Summary of this years growing season

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mr-cecil
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Posts: 156
Joined: Tue Oct 15, 2013 8:43 pm
Location: Scarborough

Last year some of us gave a round up of 2015's growing season in http://forum.kitchengarden.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=12465

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
- Hot bed. I was quite pleased with this experiment. I’m going to scale it up this next year, to try and give the melon and sweet potato’s a head start.
- 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.
Westi
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mr-cecil!

You keep a diary don't you?? :)

It's not been my best year, although I caught up a bit. My golden raspberries were amazing, my Runners & climbing French beans a disaster! Wood lice got my strawberries. Did Ok with the brassica's even though I've got club root & onions were OK too, but garlic was disappointing.

Let's just say I won't be on my garden planner site but out there levelling the odds next season - weather permitting obviously!

Westi
Westi
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