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as they swell (which can break the skin and encourage disease). The ideal spacing between fruits is about 10cm, though I admit I often allow a bit less than that. You can snip off the excess fruits with a pair of secateurs, but they will just as easily break off

on special occasions, religiously eat my five portions of fruit and veg every day and get super-fit. And the allotment fits in very nicely with the last two of those.Trouble is that in conjunction with the month of January there usually comes a settled

Last summer was not a great one for many of my crops but it was simply fantastic for all of our fruit bushes. Our little shrubs of black, red and white currants fruited their socks off and it was all we could do to keep up with them.We planted

, 'Florence', which is still yielding masses of fruit. The flavour of home-grown strawberries beats anything you can buy at the supermarket. The variety favoured by commercial growers is 'Elsanta', which is apparently robust enough to withstand rough treatment

we first started out. The raised beds and wood chip paths were a lot of effort at the time, but they were worth it. The fruit bushes and raspberry canes were a bit of a slog too - raspberries need such a well prepared trench to flourish, and I

as their root systems aren't that big. The same applies to seedlings, but for lots of plants it's also essential to water them when they're in flower and early fruit set, as this helps to increase the size of your crop. Potatoes, beans and peas and most fruits

to my tomatoes, which I grew at home in an attempt to keep them clear of the dreaded tomato blight. No chance! They've succumbed to the horrible fungus yet again. What's worse is that the fruits on 'Marmande' were looking so lovely and swelling so

.The allotment seems to be the ideal solution. There the fig can have its head and enjoy some space to expand. It will make a lovely, fast-growing, leafy plant for my plot and will add to the selection of fruits I already grow. Figs sucker terribly from

to the girlie in me with its two-tone red and white flowers. These beans may not fruit (I s'pose that's the right term - it doesn't sound quite right for beans somehow?) as well as other varieties with their exhibition names of 'Enorma' and 'Best of All

physically eat and deciding whether to give sweet potatoes another go. This is the time I order shallots and potatoes, bare-root fruit bushes and all my seeds for spring and summer sowing. It just gets it all out of the way and then I can relax and wait