what was your growing season like

I'm sure the experienced gardeners here will still be growing lots of things in their gardens, i have a few sorry looking sprouts and a few carrots still in.
i just wanted to ask what peoples successes and failures were this year.
my first year gardening for a long time and i had lots of disappointments with little success. i wasted time and space growing stuff i thought i should grow instead of what i wanted to grow.

 

Grubby, if you are talking about veg, then only grow what you and your family will eat. It`s a waste of time, effort and money otherwise.

 

I've had a poor year with lots of veg not performing. I put it down to the seed company I used. Will try another one next year, see what the allotments got.

 

Blue, don`t blame it on the seeds, the weather has been all over the place this year. Learn from it and adapt.

 

when i planted my garden i wasn't working and had lots of time on my hands, then i was forced to work for a living and the garden became neglected, caterpillars and green fly took over by day and slugs by night. didn't want to spray nasty chemicals so most got eaten by pests. i'll plan better next year and not bother with cabbage n stuff i don't eat. i'm only gonna grow stuff i can eat instead of giving it away to neighbours.

 

grubby, thanks to the EU the " nasty " chemicals have mostly been taken off the market so don`t listen to these people who tell you otherwise. If you use whatever chemical help is available, wisely you will be alright.

 

Hi Grubby Mitts!
We had a very mixed year. Spring was full of promise but things went down hill thereafter!
Peas and Broad Beans were a disaster early sowings were okay, but mid and late season crops were poor due to rain and cold. I lost a good percentage of my new asparagus crowns due to wet and cold and my Golden Dawn courgettes were a dismal failure (next year I'll revert to normal green ones).
Root crops did well - they were well watered, and spinach and chard did well too. Red cabbage and sprouts have been the best ever - must be the regular watering! And although broccoli came on earlier than desired it has provided a good crop.
Lack of sun delayed greenhouse toms and the damp weather caused more botrytis on the cucs than usual. However the toms and cucs in our small polytunnel did very well as did melons and sweet and cayenne pepppers. The outdoor cherry toms provided us with our best ever crop.
Apples and pears did well and considering the lack of sun and heat our potted peach surprised us.
Glad you posed the question because up to now my gut reaction has been 'It was a lousy year', because I think that as a gardener I tend to focus on disasters. However looking at the successes as well, it's been on balance, another worthwhile and successful year in the garden.

Wouldn't have minded a bit more sun though!

 

Just spotted your later post regarding bugs scoffing your veg Grubby Mitts. If you are like me and don't like using sprays you should try netting. I now net nearly all of my crops and it makes an incredible difference.Insect netting for low growing crops is quite cheap, though if you want to net taller things like brussel sprouts it does cost a bit. However the netting lasts for years and saves on the costs of insecticides.

 

This year has been a mixture of good and bad here. Created the veg patch from a steeply sloping area of rough grass - so spent the first half digging it over as fast as I could to make room for things coming out of the greenhouse.
Then came the rain! Luckily I had built small terraces using the upturned turf for small banks. This meant the beds drained really well - so got good crops off most things on the beds.
The bad news was the toms/aubergines/peppers in the greenhouse really missed the sun and the crops were rubbish - bit of a shame as I grew half dozen unusual tom varieties and they all got different types of mould/rot.
Can't wait for the new season to start as all the ground is now ready...

 

Still munching sprouts, the beetroot is pickled, the carrots are all eaten, the broad beans are frozen, the potatoes were yummy, the cauliflower is growing well, the peas not so good and found out too late that lettuce does not grow well in our garden and neither does cabbage (father-in-laws excuse anyway), the toms were small but there were lots of them. So I would say on the whole a very good year.

 

Sounds good to me Celia.

 

my first year growing for absolutely ages, i was a bit late turning the poor excuse of a lawn into a veg plot and didn't prepare the soil too well except for a bit of manure for my spuds and a trench for the beans.
the spuds were a mixed success. grew a few earlies in sacks which did very well until the leaves went brown and died off (due i think to all the wet weather)the later varieties fared the same fate but produced lots of lovely spuds.
cabbage and broccoli were both very poor, including any lettuce i tried. beetroot, one sowing good one not so good, and more courgettes than one person can handle. a real good crop came off my rhubarb which i basically put in a hole and left to its own devices. i will be trying much harder next year.

 

Hi.

Most people I've talked to around here lost a lot of their outdoor toms to diseases this year - me too... I lost lots of leeks/garlic due to rust, got hardly anything from the courgettes, and the butternut squashes flowered but didn't fruit :-( Oh, and the parsnips looked like squids (too much manure I think....)

On the other hand, the 2nd leek crop was (and still is) superb, the Pak choi was good apart from slug attacks, and the potatoes were amazing - lots of Anya, Charlotte and King Edwards from chitted supermarket potatoes. Radishes, beets, carrots and swedes gave a good crop for the small amount of seeds I sowed, and the toms, aubergines and chillis/sweet peppers in the greenhouse were pretty good considering the lack of lots of sun. The Blue Lake climbing beans were fantastic - just 3 plants gave a huge tasty crop for a very long time - (they are well worth growing!). Coriander, fenugreek and rocket did well too.
I also got a beautiful crop of early purple sprouting broccoli - picking it every other day or so kept me going for weeks in march/april. Another gorgeously tasty veg.

I'll grow a few less things next year, although the exotic veg experiment for next year will be sweet potatoes in some big old containers in the sunny sheltered part of the garden. I've got a chitted tuber on a shelf in the kitchen with multiple sprouts (if that's what they're called) which seems to be very alive, but not growing hardly at all any more. It's been like that for 2 months or so......That *will* be interesting.....

Good luck!

cheers,
Dave

 

i'm very fond of parsnip of late but the ones i tried didn't even germinate. i have a few big buckets that'll make for some pots and try and grow parsnip again next year. i'll try carrots in them too, the ones i did grow, although massive (over a pound in weight each) were extremely knobbly, due i think to stony ground.