Tales of woe - 2016

I'm so far behind this year that I don't really have too much to moan about since most of my plants are still undercover in pots.

I suspect I may be moaning shortly about how nothing is ripening/growing big enough since I was so late.

Feel for the rest of you who are having to fight wars against beasties or the weather though.

Black fly on my broad beans, but I think that's a given. I try and kill them off before the predators turn up and even then will squidge the worst infestations. But I've given up getting stressed about them. Grow broad beans, get black fly. It's the way of the world.

Snails chomping their way through my cabbages and caulis and nipping off the tops of my French beans, but I've been disposing of as many as I can find.

Caterpillars having a go at my brassica seedlings, but I've been disposing of them.

No fruit on the pear trees and the quince, as usual, is diseased. But there's not much I can do about either of those. The quince tree on someone else's land gets the fungal problem first and then it just blows up the valley.

Everything else that's not doing well is pretty much my fault, I think, for not doing things on time.

• Slugged strawberries.
• Virtually all of the zebrune shallots planted out disappeared (I don't know what to).
• Two of my 30 litre heavy duty pots planted with potatoes haven't done a thing and two more only have one tiny plant (from two seed potatoes). All of these poor performing potatoes are Sarpo Mira. Every other variety are doing a good job at turning into a mini rainforest with ridiculously healthy dark green foliage. So it appears that the Sarpo Mira were a bit dodgy. I've emailed Marshalls Seeds but they've not got back to me yet

Apart from the Courgettes, everything else seems to be going belly up this year. All I need is a bout of blight & I'll have a full house................Now for that famous growers saying "There's always next year"..............

Oh dear, so sorry to hear these tales of woe, folks! Rather amazingly I am having a good year so far... nothing has gone really wrong yet. That is VERY unusual so watch this space.

A good year in the garden/lottie I mean... not in the rest of life. Plenty has gone wrong this year and continues to do so!

We're not going too badly, but then again we don't grow the amount that Allotmenteers to
Strawberries have been going mouldy, one potato bucket has dodgy looking leaves, so we furtled and got enough for last nights dinner
Runner beans are flowerless, do who knows with them
Onions are very poor as usual, shoot me if I grow them yet again
It's in the lap of the gods, but I'm not getting disheartened

Slugs. Just slugs.
Last year the nematodes I tried worked great, I got to be the one smugly going "Slugs? Bad year is it? Oh dear. Not having much problem myself to be honest" then running away before I got clonked on the head with a spade. This year, I think because we had a big dry spell just after I applied them, they didn't seem to do much, and the slugs are back with a vengeance. They've had almost all my French and runner bean plants, as fast as I can plant them.

The strawberries rotting on the plant while still green is a bit of a downer too, I'm still having an OK crop, but before the rot and the slugs got stuck in, it looked brilliant.

Where do I start I see it as more of a pain in the bum then tales of woe, so here we go :-

Apricot tree removed as it was finished off by a bout of canker (other issues before that)
Cut out a fair bit of canker on an established apple.
Golden chain tree finally gave up on growing.
Dahlias in front border not returned after being slugged so much last year.
This year winterkefe peas and giant stride peas doing really well, but the ducks got in the patch and took a liking.
Tuffy sweet squash, I was determined to save seed but the ducks again left me with one plant.
Ducks had an all you can eat munching spree for about 10 days so very few flowers left in back garden.
The nectarine trees I bought are peaches.
One peach tree slung due to bacterial issues.
Really really bad infestation of aphids.
One plum tree aborted all its fruit due to aphid (it looked so promising early on)
Vine weevil grubs in random pots.
As I replaced the beds in gh2 I no longer have a path but a liquid poo lake
Keep losing time in the garden due to illness.
Finally managed to get 6 nine star caulies to grow (no more seed left) and just discovered ruddy caterpillars on them
Root veg seed germination patchy
Flower seed germination almost non-existent
Mice or squirrels eating my strawbs at the white and green stage
Hot beds don't seem to be performing very well.
For 3 years I have not managed globe artichokes where I am.
The lawn area I am yet to do turns out is even worse to prep so will be getting copious amounts of topsoil in, but first I need to clear all the gravel.

I think that is about it at the moment I love gardening

Garlic has keeled over for no reason I can see of
Ants
Hayfever

All my lovely yellow squash flowers and one small yellow squash munched off in one night
One butternut squash almost decimated
Peas that won't germinate
Rose flowers ruined by heavy rain
Fatsia japonia plagued by blackfly
But still lots to be happy about so not too much woe in the scheme of things

Green fly infestation on my herb bed.
Voles eating my bedding plants in front garden.
Blossom drop on one of my tomatoes.

So I'm doing OK really. But there is still time for that to change.

So far so good.
Its early days so plenty of time for things to go wrong.
Some of my onions have bolted.
Very poor germination on my Little Gem lettuce.
Carrots doing very poorly.
Parsnips didnt germinate.
Rust on some of my Fuschias.
Slugs attacking my sunflowers.
Still trying to stay positive though.

Leeks.

They never got to pencil thickness in the little tub I had them in. I planted them out into little holes and watered them. Half the buggers have died. They just look like little dead pieces of grass now.

I didnt take much care of them this year when planting them either. Just plonked them in, some a little deep and then watered them.

Parsnips. Only about 60% germination. Got some more chitting upstairs. I know it's a bit late but small parsnips are better than big empty gaps and no parsnips.

'My' fox is back....trundling about the strawberry patch again, nipping off the semi ripe strawberries and crushing the plants under foot.
Those strawberries which have touched the ground are now rotting.
Hmmph.

It's been so damp! Quite a bit of rot on the strawberries, quite a bit of blackleg on the early potatoes.

And slugs trying to eat everything that hasn't been attacked by fungus!