Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Welsh Market Garden

Early morning in the polytunnel

The heatwave continues. Soil is parched and cracked. There have been ten whole days of bright sun and no rain, temperatures in the shade regularly over 20 degrees. We hear of floods in France with bemusement. How can Wales be so hot?

My evenings have been taken up with hours of watering, filling up the watering can from the garden-bath countless times, taking it to where I feel the crops might be thirstiest. The soil swallows the water fast. It's better to water deeply than sprinkle it widely so the water sinks to the roots, but this takes time. One 10-metre bed can take 20 or 30 minutes. I have over twenty beds - do the maths! It's not possible to water everything, especially as I have the polytunnel to water each evening which can take at least half an hour.

Portioning the rhubarb

With the sun, warmth, and the occasional water, the plants are responding. Walking past the broad beans of an evening is a sensory delight - the sweet fragrance fills your nostrils, and the buzz of the bumble-bee tickles your ears as it samples each black-and-white flower. In the polytunnel the pea plants are a riot of intertwined stems, leaves and tendrils reaching for the roof and covered in multi-coloured flowers and, hurray, pods! At the other end of the tunnel by the thickening stems of the sweetcorn, the nasturtium and borage are now producing their flowers, some of which have already been plucked off and popped into a salad bag.

But inside the polytunnel lurks an intruder.

My first delivery of firewood... to a close neighbour

Every day in there I find plants pushed upwards by something burrowing underneath - I have to bend down and push them firmly back down so the roots aren't dangling in air. This happens all over the polytunnel. Radishes and chard seedlings have been killed. I'm sure growth of larger plants must be checked by the disturbance. I've laid mouse traps with peanut butter as bait at the entrance to tunnels but whatever it is has spurned them - so it's not a mouse. Large plastic bottles with the tops cut off have been buried halfway along a tunnel in the hope that the rodent will fall in, but they've avoided them so far.

It could be a mole - or possibly moles. The holes seem quite small for a mole though. Whatever it is, I'd like it to go away now. Please?

Sunlight streams through the conifers of the Dyfi Forest