Grow Your Own Magazine

Hi, what have you grown that has done well this year?
Our best successes are potatoes, onion, beans, tomatoes, cucmbers, celary and a few other things
However all my peas fell over

My personal best success has been my Tomatillos, we're begining to pick them and my OH says they're fantastic. I've got loads though and I'm not sure what to do with them all.

Ok that didn't work, ill try again

my tomato plants grew HUGE - then red spider mites killed them before I got any tomatos...

my kale was growing well, but then got eaten by catapillers...

my chilles are growing well as well, and nothing has attacked them yet - but I'm standing by with a bucket of bug killer and a flame thrower just in case.

so, pretty much everything is growing well - unfortunately so are the bugs - no wonder all our supermarket food is drenched in pesticides!

Im sorry to hear that you have been attacked by bugs ,JXM
Glad to know that you have still got chilles

Well the beans did alright, got lots of kale and chard but keep forgetting to eat it! The tomatoes are coming along slowly and all my lettuce came up really fast and then got eatten! My peas were a disaster and I managed to get 2 courgettes off 6 plants so not sure what went wrong there!

However all my herbs are fine

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Rachel

Trying to tame the mad thing called a garden and failing

My Garden Mayhem...inspirational blog for me I hope!

Hi, this year we planted the courgettes in the ground instead of containers and they are doing really well, 3 plants lots of courgettes, had to cut off a couple of rotten ones though. Runner beans very good in the border up against the wall with trellis, french beans in containers not as good as last year, some lettuce good, other seedlings keep getting eaten despite a net and grit round edge of container. Tomatoes so far so good, beefsteak very tasty with mozzarella and basil.

My Tomato's have been great. I have loads of green ones on there at the moment and only a few go red everyday which means I just have enough red's to pick for salad each night.

My chilli plant is full of green chilli's and they are just on the turn of going red (OH is a proper meat and 2 veg man, so I think it will be chilli vodka all round on xmas day).

Courgette's are coming slow but enough to feed just the 2 of us.

Beetroot's were wonders and grow at a rapid pace.

Leeks and Brussels are also coming along very nicely for winter (one Brussel plant also has little Brussels starting already)

On the down side is - peas only got a handful before the caterpillars got there, cauliflower's bolted, carrots were an inch long with about 15 legs coming off them, and my melon plant still only haves boy flowers on it.

Tayberries really good - got loads. Raspberries pretty good too, but a couple of the canes got snapped at the top by a wood pigeon deciding it wanted to land on top of them - that reduced my yield a bit!

Strawberries tasted nice but didn't get many - I should really try harder with them.

Salad leaves great - now that I've giving up growing them in the ground, but instead in windowboxes where the slimers don't seem to get to

French and runner beans, slow to get going but racing along now. Same for pumpkins, butternut and courgettes.

Tomatoes looking good so far, but when are they going to ripen!

My first ever aubergine seems to have set something and first ever tomatillo has loads of flowers - have been hand-pollinting as only have one, so fingers crossed

But on the downside..

Carrots - rubbish. Really poor germination then what came through got eaten at about 2 inches high. Second attempt, same result.

Peas - rubbish, if it's not one thing eating them it's another. Have had hardly any

The best things so far this year have been the courgettes 'Orelia' & 'Defender' in containers, the 'Jermor' shallots, runner beans, the free GYO autumn raspberries, the tomatoes 'Moneymaker' (look good but none ripe yet!), the strawberries (unknown variety), wild rocket & the cucumbers look promising.
The failures have been carrots, same as you Foxhill, ages to germinate & then disappeared! The onions have bolted & are very small, the chillies just haven't really got going & the broad beans have only developed a few decent pods.Oh & the aubergine plant looks very sorry for itself & my butternut squash & pumpkins seem to have only male flowers!

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Into every life a little rain must fall.

I seem to be the opposite to most of you! My carrots have been fantastic and my peas are going great guns, just got the first pods appearing now. And that's both outside and in the polytunnel. Runner beans and french beans a bit slow, but lots of flowers, again even the ones outside are doing well. Broad beans a bit mixed, some pods had no beans in them! Courgettes slow, but picking up a bit now. Onions looking good and herbs just gone mad. Tomatoes have lots of flowers, but very few fruit yet. Have the feeling I may be making a large amount of chutney as there's not much time left to ripen if they come through. Oh and potatoes (Charlotte) superb.

I forget to add my Sharpe's express potatoes in compost sacks - nice taste, rubbish yield, but I've already moaned about that elsewhere. All hopes now rest on the King Edwards to prove I can do potatoes.

A mixed bag really,

Exceptional

Onions, shallots and garlic all fabulous.
Sweetcorn, 60 cobs harvested and another 80 or so to scoff.
Blueberries, raspberries, blackcurrants and redcurrants

Ok

Strawberries, the bulk of my plants are first year so a light crop from them, beetroot, peas and beans.

Crap

Carrots, woody as no rain and patchy germination
lettuce, bolt city due to the heat, saved by rocket and salad bowl.

Total Disaster

Parsnips, will start off in bog rolls next year and worst of all, no netting meant that the birds ate 8 bushes worth so not one left for us.

All in all a good year though with more of the bones of the plot being laid. down

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Kindest regards, David.

http://pigletsplots.blogspot.com/
updated - Sunday 19th at 2100hrs

foxhill please please tell me where you got your king edwards seed potatos

Potatoes - generally well pleased with the various varietes, with Rooster still in the ground.
Garlic - lots of small cloves - will try different variety next year
Onions/Red Onions/Shallots - excellent
Carrots - some good, some bad
Spring Onions(White Lisbon) - good
Pickling onions (Paris Silverskin)- very poor
Peas - Early Onward and Alderman - both superb
Runner Beans (Polestar)- just beginning to crop but looking good
French Beans (Blue Lake Climbing) - as with Runner Beans
Calabrese - good first head then bolt city
Cauliflower (Miniature Idol) - excellent heads.
Cabbage (Minicole) - look good, yet to try
Beetroot - look good
Turnip (Snowball) grew well but tunnelled when pulled
Cucumbers - cannot eat enough to keep up - brilliant
Tomatoes - still to ripen.
Lettuce - good but easy to bolt this year

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Rat

British by birth
Scottish by the Grace of God

Blog updated Wednesday November 13th

Diana
I got them from my local garden centre - The Secret Garden in Crystal Palace - plug, plug - £1.49 for 10 tubers. Not very handy for you, but I've just searched out the packaging and the supplier is Taylors Bulbs, Holbech, Lincs, PE12 7PP. There's no website listed and I've not looked but they might have one

Pigletwillie - 140 cobs of sweetcorn How many plants have you got. Are you stocking the local supermarket?

Foxhill gardener, Taylors bulbs are commercial potatoes, onions and bulbs.
The minium order value for them is £400 so i don't think its really suitable

My success story this year so far has been my garlic, however my spaghetti squash is doing very well and looks like producing a bumper crop in the autumn. Dug one of spuds up and from that they look like they're going to be a good crop too (king edwards).

Toms completely failed, carrots were poor and runner beans are struggling, I've had a few pickings but they're not to the usual standard.

Here's looking forward to next year

Ah. So maybe you could send a nice letter to The Secret Garden, Diana, and see if they'll post some to oyu next year

Many garden centers online retail stores and websites that sell potatoes and almost 85% buy their potatoes from Taylours as there is'nt that many suppliers of things like that. Go to a few garden centres and look for them, most will have king edwards potatoes. If not look on some gardening sites in febuary and they will be on their site
Adam

First message I've placed,so bear with me.
I planted several different strengths of garlic, both in pots and in the ground last November. Have had very different results, some superb size bulbs and some totally insignificant ones. This is the fist time I've attempted garlic, anyone have any suggestions for some consistent sized heads.

My cucumbers have been superb, corgettes coming out of my ears, carrots and beans doing well. My peas were terrible.

Hi Cherry and welcome to the 'Vine
What varieties of Garlic did you plant. There are two types - softneck garlics and (surprisingly enough) hardneck types. The softnecks are the ones that you see in supermarkets and are usually imported from countries with hotter climates than our own, and these tend to have smaller cloves, whereas hardnecks are bigger cloved and more suitable for this country's weather.

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Rat

British by birth
Scottish by the Grace of God

Blog updated Wednesday November 13th