The disadvantage of being a Blogger's daughter ....

.... is pausing with your strawberry in the air, tantilisingly close to plunging your teeth into it, for a photo opportunity without even being asked. Xanthe saw me approach with strawberries and camera in hand, she silently took the strawberry and posed obligingly with it. Even photophobic Willow, while snipping elderflowers for the 'bizarre weather' post, shot me a look mid-snip and asked the lens "have you finished? Can I put the scissors down?". I thought she was behaving in a marvelously natural and unselfconscious manner, turns out every move was carefully calculated.

The allotment strawberries have been fabulous this year, I'm coming away with tubs full every few days. I guess those news reports about jubilant strawberry farmers were true after all. It's a good job really as there's not much else ready to pick. We've got lettuce but last year's chard has finally run to seed and nothing else is ready, the radishes have only just gone in, tomatoes only just flowering, courgettes only just forming.

I assume everyone else is having an awful year for fruit trees and it's not just me? We had lots of flowers on the plum, apple and pear trees and lots of tiny fruit formed but the lack of rain seems to be stunting their growth. They've remained tiny, have withered and are dropping off the tree. Other wild trees (cherry and yellow bullace) seem to be doing the same thing too although sloes in the hedgerows seem to be OK so far.

I'm now at a stage where I should be able to see if my '2 plot' strategy pays off. Bressingham (the further away plot) is now more or less established, all the plants are watered in and shouldn't need much attention from hereon in. The high maintenance crops are all watered in at Louie's Lane (3 mins walk away) so survival watering and caterpillar patrol is all that's required - hopefully. So this is the moment of truth, will I be able to maintain 2 plots split between 2 sites? I certainly hope so as I'd hate to have to decide which plot to give up.

The Menace lurking in the veg patch .....

.... The strawberry stranglers! Quite a David and Goliath story really. The strawberry plant is probably 6 inches high, has sent out one small runner and somehow managed to lasso and strangle a Jerusalem Artichoke about 5 feet tall. I'm not sure I should be sending the children out into the garden alone, might not see them again!

Hectic Sunday.

We have worked so hard today. First of all, Adam and I scrubbed the hen house with Jeyes fluid. I've never used the stuff before but I like the retro yet ruthlessly efficient vibe it has going on. The smell took me straight back to my Great Gran's kitchen so I guess she was a fan too. We're using it as insecticide in the coop but it can also do a myriad of other things like freshen the drains or, my favourite, keep the waterbutt smelling nice. I've sploshed 5ml into our waterbutt so we'll see if it works.

Adam is, as I write, finishing off painting the coop, another anti bug measure but the smart new look is a welcome added benefit.

I've been busy making strawberry jam and when the children are in bed later I'll do a batch of raspberry - boiling sugar and a curious 2 year old are not a good combination. Then tomorrow it'll be a batch of raspberry and gooseberry and some gooseberry chutney.

It's also been a scorching hot, humid day so we're all grubby, sweaty and exhausted. I think I'll sneak out shortly and buy a few cold beers as a surprise for Adam as I think he's earned them but then so have I, think I may have to help him to drink them!

Strawberries, strawberries everywhere.

After the gloom of the courgette debacle I thought I'd take the opportunity to dwell on my successes for a change.

The strawberries are doing well this year. Last year was disastrous, they were in a pot on the ground, imprisoned behind the ubiquitous netting to protect them from the chickens. They still managed to break in a couple of times though and decimated the crop. This year the strawberries high up on the fence and safe. I've also fed them with some berry fertilizer and that seems to have given them a boost.

We have a total of 9 plants which sounds like a lot but is really only enough to give us a regular snacking supply rather than a jam sized glut. They are a delicious snack too, the four of us regularly squabble over who's getting the next ripe berry. I have to confess Adam and I sneaked out into the garden after the children had gone to bed last night to snaffle a few.

My plan is to transfer the plants to the allotment (when/if we get it) next year and then start planting up runners to eventually create a large strawberry bed as, at the moment, strawberries and raspberries are the only jam fruit I buy so I'd like to grow my own supply instead. In the meantime, we're off to the pick your own fruit farm this weekend and I'll commence the 2009 jam making season.

Also doing well are the tumbling toms in hanging baskets. They are already covered in loads of green fruit but, as ever, the plants themselves look really ropey. This is my second season of growing them and last year I was worried, thinking they were on their last legs. A quick trawl of the Internet told me their appearance was fairly typical and, sure enough, they cropped and cropped and cropped. We had enough for several lbs of green tomato mincemeat as well as meeting all our salad needs for a sizeable chunk of the summer. Let's hope this year goes the same way.

Heroes in a Hairnet.

This weekend my strawberries have been mostly channeling the spirit of Ena Sharples. Saturday morning I was doing my usual patrol of the garden, feeding chickens, checking for eggs, quick survey of the veggies to see what's going on etc I was most indignant to find a half eaten green strawberry on the path. We had one lone strawberry beginning to turn red whose progress the girls were eagerly monitoring, turns out they weren't the only ones.

An unknown feathered offender had evidently nicked it, eaten the red bit and abandoned the rest. I suspect it was the parent and child combo I spotted this morning. I'm not a bird expert and have no idea what brand they were. They were a rather pedestrian drab brown though the youngster still had a fluffy comedy hair do and an air of gawky teen about him. The parent was hopping around the garden from the lawn to the trellis at the top of the fence and over to the strawberry basket with the child obediently following each and every move.

I'm now in the process of covering my strawberry baskets with netting that looks remarkably like a hairnet. I'm still concerned that they can poke their pesky beaks through the netting so I've added a mini windmill as a bird scaring measure and am surveying the house for shiny stuff I can festoon the baskets with. I'm kind of sad that my garden is looking increasingly demented with each additional pest control measure but, hey, as I read in the Half Hour Allotment book "I'm not a keen gardener, I'm a keen eater."