Any ideas please

I took up growing vegetables about three years ago when I retired thinking what an easy little hobby it would be – I couldn’t have been more wrong. We are about 750 feet up on the western slopes of The Pennines and this year’s weather has been the worst summer I can remember. Very cold and wet. The lettuce, rocket, spring onions and radishes have either not grown or do not look very edible. They are all coming out the next dry day we get.

One of my few successes has been container grown potatoes. I usually manage to get two crops in depending on the weather. It looks like the potatoes won’t be ready for lifting until August this year and I wonder if anyone can recommend what would be suitable for planting in the containers in their place. It can get cold and ‘winterish’ in early October here, but not always.

 

I would suggest lettuce, in particular Valdor. It grows well through the winter when sown in late summer/ early autumn.

 

I’m not a container gardener, but thinking ahead to next year, could you put up wind breaks, or use cloches over some of your crop? To be honest, I’ve not had much success with cloches, although some gardeners swear by them. But it seems to me that cold winds rather than wet really harms veg. I use a double thickness of debris netting (because it’s cheaper), attached to metal fencing pins, although any sturdy pole will do. Bamboo isn’t good enough. This has made a huge difference, and we get some fierce weather here - horizontal driving rain is a regular occurrence.

 

@InTheMoors you aren't alone in not getting seeds/plants to do want you hope. We have had a terrible year and we are still trying to sow seeds in the hope that they will germinate and give us something. We don't grow in containers but we did try potatoes in bags one year but to no success.
As @Emerion says can you try some wind breaks. Don't look great but they could help to give you some harvest.
All the best

 

Thanks Stephen, but we have sown three lots of lettuce this year without a leaf coming though!

 

If you have seen nothing at all, it’s not the weather - lettuce is very keen and would at least make a start. I suspect slugs or snails. They love fresh new shoots, and will hoover them off every night, leaving nothing visible in the morning. I start my lettuce off in a seed tray, kept in the house until they germinate - they don’t need light to germinate. When they have a couple of proper leaves (still really tiny), I prick them out into those tiny modules. If the weather is cool, the staging in a ventilated greenhouse should keep them safe from slugs without desiccating them. If you don’t have that, try to put them somewhere to grow on a tiny bit where the slugs won’t find them. All this sounds a pain, but it takes minutes to prick out the seedlings, because unless you’re a commercial concern, you don’t need hundreds of lettuces in one go. If you can get them to the 1-2 inch tall stage, slugs are far less likely to bother with them. Or you could use slug pellets (diligently), but I find that the birds eat them as fast as you can put them down. I only use organic ones, but I assume they would eat the nasty ones as well.

 

The garden is landscaped - water/wildlife/cottage style so we don't have too much room. I'm not too sure that the wind is a problem as the containers, troughs and pots are on hard standing between the garage, greenhouse and hedge, backed by trees. This doesn't let in a lot of sunlight but keep most of the wind off. It's just the cold and damp. The temperature in the greenhouse usually drops to single figures at night. We also have a heavy clay soil so that doesn't help.

I've just retrieved some pots of garlic from the back of the compost heap and they have a nice covering of green on them and look somewhat sad. The gardener we have tells me that garlic doesn't like too much water so there is another crop for throwing out. Managed 15 minutes gardening today and the rains started.

A neighbour tells me that they lost kale, cucumbers, and one or two other crops but strangely their lettuce has grown OK. OH tells me that the radishes might be savable which is scant reward for all the work that we have done.

The potatoes seem to like it here. Besides the containers there are always three or four potatoes plants that grow on the compost heap - I don't know where they come from as I didn't plant any.

Propagation place has suggestions for late summer planting but I wouldn't like to try some of these where i live.

I might try one or two of their autumn suggestions for planting in August!

 

Once lettuce is up and running, and depending on the variety, it generally doesn't mind it being cold and damp. I've had a good crust of snow on the Valdor in the past, which will slow it down, but it will then get going again...
I'm pretty much giving up growing lettuce in the summer, but I'll be sowing again in August/September...

 

Interesting Stephen. I must admit I'd never thought of this and will give it some thought.

I've gone off growing lettuce in 'summer' as well!

 

I'd not thought of this and you might be right. We have three small water features in out garden and have always had a lot of frogs, who eat loads of slugs and snails. Thinking about it we haven't seen many frogs this year, nor was there much frogspawn in the ponds.

Time for a rethink on how we do things.