Strawberry season is in full swing and my goodness didn’t a bit of sunshine bring a sweetness to everything! We may swap between rain and shine, but at least some warmth is a bit more reliable and fruits can start piling up sugars. Until you have eaten a fresh-picked organic strawberry, you may not have tasted how good these fruits can be.

Look after your plants to keep them cropping as long as possible. Keep them watered and use a liquid feed every week to ten days while fruit is swelling. Pull off any mouldy or damaged fruits and deal with slugs, ants and rodents that may like to eat these fruits as much as you do. You also need to protect fruit from birds, but provided you can do all of this, you should get a good crop from your plants over several weeks.

Beans and peas

These plants need plenty of water while they are in flower and swelling pods. Don’t let the soil dry out and, if necessary, use a high potash tomato feed to give plants a boost. Most peas and beans need some support and they also need enough room for you to pick and for air to circulate between rows.

Broad beans sown in late winter, or early spring, will have set lots of pods and be swelling beans. Autumn sown ones come earlier and are ready to pick from May on – these are a delicious treat, but I find they are never as prolific as spring sown varieties. Pick while beans are tender and sweet. If you leave them to grow to full size they can become starchy with tough skins.

Climbing beans (French and runner varieties) should be twisting their stems up poles at this stage. Watch out for slugs and rabbits while plants are small. Plants will flower soon, once they have put on a bit of growth.

Mangetout peas have been cropping for several weeks in the greenhouse or polytunnel. Remove these as soon as the garden ones start to crop and make space under cover for more tender crops. You can still make a late sowing of mangetout outdoors; they produce a crop faster than podding varieties and should give some autumn pickings if weather is kind.

Podding pea varieties are doing well too. Keep rows watered and pick as soon as young sweet peas fatten out the pods.

Note: some pea varieties can grow to 7ft or more. Check the packet, add on a bit to what is stated there, and provide appropriate support.

Pods filled with fresh and juicy broad beans

Onions

Nip out any bolting tops. This stops an onion from putting all its energy into producing a flower. You may still get good useable layers from a bulb that has been nipped back.

Keep beds weed free if you can. Don’t break roots that are close to the surface – avoid using a hoe at root level.

Keep an eye on autumn planted onions, they will be ready to lift very soon. If any start to show signs of white rot – fluffy white mould around the roots – then lift the lot. This disease spreads fast and it is best to opt for healthy smaller onions than leave them in the ground and risk losing the lot. White rot spores can stay in the ground for 20 years – avoid planting onions back in the same soil where this disease has had a presence.

Spring planted onions are still growing so don’t worry if there are no big bulbs at this point. These can usually stay in the ground until the end of July or even into August. Keep the soil damp so bulbs can swell to a good size – dry soil can lead to small bulbs and bolting plants. Leaves start to flop over and yellow when the plants are ready to lift.

Poppies can seed themselves throughout the garden

Perfect Poppies

Poppies add such glorious splashes of colour wherever they grow. Think bright red ones in wildflower borders, or the huge pink, or popular orange, oriental varieties that come back every year. The flowers don’t last long, but more follow on. The sight of filmy, fluttering, bright petals on long stems is enthralling.

Annual red poppies are easy to grow from seed – simply scatter on prepared soil and some will grow. Easier again, the plants will scatter seed as the seed heads burst and some of these will grow on to produce more plants in following years. Some more unusual varieties may need a little more care, but once they are established in your garden they will keep popping up around the place. You may even get some unusual colour combinations arising from a mix of varieties.

Time to plant

Pumpkin, leek, broccoli, kale, cabbage and cauliflower plants should go in the ground as soon as they are big enough.