Where here is 2016's...I’d be interested to know how others got on….
The Good
- First year with the polytunnel. So for the first time I’ve been able to grow (successfully) sweet peppers, squash, chillies, French beans. I was particularly impressed to have peas in May, and sweetcorn early aug.
- I reckon I’ve grown about £240 worth of food (if I bought it in Morrison’s). I’d be interested to know how much anyone else thinks they grow.
- The stuff I grew in larger quantities (value wise) included:
- 1. Cherry Toms: 23 punnets
2. Raspberries: 27 punnets
3. Shallots: 5 kg
4. Half sized cucumbers: 64
5. Sweetcorn: 56 cobs
6. French beans: 3.5 kg
7. Peas: 5kg
8. Calabrese: 4kg
9. Squash: 8kg
- No significant blight problems!!
The Bad
- Water melon, only got one!
- Sweet potatoes, only got about one and half from 3 plants!
- Apples / Pears...harvest was looking good, but something had them before I did!
The Ugly
- Strawberries are a *total* disaster. Despite having about 36 strawberry plant I had about 3 punnets in the entire year. I’d love to know why. Last year was a good year.
- Cabbage white butterflies. Never had it so bad!
Lessons learned:
- Beetroots are better grown indoors, mainly because they come earlier, and the critters don’t eat them.
- Peppers really do seem to benefit from feed made for pepper (rather than generic stuff)
- If you grow the calabrese varieties “Belstar” and “autumn green” side by side, the autumn green seems to act as a sacrificial crop. I going to deliberately grow autumn green next year for this purpose.
- calabrese “Belstar” seems to cope ok in the polytunnel, getting crops into November. Could have had them in Dec, except something started eating what was left.
- No point bothering with minicorn unless you are on top of them every day (based on the last 2 years)
- I really must try to space things out more!!
- Summer rasperberry really don’t taste that good; you’d be better off growing a loganberry as they fruit around the time of summer raspberrys but have the flavour of autumn raspberrys.