How's it going so far ?

[Small pumpkin]

So how's everyone's growing year going so far ?

Mines been a bit hit & miss
Turnips, bolting or splitting
Swiss chard & spinach bolted
Tomatoes about 1 fruit set per truss ( apart from sungold & one I can't pronounce ( came with the magazine)doing ok)
Cauliflower, so pointless, never again ( not even with free seeds )
All squash, courgette & pumpkins ( apart from Humphrey) just not doing. To cold and windy this year.
Onions, seem to be doing well.
Carrots, doing well ( apart from red samurai, bolted )
Cucumbers, brilliant
Melons, getting there
Aubergine, ok I think
Sweet peppers, best ever
Chillies, fantastic
Everything else, I'm still on the fence about!

Even though it's been mostly pants. I'm having lots of fun and enjoying every moment in the garden

[seasprout]

Also hit and miss for me:

Beetroot, tiny leaves, no rooty bits.
Melons did not germinate.
Kohl rabbi split.
Dwarf raspberry plant, masses of fruits
Cucumbers, I'm packed out with them.
Garlic, total crop failure due to white rot, allium leaf miner. All dumped.
Small onions for pickling, so-so... but allium leaf minor just started.
Tomatoes, ok so far.
Peppers, just ok.
Oca... remains to be seen in autumn.
Potatoes in tubs... pants.
Acohoa.. taking over greenhouse.
Dwarf French bean, climbing Beas, all peas.... for seed.... ok so far.
Sweetcorn.. looking brilliant so far.
Squashes ...ok so far
Squash on compost heap, looking fantastic. (Why do I bother with ground preparation).

Herbs, good.
Courgettes, mostly rubbish... I'm so ashamed.
Celery, new for me, so have no idea how it's doing, but it's still alive.
Carrots, forgot to thin out, so mostly rude.

[Penellype]

Hmm, a mixed year for me too.

Spinach was disappointing, rather poor germination.
Cabbages ok, have been better.
PSB went to seed very quickly in the warm spring
Best crop of spring turnips I've grown so far.
Potatoes ok so far - some very early potatoes and decent yields from Lady C, less so from 1st bucket of Desiree.
Salad greens generally good, although slugs a bit of an issue
Cucumbers fantastic
Peas disappointing with poor germination for early peas and the hot and dry weather appears to have stunted the growth of the Hurst Greenshaft.
French beans have been small and some have blackfly
Plenty of flowers on the runner beans but nothing edible yet.
Summer calabrese nearly ready and looking good
Carrots looking ok although a few have bolted
Beetroot proving difficult with lots of leaf miner and roots refusing to swell. One plant has bolted (Boltardy).
Onions not great, probably a bit dry,
Leeks doing well - the best I have managed to this point
Courgette plants huge but have mildew and the fruits have so far not got beyond the baby stage
Parsnips have plenty of greenery
Indoor tomatoes ripened very early, some cooked on the plant in hot weather and now some are splitting, but yields are very good,
Indoor peppers also early, cooking on the plant and all ripening at once
Outdoor tomatoes looking good so far
Strawberries started off fantastically well, but a lot of the later flowers didn't develop fruit, and some of the later fruits have maggots in
Excellent crops of black and white currants
Blueberries have plenty of fruit, just starting to ripen
Apples look as though they may have bitter pit and several fruits are frost damaged
Gooseberry bush produced 2 fruit, yet to ripen

Ongoing battle with slugs, snails, ants, greenfly, blackfly, strawberry leaf roller, strawberry maggots, cabbage moth, cabbage root fly, carrot fly, wasps, leaf miner, vine weevil, various miscellaneous caterpillars, mildew, sooty mould and damping off.
Appear (fingers crossed) to have stopped the cat digging up the garden, although he still visits daily. It may be that there are too many plants around, but I have a feeling that he prefers using the strulch mulch as a bed rather than a toilet.

That's just at home, don't get me started on my friend's garden/greenhouse or I will be here all night!

[happyhumph]

Mixed bag for me as well. Slugs and rabbits have been a major problem.

French beans/ other beans - I'll be amazed if I get any as slugs and rabbits have killed off successive plantings and only a few cobra have survived.

Peas - ditto beans but had enough to keep children happy but missed the enormous legume glut I normally have.

Courgette / squashes - again lots of slug damage but newe ones enormous and need to go out. Surviving ones doing well now.

Summer spinach never germinated, likewise carrots.

Garlic and elephant garlic did really well this year.

Cucumbers are now going great guns - at the top of the gh already and have customary stash on the work surface.

Toms - really well, have had quite a few ripe ones already and loads more coming. Latah is a bit of a thug though and will keep it away from other varieties next year to give them some space.

Chilies, peppers, aubergines and melons all coming on nicely.

Orach and kerala amaranth doing really well, not touched by slugs. Swiss chard likewise good.

Huauzontle and tomatillo putting on good growth.

Spring onions have been a huge success. Regular onions doing OK.

[Jay-ell]

• Mice eating my broad beans,
• slugs eating my sprouts, kale, mustard.
• Spinach, rocket and lettuce going straight from saplings to bolted.
• Parsnips and scorzornera not germinating,
• onions looking small,
• squash and pumpkins doing nowt.
• Sweetcorn thinks it's a dwarf variety
• Pigeons have decimated the perennial kales

So far it's going good -

• Perennial kales are bouncing back
• Had several harvestings of the perennial cauliflower
• yacon romping away,
• self sown kale in yacon bed avoided the slugs
• cabbages I've been eating all 2016 still going string
• beans in flower with pods forming,
• 3rd sowing of broad beans forming pods,
• SFG parsnips and scorzonera germinated,
• I actually managed to harvest some carrots,
• 4th sowing of broad beans have almost all come up,
• 2nd sowing of carrots growing,
• 3rd sowing of carrots coming up,
• oca looks healthy,
• skirret had grown wild and is in full bloom,
• last years (and the years before) scorzonera has grew back,
• bought in sprouts healthy,
• good crop of Elephant Garlic,
• Babingtons leeks growing good,
• Vine leeks look as if they'll split into several new plants,
• Having to ration my use of Oerprei as I want some to replant in September and it's tasty
• my hair has spiked up green and purple and is now full of swelling bulbils,
• sand leeks will be majorly multiplying this year,
• grape vines have nearly got their trunks formed,
• good harvests of goosegogs, strawberries and blackcurrants, there's fruit on the apple trees,
• I've eaten my own cherries,
• Kiwi fruit structure almost done
• I'm getting toms both indoors and outdoors
• Cucumbers loaded with fruit
• There's flowers forming on the dahlias
• Ripped out 3 beds in the New Territories
• Built 9 beds in the New Territories
• Clearing out the dark heart of the Jungle is going well
• The Runner Beans are growing over the bean house
• Rhubarb Brandy and Strawberry Rum - next up is blackcurrant gin and possibly gooseberry vodka.
• 6lbs Blackcurrant Jelly and alot of strawberry jam
• Still have Hostas
• There's newts in the pond
• There's garlic in the pond
• There's beans in the pond
• There's duck potatoes in the pond
• Grew some nice salad potatoes.
• My tiger nuts are growing
• My earth chestnuts are growing
• My mother now knows how to make a decent salad (she asks me to do it)

[Baldy]

Pretty much everything has been brilliant.

[Baldy]

Apart from....

[Baldy]

Sweet corn - blown over
Onions - tending to bolt
Berries - of many types growing well but bleddy blackbirds

I could go on... But need to go to bed

[Cadalot]

Everything's so late this year it's hard to answer that question really ;(

[Darthcider]

For our first year on an allotment that hadn't been touched in 3 years and was dug quickly to get stuff planted..

Broad beans covered in blackfly, but got one meal off them
Peas, not a single one sprouted
Squash going well and loads of babies on the plants
Chard looking good
Cabbages of various types looking good
Shallots look nearly ready to lift
Various salad stuff not too bad, but tomatoes poor with not many fruit
Inherited strawberries had several meals off them
Inherited potatoes bloomin' everywhere!

All things considered, we are happy so far.

[Nannysally99]

I know I only grow in pots, but everything we have grown this year is ok, although potato yield is down.

[Yasai]

Goodness me! That's an impressive amount of veg people are growing... or attempting to grow. Wow! Curiously, [*scarpers off in search of wood*] the only slug/snail damage I have had was at the start of the growing season with a lot of my seedlings in my little greenhouse taking a hit. Now, most things are growing nicely, no thanks to the foxes that regularly attempt to uproot two thirds of my plants in search of the critters that pooped out the chicken manure I have fertilised my plants with Also, trying to grow baby leaves in containers so far has been a non-starter because the pesky squirrels decided to chuck out half the soil in a bid to find nuts. Not at all annoying when I used entire packets of seeds. Will keep the next lot netted for sure. On the plus side, I'm successfully growing beautiful, yellow, round courgettes. Never eaten these before so I'm really looking forward to trying them. Likewise, the yellow patty pans; I shall have to find recipes for them as I have no idea what to do with them but they are looking very funky in the garden

[Kirk]

Squash seem to be the problem:
One is growing what is best described as insanely. It reached the top of the foot climbing mesh, then grew horizontally along another for 4 feet, then it found the bay tree and decided to grow into and up that, then made a small go into the cedar, and gave up on that and has sent out a 3 foot tendril to determine what else is available to climb. At a guess 12 to 15 foot of plant.

The catch is not a sign of a squash on it. I get flowers but seems to be 2 types - I assume male and female but always one at a time.

The "normal" squash, Hunter I think are small squat bushes, last year they were nice tall growers about 5 foot high. Not a flower on any of them at all.

Cucumber is flowering but will guess no cucumbers, they all seem stunted and about to fall off..

All the squashy type things will I anticipate be a bit of a disaster. Shame.

Rest of the stuff is slow, sure they say you can get 2 harvests of some of the things each year, well if they do not grow I will not get any before winter arrives. My tomato's are just starting to show the signs of first flower trusses, no flowers but the start of the stakes they grow on.

[Small pumpkin]

I'm successfully growing beautiful, yellow, round courgettes. Never eaten these before so I'm really looking forward to trying them. Likewise, the yellow patty pans; I shall have to find recipes for them as I have no idea what to do with them but they are looking very funky in the garden

I treat my patty pan like my courgettes. Cut them up, toss in a little olive oil with salt & pepper, then roast in a hot oven for between 10 & 20 minutes.

[Small pumpkin]

Just realised I forgot another success in the garden!
Peas are doing quite will this year
Mangetout is just stunning. Never grown before, 100% on permanent grow list now.

Think they would both be even better if it wasn't so windy. Have to keep tieing them up, but still getting a few stem breakages.