David Lifton

July is here and, thanks to the warm weather, my crops are looking the best I’ve seen in many years

If you’d asked me back in March if I thought this year was going to be a successful one for homegrown harvests, I’d have probably said no. With that late cold snap, the peas were stunted, the broad beans were nowhere to be seen and I didn’t even begin sowing squash until April and May. This time last year, everything would have been twice the size of the plants I have in the ground right now – yet, there is a developing optimism in the air. fast-forward to July, and the weather has improved dramatically. While the rain has been scarce, we’ve had a good deal of sun and warmth – two elements I haven’t seen since 2013: my first year on an allotment. In that year, we confounded expectations and walked home with pumpkins too large for wheelbarrows, tomatoes aplenty and lots of salad crops. Should this warm spell continue into September, we could likely see the same again. The polytunnel is almost emptied of young plants – the wealth of ‘Musquee de Provence’ and west Indian pumpkins I’m growing this year are now in their final planting positions. Around them, the tall frames have been built, the kidney beans in and fed, ready for what I hope is a great yield of these beans. Back to those broad beans, and – if ever I needed an example of how well this year is going – I only need to count the amount of beans I have growing on the plants. Each time I do so, the number only goes up. Currently, there are around 50 pods ripening – a good ten times the crop of previous years. The peas, on the other hand, are only just beginning to recover from the slugs’ relentless assaults earlier in the year. This year is not a year for peas. I attribute it to many things, namely slugs and my ineffectiveness at stopping them before they chewed through the growing tips. While peas will regrow from the base, this takes them a great deal of time and sets them back weeks. Next year, every inch of soil will be covered by a beer trap – so far, this is the only effective way of dealing with slugs that’s both friendly to birds and other wildlife and is a little kinder to the slugs too. When I survey the plot, I see plants growing in almost every corner. This might not be a year for peas, but the beetroot, parsnips, potatoes, tomatoes and more are all coming along fast.