Not the Best of Years

[mags16]

I had great ambitions in Spring - all of my gardening efforts would go into growing veg. Tomatoes, courgettes, peas, strawberries, raspberries, potatoes, and herbs were all planted and nurtured.

But my yields have been poor. Last year, I had a glut of courgettes and tomatoes, this year I have had a reasonable amount of courgettes and the tomatoes are only just starting to ripen. I'll have to get me a good recipe for green tomato chutney!

Mistakes were made along the way - peas were not staked properly, tomato seeds were sown a few weeks too late, strawberries had not been cut back last year.

The only saving grace has been the potatoes - they were great fun to grow and the yield was pretty good.

How was your year?

[Phoenix]

Not fab, but this is our first year.

Courgettes got mildew, and haven't produced very much (treated with the skimmed milk solution, which helped a lot.)

Runner beans have been producing a lot, but their position wasn't great so we'll have them somewhere else next year.

Peas were in the wrong position (too shady) so withered up and died. Toms have been gradually producing but not the glut I was expecting, some of ours are just turning red now.

Strawbs, well, we had 12 plants and got about 6 strawbs, so they'll be moved next year too.

Our only brill veg crop has been beetroot, and we've made chutney and pickled some, our cupboard is full of purple jars! Our other fab crop has been the apple tree, tons of apples, loads now stewed and in the freezer, 2 big bags given away to a friend, and 3 big bags still waiting to be processed.

Nix

[vegetable-gardener]

We have an amazing crop of beetroot, so many courgettes that I'm having nightmare's. Lots of broccoli with Caterpillars galore!! Carrots are really rubbish couldn't get the seed to germinate even after 6 times of sowing!

Runner beans, sweetcorn even red celery all growing really well. So am a very happy bunny!

[Crystian]

I guess one of the mistakes you made was planting the same crops in 2 consecutive years.

The crops planted in the previous years would have used nutrients from the soil. This could have contributed to the poor results you had this year. Your current crops are deprived of nutrients.

Another consequence could be pest and desease. The reason why rotate crops (or don't plant them twice in as many years) isto avoid pest and desease.

Some pest lay eggs in the soil. These hatch when your vegetables are begining to mature. The young pests then feed on your crops. But what happens when you rotate the crops.

Well if a pest feeds mainly on tomatoes but is faced with peas when it exits the eggs then it either starves to death or finds another garden to atack.

So maybe you can begin rotating crops and become more structured in your approach to gardening.

You can check out the following site for more information:

Vegetable Garden, Vegetable Gardening Tips and Planting a Garden

[Digindeep]

All in all about the same harvest as last year..But and here comes the big BUT..I planted twice as much and in some cases three times as much as previous year(s)...considering the the varirty of adverse weather conditions this year...overall pleased with the harvest so far and looking forward to next year...

[Steph]

Mags 16 - try this receipe none of my tomatos ripened either. But its only my first year and was glad that anything grew at all!

The Cottage Smallholder » Green tomato chutney recipe

[Taylors Choice]

I grew christmas variety potatoes for the first time this year in 2 Lets Grow Spuds grow bags due to lack of space.

They were brilliant up until the first frost which took me by suprise only to find them completely wilted the next day - all that effort for nothing

[Mikey & Annie]

Our tomatoes and peppers also were suffering from the cool summer, but the tomatoes all went ripe in brown paper bags, each with a banana - this really works! Making a fleece cage over the brassicas really stopped butterflies so we harvested a decent crop for the first time, but put potatoes in too early and they got frost damage in late May!!! Will keep an eye on the weather next year and use fleece if a frost is about to appear. We put pumpkins in the potato bed, which did really well. Just one question - how should you cut strawberries back?

[Dave the Gardener]

Of my own stuff, the crops in my tunnel surpassed all expectations - I have a freezer full of chilies, the Shirley tomatoes gave me more beautiful toms than nay of the last 3 years, the 3 cucumber plants just kept on producing, the onions were great and had my best ever crop of sweet peppers. Outside, good crop of various tatties, cabbages, caulies and calabrese but the star crop this year was my strawberries. Poor crops compared to previous years were peas, courgettes and carrots.
Stuff grown for other people (the clue is in my forum name!) - pretty good all round though all seemed to struggle with courgettes this year and the three pumpkins came to nothing too. One garden had poor carrots, the others all produced (and are still producing immense crops), excellent peas, runners, broadies, leeks, parsnips, lettuce, rasps, strawbs, currants, apples, pears, cherry plums, damsons, beetroot, kale, chard, purple caulies, romanesco, onions - think I need to devote more time to my crops and less to theirs but it's a vicious circle as I need the money that they pay me !