Although it’s brilliant to be able to nip down the allotment and pick up fresh fruit and veg for tea, there are one or two downsides. The biggest problem is ‘The Glut’ or, everything being ripe at the same time. This leaves you with a fridge full of soft fruit or a kitchen table loaded with onions that need to dry out for storage while it pours with rain outdoors.

July can be the month of ‘The Glut’ so here are a few tips on coping with, and prevention of (next year) yours.

• try making jam, preserves, chutney to store food, or bag it and freeze it

• sow seed in batches a couple of weeks apart and ripe food can be picked before the next lot is ready

• distribute your overspill (the ‘win friends’ approach) soft fruit seems particularly popular

• grow different varieties, lots of soft fruits have summer, or autumn fruiting varieties so pick a different type to the one you have to extend the time you pick fruit and avoid a glut

Seed of tomatoes, peppers, chillis, aubergines, pumpkins and courgettes can all be started off inside on a window-sill in pots at this time of year. I like small 7cm pots as you can fit lots into a tray and place them on a window-sill or on the table beside a bright window.

As your seeds germinate they will benefit from being shaded from really intense light (in my case this is an east-facing window so I keep the curtains drawn for as long as possible on very bright days). Feed your plants with a general food or tomato fertiliser every other week to keep them growing strongly. Turn the pots every few days if the seedlings begin to lean towards the light. You will probably need to pot some of them on into larger pots as they grow so plan how much space you’ll need indoors to fit them all in.

These plants will not be able to go outside permanently until the danger of frost is gone. At the start of May I usually put them outside on warm days and bring them in at night, then they can be gradually acclimatised to night-time temperatures by using a cold-frame or a mini green house before planting out into their final positions. Don’t rush the process, plants that aren’t hardened off properly will have their growth checked by the cold if planted outside suddenly. If you have a greenhouse you can use that to harden them off, or as their final position.

Here is a photo of my new head of pest control at the plot:

I think he must have a family because he takes back his finds to a nearby hedge before coming back to wait for me to dig around a bit more. Centipedes and spiders appear to be his favourite meals.

What a surprise on Saturday when I lifted the cover off the compost bin, a whole family of Slow-worms (Anguis fragilis) ! These reptiles are protected under the law because they are quite rare.

They look like snakes but are in fact lizards who have evolved to lose their legs.  They prefer to live just under the surface of the soil but at the allotment I usually find them under plastic sheeting or under the cover of the compost bin. They like to live in the compost bin because there are plenty of slugs there too, that they can predate. You can see why any gardener would welcome them because of what they prefer to eat.

It is an offence to disturb, move or harm these fellas, although I can’t imagine why anyone would want to.

Sometimes nature throws the gardener a curve-ball inb the shape of a weed or an insect that you’ve never seen before. Being slightly nerdy I always like to look them up so I can impress my friends with my insect knowledge.

The Natural History Museum website is good for photos and info on insects.

This commercial site has a good selection of photos to help you tell the difference between your plants and weeds.

At the allotments, things are stirring at ground level. The weeds are making a comeback after a cold spell last month. It won’t take them long to get a foothold so this is a good time to get out there and dig a few up. I like to pull or dig them out and then rake the surface to level it (on beds not yet in use) and then come backa week later to pull up any new weeds before I sow my seeds. This is the ’stale seedbed’ method that helps to get those first weeds out of the way, in theory you are supposed to get fewer of them around your crops later on.

I think it gives the vegetable seedlings a slightly better chance to grow away with less competition early on, and it’s worth trying if you have time.

PS. The ladybirds are emerging too, I seem to see them on the soil a lot. Perhaps they have flown down to warm up, or maybe they hibernate in the loose bits of soil, I’m not really sure. Either way protect them, they will be useful on your broad beans in about a month’s time when the bugs get started.

It’s not hard. Here is my recipe:

- Find a child who is bored, plenty of potential energy.

- Transfer to the allotment

- Fill one can with cold water from the standpipe tap

- Flourish several seed packets and offer to child, instructing to pick the one they prefer

- Stand well back as fingers get dirty making holes and poking seeds into soil

- Water well

- Write a label and poke into the soil, approximately where the seeds are located. retire for fizzy drinks and crisps in the shed or greenhouse.

Wait for about a week for shoots to appear, longer for food to grow and take care to gently weed around in the meantime. Congratulate yourself when they want to go back and do it again.

Even bigger congratulations if they’ll eat it once you pick it!

Down at the allotment, things are stirring, and I don’t just mean the weeds. The lengthening hours of daylight and a spell of dry weather have conspired to encourage allotment holders, like small furry animals fresh from hibernation, outside again. I myself have done a couple of days of digging and tidying on my own plot and I was pleased to see a slow-worm warming itself on the top of the compost heap when I added the old trimmed autumn raspberry canes on Saturday.

There may not be much on my plot to harvest, just a few leeks, but it’s time to start sowing the seeds for this year’s veggie (and flower) harvest. Although I should probably add that if frost or heavy wet weather are forecast you might be better to wait a couple of weeks before you begin, your location in the UK determines when you should begin as the further north you live, the more likely it is you need to wait a bit.

This weekend I’ll have a long list of jobs to do including: a few bits of tidying, a last pathway to cover in cardboard, plastic and wood-chippings and some seed sowing to complete. Hardy broad bean seeds can be sown outdoors, as can calabrese, spinach, spring onions and carrots. I’ll sow leek seeds outdoors but in a seed tray so I can pot them on without using valuable bed space. My seed potatoes are chitting nicely and all have strong shoots growing but I won’t be planting them just yet as they are sensitive to frost. Having had my first (rather optimistic) planting of potatoes set firmly back by a frost the year I started the allotment, I have learned my lesson!

I’d like to visit the allotment, but it’s like a skating rink outside and the snow is still falling. Gardeners generally get a few things sorted out at this time of the year but with this weather it’s proving difficult to make a start.

I would be pruning my autumn fruiting raspberries if I could get to them. The summer fruiting varieties are the easiest to prune as all the stems from last year are cut down to ground level in late winter or early spring. This time last year I was doing the work but it doesn’t matter so much if they are left until the weather improves. These plants will make a new set of stems that bear fruit this autumn and you’ll want to cut the old stems down before these new ones appear.

I will also be chitting my seed potatoes - one job that isn’t affected by the snow as I’ll be finding a cool and light place to put my tray of spuds so they form small shoots (the same shoots you have to scrape off when you want to cook your potatoes) that will grow away when they are planted out in late march.

I would really like to finish the digging and path-making that I started in December at the plot. The last few paths will mean my plot is at last fully cultivated but at the moment it is just too cold to bother with, maybe in a few weeks! There is no point in trying to dig frozen ground to finish my cultivation of two new raised beds, it is possible to damage the structure of the soil (and damage the tiny creatures living in it that contribute to a healthy soil) by digging it while frozen.

It might be possible to plant a few onion and shallot sets in small pots or modules to give them a head start when the weather improves. I will be placing mine in a coldframe insulated with bubblewrap. At least I will feel as thought I have achieved something while the weather is against me!

Here is where to begin: The Whitchurch Potato Festival, in Hampshire on the 24th and 25th of January.

There will be many, many, varieties of potato to choose from (judging by past years) and even some sexy disease resistant varieties. You can also get gardening advice, buy or swap seeds and buy plants on the day. It’s usually a couple of quid to get in and make sure you get a catalogue of the varieties that will help you choose the varieties by cooking method and pest/disease resistance.

I can’t recommend these days enough. They allow you to buy small quantities of seed potatoes, in contrast to often having to buy kilos of them from the seed merchant catalogues. Tubers are priced individually at 15p each, or you can still buy them by the 2.5kg bag. This means you can buy just enough for your space and try several varieties to get crops across a longer period or to find ones you prefer the taste of.

My own favourites include:

‘Epicure’ - always reliable, good cropper and untouched (on my patch at least) by pest or disease.
‘Fleur Pecheur’ - Pink potatoes, lovely roasted, small size but lots of them.
‘Arran Victory’ - lots of fab purple potatoes.

PS. I bought a bag of shallots ‘Jermor’ at the festival last year and they were a real success. I’ll be trying a different variety this year. Simply plant into small pots and plant them out when the weather warms up a bit in early spring. They needed almost no attention apart from a bit of water for the first few weeks, I harvested simply bags of them in august.