Allotments 4 All
Produce => Edible Plants => Topic started by: Debs on August 27, 2012, 17:49:14
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It has been a really poor year from seed sowing disasters to poor growth due to weather conditions.
But has anyone had any fruit or veg successes??
I have had plentiful amounts of rhubarb, potatoes grown in bags have produced good results, and thornless blackberry bush has got masses of fruit slowly ripening.
Curly kale is also growing brilliantly & hasn't suffered with caterpillars - possibly because there seems to be a distinct lack of butterflies
What are the experiences of A4A peeps?
Debs
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Gooseberries...I had 'tons' of them. So far I've only lifted some of my potatoes and Charlotte's have not failed to perform again.
Peppers..loads to ripen and even if they don't I've got plenty of green fruit to eat.
I've had some other crops that have done ok..not particularly well or exceptional,just ok..BUT..I have more failures than success this year.. ::) Even I have been moaning the year on every other post, I glad for what I have been cropping and there is still plenty to crop..not all over yet! ;) ;D
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hi all
yes ive had a very good crop of potatoes,should not boast but only 3
of us out of 50 on the alloment had potatoes this year,frist i put second early in in feb
we had very bad floodings but mine were ok. then my main crop was so big
that i had to give lots away,the potatoes were sarp axona .first class spud.
good luck to all for next year
5 rod
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I had tooo many broad beans, and now runner beans, I just pull and throw away them at the moment.
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Broad beans did well for me too. Fantastic celery that loved all the wet. Parsnip and salsify looking excellent along with oca and yacon. Lettuce, endive, kohl rabi perpetual spinach/chard along with cauliflowers and picked a nice crop of komatzuna last week (only took a month!).
Carrots are finally being harvested.
Runners finally doing their stuff along with promising looking brussels, cabbages, broccoli. leeks, swede and kale. Winter radishes and spinach are looking good too.
Not forgetting the jeruselem artichokes either ;)
Soft fruit a success too, also some grapes in a few weeks.
There have been some serious failures - potatoes and onions, beetroot to name three.
But still have things to eat so not too many complaints overall ;)
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Lovely big blackberries and tons of them, broad beans, French beans and runner beans good, but no peas came up at from two sowings. Everything being later has actually worked in my favour, as stuff that usually gets past its best while we're away in Sweden is just at its peak as we've come back.
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Raspberries doing very well, and I can't take much credit for that, as they just look after themselves. The blackberries growing wild around the site are rubbish this year, last year they were brill. Sweet peas also brilliant this year, apart from that not a lot. Might have plenty of pears, if they don't drop off the tree before they are ready. Normally manage to bring something home even if it is only the one small carrot I grew.
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Runner beans, French beans and peas have been amazing and we have more beans than we can manage so the neighbours are pleased. Raspberries weren't huge this year, but there were masses of them. Lettuces (little gem) were fab, but bulked up and bolted quicker than we could eat them, same with lollo rosso. The top growth on the parsnips is fabulous so hopefully below ground with be good also. The squashes are doing okay, lots of fruits although I have lost a couple of pumpkins due to rot.
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Yes, after all the searching for the very large Gigandes beans and most not coming up to what I wanted, I ordered some genuine eating ones direct from Greece, a whole KG. what I sowed germinated very well and despite the rough weather we have had the trellis they are on is loaded with bean pods with the correct size seeds in... I am so very happy now as it has taken me 4 years to find replacemets for my lost seed stash.
Yeah!!
XX Jeannine
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I have two rows of dwarf beans that are doing amazingly well. The soil was hard and full of weeds and had been used as a path. I chopped off the weeds, hoed off the top couple of inches and threw in the seeds. I did not expect much, they were simply ground cover. They are now 18" (1/2mtr) high and producing loads of beans.
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All in all it's not been a bad year for me with a couple of notable failures - onions and squash mainly.
Loads of beetroot, peas, beans, great cabbages, plenty or early spuds, carrots look good but only just started on them. Sweetcorn is tasty but not many of them, hardly got a cherry and soft fruit in general wasnt brilliant.
Plenty of cucumbers and lettuce and I even have a tomato glut now!
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Yes, after all the searching for the very large Gigandes beans and most not coming up to what I wanted, I ordered some genuine eating ones direct from Greece, a whole KG. what I sowed germinated very well and despite the rough weather we have had the trellis they are on is loaded with bean pods with the correct size seeds in... I am so very happy now as it has taken me 4 years to find replacemets for my lost seed stash.
Yeah!!
Gosh..now that is what I call determination..nothing like getting them straight from the 'source'. You must have plenty left over to eat from that lot after sowing some to grow.. ;D
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All beans (broad, french and runner) have been excellent, as were the main crop onions (strange as the garlic and shallots were disappointing). Main crop spuds (Desiree) were also good but picked them fairly early. Just started eating the sweetcorn which is delicious (my first time with them). And Tayberries and Gooseberries were plentiful. However, couldn't grow a single edible radish(!) and have almost given up with the calabrese - sincerely hoping that the sprouts survive the current cataerpillar and slug attack.
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I had tooo many broad beans, and now runner beans, I just pull and throw away them at the moment.
Huuuh! (sharp intake of breath) Sounds such as waste - can't you let them ripen and save as shelling beans for soups and chillies in the winter?
I've had a lot of peas, they loved the weather. Apart from that, nothing has done very well.
But I haven't had to water anything very often - just the last few weeks were very hot and dry and so I did start watering towards the end, but then luckily we had some rain this weekend. So it's been a much easier summer than most.
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I had tooo many broad beans, and now runner beans, I just pull and throw away them at the moment.
The beans do freeze - assuming you have a freezer of course...
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Loads of runners (3rd sowing) and dwarf french beans, beautiful peaches. Good amount of potatoes apart from some of the nadine's rotting due to blight. Lettuce, cucs ,spring onions, radish all did well, once we got the beer traps set up. Actually got some decent carrots and the parsnips are looking good. Lots of raspberries and gooseberries, loads of apples, discovery. Tomatoes coming out of our ears now and big sweetcorn but only 1 per plant. The strawberries were a bit tasteless but we had lots of rhubarb.The romanesco broccoli got slugged to death and there are loads of slugs but we're doing better than I thought we would :)
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My broadies were pathetic, and the climbing beans are only beginning to flower now. The dwarf beans were wiped out by slugs. The only one that did well was Wizard, a field bean from Real Seeds.
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Excellemt yields of soft fruit - gooseberries, blackcurrants, recurrants. Raspberries really starting to kick in as are the blackberries. Even had more blueberries than usual - that might be more down to me picking and eating the before the birds for a change. Spuds OK in spite of what looked like blight - got the tops off in time. Early peas were OK and the courgettes and runners are finally starting to go mad. Really good crop of beetroot again
Any squash I get this year will be a bonus as they sat and sulked for ages in the cold and damp. Everything else has been middling to awful. Although getting the first sweetcorn at the weekend was, as always, a lift.
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Salads & leaves done and still doing well. Courgettes, squashes, marketmore cues, beetroot, fennel, pentlan javelin & charlotte pots, all brassica ( I fib, cauli's rubbish) French & runner beans, onions & garlic. In fact most stuff ok. Only carrots was a failure after trying 3 times!
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Oh, non-stick, I had forgotten about the blueberries, best year but they were put in a better place ;D
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Best year for my blueberry too & it is the only one I have left so I never expect much of a harvest from it as they don't like to be on their own but I've had 3 large punnets so far. I moved it (it is in a large pot) so it is next to the comfrey in the hope that the bees would hop over from the comfrey to fertilise the blueberry & it worked a treat. I also made sure it was netted from birds very early this year which has also helped.
Great black currant & red currant harvest, really good gooseberry harvest from an ancient bush but zero raspberries & I usually have absolutely loads. I think all the raspberry fruit blossoms were destroyed in the storms we had as the raspberries are right next to the other fruits. xJane
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Blueberry wise I got zilch but had a bumper crop with the gooseberries.
My giant pumpkins aborted (patches have been cleared now) although I have a bumper crop of squash with around 25 Bonbons over 5 plants, 11 rolet on 1 plant and 6-7 blackfutsu squash over three puny plants. I love pumpkins :-*
The broadbeans were disease ridden, tomatoes were insignificant, strawberries and raspberries were watery and the sun flowers were pathetic. Nettles are doing fantastic as are all my beans
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Wow Dandytown how did you manage to get your squash to do so well?
All my plants either died at the 4 leaf stage or put out flowers way too early when the stems were only spring onion thick so every single variety I tried this year failed & I normally have bumper crops.
My strawberries were all tasteless too xjane
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Good and bad for me...
Good: loads broadbeans (used to hate them, but now learned how to depod twice and actually quite like them now lol) /onions/garlic (although pulled garlic up too early and they didn't mature properly) / spuds (not as good as last year but not bad) .
Bad: strawberries (slugs got most of the good ones) / blueberries (just a handful) / sweetcorn (very slow to get going and very slow to catch up with neighbours!) / butternut squash (loads of flowers but only a couple of fruit which are struggling)/ courgettes (just the one!) / carrots now starting to get going / swede - yuck! / brassica's rubbish.
I put it down mainly to the excessive amount of water that has rained any nutrients that our poor site had. We've now moved to a new plot so fingers crossed for better results next season!
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tomatoes have been great. I stopped all plants at 4 trusses and took some leaves off, a few at a time throughout summer. 8 plants under polythene and 8 in assorted buckets outside. I must have had over 50lb. I also took fruit when orange and brought inside putting a layer of newspaper on top. I have been manic getting them preserved
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Beans Beans Beans ! First broad then french, climbing french beans and now runners.
Also loads of apples.
Cabbages are only starting to grow - at least a month late.
Just shows - there will always be something that likes the weather
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My sweetcorn has been the best ever, and fortunately I have picked quite a lot over the last two or three weeks, because yesterday I went to pick more and found the dreaded badger had got there first (or rabbit or squirrel or fox, everyone has their theories). Trampled down and broken, with about 6 big cobs shredded open and gnawed all over. Managed to pick the last four or five, and that's it.
Surely rabbits and squirrels have not got the weight to bring down the tall heavy plants, or the strength to pull open the cobs? And are foxes interested in sweetcorn?
Overwintering onions and shallots did well too, and all forms of beans have been productive, and thanks to successional sowing (don't always achieve it) will go on for some time. I only hope the gigandes and pea beans and borlotti will ripen. Peas did very well earlier in the year, but have mildew now.
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Kew Blue beans would be cropping like mad now if something hadn't bitten through 90% of the stems. As it is, I'm saving everything for seed.
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Lettuce (once got going). Plus nettles!
Strawberry1 - what tomato varieties are you growing to get such magnificent crops? I'm trying to keep the blight at bay on both indoor and outdoor ones.
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So many runner, dwarf and french beans, it is getting silly!!! :o
'Sunburst' patty pan squash , courgettes have gone into manic mode!! ???
Tomatoes have done fab!! ;D
Huge massive raspberries! :)
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Kew Blue beans would be cropping like mad now if something hadn't bitten through 90% of the stems. As it is, I'm saving everything for seed.
Probably slugs... I've lost some climbing kidney beans to them...
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Swede, beetroot, calabrese and peas all performed well. Carrots, I had lots of split ones. Onions, I have nothing to compare to, but they look like I might get an ok crop off them. Loads died at the beginning of the year through rot though. Tomatoes, lots of splits but I think that's more down to not quite getting the watering regime yet.
Spuds slugged to high heaven. However, Home Guard planted in 25 litre plastic-weave bags have done really well. Not a spot of blight. Sowed 1st July, mid July and early August. Weird, I thought they were highly blight susceptible but every other variety got foliage blight.
Lettuce excellent.
Scallions did really well the beginning of the year but I'm still waiting on my June sown to be a harvestable size. Been without them for too long now.
Strawberries awful. Most split and rotted.
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Good yields: spuds, more than I can handle in fact despite some beginnings of blight. Onions, red and brown, and garlic, lettuce (which I am generally hopeless at), mizuna and baby leaves and early beetroot, early beans (but I only realised that I should successive sow the runners as they die off fairly rapidly), peas were OK, and the pumpkins look good so far. Raspberries look Ok so far too.
I did get a few caulis too even though they were small (first time). Also loads of herbs, much more than I can handle.
Bad yields: artichokes, summer squash (pattypan), strawberries, gooseberries, cucumbers
Total loss: Tomatoes, aubergines, courgettes, parsnips (did not germinate).
And teh plot just looks crap because it has not been as well tended as there was too much rain,
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After a very very slow start I now am hoping for a great crop of sweet corn. Earlybird from
Moles is looking very good at the moment. You get lots in the packet so I sowed two in each station. I seemed to get either nothing or two hardly any singles.
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pg, I grew ferline, alicante and a few strillo. Ferline were so easy, good and strong and just went evenly red all over, even the outdoor ones in buckets. Alicante were big and I had to catch them as they fully ripened indoors, otherwise they got too soft for the mandolin slicer, then I just dehydrated the slices. Next year I will grow mostly ferline and will try old brookes. I will be growing half the number of plants using the same methods. Everyone is picked now, a few left to fully ripen indoors, 5lb for green tomato chutney and I have cleaned and washed everything ready for next year
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Loads of kiwis. Though I'd done ok with around 250 last year. Must be around 600 this year.
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Runner beans late but doing well - more beans setting on each flower stem than usual. Courgettes and marrows in abundance. Not much else!
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I have a freezer full of broad beans and runner beans and tons of tomato sauces just waiting for the winter - oh and so many blackberries I have now resorted to making wine. Got about 15 lb of them in the freezer too.
Chillis not looking too bad as is the sweetcorn. About 35 parsnips though out of 3 full rows. Half the weight of onions as last year
Total failure was carrots (6 sowings and about 3 germinated) beetroot and spinach. Birds got all my goosegogs and blackurrants and only about a dozen plums when we have a tree full for the last 3 years.
Never mind, theres next year to look forward too :) :)
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Probably slugs... I've lost some climbing kidney beans to them...
Could be, though they were all bitten through very neatly, at the same height, a few inches above the ground. It didn't look like the typical slug job. I haven't harvested a single bean yet, and some of them aren't even flowering. It's down to a combination of low light levels and flood damage.
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Could be, though they were all bitten through very neatly, at the same height, a few inches above the ground. It didn't look like the typical slug job. I haven't harvested a single bean yet, and some of them aren't even flowering. It's down to a combination of low light levels and flood damage.
I had exactly the same issue on my climbing borlotti, climbing French beans and runner beans. Entire sections of the stems were eaten away at the same height from the ground and for the same length of stem - resulting in the plants dying. At first I thought it was a rabbit as my carrots and leeks also got a good seeing to by this pest. Then I noticed that most of my beetroot had been chomped into as well and there were plenty of teeth marks left as evidence. >:(
My plot is rabbit proofed with buried chicken wire and there was no sign of any entry around the entire perimeter so I was puzzled how the rabbit was getting in. Now that I have topped my last two rows of spuds I have found very small holes which look Rat sized and the odd spud has been eaten into, again leaving the same familiar teeth marks as in the beetroot.
Could it be that a rat (or rats) are the culprits? I did have a rat issue in my compost bins over winter but they have deserted them for some time now. Are rats into that much veg? ???
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It could be, though I've always got rats about, and I've never seen anything like it. The tooth marks on some broad bean pods which were opened looked too big for rats as well. It's a puzzle.
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I shoehorned my sweeetcorn in 6" apart :o and they grew well, cropped well and taste superb.
Cheers, Tony.
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Rats will eat veg with a high sugar content. Especially in winter. Carrots, parsnips and sweetcorn are a favourite food of the rat, :-X
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I would suggest that the culprit could be voles, ie short tailed mice. They do that sort of damage on our allotments.
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After losing most of my garlic to rust I've been chuffed to grow good onions- both overwintering sets[Troy] and jeune paille from seed. The JPs split a bit as I waited too long to lift because of the weather but they've dried well out of the ground and I hope to string them Monday. BTW onions grown on raised beds despite this being the 'dry ' side of the country.
Tomatoes are ripening and the marrow crop has been pretty impressive from one plant....Chillies and peppers seem to have coped but most are still green.
Nets over nearly everything have helped.
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I would suggest that the culprit could be voles, ie short tailed mice. They do that sort of damage on our allotments.
That could be the case. I had a field vole destroy my newly planted cherry tree back in Spring, and it was easily identifiable by the amount/size of droppings everywhere(I read somewhere that they continually poop!) Not sure if I have seen this in evidence so far around the other crops being eaten - and unfortunately they are protected by law, so I am not sure how to deter the blighter! >:(
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Blueberry flowers frosted, strawberries mostly rotted, hopeless tomatoes but good crops from raspberries, blackberries and black currants plus my first ever cucs and masses of rhubarb.
Salads have done well plus fennel and the cavolo nero is getting going for good crops. Swiss chard ready to crop but the spinach bolted quite early and the coriander did while we were on hols. PSB is already fowering but sparsely.
Peas iffy. I have to wonder if they're worth all that space for a small crop that takes ages to pod but does at least provide composting material. Pumpkins looking smaller than usual but ripening OK. The Chiense greens are just showing through and look to have high germination.
I don't grow spuds and have my first successful carrot sowing in 4 years - in pots. It'll be a while till they crop.
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Although it seemed doomed early in the season I have had a good year considering. Runner beans were the best followed by broad , french. Carrots have done well also most brassicas. My iron man callabrese planted early on was very poor, went to seed. I am watching my swede which hasnt gone as well as last year. Lost my toms to blight then the potatoes followed but they were nearly ready to dig so I have taken up the ones that look ok, hopefully I will have some that will store.
So all in all with the very wet and cool temps we had for the early to mid part of the season I am happy, especially after reading some of the stories on here.
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Spuds did well! I'm struggling to eat all of the courgettes, but I'm trying my best. :) Florence fennel have been great and I'm glad cos I love it. Tomatoes were mixed - some varieties have come good in the end (alicante, gardeners delight, conchita) but I've not had one ripe one off the heritage range. Salad did well, raspberries not bad, carrots ok, runners and broad beans ok.. and the bad news - spinnach, broccoli, caulis, chard all decimated by caterpillars. Not one aubergine!! Grrr!!
All in all though, I'm happy with my first harvest from our new house. We moved in just before Christmas and it was a blank canvas. Ive built a shed, a greenhouse, laid decking and a patio, made 8 raised beds and built a brewery in the garage. It's been a busy year, but I've enjoyed having a potter in the quieter moments too.
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We've had a great year for melons, water melons, peppers and tomatoes. No runner beans at all, they're selling for €7 / kilo in the shops so it seems it's not just us. Potatoes too a complete disaster, planted more than I dug up I think. Sweetcorn looked good but was inedible really - incredibly chewy.
Biggest problem is we haven't any rain at all, probably not since May - mulched and watered like never before but it's not sustainable and am considering cutting right back next year to just working half the plot or less.