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With all the other work to get on with on the plot, the cold frame has been somewhat neglected over the past month or so. It's served its purpose brilliantly this spring, though its contents are now bursting out of the sides with quite a terrifying

- never-ending you could say - period of rain, cold and cheerless, sunless days. My fervent enthusiasm after the excesses of Christmas usually fades as quickly as any glimpse of sunshine; the allotment lies abandoned until the first glimmers of spring

for clay soils and spring for sandy ones. However, I usually add compost to my clay beds now. It always bothers me that all the lovely nutrients in the compost are leached away by winter rains so I go against convention and leave composting until now.

be spring as I'm now off the soup!

Once spring is sprung it really does get going! My plot is a mass of potato leaves creeping out over the mounds of ridged earth, seedlings sprouting sturdily out of the ground almost as I watch. But of course, there's a hearty selection of common

, with little effort on my part.I don't know why I didn't grow asparagus, as it's really easy. Now I'll have to wait to next spring to plant some crowns, and then another couple of years before getting a decent meal out of them.

not deserve this apple tree because this year it flowered bravely in the spring. (I thought this was its final swansong and I can't tell you how guilty I felt - call myself a gardener!) So I still ignored it thinking it was still on its way out

to the inclement summer. Also the general web consensus seems to be that over-wintering types don't keep as well as the spring planted varieties. Oh well, it seems I still have a lot to learn!

It's all go at the moment, there's so much to do. The recent hot weather has had quite an impact on the plot - plants have doubled in size, flowers are abundant, the onions are trying to bolt and I've got a spring in my step.When there's so much

are struggling to keep their heads above water. Usually I find a spring dose of nematodes sorts out the worst of the problem and keeps the little blighters at bay while my plants get established. But this year it's not just the little blighters that are wreaking