Great expectations

Best garlic ever

So far we've had several harvests exceeding our expectations this year: strawberries, gooseberries and garlic. This has meant a lot of fruit processing, but I've become better at the jam-making game and, with the steam juicer, it is very easy to make jellies and fruit wines. Just add your fruit, no need to top and tail or remove bits, steam for 90 minutes or so and drain the juice into a large bucket.

For fruit wine, add sugar to get the right specific gravity (around 1080, hydrometer needed for this), let cool to 22C or thereabouts and add yeast. Then rack into a demi-john with air lock after about a week and leave until it's done its thing. You'll probably have to rack it once more before bottling.

Strawberry punch

Then there are other crops that look very promising this year, particularly raspberries and Jerusalem artichokes.

Raspberry outlook

Very tall Jerusalem artichokes

The new crops of the year - grain amaranth, oca and quinoa - are beginning to look substantial:

Grain amaranth

Oca with flower

And the tomatillos, which didn't do so well last year, are a lot happier this year.

Pretty, zingy tomatillos

Inside the polytunnel it's a jungle of tomatoes. Two of the new varieties this year, Black Cherry and Dattelwein, have a wonderful flavour and will definitely become regulars.

It's a jungle in there

I haven't been quite so lucky with the beans. No problems with the broad beans and runner beans but poor yields of any French beans I've tried so far (Hunter, Cobra and Sultana). I'm still looking for the definitive French bean - any suggestions welcome. I quite fancy a yellow one.

Runner beans

I particularly like how we've got very smooth transitions of crops this year. No real gaps and manageable quantities of everything. Just now we have one more portion of broad beans left, for example, so that they are finished just as the other beans are coming on stream. The only gluts so far have been strawberries and gooseberries, but that's a nice problem to have.

We've been working on the area around the pond, which will get covered with black plastic this month - a project for next year - while we ponder what to do with the space. The soil seems very good.

Astilbes by the pond, area to be covered on the other side

The chicks have been growing at quite the rate. They now get to roam during the day but are quite skittish, particularly when the adult hens pass in the vicinity. Another month maybe until they're going to be catapulted into the hen house at night.

Tippy, our black-combed hen, and Feathers, one of the Christmas cockerels

Bring back summer

It really feels as if someone has switched the months around this year. Here we are in July, with April/May weather: highs of 16C and frequent showers and no end in sight.

Still, it is a good temperature for working in the garden, between showers, and the fruit & veg are growing quite happily. We've got quite a large variety on the menu now: cucumbers, new potatoes, broad beans, mangetout, cabbage, lettuce, courgettes, beetroot, radishes, shallots and, slowly but surely, the first tomatoes and carrots.

Strawberry Symphony

Our main crop at the moment, however, is strawberries. Blackbirds permitting, we are harvesting two litres a day. Strawberry rhubarb jam has already been made and some strawberries frozen. We eat about a litre a day, so yummy in porridge, with ice cream or cream or on top of a sponge cake.

Gooseberry Invicta

The gooseberry bushes are absolutely laden this year. We've had a few already, but most of them should be ripe over the coming fortnight. Same goes for the jostaberries and currants.

New bed, with quinoa in foreground. Note the weeds that
have grown since we removed the black plastic in April!

Jim's still digging the new area, which is very stony. Half of it has already been planted with quinoa.

New herb bed

The new herb bed is really coming along and makes the top of the garden look much prettier. This year it's a bit of a hodgepodge of herbs (summer savoury, dill, coriander, majoram, rosemary, anise hyssop and blue hyssop, borage, camomile and Vietnamese coriander) and other things that needed a sheltered home (sun flowers, grain amaranth, red cabbage).

The mint bed is also filling in. The lemon catmint is proving particularly tasty.

Colourful displays everywhere

Roses, lavender and wild flowers are out in full bloom now and everything is looking colourful. All we need is some balmy sunshine to sit out and enjoy it all.

This is what we want!