I’m vaguely aware that in parts of my Oxfordshire garden, the magnificent velvet petals of Rosa ‘Charles de Mills’ have unfurled and the border is a-glitter with astrantias, penstemons and pincushion scabiouses. There’s no time to smell the flowers, though, for I am a slave to the vegetables.

Every spare moment is spent hoeing, weeding or harvesting in the kitchen garden. My goodness, nobody warned me about the harvesting. I keep picking, but the plants keep producing. Never mind “cut and come again”, it’s again and again and again. We are drowning in salad leaves.

Gerard, my husband and the cook of the family, turns what we cannot eat into soups, but the freezer compartment is already groaning with cartons of rocket soup, spinach and nutmeg soup and the speciality of the house, Gerard’s Green Soup — a variable recipe containing anything leafy and left over. With vats of beetroot soup, tomato soup, leek and potato soup and, finally, parsnip soup in the offing as the year progresses, we’re starting to panic about what to do with it all.

As we hardly know one end of a horse from the other, we’re planning to turn one of our unused stables into a storage facility, kitting it out with second-hand catering freezers and stocking them during the summer glut. Thus, we shall spend the coming winter in thrifty style, well fed and feeling smug, if a little oversouped.

It starts off gently enough. Fizzing with enthusiasm and impatient for things to grow, we veg-growing enthusiasts sow steadily as spring sunshine warms the soil. Seeds germinate, and there is the promise of good things to come, but all is under control. Then June arrives.

The ensuing horticultural chaos is enough to test the most laid-back gardener, and those of us who like a little order in our beds can find the speed and abundance of nature’s generosity somewhat stressful. Where only a fortnight ago lay neat rows of steadily developing seedlings, there is now a free-for-all of giant leaves, radishes popping from the soil like inflamed pimples and Triffid-like weeds.

When the weather is amenable — warm sunshine, followed by a good dousing of heavy rain — you can almost see the crops growing. The rocket more than lives up to its name, soft-leaved herbs threaten to bolt (flower and run to seed) and the beetroots jostle for space. I’ve deliberately not thinned these at all this year, but pulled out the first golf-ball-sized baby beets on the first weekend in June, which allowed the rest to ease out into the surrounding space. Gerard used them in a salad with a fresh young goat’s cheese on top of a mound of home-grown mixed leaves, topping the lot with a drizzle of balsamic dressing. The beetroots were sweet and tender, their juice bleeding into the salad, staining the milk-white cheese crimson: heaven on a plate.

Such simple pleasures are what growing your own is about, but you can have too much of a good thing. If I’ve learnt anything this year, it’s that single rows of lettuce and other leaves, sown at three-weekly intervals through spring and summer, are more than sufficient to keep a family of four in fresh salad. Little and often is my new mantra, but it’s easy to get carried away after a long winter.

Back in March, I sowed two rows of cos-type lettuce and two with contrasting red leaves, two rows of mixed salad leaves, three of rocket and two of Red Frills mustard (Brassica juncea crispifolia ‘Rubra’), the surprise culinary hit of the season, which I had started off under glass in February. Added to these were three rows of spinach. The result? Far more produce than we can consume.

Despite the glut, I’m already thinking of what I can grow next. Though I’ve been picking since May, the beds remain pretty full, but we have now reached the tipping point and spaces are opening up. Radishes have long since been harvested, as have several rows of rocket. The Red Frills flowered in the hot weather and, after picking the last of the leaves, I took them out, creating an opportunity to grow something else. Every gap can be resown, either with fast-growing crops to follow on from those that have been cleared, or with long-term vegetables for harvesting during the autumn and over winter.

The trick to getting the most from every bit of soil lies in having something ready to take over when the first gaps appear. French beans are an excellent second crop if you sow them in small pots or modules under cover and harden them off in a cold frame while early-cropping salads are being harvested. The strong young bean plants can then be planted in their place, with a head start on those sown directly into the ground.

Further space-saving relies on a bit of advance planning — combining crops that complement each other in terms of growth habit and cultivation requirements. A stand of sweetcorn grown in a bed with pumpkins is a classic combo; the stems and leaves of the pumpkin can ramble at the feet of the corn, which, being pollinated by the wind, benefits from being planted in a block, rather than in long rows.

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