What a difference a week makes. I have been away for a few days and returned to beans grabbing on to every pole; the Basque peas climbing, reaching out like a rock climber on a difficult face. Pods are fattening fast on the broad beans (but first I’ll crop the plant tops, the classic gardening perk, to eat steamed tonight with Sunday dinner). The nasturtiums are clambering through the potatoes.
The chard has doubled in size in six days. The tomatoes, too. I pot them on, and try to offload others I have no room for. This is the growing season with the sun high in the sky, rising before 5am (but dropping fast from now), though we are past the week of the solstice – the twitchy garden time, the start of looking over your shoulder.
We are in the months of harvest. Gardening with warmth on your back, maybe a hat on your head, waiting, if you are like me, for the first bus to the plot, for an hour or two’s watering and weeding before work.
Time to pick, to cut and come again, time to eat your way through the veg patch. Time to clear space, plug every gap, time too for summer squash. These are the high summer feasting weeks of sharing food and seeds and seedlings.
I shared astonishing self-seeding purple orache, happily growing now on a neighbour’s plot. I have too much. I need Howard back from holiday, a few family meals for hungry kids.
The sunflowers are shooting up. My daughter Kala is taking the overspill. A couple of colleagues are growing on sweet peas. It is the month of abundance but remember to drench the plants in seaweed or other feed. Food for your summer food, if you will. Time to be thankful before planning for the shorter days ahead, to sort through autumn (and winter) seed. Their moment is coming next.
Allan Jenkins’s Plot 29 (4th Estate, £9.99) is out now. Order it for £8.49 from guardianbookshop.com
