Apart from that early update, when the first shoot of the leaf salad popped up above the compost, I’ve barely written a thing about the garden since planting began.

It’s going great guns.

The tomatoes are poking through now, although they took longer than I thought they might. Two or three weeks for the first shoots to appear, and another week or so for them to get to a centimetre high. They’re quite weedy compared to the tomato plants on sale in B&Q, and still far too small to handle yet. The chives are doing well, and the onions are quite long and stringy, although what’s going on under the surface, I’m not entirely sure.

Beyond the chives, I’ve planted another four herbs: basil, coriander, lavender and mint. Admittedly lavender is more of a flower than a herb, but you can bake with it, although the last time I did that the consensus was – in the office at least – that the results tasted of old ladies’ talc.

Beans. No sign yet. I planted French and Runner a couple of weeks back, but they’ve not yet put anything up through the soil, so I don’t know what’s going on there.

Rich and I planted sunflowers, mushrooms and strawberries on Sunday morning, and already – after just two days in their pots – the strawberries are starting to flower. They’re also about half as big again as they were when we put them in, and one has a white bloom on it, an inch across, from which I presume it will eventually give fruit. That’ll be weeks away yet, but it still looks promising.

And that brings me to the last crop of the year so far: potatoes. I’m growing them in a large black dustbin, as an experiment, as the garden is still in no fit state for planting out. You can apparently get 50 or 60 potatoes from just five tubers growing them like that, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed for home-grown Charlottes, which I’ll eat with the mint, assuming it grows.

Here and there, the rest of the garden is starting to spring some surprises. Flowers that went unnoticed in the overgrown beds are now coming into bloom, and I’m starting to notice quite how extensive the bramble is along one of my borders. I’d like to find some way to keep it so I can make blackberry jam in the autumn, but it does tend to spread quite a bit, so it’ll have to be trimmed if nothing else.

I find it all very relaxing, and the experimentation is quite exciting.

Related posts:

1. Planting lavender
2. We’ve started planting this year’s seeds
3. Planting this year’s herbs