Basil plants for free – in five minutes

I can't smell basil without being whisked back to the greengrocer's in Rome where I first encountered fresh basil. Sent out to shop for tomatoes for dinner by the friend-of-a-friend I was staying with, I asked the shopkeeper, who was on the phone, for pomodori, and he weighed them out. Then I asked for basilico, and he gestured for me to take a massive bunch. I offered my cash and he waved it away, as if to say: you can't have tomatoes without basil.

The dinner that our host made that night is something I still love – I ate it this week. It's a more substantial version of insalata tricolore, adding pasta to the mozzarella, tomatoes, basil and avocado. I also like to add olives, sundried tomatoes and toasted pine nuts.

I like to have a constant supply of basil but it's tricky to grow from seed, and if you buy packets of fresh basil it dries out and goes brown very quickly. I find the easiest way to have enough for your summer eating (homemade pesto! Mmm) is to buy a pot of growing basil from the supermarket. The pots are always full to bursting with little basil plants to ensure a large head of pickable leaves.

All you need to do is take the little plants out, and repot them in a bigger container where they'll continue to grow, and each one will become a bushy plant, with lots of delicious basil leaves. So you'll have enough basil to see you through the summer. And if you have plants left when autumn approaches, take the pot indoors.

I've grown an aubergine!

It may be small but it's glossy and darkest purple. And tonight, it gets eaten, along with... one or two ripe red tomatoes. I haven't managed to get them to turn red naturally for years without resorting to windowsills, brown paper bags and bananas.

Gorgeous gooseberries

Who knew that gooseberries ever turned ruby-red and wine-dark? And sweet?! Not me, until the gooseberry bush had a bumper crop this year. I say bumper crop; last year there were about five berries... Perhaps being dug up and replanted was the TLC it needed, and I'm sure the weather helped. (This bowlful is just one picking.) And this lot made a gorgeous gooseberry fool with crème fraîche and a dash of elderflower cordial.

We've got an allotment!

After just two years on the waiting list, we've got half a plot - shared with one of our friendly neighbours, who's also a new plot tenant.
We've had a quick peek over the fence (haven't got the keys yet) and it's hideously weedy and overgrown as you'd expect, but there are a couple of artichokes, two rose bushes and a massive lavender plant, as well as a bean frame and lots of odd pots and bit of wood and metal poles lying around. This is going to take some time...
Although I may mention allotment issues on here now and then, it's not going to become an allotment blog; there are already loads of people who do it far better than I could.

A baker's dozen of tomatoes

Sometimes I don't know why I bother growing tomatoes: here's the whole harvest from a patioful of plants. Pathetic, innit? Still, at least I don't have to deal with a glut! (I'm thinking cherries)