It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times

We are having the finest summer for six years, though given that means about one week of sunshine that's more a reflection on the vileness of the weather in previous years. The spring though was, in Britain at least, the coldest for half a century.

Combine those two phenomena and it is making gardening a bit of a bugger, which for those of us who enjoy eating food we grow is beyond annoying. We are at least three weeks further back in the growing year than we would normally be, and now the ground is exceptionally dry so to prevent everything running to seed or dying off watering is needed.

In a spare moment the other day I calculated we had 44 different fruits and vegetables on our allotment (and you can add to that another two or three like fennel grown in the garden but not the plot). That isn't counting different varieties of the same thing either. So in spite of the conditions we can hope for some plenty to come, which is probably one definition of the allotment gardener.