The highlight of this week just has to be the strawberries. We have gorged ourselves on them and even given some away. We have managed to pick about 12 punnets – the cartons that the supermarkets use for peaches etc. It is just such a shame that the berries don’t freeze well so there is just nothing else for it than to eat them or jam them which seems such a waste.

The trick is to avoid succumbing to the desire to pick the berries as soon as the first flush of red is shown. Often the sunny side up ripens before the underside and to pick the berries too early means the flavour hasn’t fully developed. We did this with our first pickings. A fully ripe berry picked with the warmth of the sun still on its back is just too delicious for words.

The cherry which we planted a couple of years ago hasn’t yet fruited. However, this year it looked as though we were going to have at least a bowl full of cherries to test. The fruits are now turning red but are still very small and solid so it looks as though we will have to wait another year.

The blackcurrants are another disappointment: the bushes have suffered a severe aphid infestation which has left them and cuttings that were taken last year struggling to hang on to their leaves let alone fruit. The tips of the gooseberries are also displaying the curling and sticky leaves that are typical of aphid damage.

Aphids do seem to be a major problem this year. Our plums and gages suffered an attack in spite of having been treated to a winter wash. Each year we give the plums and gages a winter wash. Before we started to do this each year the trees lost most of their first flush of leaves because of aphid damage. The fruit was also often deformed.

This year, due to poor weather at the time, we only managed one application of winter wash and so the trees have been mildly attacked by plum aphid. In spite of this we look to be going to have a good harvest of plums and gages. Pruning of plums and other stoned fruit has to be carried out now to avoid silver leaf fungal disease.

I spotted one such predator that is more than welcome in the garden – the ladybird larvae. As with most insects ladybird young look nothing like their parents. If you can’t recognise a young ladybird so you can avoid inadvertently squashing these gardeners’ friends, click here to view a short video clip.

This week we planted:
Squash ‘Crown Prince’ and ‘Turk’s Turban’
Lettuce ‘Iceberg’ and ‘Little Gem’
Climbing French Beans ‘Barlotta lingua di Fuoco’ and ‘Cosse Violette’
Tomatoes ‘Roma’
Beetroot ‘Sunset Mixed’
Calabrese ‘Green Magic’ and ‘F1 Samson’
Sweetcorn ‘Honey Bantam’, planted well away from other cultivars to avoid cross-pollination

This week we sowed:
Radishes: ‘French Breakfast III’, ‘Rainbow Mixed Yellow’ and a large purple cultivar called ‘Hilds Blauer Herbst und Winter’.
Spring onions ‘Ishikuro’ and ‘Guardsman’
Broccoli: ‘Late Purple Sprouting’, ‘Raab’, ‘White Eye’ and ‘Early White Sprouting’.
French Beans ‘Delinel’ and ‘Cosse Violette’
Florence fennel ‘Sirlo’
Swede ‘Marian’