Here is another way of using aggregate
to count rows by group:
my.data <- read.table(text = '
month.year my.cov
Jan.2000 apple
Jan.2000 pear
Jan.2000 peach
Jan.2001 apple
Jan.2001 peach
Feb.2002 pear
', header = TRUE, stringsAsFactors = FALSE, na.strings = NA)
rows.per.group <- aggregate(rep(1, length(my.data$month.year)),
by=list(my.data$month.year), sum)
rows.per.group
# Group.1 x
# 1 Feb.2002 1
# 2 Jan.2000 3
# 3 Jan.2001 2