Taking cover

When the weather's at its worst - and let's face it, it has been for the last week or so - this is where I retreat to.

It's my greenhouse, technically speaking not on the allotment but in my back garden. I did experiment with raising seeds in my allotment greenhouse, but I couldn't reliably get up there often enough and lost a lot when the weather turned warm.

So these days I sow dozens of trays of seedlings where I can keep an eye on them - as you can see, it's almost full and the sowing season hasn't really got into top gear yet! I have no idea where I'm going to put the seeds I intend to sow next week. I've already decided to direct-sow more than I usually do this year - leeks, for example, carrots and broad beans have been deemed tough enough to fend for themselves out on the plot. But most veg I raise in modules simply because that way, you can stop most things eating them, keep an eye on watering and growing rates and generally mollycoddle them until they're big enough to look after themselves.

Another somewhat overlooked benefit of greenhouses is that you can retreat in there in rainy weather, so you can carry on allotment gardening even in the worst of downpours. Essential equipment, I'd say - I just need a bigger one!

The greenhouse is go!!

At last... I've sorted out the watering system for the greenhouse, and now have a dripper hose connected to the water butt up at the allotment. I'll be very interested to see how it keeps everything going.

So it's all systems go for transferring my poor overgrown tomato plants from the home greenhouse, where they've been getting increasingly drought-stricken and pot-bound, to the luxurious quarters of the allotment greenhouse. Because I've got a whole greenhouse devoted to toms this year, I've been able to go to town on the varieties: I'm growing good old Gardeners' Delight for general use, then San Marzano, the "only" cooking tomato according to some - it's a plum variety and very reliable; and then Brandywine for massive beefsteak tomatoes for salads.

Brandywine can be quite tricky as you need to get the watering just right to avoid blossom end rot and all sorts of other difficulties: last year I only got a couple of edible ones, and the rest split and went to waste. But this year I've got my watering system, and anything is possible...!!

Juggling glass

I have two greenhouses. Yes - I know, it's a bit much. The worst of it is, I have a secret yen for a third one, too.

One greenhouse is at home - that's currently stuffed to the gunwhales with bedding and cutting flowers for the garden, but also raises all my veg seeds (I prefer to have them where I can keep an eye on them). Outside it are also two rather ramshackle coldframes, soon I hope to become one very large and less ramshackle one, where I eventually evict all the baby plants when the pressure to use the borders inside the greenhouse becomes too great. The process has already started - today I took out one of the benches and planted my cucumbers out. They're "Cum Laude" - an F1 female-only variety which cost a small fortune but I hope will be worth it. They've formed some great little plants, at least.

The next bench will come out once I've evicted my tomato plants. They're currently growing into small monsters in 3-litre pots, waiting for the automatic watering system to get itself sorted out up at the allotment greenhouse. I've just bought a dripper system from Two Wests - great online greenhouse/watering/gardening site - which connects up to a water butt. So far, so good. The plan is to feed the hose through a hole in some marine ply which I've replaced one of the glass panes with. However - if you've ever taken a close look at water butt taps, you'll know they're not exactly standard. So I've had to order a new connector - one of the ones with a screw thread to fit any size tap - and an in-line filter as they don't supply them with the dripper kit (to their shame - there's nothing more infuriating than realising you've got to search out another bit of kit to make the first bit work).

Once they've arrived and I've got it going, off go the tomato plants and I can free up another border for the aubergines and peppers. I did also want to grow melons this year - but the slugs have taken a good munch at the growing tips so I'm not sure the plants will make it through.