A report on my first year in the greenhouse

[MikA]

A report on the first year using my small, unheated 6 * 8 greenhouse positioned on a patio next to the house.



Spring was very good and judicious use of copious amounts of fleece enabled lots of seedlings to be grown on after propagation in a heated propagator indoors.

Gloomy summer in the main, I hardly had to use the shading at all.

Grew 4 main crops -
Tomatoes -> varieties Gardener's Delight * 2, Sweet Olive * 1, Suncherry * 2 and Shirley * 2.
Most were grown in 1/2 growbags on end and 1 of the G.D in a small pot.

Cucumber - Cucino * 2 -> 1 in 1/2 growbag on end and one in large pot.
(This is a variety to pick when quite small)

Sweet Peppers >- Worldbeater *5 in 9" pots. (from free seed packet KG)

Melon -> F1 Lunabel * 2 In growbag.

YIELDS

Melons were a disappointment. They set several small fruit but I think the cool summer led to these aborting and I took them out at the start of August as they were competing with the cucumbers for space at the end of the greenhouse.
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Cucumber - picked the first fruit on 10th May and the last on 8th Sept.

About 20 small ones picked unweighed in May and June.
1818 gms. in July
2514 gms. in August
859 gms in Sept.
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Total 5191 gms
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Tomatoes - picked the first one on 4th July and the last on 28th Sept before going on holiday.



Sweet Olive - poor crop - the fruit was misshaped, small and lacking flavour. (Two seedlings I gave to a friend perfumed very well so the problem was probably down to my issues with the compost and watering.)
Shirley - good crop but disappointing flavour although cooked ok. Later ones splitting.
Gardener's Delight - best for flavour.
Suncherry - Excellent crop but flavour not as good as GD. Great for cooking.

A lot of the small ones picked early were were mixed batches and often unweighed (eaten before left greenhouse)

TYPE Weight / Approx. no fruit
Mixed Small 860 gm
Sweet Olive 906 gm / 180
Gardener's delight 2010 gm / 200
Suncherry 4754 gm / 400
Shirley 7288 gm / 80

Total 16,110 gm / 860
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Peppers

Still cropping at the time of writing - 27th October. I will update when finished.

All in all a pretty good result considering.

MikA

edited to try line up table.

[oldherbaceous]

Evening MikA, a very interesting report on what can be achieved in a season.
And you have done very well, especially as it hasn't been one of the best years weather wise.

[MikA]

Thank you OH,
I am going to try using hydroponics next year to see if the compost and watering problems can be bypassed.

MikA