t spray our apples anymore for codling moth, but if you do then in early June and late June is the best time. We used to loose about 2/3 of the apple crop to Codling moth, but we’ve gradually selected apples that are less prone to them! Once strawberries have finished fruiting root runners to create new plants. I like to trim the foliage off my younger hanging basket strawberries, give them a good feed and let them recover, ready for next year, older plants are composted.

If you are running late or sowing outside almost everything that I sowed in May can be sown in June, but it’s getting a bit late for main crop potatoes and parsnips, so don’t delay.

• I like to root a third batch of tomatoes from side shoots, which I grow in containers for a late greenhouse harvest in autumn, we remove the main-crop cordon varieties (which we grow in the ground) from the polytunnel in early October to make way for the winter salads/spinach etc. Sun gold and Honeycomb remain sweet all through autumn, most other varieties don’t

• I sometimes direct sow a last batch of main-crop carrots in early June, to be harvested in late Autumn onwards. Ironically our slower growing winter carrots (Eskimo) were direct sown in May

• Early June is the latest time to sow beetroot, to be planted out in July (often after early cauliflowers, garlic, onions or broad beans) to be harvested for storage in October

• The beginning of June is also a great time to sow another big batch of loose leaf lettuces, to replace February sown ones. These will last until the end of summer

• June is also the best time to sow purple sprouting broccoli for a harvest next spring, I like Red Fire and Claret for a longer harvest period. Plant it out in July with some protection from the heat and butterflies! However if you have clubroot like I do this often fails, as clubroot is rampant in summer, so this year I will be sowing later and planting in colder ground in October

• Early June is also the perfect time to sow calabrese and cauliflower for an autumn crop, plant out after you’ve harvested your onions and shallots. Since I have club root Monclano and Clapton are the only real options.

• I also like to sow a new batch of kale for autumn/winter, I prefer doing this than trying to keep my March sown plants healthy.

• I also like to sow a few cucumbers, to provide a late crop in the polytunnel/greenhouse, this also mitigates the risk that the polytunnel plants run out of steam, or succumb to mildew. My early cucumbers, which have given us hundreds of fruits in April and May will finish by the end of June, by which time the polytunnel plants are fruiting

• We also sometimes sow radicchio in late June, to provide crunch and colour to the winter salad mixes, although now my preference is to use baby beetroot and chard leaves to provide the colour

• June is also the perfect time sow chard and perpetual spinach for autumn and winter harvests of mature leaves, but we often just use beetroot leaves instead of chard

• June is also the time to harvest Garlic and Elephant garlic, you can leave it longer, but that increases the risk of splitting, which reduces storage life, also the longer you leave it the less options you have to re-plant after it

• June is a great time to plant a last batch of potatoes in containers for a harvest in winter and early spring. Some will leave their last batch until July (Christmas potatoes) but this significantly increases the risk of blight, for little improvement in taste. I have some Vita Noire chitting in the workshop, ready to go.

• Mid June is a good time for a second batch of Fennel for an autumn harvest too, we often find we have a little space starting to open up in July after cauliflowers.

• There’s also just time for a last sowing of French beans, for me these follow my early peas and broad beans, which finish in late June or early July. My favourite variety is Algarve.

All of the details

You can find all of the details of my plans for June in my sowing log, which is updated in real-time, as is my planting log. Here’s the visual summary.

If you are new to my newsletters, then you will find all of the specifics of what I’m sowing, planting, harvesting etc in my gardening week newsletters.

Bulk Harvest highlights

My main monthly harvest highlights for June. I’m going to be focussed on getting the early Toughball onions out of the ground and into store, these help us bridge the gap between our stored onions losing quality in early June and our main crops arriving in Late July or early August. I don’t like to leave them too long, especially with rainy weather coming. This year about 30% of the Toughball went to seed, but we still have plenty and we have a later succession a few weeks away and they are very unlikely to go to seed.

Then we have the garlic. I’m always keen to get the garlic out of the ground as soon as it’s ready. I’m harvesting green garlic in May and early June, but towards the end of June the garlic is out of the ground and drying.

I dry my garlic in the workshop under fans, it doesn’t take long and fans cost essentially nothing to run.

I’m also keen to get the Elephant garlic harvested and I replant the rounds back in my perennial bed, where they are quite happy, until they are ready to sprout again in Autumn, it’s one less job to remember to do.

Finally I like to get my early potatoes out of the ground and into store, the rest I will leave in the containers until I need them.

Problems in June

For all of its delights June comes with it’s unfair share of problems! First up for me are the aphids in the greenhouse and for that the solution for me is simple, airflow. I open up the double doors at both ends of the greenhouse, the roof vents open (automatically) every day and I have the louvers open too. Few aphids get established in such a breezy environment and airflow helps with all of the indoor growing diseases too.

For many, leaf miners are the next worst pest we have to deal with, we don’t have the allium leaf miner here yet, but the beet leaf miner can quickly decimate a beetroot, chard or spinach crop. Beets also often suffer from fungal spot on the leaves and the combination can leave them in a sorry state. My solution here is simple too, cut off the leaves, all of them! It seems dramatic but if the plants are well established the leaves soon grow back, clean and healthy. This is also a useful technique if your beets are getting a bit too large, you can effectively pause their growth for a few weeks in summer and get a lovely crop of leaves to eat too. In June this technique is only relevant for early sowings, that are large and well established by the end of June, for later sowings I find myself topping them in August.

Finally we come to the brassicas! There are three key options to consider and all have their place.

Nets

Protection with nets often sounds like a panacea, just cover up your fruit and veg with the right size of mesh/fleece and your pest problems will go away. Unfortunately while this does work to a degree, it's also likely that you will trap pests under the net, or they will already be in the soil. You will also keep out the predators. The pests will happily breed away under your nets, hidden from your vigilant gaze until it's too late.

We had this problem many times with brassicas under nets; the first time we removed a fine net to find our purple sprouting broccoli covered with caterpillars (hidden under the leaves). The second time we removed a net over our red cabbages and Brussels to find the hearts decimated by cabbage aphid (we lost half the crop).

I now generally only keep nets on for the first 4-8 weeks after planting, at which point the plants are big and well established. Usually too big for pigeons and big enough to cope with a few nibbles. After this inspection is key!