I cannot believe how badly my crops are doing this year! All my salads have bolted, the squashes have hardly grown at all this month, the beetroot haven't done much since putting their first leaves through over a month ago. Raspberries don't look like they will have any fruit (storms badly bashed the flowers). Etc Etc
I live in the south east & most of my growing is in large plastic raised beds so a warmer safer climate with lovely soil but the weather has been so awful here everything seems to be very late or confused....after last years wet Summer I am beginning to give up on the idea of growing my own.
Anyone else having similar problems?
x Jane
Hi ya Crystalmoon, I am with you on the fact that this year so far has been difficult to say the least. I see they metioned frost on the news this morning and it's June. I still have to sow carrots and hopefully that will be today. I am well behind and wodering if all will catch up. Still don't be to downhearted and it still holds some pleasing moments and just enjoy what produce you can and Happy Gardening :happy7:
It is nature I guess ... some crops do well, some less well and others badly each year.
We just have to hope we have a good mix that contains some at least of the do well ones each year.
Yes..it seem to challenging year for the plants...again..though I do have to admit that at least some of the crops that failed last year are doing far better this year :icon_cheers:
Last year I had hardly any tomatoes at all..and this year my plants are already twice the size and set fruit on them :icon_cheers:
Squashes and such a things are not growing..they've been in ground few weeks now and only made couple of new leaves since..but, at least they've not been eaten down to ground level and look healthy and sturdy other wise. We just need bit of night time warmth to get things growing.
Brassicas and spuds are ok..onions..well, they are growing but very slowly.
It is the corn is suffering most....I've got such a amount planted of it this year..I've done massive amount of ground work to get everything perfect for this crop and now we've had plenty of rain..almost perfect for rapid lush growth but NO..they need warmth :BangHead:
At least there is going to be plenty of fruit and berries.... :icon_cheers:
I agree that there will always be hits and misses each year due to the prevailing conditions. Looks like I should have a bumper apple crop and broad beans, spuds and onions seem to be flourishing. Carrots, parsnips and climbing beans are just taking off, and lettuce/spinach are slowly getting there. Less convinced about some garlic (see separate thread) and courgettes, and will be interested to see if we get enough warmth for the sweetcorn this year (particularly as I recently expanded that bed). As a relative newbie, I suspect the best thing is to grow as wide a variety of crops as you can, and enjoy whatever successes you get.
Hi everyone thank you for your replies....it has been tricky the last couple of years hasn't it with the strange Summers we are having. I need to rethink what crops I grow as so much of what I plant requires warmth & proper sunshine (squash, corn etc).
For the last 4 years I have tended to grow (or attempted to grow for 2012 & this year!) loads of squash varieties as these are so expensive to buy in the shops (especially organic ones) so in theory they offer me the greatest financial saving. In 2011 after a wonderful bumper harvest I had over 40 winter squash happily waiting in my spare room to be eaten & enjoyed & I must have given away as many again. Last year none of them over wintered & this year I don't think I will get many if indeed any!
I am actually missing the days when I had so many courgettes I didn't know what to do with them all, ha ha.
Even in this cold weather we have had 3 near miss periods for blight so I'm not sure the spuds will do much either (last year many rotted in the wet ground). Ho Hum....now I wonder if I plan to grow crops that like a cool Summer we will have a heat wave in 2014 :tongue3:
Heres hoping for some sunshine for us all very soon
xjane
Crystalmoon,
It really does seem to get trickier to grow things.
When we moved here in 1990, I started making a garden out of grassland. We had lovely outdoor tomatoes, even late varieties that ripened in September. Blight was not that much of a problem. No mice/voles chewing through bean stalks etc. We got gales in spring and autumn, but not like it is now, at any time of the year and when the trees are in leaf/fruit.
I remember storing 60 plus winter squashes, compared to last year's ten, which were undersized and largely seedless! There were almost no apples/pears/plums last year either. That's not happened since the fruit trees in this garden have started producing well in the mid 90s. And why is it suddenly so difficult to grow decent leeks??? Why do brassica drown and keel over when the garden is underwater over winter and why does all PSB fail (two year's running killed by frost, didn't grow any last year or they would probably have drowned too).
Now I do sound like I am going on about 'the good old days', but I don't believe that I am now a worse gardener than I was when I had so much less experience :BangHead:
This growing year started badly when due to last year's washout I could not dig/prepare ground in autumn for the garlics and shallots. They had to go into seed trays and overwinter in the greenhouse. Spring digging had to start late because of waterlogging too. They look fine now, but it has never happened before that I could not get them in during October.
Reading back in my gardening note books of what I used to grow with ease, things really have changed and most recent years seem more difficult. I don't think the gardening books and gurus have caught up with our changed and less predictable climate conditions yet, which does not help.
There are good successes too, no doubt about it :blob7: and very welcome, just that they seem to be harder to come by. Peas (started early indoors second half February/ first half March and transplanted) have been fine the last few years (give or take pigeons and a bit of storm damage), lettuce is fine too, greenhouse tomatoes are the way to go these days with only a few selected varieties for outdoors. Saving my own seeds does help give me plants that are adapted to my growing conditions too. For example I had losses from beans due to a slight late frost in June, but some plants struggled and survived. By chance the same variety was planted when the same happened again - and that year the beans just shrugged off the conditions, whereas other beans perished. I am not saying we could breed a frost hardy bean by growing from our seeds. But we can have varieties that take our conditions better, because by definition only those plants that grow despite adverse conditions will get to produce seeds.
Winter salad gardening under cloches/greenhouse has been mostly successful, apart from flooding damage early this year. I now do a lot of this, in the hope that quite a bit survives.
Tomatoes are now mostly greenhouse plants. I sow a lot indoors and transplant. Potatoes need to go in super early to get a good crop before blight. I like the Sarpo varieties, but they are not totally blight proof either. Everything needs far more cloche protection than before. We had both really bad droughts and deluges leaving the garden under water for weeks (you should have seen the moss growing everywhere earlier this spring!!!) :BangHead: In the early years I don't remember such cool, cloudy sunless conditions like we get often now. I think it was in 2005 when we had no sun at all for six whole weeks and no rain, with a maximum daytime temperature of 16C at that time in July and August.
The trick really is to grow little and often (especially lettuce etc), try lots of varieties, lots of indoor starting/transplanting and cloche protection and not to be too disheartened. I wouldn't write this year off yet anyway, Keep plugging away, keep sowing. And best of luck.
It has become rather unpredictable.
This year I planted things out really late, except the tomatoes which went out early May! they sulked like hell but now are bigger than any other plot! Squashes cukes etc went out with cloches and plastic but now have taken off really well. Loads of flowers about which has encouraged many bumblebees so I hope for good fruiting!!
But peas have been rubbish, oddly enough, and last year I got nice turnips and radish - this year they are inedible!
Usually cannot do carrots, this year they have germinated like mad and have very lush stems! Also had nice lettuce and loads of rhubarb. I have the biggest broad bean crop I have ever seen, there are dozens of pods that I should be able to harvest end of the week.
My onions have been attacked by pests so might not get much out of them this year.
It's just really hit and miss.
Hi Galina thank you for your reply :toothy10:
You really hit the nail on the head when you said you are not a worse gardener now...that is exactly what is getting me down this year, I have so much more experience yet smaller harder to come by crops. It is really good to hear that I am not alone in my struggles this year!
I think you are right I will start a lot more off indoors next year & invest in more plastic cloches for my raised beds so I can create mini greenhouses. I really would have been quite happy if I could have just had a decent salad bed this Summer if nothing else!
I think I may start to strip beds of all the struggling plants, feed the soil & get ready for growing things that don't like much sun...but will July or August suddenly be our Summer? Who knows lol.
Hi Antipodes, I also have inedible radish & turnips this year & I have never had problems with them before.
xJane
My plot looks more like early May than mid-June. The climbing french beans are sulking at the bottom of the poles, the courgettes are refusing to budge and the carrots and parsnips have germinated but that's about all. There's a bare patch where I daren't put any tomatoes yet, it's so windy and cold at night...though the greenhouse ones are doing brilliantly. But we seem to have been getting warmer Septembers lately, so I'm hoping things catch up. Nil desperandum!
I think every year is a different challenge. And this year is quite a challenge. A few years ago we were suffering from drought then too much rain.
I can remember so many tomatoes I did not know what to do with them. I can remember years of blackcurrant jam and then loosing all the plants to reversion virus. I can remember loads of plums and then the tree dieing. I can remember all the flowers dropping off the runner beans. I can remember the pet rabbit eating everything. I can remember piles of courgettes, and cucumber mosaic virus. (with the newer varieties most people have forgotten that one). I can remember hot Aprils and cold Mays and frost in June. I can remember the wind suddenly blowing most of the leaves off the courgette plants. I can remember the warmest day of the year in October. But the perfect year I cannot remember that.
I think we all need to become more cunning. Being on a very windy site I have my courgettes with straw bales rotting slowly beside them keeping them warm at night. They do not appear to be suffering from lack of sunshine. Those without their personal central heating are looking very poor in comparison. I think it is the cold nights which is causing the problems.
But my runner beans have only just started climbing the canes and I have so far had only one full size courgette. Thank goodness for broccoli and rhubarb. :icon_cheers:
The forecast for the jet stream shows it flipping to the north at the end of next week, so I am cautiously optimistic about the beginning of July.
http://www.stormsurfing.com/cgi/display_alt.cgi?a=natla_250
I am thinking because we are a month or two behind that it will be a late winter and winter will end later next year
Strawberries very nice, have made jam, given some to neighbour and eaten too many tonight. Also peas very good, apart from that, the apple and pear tree look good. Plenty of mint. Think we will have a late summer and September will be hot, maybe. Nothing much else growing too well, but am doing a lot of weeding/digging for next year. Apart from that have had very good chats with lovely people at the allotment, so the rent to the Council is worth it and it gets me out of the house and the excerise is good, so I just enjoy it.
I think just the allotment and trying to grow things is the joy ... not the results - I'm not in this game for huge bountiful harvests (although I'll gladly take them if they happen) ... I haven't had an allotment long enough to remember any halcyon days of massive easy crops - so I will just take the relaxation and connection to the food I manage to grow as enough to make me enjoy being an allotmenteer.
Pretty much the same as everyone else. Exceptions, 1 summer coli as started turning purple the other 5 seem to be o k at the moment, don't no whats happening there. Never had that happen before. For the first time ever my quince tree as fruit on it :toothy10: :toothy10: everything crossed that some of the fruit come good.
It is definitely hard this year, I have grown veg for 30 years but am not going to look back. Trick is to go with the flow and the restraining factors this year where I live, in the sw, are the consistent dessicating winds and lack of good light. It is just about impossible to deal with either, the leaves are flopping before the roots take up the water and it is so hard to get around with a watering can. I have done things like cutting the broad beans down in height, put up wind shelters around the runners etc. Brassicas are in cages but any net is blocking some light, either that or cope with caterpillars later. I have a potential fantastic crop of blackberries looped on wires so I am concentrating on getting water to them and to the black currants. Starting stuff at home and keeping as long as possible is helping, a bit, like beetroots, squash, dwarf french beans. The raised beds with the most organic matter are the ones coping best, so I am sowing green manure when ever a bed gets emptied, no second catch crops this year as I am trying to look ahead to what appears to be another very tricky year coming up in 2014
Some interesting comments in this thread. My experiences are:-
Top fruit - Subtract overhang effects of an awful 2012 and things look good apart from cherries.
Soft fruit - generally good, gooseberries picking this week I hope.
Vegetables - mixed results so far. Most problems seem to arise from the awful spring, although last winter was not too bad (my PSB survived). Most successes connected with overcoming the awful spring, for example now eating broad beans rised in g/h and planted out, for example container-grown carrots, for example overwintered lettuce seedlings in g/h and planted out under cloches.
But the effects of the awful spring should not be dismissed lightly, so many crops will be late. Sweet corn, outdoor tomatoes not even flowering yet, celeriac, Romanesco - its a long list. Prepare the soil, keep the weeds down and the pigeons away, and hope for the best.
I'm having a good year so far with the proviso that everything is a little late.
Just eaten my first toms and a little cucumber, lots and lots of salad, Kohl rabi coming out my ears, broccoli is cropping now as are peas, broad beans and early spuds in buckets It looks to be a great year for fruit - raspberries just starting to ripen and there are tons of them - same with strawberries and my cherry tree is groaning under the weight of fruit. Cabbages are looking rock solid, beetroot is going mad (had my first two last night) and even the sweetcorn is taking off now.
I have had real issues with sowing direct - carrots, early peas and parsnips all had to be re-sown due to poor germination but that is the only really poor show so far.
Hi Crystalmoon....don't despair, theres time yet for things to come right...it is difficult this year but we can help out our little green friends with some netting to help keep them warm...have a look here at my garden, we live in N wales and are a LOT later than most because we are up quite high...but the stuff under nets (it all is) has had as best a start as we could give them...
http://nomspatch.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/the-sunit-does-still-exist.html