Courgettes, Keepwells and a Hosepipe with the Audacity of a Parking Warden

 Tuesday happened.

Now, I say that like it was some sort of event, and honestly, up the allotment, Thursday very much was. It was one of those proper working days where you arrive with a list in your head, you work through it steadily, and by the time you're packing up to go home your back is reminding you of every single item on that list in considerable detail. But you're happy. That peculiar, quiet, soil-under-the-fingernails kind of happy that I don't think you can get anywhere else. You allotment people will know exactly what I mean. Everyone else will just have to trust me on this one.

Sam was at work, which meant it was just me and Iris for the day. Now I want to be absolutely clear — Iris is seventeen, she is not what you'd call a morning person, and yet there she was, up the allotment on a Thursday, which I think speaks very well of her indeed. Either that or she genuinely loves growing things, which I firmly believe she does. Possibly both. Whatever the reason, I'll take it. The team was assembled. Two Tudor gardeners, two plots, and a very full agenda.

First job, as it almost always is, was the weeding. There's no getting around it and there's no putting it off, so you may as well get stuck straight in and get it done. The weeds have been having an absolute party while the weather's been dry, and they showed no signs of being sorry about it either. They never are. I have been growing vegetables on these allotments long enough to understand that weeds have no shame whatsoever. None. Not a single scrap. You turn your back for a fortnight and they've moved in, redecorated, and put their names on the letterbox. So we weeded. Thoroughly. Iris on one end, me on the other, and between us we made decent work of it. I didn't time it but it felt like the sort of session that earned a cup of tea about a third of the way through and then another one at the end.

With the weeding sorted, we moved on to the courgettes. Now. Five courgette plants. That is what went in on Thursday, and I want you to really take that number on board. Five. Because here's the thing about courgettes that every single person who has ever grown them knows — five plants in June is effectively a commitment to having more courgettes than you have ever wanted in your life by August. They will fill your kitchen. They will fill your neighbours' kitchens. You will be leaving bags of them on doorsteps like some kind of green, slightly alarming secret Santa. You will be slipping them into Sara's recipes with all the subtlety of a man who absolutely has too many courgettes and is hoping nobody notices. And yet — and yet — every year I plant them, and every year I am happy that I did. The neighbours are always grateful. The family eat well. And if I'm honest, there's a little bit of me that enjoys the comedy of the whole situation. Five plants. What could possibly go wrong.

The cabbages under the net had a bit of attention too — they needed hoeing and a general tidy-up around the base. Cabbages are good like that. They just get on with it under the net, quietly doing their thing, but they do appreciate a bit of housekeeping now and then. Give them a clean run around the base, take the hoe to anything that's sneaking in underneath the netting, and they reward you with proper solid heads later in the year. We had a decent go at them and they're looking a lot better for it. Job done.

Now, while I'm in the mood for reporting back, let me tell you about the onion situation, because it has been both a lesson and a genuine delight this year.

Last autumn, I did two things. I set some onion seeds — a variety called Keepwell — and I also bought in some onion sets. And I have to tell you, in the spirit of complete honesty, that the sets have been a disappointment. Not a disaster — they're perfectly fine for eating — but almost all of them have run to seed with the dry weather, which means they're no good for storing. And if you've grown onions you'll understand why that matters. Half the point of growing onions is that beautiful moment in late summer when you string them up and hang them in the shed and they sit there looking magnificent for months. Running to seed puts an end to that dream rather sharpish.

But the Keepwells. Oh, the Keepwells. Not one of them has run to seed. Not one. They're sitting there in their rows with tight, neat little bulbs, all of them doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing, cool as you like, seemingly entirely unbothered by the heat and the dry spell that's done for the sets. I planted them from seed last autumn — which does require a certain amount of patience and faith in the autumn when you can't quite see what's going to happen — and they have repaid that patience in full. If you're thinking about your onions for next year, write down Keepwell and don't lose the note. You'll thank me. Or rather, you'll thank yourself, because you did the work.

I've been busy at home as well as up the plots, which is the other thing I want to update you on. The first greenhouse is finished. Properly finished. And the second one — which has been functioning as a sort of transit lounge for about six hundred plants all waiting to be planted out — has now been almost completely emptied and is ready to come down. I can't tell you what it feels like to walk around at home at the moment without having to step over trays of seedlings. Like, genuinely, every available surface has had something sitting on it. The windowsills, the staging, the floor in the back room, the table in the corner that I thought Sara couldn't see but apparently she absolutely could and has mentioned it on more than one occasion. The plants are going in, the greenhouses are clearing, and the household is returning to something approaching normality. Sara is relieved. I am relieved. The windowsills are relieved.

Out on the plots themselves, we've already got the courgettes in from this week, and before that the butternut squash and pumpkins have gone in too. The French beans are planted out against a length of plastic fencing, put up with garden spikes along the edge of the bed. I always do mine this way — I put the plants in on one side and sow a packet of seeds on the other, so that when the plants are starting to give up later in the season, the seeds have come on and you get a second flush of beans. It's the sort of thing that sounds like it might be more trouble than it's worth but it absolutely isn't. You barely do anything extra and you extend the harvest by weeks. If I had a gardening motto — and I may actually get one stitched onto something — it would probably involve the phrase "second flush." There's always a second flush if you think ahead.

Now. The water.

I've talked before about the water situation at our allotments. The late switch-on at the start of the season, despite the fact that we pay for it in advance. The distinct impression that the tap knows what it's doing and is quietly laughing at us. Well, this week, the committee — in what I can only describe as a moment of what I'm sure felt like inspired thinking — have removed the barrels at the taps and replaced them with a length of hose.

I'll just let that land for a moment.

Gone are the days of the quick dunk. You know the one. The satisfying, efficient plunge of the watering can into the barrel, a nice deep drink for the can in about twelve seconds, and off you go, back to your parched plants before the damage gets any worse. Simple. Effective. Civilised. That is now history. Ancient history. In its place, you must now stand at a tap, hold the hose into your watering can, and wait. And wait. And wait a little bit longer. On a busy Thursday afternoon, when half the allotment site has decided it's time to water their brassicas, what you end up with is a queue. An actual queue. At a tap. In the sunshine. Which brings me to a point that I feel very strongly about — the average age on our allotments is somewhere in the seventies. Seventy. Not a typo. Last week, in the heat, we had a row of people standing in the sun waiting for their watering cans to fill, which I'm sure nobody on the committee had modelled as a possible outcome of this particular decision.

And now — and I am almost certain about this — they have lowered the pressure. I cannot prove this, I have no instruments, I have not measured it scientifically. But I know a slow tap when I see one, and what we had this week was a slow tap. Which means the queue is longer, the waiting is longer, and the sun is still out there doing its level best. I feel a letter forming somewhere in the back of my mind. I have not written it yet. But it's getting closer.

Anyway. Rant over. The courgettes are in, the Keepwells are magnificent, the cabbages have been sorted, and Iris did a brilliant job and didn't complain once. Which, at sixteen and on a Thursday, is genuinely impressive.

Until next time — keep growing, keep digging, and if you're at a tap on our site, maybe bring a book.