We are now entering the season when the fruits of your labour in the garden are now starting to pay dividends

Tomato and cucumber are giving an endless supply of fruit, and the peppers are now starting to swell and soon will be ready for picking.

You cannot get anything fresher than picking vegetables from your own garden.

Now that one side of the small greenhouse has been emptied of the pot leeks, I have replenished the soil by the addition of 6X manure and I am about to sow Nantes 2 carrots early.

This type of early carrot can be sown from early March till July. By sowing in July they will be ready for lifting by late November. This will ensure enough carrot to see us through the winter for pots of home made soups and stews.

Part of the leek crop has been dug up, washed, cut up, put into foils and placed in the freezer as well as the rhubarb that will be made into pies and crumbles.

And so the preparation for winter will continue till all the vegetables and fruit have been lifted and stored or frozen.

As I wrote in a previous column, last September I planted Radar onion sets from D. T. Brown of Newmarket which were planted in October and covered with enviromesh to help protect the sets against birds and the weather.

These onions were lifted this month and placed in the greenhouse to dry.

They now are a golden brown colour and have now been placed into an onion net bag and put into the garage.

The seed sown onions are still in the garden and will continue to grow in size untill they will be lifted, dried and stored.

For this Autumn, my delivery of Radar will happen in September for planting in October and so the start for next year will begin all over again. I do not grow onions from sets as they tend to run to seed which makes the onion pretty useless and does not store well.

However this did not happen so I am growing them as well as onion from seed. The second early and main crop potatoes should be growing well. Just make sure they do not run short of water for even if it is raining, it is difficult for the rain water to reach the soil as the leaves act like an umbrella.

As with all plants always make sure that they are watered and fed, especially if grown in pots tubs, and baskets as the tend to to dry out very quickly. I cannot stress this often enough.

My late cropping raspberries are now starting to show signs of the fruit forming –something to look forward to. Also on the allotment, the swede that I planted are growing well and the pot and blanched leeks are doing good, but basically all that I have been doing on the allotment this year is weeding the beds and trying to keep everything tidy as I missed four months of the growing season.

Considering everything, I have not done too badly.

I was fortunate, especially with the leeks as I always receive my leek seedlings in November and grow them on through the winter,.

But this is at a cost for heating the greenhouse and also lighting. In the dark days of winter, artificial heating and lighting is a must to encourage the plants to grow and to get them large enough and hardened off for planting out in May the following year.

I also enjoy growing flowers for the front garden.

This year it is begoias, and geraniums, as seen in the photo above.

Well friends I will close for now and wish you all a rewarding garden year.