Rekha’s allotment: from plot to plate

With no time – or room – to spare, Rekha is busy sowing, planting out and cropping her first harvests, plus she shares a delicious cupcake recipe

Excited barely describes how I feel right now! My heart is racing as the outdoor air warms up and the seedlings start shooting up day after day. Forget those lockdown shopping queues, all my potted main-crop potato tubers are waiting patiently (socially distanced, of course) in the cold frame while others find themselves on the floor by the shed – even my pallet bench has no space for me to sit on! It seems like there is too much to do, but the reward will be a plot filled with new growth.

Now that many of my plants have been taken out of the greenhouse, I can move the aubergine, chilli, pepper and tomato plants out of my house – much to my family’s jubilation! It’s the perfect time to get these plants acclimatised to the greenhouse, but first, I need to put up shading and create filtered light, and in a week or two they’ll be ready to go into their final pots.

It’s also time to start earthing up the first-early potato plants. This task always assures me that abundant summer harvests are on their way. Finally, despite all this planting, my attention also turns to sowing winter crop seeds. I know it sounds crazy when summer hasn’t even got going yet, but as good gardeners know, it pays to plan ahead.

Carrots are quick and easy to grow, so sow small batches regularly for harvests throughout summer

Rekha Mistry is a keen veg grower who loves to try exotic varieties and experiment with them in the kitchen. She appeared in the 2015 BBC Two series, The Big Allotment Challenge