I have not spotted any overall summaries of the 2008 growing season so far.
As autumn seemed to arrive yesterday I found time to draft an initial view of the experiences across our allotment site.
http://www.sunningdaleallotments.org.uk/GrowingSeasonRetrospectiveV2.html (http://www.sunningdaleallotments.org.uk/GrowingSeasonRetrospectiveV2.html)
How was it for you? ... the growing season that is.
Good crops of garlic, onions, shallots, broad beans, french beans, strawberries. An outstanding year for raspberries still going including one of my summer ones. Better year than last for squash and courgette but only average though have grown my biggest ever Kaboucha weighing in at nearly 5Kg...though past experience tells me that the medium size ones are better eating! My son did well with gerkins......wouldn't have planted so many (5) if we'd known how prolific they were going to be. All my salad crops got eaten but raddichio coming along for autumn and beetroot did too well and i have giant ones when I wanted small ones.
I've lost about a 1/4 of my leeks to the slugs but the rest are doing well.
Busy getting beds ready for Broad beans and garlic and tidying up plot now.
Well, overall I am satisfied. All things that have done well: Carrots, beetroot, runner beans, french beans, sweetcorn, cauliflower, globe artichokes, broad beans, parsnips (so far), onions, potatoes (mid-earlies and lates), cabbage, rhubarb, blackcurrants, gooseberries (green and red), butternut squashes, asparagus, salad leaves, radishes and tomatoes. Things that have not been so good: garlic, courgettes, strawberries, cucumber, calebrese, leeks, Brussels and sweet peppers. Things that have done miserably: Aubergines, gherkins, melons, chillies.
Will endeavour to do better next year.
twinkletoes
This is my first year of growing vegetables. I started in March with an extremely overgrown plot full of rubbish! We managed to build raised beds and even though I didn't think I was going to grown any veg I was so pleased with what I achieved!!~~~
Cabbages~Wonderful
Beetroot~good but not enough
Sweetcorn ~very good
Various lettuces~ good
Carrotts_very good
Pumpkins ~Excellent
Butternut Squash~ Good
Runner beans~very good
French beans~ good
Swiss Chard ~ very good
Courgettes~ sick of them now but good
My failures:-
Parsnips ???
Peas >:(
Tomatoes~Blighted >:(
Roll on next year!! ;D
Duke
You should be very very proud Duke, you did great XX Jeannine
Quite pleased ! Planned it all out and got organised early this year . All crops did well....except for my apples...I ,ve no idea why . Next year plan to try saving my own seed and get better at successive sowing. Debs ;)