There are many wonders to be had this summer: watching small boys climb cherry and plum trees and eating or throwing down the fruit; the joy of feeding many people with far too much food; children singing carols …

The secret of summer gardening is to do a lot in spring.

The joys of summer here hopefully don’t include digging, weeding, mulching, planting or too much watering, just enjoying the produce of the garden and watching the wombats and wallabies eat the grass, i.e. no mowing and the droppings enriching the lawn.

How to achieve this? Mulch, loads and loads of mulch, with a scatter of your favourite fertiliser on top, unless the mulch is compost that will feed the garden perfectly by itself. Our mulch is still from the stone pine trees cut down about five years ago, and so needs a good top up to help feed the garden and to encourage the mulch to decompose.

Over the past two weeks our veg have been safely tucked up for the summer – the fertiliser scattered and well watered in (if you fail to do this step then it may burn the roots if you get a drizzle of rain or the mulch may stop any of that drizzle getting down to the plant roots).