Grow Your Own Magazine

I have grown in containers this year...
potatoes
beetroot
carrots
cabbages
blackcurrants
raspberries
In hanging baskets
strawberries
tomatoes

My potatoes were OK, my beetroot is fine, my carrots are OK. Blackcurrants will fruit next year I hope, the rest........

Cabbages - all eaten by caterpillars (where did the 1000 on them yesterday suddenly come from???!)
Raspberries - Autumn bliss - more like blissfully doing nothing!!!!
Tomatoes - few on each plant thats all
Strawberries - few on each plant

The rain and wind has soaked, battered and waterlogged everything, and now I have the worlds largest caterpillar collection!!! Arrgh.

Am now feeding whats left of my cabbages to the chooks - they think its great, and have given up with the rest of it.

Is it me (I have followed instructions on all my seed packets!!) or is this a funny season with all the rain and wind and strange weather?

Maybe its me

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Best wishes
Daisychook x

Dont fret Daisychook, its just the luck of the draw with the poor weather of late! Most of our container grown crops in the back yard have fared just as badly as yours, and even the stuff down on our allotment hasnt grown on as much as we'd thought it would by now, but hopefully it'll all improve as the weather improves, hopefully!

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Blessings
Suzanne (aka Mrs Dobby)

'Garden naked - get some colour in your cheeks'!

The Dobby's Pumpkin Patch - a blogspot work in progress!
Last updated 26th November2008 - more new piccies!

Oh dear. Sorry to hear about all your bad luck. I think you can be reassured though that it isn't you, just the weather.

Please try again next year and in the meantime enjoy the recycled cabbages

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Happy Gardening,
Shirley

http://www.honeyjukes.co.uk

Why dont you feed the Catterpillers to the chooks as well they could have meat and veg then so sorry about the losses but it happens some times i have sowed seven different rows of Peas this time but only picked from one three bucketfuls the Pigeons had the rest reason i have only got so many covers and i like Sprouts more than Peas you win some and you lose somejacob

Keep at it, sow more cabbages and invest in some netting.

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You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
Max Ehrmann, Desiderata

blog: http://allyheebiejeebie.blogspot.com/ and my (basic!) page: http://www.allythegardener.co.uk/

It has been a terrible season so far, weatherwise. Everything seems to be late, battered, drowned, or eaten by slugs, snails and caterpillars. Sun was out today, though, so hopefully it will dry out a bit and everything will catch up.

Don't give up daisychook, it's been rotten for everyone this year, you're not on your own My french beans (my favourite thing that i grow) have been battered by wind, nearly drowned, eaten by s**tty molluscs and then battered again... I've just sown another lot in the hope that we'll get a sunny autumn??!! Keep trying, there's still time to grow some over-wintering stuff.

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Sarah

“Tell me one last thing,” said Harry. “Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?”
“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”

We have moved house, and I have got a great veggie plot, which I have set up with lovely raised beds carefully nurtured with compost and manure. I tend it daily (unlike my allotment that I used to have), and every plant has had acres of love and attention.

I have never before failed with courgettes, cut and come again lettuce, carrots, spring onions spinach, but this year I have spectacularly. Can only think that it's the poopy weather and hope that we get a good spell soon to make everything have a new lease of life.

I think this year has been the worst I have ever experienced in the veg growing sense. So don't despair. Just take any crops you can and enjoy them and hope for an improvement in the weather.

If it's any consolation my garden's looking just as bad and this is the first time I've tried it seriously. I was going to post an I've given up message yesterday but I decided to drink some wine and say to hell with it instead.

I had 5 courgette plants that have been devastated by snails. I bought 2 more, they've been devastated in 3 days. Fortunately my tomatoes are growing as are my lettuces, although... guess what, yep snails.

However I cheer myself up with 3 things I know for certain.

1. I didn't plant anything until this time last year and I still got some courgettes. I do have some mangetout and beans as well this year so hopefully I'll end up with twice the crop I had last year even though it'll be a pathetic amount really.

2. The common brown garden snail we have in this country is the same as the french escargo snail, so if all else fails I'll start a french restaurant. I wonder if that's why these garlic sprays work (if they do I haven't tried them yet).

3. Snails are just moluscs (I think) and I'm sentient. It's not over yet.

Angie

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Newbie gardener in Cumbria.
Just started my own website on gardening:

http://angie.weblobe.net/Gardening/

The weather looks set to improve Daisychook, and when it does, so will everything else. In the meantime have a search on the Vine. There was a thread about cooking snails. So if you can't have the veg, maybe you can have L'escargot. How posh would that be

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From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

I know the frustration too. I've planted out 8 courgettes and one marrow and only have three courgettes left which are likely to produce a crop. I've got blight on my pots and toms, weeds growing with complete gay abandon, more mare's tail than I've seen before, very few toms on anything and stuff still to plant out.

I went to a friend's yesterday and all her pots and growbags look so luxuriant I too figured I must have done something wrong. My only success this year so far have been the first and second earlies which are in my garden, a rampant row of mixed salad, a little bit of chard and some onions (this latter I'm very proud of).

My broad beans were devastated by blackfly and fungal thingies.

This time last year we were eating so much of our own it is almost famine by comparison.

I think other grapes are right in ascribing it to the weird weather and sometimes it's just not a good year for certain things. don't know how that works but we plod on anyway.

I suppose we could go very nouvelle cuisine and only serve 5 peas each with a little teaspoon of spinach puree or something and a baby carrot cos they haven't grown much. That would be very posh with snails.

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

I have to say that my usual snail/slug problem although present - hasn't been as bad as usual and I put this down to the number of frog I surprise (well, we surprise each other!) when I'm weeding.

Some years things die off early through drought. This year they drown. There's always something to pit your wits against. Keep on planting! I just put a couple more courgette seeds in for continuity. The gardening year is only just beginning!

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Earth laughs in flowers. Ralph Waldo Emerson

www.vegheaven.blogspot.com

Updated November 30th - Mr Stinky's Excellent Adventure (and a Christmas Cake)

My courgettes and squash plants have hardly grown, let alone flowered since they were planted out on the lottie 4 weeks ago.
There are however 2 rogue squash type plants growing like crazy amongst the raspberries, strangely they look more like baby cantaloupe melons seeded from the compost!!
Broad beans still in flower, and the mice have eaten the few pods which have matured, as well as most of the pea crop!
Even the birds have tucked into the netted cherry tree!
Spuds look they may have the beginnings of blight, and it's too wet to spray them.
My 3 main successes this month have been the celeriac which are growing like crazy and the gooseberries- 25lb from one 4 yr old bush, and carrots......and of course I forgot to mention the convolvulus (bindweed)!!
Don't give up- you're not alone as you can see.
In someways it's a good indication that we should be planting all sorts of crops which require different growing conditions as we can never predict the weather.
I suppose we should be glad that we are not commercials growers and the failed crops would have been our livelihood ( or do they get government aid for that these days??) , or that we aren't living 300 years ago and are meant to feed the family on the produce!!
Chin up...

my strawberries at home are about one per plant.

my climbing beans and one or two sunflowers on the lottie have become snail brunch. I'm finding loads of the wee buggars and launching them carefully in the middle of the lovely Mr Sec's plot next door to me (he has promised since i signed up to clear his border of nettles, couch grass and bindweed, he has failed so i've slung up a corrugated iron fence instead and hope the snails devour his weeds).

my beetroot doesn't like sun, but loves rain and i actually have some sprouting on the lottie that i sowed in situ. everything else was transplanted so i'm especially proud of my half dozen babies.

my toms won't set.

my broad beans and peas are just filling out now.

my sweetpeas are to die for but i had more than one mutant lily.

my courgettes still provide my only regular harvest despite having whatever mildew. i have bought "the" courgette idea book this morning, no doubt my crop will vanish overnight.

Supersprout's Gigantes lima beans are reaching the top of the trellises but her pineapplie tomatoes are not setting like the rest of them.

my leeks need a good hoeing but i'm scared that i'll shove loads of soil in the holes.

my onions were barely worth the cost of the postage but the marigolds that the slugs left behind are doing wonderfully and to be fair there isn't a slug or whitefly on the toms ! no fruit's it's true but no beasties either.

it's a funny old year.

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Catch up with my daily doings at http://kaypeesplot.blogspot.com/ and http://kaypeeslottie.blogspot.com/

If only we could guarantee this type of weather every year, i would grow some rice. But seriously the wind has done the damage to my babies

Hi
Last year was my first year and I went through the disappointing crops then, partly through my own ineptitude and partly because of the drought. However I did learn... and this year being in sunny Kent, we have not suffered from the rains anywhere near as much as in the north. My heavy clay soil was starting to get waterlogged again, but the dry weather before hand meant it could take most of it without getting like quicksand.
So this year, growing potatoes in pots has worked really well, bit of a disaster last year with the drought, so much watering. I have managed to grown salad leaves and lettuce, they all bolted last year, beans are looking fab, draw a veil over what happened to them last year. Got cabbages for the first time and after sharing my two strawberries last year went for broke and put in 60 plants, and the rain has only just now defeated them - had a wonderful crop from them - 46lb.
The raspberries have failed again for the second year though so will have to do something else in that bed, the sweet peas have gone yellow and started to die, waterlogged, and my sunflowers have keeled over, wind and slugs I think, oh and I had terrible rust on the garlic and it's ended up very small - but eatable.

So however much I moan about my heavy clay soil, it can be improved and I'm gradually seeing a difference, but my luck's in for protection from wind, I have hedges on two sides and it's a good plot for sun.

So of the two summer evils, rain and drought, my ground is obviously better suited to the first, so do you think soil has something to do with it as well?
Of course, I'll think I can do better next year and it will do something like snow in June but if we get baking sun again I know I'll have a terrible struggle keeping everything alive and I'll be set back, but at least I know I nearly got some of it right this year. Failure again after my dismal beginners efforts last year would have been too much to bear and I think I would be thinking of giving it all up too but I suspect I will reach the end of September and whatever happens will be wanting another go now instead of having to wait to the Spring to start all over again.
Sue

The secret of at least some success is diversity. If we were relying on one crop (whatever it was) there'd be some years we'd have a dismal failure. If you have a row or two of this, that and the other then you will always find that something likes the weather conditions this year. My spuds and courgettes have been great. They obviously like more water than I've ever been able to throw at them in a dry year!

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Earth laughs in flowers. Ralph Waldo Emerson

www.vegheaven.blogspot.com

Updated November 30th - Mr Stinky's Excellent Adventure (and a Christmas Cake)

Flummery
I think you've a good point there, diversity, being still new at all this I like trying all the different seeds and plants and as you say, every year whatever the weather something will grow, will have to embroider that as a sampler and hang it in the shed to remember when I next bang my head over some failure or other.
Sue

I was beginning to think I was useless at growing veg, but all the stories of woe and bad crops I read on here hearten me that it isnt entirely my fault. There's nothing we can do about the weather except battle on regardless, don't give up but keep on sowing, weeding, doing what we can to bring along our crops even if they're meagre. I think all my plants really do want to grow and try valiently for me so I shall perservere in helping them all I can. Keep going daisychook, maybe we will have that indian summer after all

Decided to dig up my garlic today as the soil has dried out a little(!!)
....only 4 out of 54 have survived the damp- the rest are just mush
Oh well....there's another one for the books!

Oh, love you all....!!!! Thank you for your reassurances and stories!!!

I am heartened (in a warm kind of way) that it isnt me being a total eejit, and that it is the weather.

My chooks have enjoyed my cabbages a la caterpillars!!!! The carrots werent thinned out enough, so again the chooks are enjoying sweet roots, and its fun to watch.

I do however (have to boast loudly!!!) about my 4 yes FOUR strawberries that have actually ripened!!!!

Oh and my mini beet are doing OK too.

As you say, I will keep going, after all it is really satisfying when you get something, even if it wouldnt be enough to keep a chook going for a day!!!!

Happy gardening!! xx

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Best wishes
Daisychook x