Successes & Failures 2009

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Colin Miles
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The weather here in sunny Wales(!) is the opposite to that being experienced in the East, as it has been for most of the summer. June was very good here, but July and August 20% wetter than last year, which itself was extremely wet. Not only that they were notably dull months. So what has this done to the veg?

Potatoes - poor yields. Too dull and wet for the poor tubers.
Brassicas - generally seemed to have loved it and anti-butterfly netting has worked well!
Dwarf Beans: Purple Queen and Duel French Beans more or less curled up in disgust.
Climbing French Bean Cobra, also grown last year. Definitely not a wet weather variety, similarly with Butler Runner Bean which I also grew last year - or attempted to grow.
Runner Bean Enorma. Always used to grow this one and I will continue to do so. May not be the heaviest cropper but certainly doesn't mind the wet and the texture and flavour is superb. Is continuing to produce flower spikes and enough beans for the 2 of us.
Winter Squash: as I said before - needs sun. But Hunter has produced some fruit.
Sweetcorn: Variety Mainstay. The good weather in June encouraged the plants to produce lots of potential cobs, but it is only in the last week that they have shown any sign of ripening.
Peas: I grew Fortune as an early variety and the weather then was good, but it produced a lot of haulm but not really too many peas. In contrast Greenshaft did very well. But Kelvedon Wonder, sown as a late crop stood there and sulked in the rain. Had a few peas yesterday and that was it. Can't really blame it.
Carrots; Nantes and Flyaway as earlies tended to split a bit and suffer from rot. By contrast Autumn King has done superbly well. If I were so inclined I think they would be good enough to enter in the Big Village show at the National Botanic Garden of Wales this weekend.
Parsnips - Archer - also very good.
Leeks - Autumn Giant 3 - Albana have done very well as have the Onion Sets (Marshalls New Fen Early) with no bolters.
Beetroot - Wodan. Very good.
Swede - Marian - did well last year but it looks as if the extra dullness has told on them as they haven't swelled up at all.
Finally, wild blackberries - and I have lots of stray brambles in the garden such that I can usually pick quite a few handfuls. This year, today whilst mowing the lawn I found one edible blackberry! And it has seems to have been the same in the hedge
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Primrose
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Potatoes in containers - disappointing yields. Won't bother again but enjoyed the experiment.
Tomatoes - Ferline astounding. . Gardeners Delight, Sungold, Red & Yellow Tumbling, Moneycross & Ildi all cropped well. Ailsa Craig and Alicanti died on me for no apparent reason. Sprayed fortnightly from mid July onwards. Slight sign of blight on Ildi but it didn't spread and no tomatoes lost.
Climbing French beans. Blauhilde mixed quality. Cobra did really well.
Runner Beans. Enorma cropped well. Only grew a few plants.
Carrots - disappointingly small and many eaten by big brown slugs.
Beetroot - excellent crop of Bolthardy.
Leeks - Doing well. No sign of rust or leek month.
Kale, Cavalo Nero & Swiss Chard all doing well.
Gooseberries, Blackcurrants Redcurrants & Blackberries. Excellent crops.
Kohl Rabi. First & second crops did well. Third batch of seedlings eaten by slugs.
Celeriac - bulbs still looking very small.
Rhubarb - grew more than we could eat.

Amazed how much I've managed to crop from a pretty small growing area in garden. Feeling quite pleased with my efforts this year. Freezer now packed. I've also had the best crop of big brown slugs I've ever seen in our garden - they've been enormous!
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Primrose
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Oh, I forgot the mini cucumbers - poor crop this year.
And the Black Russian tomatoes were a big disappointment too.
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Geoff
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Agree about the rubber slugs as I call them - need a knife to despatch them as a boot often fails.
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Primrose
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Senile dementia must be imminent. I also forgot my successful crops of chillis, aubergines and peppers. The peppers seem to be very slow in ripening this year though and I'm now contemplating bringing all five pots indoors for them to ripen off, where they will probably block most of the light from our bay window. Do wish I had room for a greenhouse!
pongeroon
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Freezer now packed. I've also had the best crop of big brown slugs I've ever seen in our garden - they've been enormous!


For a moment there I imagined small packets of slugs tucked into the few remaining spaces in Primroses freezer... :shock:
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Primrose
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What a good idea Pongeroon - they'd be useful for eeking out the spaghetti bolognese if an unexpected visitor pops in :lol:
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macmac
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We've had a splendid crop of tomatoes I only sprayed twice.Sungold have been my favourite though Legend are brilliant for sauce.Soft fruit has just kept on and on and I'm delighted that after a dreadful crop last year the butternut squash are looking brilliant,also Sweet Potato squash a plant given to me, with seed bought from the real seed company has several offerings though I'm a little unsure of what to do with them :? All in all we've had a really good year,oh and i've got chillis coming out of my ears :lol: :lol: :lol:
sanity is overrated
Stephen
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Onions did well
Potatoes were OK, only a few tubers got blight; I got the tops off just in time. Edit to add: I grew Anya which yielded Ok but were disappointing as a spud (salad or otherwise). Pixie yielded well and mashed well. the Prince Eds were OK and the Desiree were probably the most predated. Next year, I am going to water by using a leaky pipe system and give them a little extra space.
Autumn raspberries are doing well.
Currants poorly on the allotment but the redcurrants in the garden were good., I have ordered new red and white currant bushes for the allotment; I find more use for red than black currants.
My two little plum trees have done very well (see my other post)
Gooseberries in the garden did well, those on the allotment less so. I think I need to improve my pruning skills.
Summer raspberries in the garden were pretty good but lost a fair few to rot as the rains set in.
Red cabbages are good, the slugs appear to like them!
The sweetcorn cropped lightly but were delicious.
Last edited by Stephen on Sun Sep 20, 2009 7:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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glallotments
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I've got deja vu? Haven't we had a thread about this somewhere before as I seem to remember typing out my list of successes - have to admit to a complete failure with brussels sprouts though!
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Zena
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For the first year ever I managed to grow broad beans & peas! Also some other type of bean, the name of which I can't remember :oops: They are purple when they grow but turn green when you cook them :o
Also, the best crop of carrots I have ever managed to grow :D
Loads of spinach - I'm just struggling to find recipes for it that we like.
A few parsnips, too, which I'm very excited about. Usual turnips, spuds. Too much lettucey type stuff - it ended up going to seed.
OOh, and the brassicas did better than ever before, until the caterpillars got them. :evil:
I'm still learning about what grows best and whether we like it or not!
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Primrose
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Zena - were your purple climbing French beans called Blauhilde? I've also been growing them this year. They come from Thompson & Morgan.
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glallotments
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We also grew a purple climbing French bean calles Cosse Violette but have in the past also grown other varieties of purple French bean some climbing and some not. It does seem likely that it would be some sort of French bean though.
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Colin_M
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I think every gardener really benefits from a good cook (sometime the same person, but only partially in my case).

Anyway this year has been good for Kale, Sweetcorn, Peas, Borlotti beans, Fennel, Garlic, Parnsips, Potatoes, Squash....and caterpillers :( . The squash were fewer in number than I'd like, but rather large. Anyway, my daughter was kind enough to take pictures of some of them and (even more useful) cook some of them for us - see here for some examples.

Failures include outdoor Sungold tomatoes (blight), Mooli & Swede (Caterpillers).

We're also shamelessly promoting Jenni's book of recipies for vegetables see the publisher's site and her blog for more details. You can now also get this direct from us (with quicker delivery than the publisher).


Image

This autumn has been kind to us (though very dry). We managed a second crop of Climbing Peas, Fennel and Broccoli which we're still harvesting at the moment.
Elaine
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This year I decided to try a new (for me) variety of tomato and got Spartan.
They are quite large, though there are a lot of "normal" sized ones too, and they have the most wonderful deep red flesh I have ever seen in a tomato. They are quite thin skinned and are absolutely delicious both raw and cooked.
I have not stopped eating them since I tried the first one and I am not a real tomato fan.
I will definitely grow these again next year. :D
Cheers.
Happy with my lot
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