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Grow your own enthusiast Richard Crawford, shares the growing pains and pleasures of his summer down on the plot at Hawthorn Allotments in Inverness.

Having put the last of my broad beans in the freezer, I was about to pull up the plants and compost them, when I noticed a whole load of new flowers coming through – could this weird summer prompt some more beans? Well, I will leave the plants in for now and see what happens. I am still struggling with my dwarf beans though; perhaps I should have done what I did to my celeriac and put cloches on them.

It looks like cloches are the secret formula for celeriac up here in the Highlands. Once I had taken my young plants out of the protection of the cold frame, they really didn’t do anything at all in the ground. I haven’t had much success with them up here before and this year seemed to offer little hope. However, after removing the bottle-cloches from the brassicas, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to try and improve my chances with the celeriac, and it has certainly done that. They are protected from cooling wind and so long as they get watered, we are looking good! I am adding occasional waterings of comfrey tea, which should encourage good growth; I have had a lot of comfrey this year so I might as well put it to good use (plenty has gone in the compost bin too).

Contrary to what I thought, the sweet peas continue to do extremely well. Again, perhaps leaving the bottle-cloches covering the base of the plant is the key to their success. Hmmm, maybe I should build a huge poly tunnel to cover my plot! Well, it would be a nice thought if allotment rules allowed it. The communal poly tunnel sure is looking like a winner for next year – I will get my space booked.

I have finally had some pumpkins set, and will be keeping them protected too; I can only think that it has been the ups and downs in temperature that has prevented them from achieving much so far, but now we are rocking and I will be giving them a dose of potash every now and then – ah, that will be some comfrey tea again then!

If you recall one of the first Kitchen Garden programmes this year, Poyntzfield Nurseries was the subject and there was a brief discussion about lunar cycle planting. Ok, so I am giving moon planting a go. Following the Synodic patterns (as opposed to Biodynamic or Sideral), I should be looking at sowing my winter brassicas and I thought I might just try a last sowing of cauliflowers as a result along with some spring cabbage. It is interesting to note that the Sidereal method is saying that this is a good time for maintenance rather than planting or harvesting. Oh, and speaking of cauliflowers, the new method of planting I have tried is paying dividends. Planting them close together instead of leaving space around for weeding is keeping my cauliflowers tight and pearly white so I will definitely be doing this from now on.