June on the allotment: what is in the ground right now

Tomatoes went out last week, staked and in with compost worked into the planting hole. Cucumbers are on their climbing frame and starting to reach up. Courgettes are in a bed with good spacing — two plants, which is about the right number before you start drowning in courgettes. Sunflower seeds went in at the base of one of the beds; I am looking forward to those more than almost anything else.

The potatoes are the most satisfying thing on the plot right now. They went in using a bulb planter — which I am a convert to — and they have come up well and been earthed up once. They are a first early variety and should be ready to harvest in July. I am looking forward to that more than I should probably admit.

The marigolds are in for the second time this season. The first batch went in during a hot April spell and fried when I could not get to the allotment to water for a couple of days. I ordered replacements, waited for them to arrive, and planted them out more carefully in the evening with a proper watering in. There are gaps in the border where the original planting was denser, but they are alive and that is what matters.

Not a great year for strawberries. The plants are there and flowering, but every ripe one I find has already been gotten to — by slugs rather than birds this time. I am finding them half-eaten on the soil rather than missing entirely. I need to get some slug deterrent down around the bed, but so far I have not quite got around to it.

Last year the strawberries were the first real harvest of the season. This year I suspect I will be lucky to eat half of them myself.

Ongoing. I dug over the potato bed before planting and pulled out what felt like metres of bindweed root. It will be back. Bindweed is always back. The only thing that actually controls it is patience and persistence — pull every shoot the moment it appears, and over time you weaken the roots underground. I am several years into this process and it is very slowly working.

Not much yet on the vegetable side, but there is a verbena on the site that has been flowering for weeks and is one of those plants you keep stopping to look at. Small purple flowers, dozens of them, on tall airy stems. It does not photograph badly either.