Allotment Tales 25th June 2026

Thursday on the allotment was full of glorious sunshine for the third successive day. Everything at the allotment seems super-charged – crops and weeds alike.
It’s suddenly peak strawberry season. We picked about eight punnets, with more to come next week – in a race to harvest before the slugs spoil too many. We’ll try to get straw to lay around the base of the plants next week too. The blackcurrants have quietly ripened, almost whilst our backs have been turned (focusing on the sea of weeds that greet us on arrival every week). The gooseberries are still slightly firm to the touch but may be ready next week. We netted over the top of the blueberries as fruit is forming and the pigeons are gathering.“June Drop” had begun to naturally thin the apples and stone fruit trees. We added to this process, aiming to leave 2 fruit per cluster, to give space for growth and to prevent disease from developing amongst overcrowded fruit.

We have secured two courgette plants and a butternut squash (Thanks Moira!). These are hungry plants, so we mixed the last of the manure with our allotment compost to give the plants a good start. Cross fingers we’ll be rewarded with successive waves of courgettes throughout the season.

The weeds are thriving and we don’t feel on top of them just now. Efforts today were focused on weeding amongst the peas and beans. We also sought to restore order in the ranks, as the beans are anarchically weaving themselves everywhere other than where they’re supposed to be climbing.
It was a pleasure to do some harvesting – strawberries, rhubarb and broad beans (delicious when popped raw into salads when they’re so young)

Late in the day we noticed that the bramble bed is disappearing under a blanket of perennial weeds. We managed some emergency weeding and will focus on this area next week.
Despite the rainy start to June, the ground is very dry, so everything got a good soak before we left.

Jobs for next week: sort the brambles; weed as much as we can; continue thinning the fruit trees; harvest comfrey for the compost bins and to make a batch of plant feed; prune the willow windbreak; lay a bed of straw around the strawberries ; fill more punnets with ripening fruit