Isn’t it great to see how everything greened up so quickly after a bad spring. Cattle are all out at last and there’s a good cover of grass in the fields. It’s so nice to walk about the fields and see everything growing again.

Here in our kitchen garden the vegetables have all taken off. Broad beans and peas are ready to be supported against any wind. Onion and cabbage plants are thriving, with the early potatoes well up. We had to cover them on a few nights to avoid them from being cut back by the late spring frosts. We always get those late frosts here in the midlands.

The main crop potatoes were sown over the May Bank Holiday weekend. We also got carrots, parsnips, celery and leeks sown, and these will soon be ready to transplant. The soil had a chance to dry out even though it was late; it warmed up well and that is a big help when it comes to catching up on the season.

The long, bright days and evenings give people an opportunity to get out even if it’s only to potter around. I always think you can only feel the better of being outdoors, especially at this time of year.

Recently a reader asked me how to get rid of some ground elder under her apple trees, as she didn’t want to be spraying toxic chemicals in her orchard. My advice is to spread heavy plastic over the affected area. Flat stones can be placed on top to secure the plastic from the wind.

Doing this will suffocate everything underneath it, so this method can’t be used if daffodils or snowdrops grow there. The plastic should be left in place for about three years, as ground elder is hard to kill. Silage wrap from the farmyard works well. We used it on nettles and it got rid of them – roots and all.

I was reading an interesting article in the Irish Farmers Journal, issue dated 5 May, where it said living near livestock farms can reduce illness. I can vouch for that. My granny often told us a story that as a young girl she worked for a nanny-nurse to two delicate children, whose family owned a large farm estate nearby.

Their doctor advised that the children be brought to the farmyard when the men were turning the manure piles, which normally happened about twice a year. The idea was that they would breathe in the fresh gases released by the manure. So it’s an old cure for delicate health. This must have been around 1880 and I have long forgotten their names.

Back to today. I hope to see all of you at Bloom and I hope the weather continues like this, as we deserve a good summer. CL