Barren garden?

Nothing grows, or at least grows well, in my garden. I have a vegetable plot full of rotted compost dug into topsoil, a year's worth, and have tried - potatoes which come up like marbles, plus the following which I planted and never saw again - Swiss chard, onions, pumpkins, spring onions, beetroot, coriander, cabbages, carrots, parsnips, garlic, lettuce.....I try them in the greenhouse and they disappear in there too. Tomatoes grow in bags and I have some success at strawberries and cherries, but my pear tree is sparse, one apple tree has never fruited, the others give small sparse fruits (fruit trees are over three years old now and I feed them from time to time, they don't appear diseased). I do have a prolific Victoria plum tree. I've grown courgettes from seed and have now planted the plants outside, but am just waiting for them to wither and die too. Even flowers are disappointing - my clematis are barely blooming and I never saw the sunflowers start up. My 3 year old lemon and orange bushes have never fruited. Yet weeds flourish! Nothing on my blackberry bush (one year old) but a few raspberries coming.
What the hell is happening? I'm in Lincolnshire, which is supposed to have great soil for growing.

 

@cheryl felix please don't take what I'm going to say as a personal attack I'm genuinely trying to be helpful. Try and not add negativity to negativity, ok maybe things have gone wrong but surely there have been good things too. With so many things seemingly going wrong I would hesitate a guess that maybe things are not being given the right conditions to grow? I like to look into what I'm going to grow before i start and then ask questions on the forums if things aren't going right. Why not start afresh with a few things and when those are working start a few more and if in doubt ask, ask, ask.

 

Hi @cheryl felix - like @mazambo said - don't be too hard on yourself (or your garden)! From what you say, your plum tree is doing really well, and tomatoes, cherries and strawberries have succeeded too! So does that suggest more of a problem with leaf veg? Which weeds grow well in your garden? They can sometimes indicate what the soil is like. As a gardener, I can tell you I have definitely killed more plants than you - but I still keep going and learn a bit more from all the helpful people on the forum. A few photos of your weeds and maybe places where the plants are growing miserably would help the good people here to help you. Stay positive!

 

Thank you both. Yes, maybe I was trying too much at the same time. I got a load of seeds by subscription to a magazine, still got loads! I think to my greenhouse is in the wrong place and doesn’t get much sun. I’ll plough on! Don’t want to give up

 

Hello cheryl felix! Want to swap for a heavy clay soil on an exposed French hillside? I'm at the end of my tether this year, having lost a lot of well-established trees and shrubs. But life goes on, you have to concentrate on the successes. The first thing that sprang to mind reading your woes was perhaps a lack of feeding, or careful watering. Then I remembered a recent thread by @JWK on contaminated soil and compost. I'll have a trawl and see if I can find it. Nailing the cause is the tricky bit, but we're all here to help
Edited to add....the thread is called A Word of Warning! by Freddy. Interesting reading!

 

That’s interesting! It does seem to be wherever I put the compost, come to think of it. Just kitchen organic waste chucked into a huge rain butt, I didn’t even turn it over during the year. Maybe that’s it!

 

No, no drainage, it was moist but not dry or over wet. The fertiliser was simply the stuff in bottles you apply with a watering can. Just about nothing grows in that patch except a few strawberries. It’s odd. I do have cats though, but even if they tiddle in it, there must be some areas where stuff will grow? It’s a large patch.

 

It sounds (to me) like your ground may well need lots of organic matter, especially if it’s free draining.

 

Thank you, I’ll try to introduce more bulky stuff to it, right now it’s mainly fruit n veg peelings.

 

Out of interest, these fruit and veg peelings, were they completely rotted down?

 

Yep, I don’t remember anything in it’s original form when I spread it, except the eggshells and banana skins which I no longer compost. Just put there now planting January King cabbages which I grew from seed, but they are very spindly, I’ll try to upload some photos.

 

Is it worth me planting them?