It's time to start harvesting your first crops! Pick runner beans when they're about 20cm long. Harvest peas when the pods begin to swell, while the peas are still sweet. With a fork, carefully lift the first potatoes.
Cut courgettes before they become marrows. Let children feel and smell the freshly picked crops before having a special taste of them.
To protect strawberries from birds, make a 'cage' by draping plastic mesh over a rectangle of low canes topped with rubber knobs. Pick the berries when they're deep red, and without touching the fruit itself - hold the green calyx and nip the stalk with your thumb and fingernail. For a good crop next year and to encourage new leaves to grow, cut off the old leaves as soon as the fruit is harvested and cut off the runners (unless you want to make some new plants, in which case poke the ends into pots of compost).
Remove all debris and water the plants well.
Summer sowing
As soon as you harvest one crop, plant another. But first dig in some compost and/or well-rotted manure, and fork in a little 'fish, blood and bone' powder as a fertilizer.
Make a final sowing of carrots, peas, beetroot and French beans, choosing 'early' varieties for faster maturation. Sow oriental vegetables now. Sow another batch of summer salads; it may be too hot for lettuce, so pick a shady spot. Sow spinach, chard and rocket now to get a spring crop.
Pest patrol
Each day, look for signs of pests. Net brassicas (as above) before cabbage white butterflies appear. Look for blackfly and their pale yellow eggs on the underside of bean leaves and around the flowers, and either lift them off with the tip of a paintbrush or squash gently with wet fingers - this is a job for adults. Scatter scooped-out grapefruit halves around the garden to attract slugs, and inspect daily.
Children can help look for small creatures of all kinds. Perhaps put some snails into a lidded, clear plastic box with a few lettuce leaves and see how they eat - and slither up the plastic sides!
Children can also observe beneficial butterflies, bees, worms and ladybirds.
Water tubs daily and feed with tomato fertilizer fortnightly; feed tomatoes weekly after the first flowers appear.
