By the middle of June most of my crops are doing quite well even though the weather has been hot and dry. The broad beans, lettuce and strawberries have been cropping for about a week now and the early peas will soon be ready. The early potatoes are flowering and the brassicas are coming along nicely, as are the onions and carrots. I've been picking African daisies and the first sweet peas although the hot weather has forced the dahlias to flower early rather than putting on more growth.

African daisies

Dimorphotheca "Sinuata Mixed"

Brassicas

Peas filling out

Onions and carrots

Sweet peas starting to flower

End of May

By the end of May the plot is just about set out, leaving room for a few successional sowings. It's been a wet end to the month, which is just as well because previously it had been very dry. It's a good time to get a mulch on, to feed the soil and keep the moisture in.

Pests

For me the main problems are with slugs and snails and pigeons, particularly on the brassicas. I find that sprinkling a circle of lime around each brassica plant is usually sufficient to deter slugs and snails but this year a heavier infestation means I have had to resort to slug pellets. I create a trap by putting a few pellets under a margarine tub where there is no danger of the birds eating them or the dead slugs and dispose of them each morning, renewing the pellets where necessary. I hang old CDs over the brassica plants, these blow around in the wind and reflect the sun; this keeps the pigeons off, although people with a serious problem use netting.

Plot this weekend

Planting out

By the middle of May it's time for PLANTING OUT, firstly the brassicas and then, once the danger or frost has passed, the flowers.

Outside now at the beginning of May the potatoes are coming through and need earthing up, the broad beans are flowering, the first row of peas is up so it's time to sow another, the sweet peas need planting out; the trees are in leaf and blossoming and all around everything is spurting into growth!

Cherry tree blossom

Sowing another row of peas

Earthing up potatoes

Hardening off

In May it's time to move plants from the greenhouse to the coldframe for a week or two to acclimatise them to conditions outside prior to planting out. This is called HARDENING OFF.

Potatoes Showing

Earlies, planted out at the beginning of the month.

Broad Beans

These were sown last November and overwintered.

Onions

These are the first crop to go in here, at the end of March. A month later they're growing away nicely.

Pricking out and potting on

PRICKING OUT AND POTTING ON is the next job for seedlings raised under glass, to give them more room to grow.

Sowing seeds

SOWING SEEDS is what I've been doing in late March and April. Most of the cut flowers I grow are half hardy annuals and are started off in one of my two heated propagators on a sunny window sill. I sow them in the flimsy small modules in strips of ten, 5 of these will fit into a sturdy standard size seed tray, then the tray goes into the propagator. For very fine seed I use 1/2 size seed trays. As soon as all the seeds in a tray have germinated I move it out of the propagator onto another sunny window sill for 2 or 3 days and then put them out in the greenhouse. Ideally this would be heated to a constant 20 degrees but like a lot of people I can't afford to do this so they have to take their chances! The greenhouse has an automatic roof vent and I use a paraffin heater at night if frost is threatened. Seeds that don't need a high germination temperature are started off in the greenhouse, coldframe or straight in the ground once the soil has warmed up enough.