My first allotment summer, in pictures

We took the plot on in March, but it was June before the beds were finally built and filled. I still remember the soil being delivered on one of the hottest days of the year — the two of us barrowing load after load until every bed was full. Starting that late, I half-expected little to come of the first season. And then, all at once, it did. By the end of summer those bare new beds had turned into this:

The sunflowers were a joy — great cheerful faces standing over the beds, the thing I'd walk down to see first at the end of a long day.

And then the waiting paid off. Watching that first pumpkin turn from green to orange over a few weeks was ridiculously satisfying — proof that the whole thing actually worked.

The harvest, when it came, came all at once — the happy glut of a first summer. Tomatoes by the punnet, more courgettes than anyone could reasonably eat, lettuce cut fresh of an evening.

If you're about to start your own, the honest advice is this: don't try to buy or grow everything at once. Get a few beds in, sow the easy, generous things (courgettes, beans, lettuce, a pumpkin for the fun of it), and let your first summer teach you the rest. A handful of good tools and a bit of patience will get you further than any amount of kit.

These are the cheap, everyday few I actually used that first summer and still reach for now — nothing fancy, all of it earns its keep.

And if you want the fuller list — the things to add as you go, and the one big upgrade worth saving for — it's all in my tools roundup below.