These are my strawberry plants, which look strong after our hard winter. A lot of the flowers have finished now, and there are small green fruits on every plant which should be ready in a couple of weeks. I put some blood, fish and bone fertiliser round the plants a month ago, and I also removed some of the older ones, and put wood chippings around each plant to hold the fruit off the ground. This is inside my mesh tent of course, to protect the fruit from the birds, and to allow me to put down slug pellets. The small plants that I grew from runners last autumn are all outside the tent - no room inside! The crop will undoubtedly be smaller than last year, but that was exceptional, and this year's looks perfectly adequate. It's been so dry recently that I even watered them, although we do have thunderstorms forecast.
My purple sprouting broccoli has now finished, but I was lucky to get any. The weather was so cold in the winter (down to -11°C) that some of the plants died, and heavy snow collapsed the tent that they were in, breaking others. But it's a super crop - very tasty, expensive in the shops, and at an otherwise lean time - and I shall certainly be growing it again.
I planted out some French beans - a little early, but the weather is forecast to be warm. I also have potatoes looking good, peas (very slow) strong cabbages, broccoli, broad beans (full of flower) onions and shallots.
In my 'hotbed' I have beetroot and lettuces coming up.
Still to come are runner beans, courgettes and sweetcorn.
