Grow Your Own Magazine

Me again

Forgot to mention lettuces, spinch, rocket, american cress, basil, parsley, peas and sweetcorn. All in containers!! Whew we never seem to stop watering.

Have you thought of Lambs Lettuce/Mache? This can be planted now and over wintered under fleece, wonderful when there are no lettuce. Its slow to germinate and dont plant it too deeply. Yhere are also some short day lettuce that will over winter if sown now, I m trying Optima for the first time. You could also put in some Autumn onions. I am ging to try this as those I grew from sets have been rubbish for the last two years.

Best results this year have been climbing french bean blauhilde, runners (variety unknown - given by a fellow allotmenteer), courgettes well under way, all new pots especially duke of york and arran pilot - not impressed with maris peer in our soil). Toms are looking good, all leafy stuff is doing well especially leaf beet, cima di rapa and giant red mustard. Leeks and swede have taken well and am experiencing what for me is a glut of cucumber - the most I have managed in the past is two decent cukes in a whole summer must have struck lucky with the varieties. Oh yes and the left over jerusalem artichokes are turning into triffids Have had to make strawberry jam - pity that!! Loads of blackberries too.

Very disappointing - broad beans, got chocolate spot but managed to get some into the freezer.

Ger-annie-um have you thought about green manures if you have some spaces. There are some that can fit in any part of the rotation. Have a look at the HDRA site

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Bright Blessings
Earthbabe
If at first you don't succeed, open a bottle of wine.

Excellent: onions, courgettes (dear God please please please no more), celeriac, cauliflowers (absolutely enormous), sweetcorn

Acceptable: Potatoes, peas (only just acceptable, mind), squashes, beetroot

Total crap: Parsnips (lousy germination), carrots (ditto)

Leeks still growing, don't look too bad... but rather small. Hope the salsify and scorzonera make up for the lousy parsnips

Best so far has been the onion sets I planted last autumn & the freebie GYO round courgette seeds

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Lets teach kids to cook.

Hi there everyone, am totally new to this as is my first year growing ANYTHING. We moved into present house at beginning of april and inherited a large, crusty, old greenhouse. A bit of elbow grease cleaned it up a treat and it seemed a shame to leave it empty so I borrowed a few books from the library and set about growing some grub.
courgettes have been the shining star, so much so infact that the sight of them almost makes me nauseous. I have 6 plants and have had 2 or 3 every day from them.
peas planted in may were superb and plentiful.
ruddy birds ate most of strawberries, even when I transplanted them into tubs and put them in the greenhouse the little darlings still nipped in there and pecked at the ripe fruit, leaving little poo presents for me.
runner beans were total waste of time. a lot of the flowers just dropped off and the rest were far and few between
am enjoying french beans at the moment, purple and yellow dwarf varieties which are tasty. Hubby keeps taking them into work to impress the chefs.

Lots of stuff I would have done differently but lifes a learning curve and there is always next year!!!

This is my second year:

Very good

Potatoes 'Majestic' excellent but not enough of them. Pink Fir Apple tried one plant last week and just stunningly good, some still a bit small, but early days.

Courgettes but slow, late start because cold dry weather in April

Lettuce 'Mervaille de Quatre Saisons' excellent but bolted early July, second sowing got eaten by something at seedling stage, but have just sown some more last week.

French/Runner/Borlotti beans all under way now. Blue Lake climbing particularly good. Runners good too at last. Borlotti a monster plant but seems all leaf, but I'm patient.

Parsley wonderful planted and neglected in the ground, but rubbish cossetted in a pot

Bad

Carrots 'Amini' (first attempt in container) waited ages for things the size of a pencil stub.

Cabbages 'January King' got eaten by slugs, would like to try again if still time?

Spinach bolted as soon as the first true leaves appeared, just so awful and a waste of space.

Rocket not as good as last year's, but have resown now the weather's cooled down.

Peas (first growing attempt) had about 4 (very delicious) pods — hardly the bumper crop I'd been expecting, sweet peas were rubbish as well.

Sweetcorn,sweetcorn,sweetcorn. Just had our first ever grown sweetcorn this evening and have never tasted anything so good and what a feeling of accomplishment.

Glad your sweetcorn was such a success Limbury Lad. Enjoy it all. My potatoes in buckets have been just excellent. Emptied a bucket of Nadine today and got 4.5 pounds of gorgeous potatoes from 1 seed potatoe planted 10 weeks go. That's got to be success. Had some for dinner. Scrummy, but not as good as Charlotte. Still got Nicola to come. Sounds like the dancing girls.

Interesting to see it all up there and how u went with different stuff.
As for my second season I am not too impressed with the tomatoes as all got pretty blighted but fruited until September however few ripening well even in greenhouse. Roma did funny things both seasons so will not go for them next time.
Aubergines flowers no fruit in or out of G house
Patty pan squash good but quick end with mould.
Very impressed with mini parnips from Dobies with good germination on several sowings. If left can get large but still tender.
Carrots so so. Usual problems.
Broad beans great at first but wiped out by rust pretty fast
Peas ok to start but mould cut them short (as with sweet peas)
Potatoes good with earlies but my neighbours main season ones rotted due to wet I suspect (as we have very high water table in our allotments). Another neighbour did well however with mains and I put that down to his very thorough deep digging and incorporating masses of compost.
Overall due to wet weather and lack of heat I had a few obvious problems with ripening and fungal diseases.
better luck next year folks!!

Well, I think it's now the end of the growing year - very cold today. Potatoes and beans did really well. Tomatoes rubbish, chillies middling well. All squash (courgettes, butternuts and pumpkins) utter rubbish. Strawberries fantastic - trouble was the slugs, snails and woodlice were getting to them faster than I was. Raspberries newly planted, but still picking a few till 3 weeks ago (no idea what variety). Root crops rubbish, except beetroot which were started off in cell trays and they were really good.

Sweetpeas, clematis have romped away. My peas did well and so did my spuds, my toms have been a wash out but apples, plums have been in abundance. Raspberries did well, strawberries not so well - so they have been pulled up and burnt - ordered new plants. Cabbages did great, leeks failed. All in all though it hasn't been a great year, started warm, went wet, went hot, flooded and then went warm again, seen alot of whitefly and midges and alot of fungal diseases.

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Best wishes
Andrewo
Harbinger of Rhubarb tales

Not having much to compare it with, nonetheless, our first year has been like this in terms of the exceptionally ace, and catestrophic flops. All others pretty much as good and tasty as you'd expect.

Especially fab and better than expected - runner beans, parsnip, sweetcorn
A crashing disappointment - tomatoes (blight), squash/courgette, carrots (carrot fly), onions (eelworm)

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Hazel
www.hazelandjanesallotment.blogspot.com
update Sat 20/12/2008......End of year report - plot d (legumes)!.....

Seems our experience of succeses and failures varies greatly - my successes in my first year so nothing to compare them against, hence 'success' is a relative term, have been carrots, caulis, beans, courgettes and most herbs. Failures have been tomatoes, onions, garlic, chillis, cabbage. Reasonable crop, so since this my first year I count a success but you more seasoned growers wouldnt, potatoes, lettuce early on then bolted and same for spinach, strawbs finished very early, peas and broadies, what I got were great but didnt go very far! About to start on the parsnips which germinated well following advice on here re kitchen roll and windowsills now looking forward to the taste test!!

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Life may not be the party we hoped for but since we're here we might as well dance