The garden is beginning to provide food

The garden as a whole is looking possibly the best it's going to look all year, as nothing is visibly diseased yet from a distance and the plants are all growing nicely (there's plenty of green and black fly visible close up, but I'm not too stressed about that, as I remove it whenever it gets too much).

I even decided to reduce the amount of mustard I was growing and tie the rest neatly together, because it was looking messy and I wanted an attractive garden more than I wanted the maximum possible number of seeds.

Even though most of the plants are still small, several of them are beginning to produce food. We've had a fair amount of lettuce already. I don't understand why this year's crop hasn't been ravished by slugs, but I'm delighted. I seem to be getting less slug and snail damage in the garden in general this year. Theories on why include that April was so dry and that I removed so many of the shrubs from the garden that they didn't have anywhere to shelter in winter.

The blue love-in-a-mist self-seeded there from the front garden and I left it as part of my policy of having more flowers this year.
We're also already on the second crop of radishes (if I'd put more effort in or organised myself better, I could possibly even be up to the third or fourth by now, but I have two long lines of them and am satisfied with my harvest so far).

I've also had an entire bowl of strawberries. I'll be growing more of them in the greenhouse from next year. I'm using shredded paper under them instead of straw. You need to be a bit careful with your watering or it can go mouldy, but otherwise it seems like a decent alternative to straw.

My first mangetout are ready.

And I just tried my broad beans to see if they've got big enough to eat the beans rather than eat the pods whole.

They just had, but only just. A bit bigger would have been better - although if you leave them to get too big, they become tough and unpleasant to eat.

Also, we've already eaten some rocket (we probably won't be getting much more unless I resow, as most of it has started growing flowers). Slugs love it, so it will have to start in pots away from the slugs or under some form of protection, such as copper slug rings.

We're also getting close to being able to pick some chard.