It’s been something of a strange growing year at the allotment. It has taken an age to turn around. And not just on ours. Most everywhere I looked showed a slower, slightly stunted growth. Largely unresponsive to effort.
Until it wasn’t. It is almost as though our usual May plot didn’t really happen until June. And then, almost invisibly at first, a gardening corner was turned.
The climbing French beans – some poles took multiple sowings and were either slow to grow or had baby stems eaten by pigeons – are finally taller than me. Soon, there will be happy handfuls of homegrown pods in blue and green and yellow.
The same with salad leaves. A bagful of oak leaf lettuce and assorted summer herbs is sitting in the fridge. The odd radish, too, might make it home. Luckily, Howard isn’t keen.
The morning glory – also on its third sowing – has finally taken to the poles. Company for the single tear pea stem that survived. The homegrown sweet peas, though, are tall and thick with scented flower. Our tagetes and calendula shine in the early morning and evening light. The self-sown verbena bonariensis towers in small clumps, challenging our slower-growing sunflowers.
I am hopeful our Italian chicories (red treviso and flecked castelfranco radicchios) and Asian greens (purple frills, kizuna and mizuna) from Vital Seeds will have an easier ride.
Everywhere I look around me now, our neighbouring allotments have also recovered. I wish we, too, had room for swathes of ox-eye daisies.
Our crimson-flowered broad beans should be ready when you read this. Howard and I will divide them for a favourite summer lunch and ponder what to sow in their place.
We will meet in the early morning, pick a few leaves, some herbs and sweet peas for home and count ourselves lucky.
Now, please tell us how your summer garden is growing.
Allan Jenkins’s Plot 29 (4th Estate, £9.99) is out now. Order it for £8.49 from guardianbookshop.com
