2020 report

[burnie]

I thought I'd do a report on the garden for the year, what a year eh? spent most of it in the garden dodging the virus, so you would think I'm now a fit 'n' elfy and knowledgeable gardener up to my arm pits in produce.......................if only eh?
The greenhouse has earnt it's crust again, an 8 x 12 with a fair amount of room to grow stuff, especially stuff I like fresh that won't grow outside, this far north. Sweetcorn, raw straight off the plant for pudding is one thing I really enjoy along with early crops that taste so much nicer fresh. As well as the usual salad of lettuce spring onion and radish sown early under glass, I also sowed peas and stump rooted carrots, as much as anything I thought an early crop might have been needed at the height of the daft panic buying that was going on. I was going to try growing toilet rolls as well, but couldn't get any to germinate......................
5 varieties of tomato were ok, not huge crops like the year before, though the "British Breakfast" were prolific again, definitely growing those every year, nice in a salad and excellent cooked in a soup or on toast. The Only failure has been the butternut squash, plants grew like triffids, quite a lot of female flowers, but no males when I needed them to use for pollinating, we have had one fruit and there's one more on the plant, not a great return from 4 plants.
In the raised beds outside most stuff has done well despite the strange weather conditions, I've grown the best spring onions I have ever grown, huge cut and come again lettuce, loads of carrots and dwarf beans. Pot Leeks were ok'ish and ordinary leeks are looking good too, climbing french beans seem to have done well, first time I have tried drying some, they will be in todays soup, so report on taste will come later.............if I survive lol.
Parnips are looking weedy, tasty but very small just now, the carrots are bigger and my main failure outside was my onions from seed, I grew Ailsa Craig for a change and they germinated well, but never really got going, got plenty but small, back to growing mammoth reds next year, which will be in the heated propagator in around a months time.
Fruit has been pretty good this year, sadly due to disease I no longer have apple trees, they were dug up and a wildlife pond is in their place(the pond has done really well too). Strawberries under glass and outside were prolific and tasty. Black currents were very good cropped well and went well with some strawberries in a crumble. Still eating the thornless blackberries, huge fruits and the taste is good enough, if not quite as good as the wild ones. Raspberries are also still being eaten, first year and not a bad crop, they will get a good covering of compost once they are finished.
So all in all not a bad season, we still have the last of the Roses in flower, Verbena also giving the late insects some food, once the grass has had it's last cut for the year(he says hopefully) my garden tends to go into hibernation up here, there are a few cabbages still to have and the root crops will be covered with fleece and picked through the winter, with seed catalogues arriving, already drawing up plans for next year.

[Penellype]

A strange year, definitely.

My gardening is divided into 4 distinct areas - my house, the garden, my allotment and my friend's garden.

House
This is used as a seed nursery, with grow lights for salads, young tomatoes, peppers and plants that are going to go outside later. The windowsills are used for tomatoes (Shirley and Balconi) and peppers. This year I decided to grow some fuchsia cuttings, breaking my number 1 rule that plants go from indoors to outdoors but never the other way. As a result I have had an ongoing battle with aphids in the utility room all summer. For the first time for years I turfed out all of the salads and turned off the grow lights for a month in a desperate attempt to get rid of the aphids. I have some lettuces and pea shoots in the propagator about to germinate and I am hoping I have got rid of the aphids now.

The tomatoes did well and produced decent crops, some of the Shirley have more tomatoes on sideshoots which should ripen soon. The Balconi produce a first flush and are put outside when that is over. The peppers (Snackbite) have produced enormous crops with one plant having 15 ripening fruit at the same time.

Garden
The allotment gives me the ability to restrict my garden to specific crops, namely carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, peas, cucumbers, calabrese, blueberries and strawberries. Everything else is an extra and there are small spaces around that can be used for extras or flowers. When the pandemic hit I decided to use some of these extra spaces for salad leaves for my friends at the stables, and this in general worked reasonably well. The early peas produced an enormous crop and some of the potatoes did ok. The carrots I have harvested so far are reasonable and the 2 calabrese plants produced fairly goo d heads, but they have produced almost no growth since (usually I am eating sideshoots by now). The tomatoes have been a mixed bag - the Shirley in the growhouse (which usually do badly) have done quite well and the Sungold were ok if a month late, but the Ferline and the Balconi did less well and got blight a couple of weeks ago, before anything much had ripened. This is the first time since I first started growing Balconi that I have had no red fruit to pick outdoors. There was plenty of green fruit, but most of it is blighted and I am not hopeful that any will ripen at all. The cucumbers (Cucino and Mini Munch), usually successful outdoors, have been a disaster with only a couple of small edible fruits. The strawberries and blueberries were average.

Allotment
A detailed account of this is in my allotment thread https://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/gr...pe-s-allotment. Briefly, not a bad year overall, with good early crops of spinach and salads, beetroot, peas and an excellent crop of raspberries. Strawberries tended to get damaged by rain. Courgettes, beans, tomatoes and cucumbers and some of the calabrese were extremely late cropping. Onions were destroyed by white rot and maggots. Leeks have been fine. Many of the carrots have split badly. The melons have been reasonable (in the growhouse) and unbelievable outside. The potato crop was massive.

At my friend's
I grow crops that my friend likes to eat - potatoes, peas, beans, onions, leeks, lettuce, beetroot, courgettes, cabbages and cucumbers, melons, peppers and tomatoes in the greenhouse.

The potatoes, peas and onions (no sign of white rot or maggots) have done well and the leeks look fine. Runner beans got eaten by slugs and half the plants didn't survive. Lettuces and cabbages went much the same way and the beetroot was decimated by caterpillars. Courgettes were very slow but eventually produced some fruit.

The tomatoes (Shirley) have done ok, although some of the fruit is smaller than usual. Cucumbers did reasonably well but the melons have been bitterly disappointing, especially Emir, which did so well at the allotment. The peppers have been incredibly slow to set fruit, and nothing so far has even started to change colour.

I find it fascinating that things can behave so differently only 2 miles apart. You would not think that the melons, cucumbers, beetroot, peppers or onions were the same thing at all from the results in different places.

[Chippy Minton]

I was going to try growing toilet rolls as well, but couldn't get any to germinate......................

I think toilet rolls are sterile, or you might have had an F1 variety. I think you'll need to take cuttings

[Snadger]

Hmm, where do i start? Another decent year for crops although a little bit disappointed with my leeks an't remember what they were but back to Musselburgh next year with hopefully some show leeks. I am in the process now of planting leek grass from a show leek head I allowed to seed. 30 leeks planted with probably as many again to plant up when I get some time.

Onions both winter and spring planted from sets have done really well. I also grew some Ailsa Craig from seed and red torpedo onions. The red onions had to have there tops bent over to stop them growing and maybe were sown too late.
Spring cabbage have been fantastic and by cutting a cross in the top when harvesting have been available all year. Kale has been prolific along with calabrese which is still producing now.
Carrots and parsnips are great. Sweetcorn is massive but matured too late.Garlic and elephant garlic were poor.

Maicrop (Elfe) spuds were great but Charlotte were rubbish this year.

Broad beans were good along with french beans. The climbers are still growing but will be used for seed as they weren't as tasty as the ground grown variety.I probably wont bother with the climbers next year,
the Gigantes runner beans are still producing and I have high hopes for them.
Brussel sprouts seem to be growing outwards instead of upwards.

Peas were a waste of time. Blackcurrants and gooseberries were fantastic and laden with fruit. The birds enjoyed the white currants and red currants
Strawberries were rubbish even though they were covered with enviromesh.
Butternuts were good, cucumbers were rubbish. Chillies are ripening slowly. Tomatoes have been good, but very late.

[Contadino]

Another mad year here. Moved house last November. Planned to establish veg plot at home then investigate an allotment plot but my new neighbors introduced me to the secretary of the local allotment site and I ended up with an overgrown plot in April.

In the garden veg plot I grew early crops of calabrese, spinach and beetroot which all did well. New potatoes (Sharpe Express bought on eBay after watching Sean Bean doing his thing) did okay. Celery - bitter. Followed the potatoes with a couple of rows of dwarf french beans which have done okay.

Courgettes failed again. Cucumbers in greenhouse got done over by spider mites. Tomatoes in greenhouse: Shirley good as ever, Chadwick cherries disappointing. Herb patch established.

Cleared enough space at the allotment for red cabbage, calabrese, kale, leeks, butternuts and climbing green beans. The only thing that failed totally was the swede which got overwhelmed by the weeds on the rebound. I remember saying when I put in a 2nd row of beetroot "you can never have too many beets" how wrong I was? The leeks were a bit short but tasty.

Overall the disappointments came down to being disorganised in spring. No sprouts, little by way of soft fruit, no peas, carrots decidedly iffy, etc... Happy that I'm back into growing and each year should be easier from now on.

[burnie]

Now you've reminded me, my courgettes were a disaster not one, but my peas were very good, forgot about those.

[ameno]

I've done pretty well this year, only a couple of disappointments and one failure.

I've had masses of fruit, both soft fruit and tree fruit, as usual. My freezer is stuffed full of it. The autumn rhubarb is still growing, too, although I accidentally pulled out one of the buds last week, which I'm upset about.
My fig still has ripening fruit on it, as does my Christmas Pippin apple tree.
I also have a persimmon tree, which I bought last year, which has 6 good sized fruit on it which are just starting to turn yellow. Normal ripening time is November, so hopefully they should still ripen.

The only fruit-based disappointment was the goji berry at the allotment. It came with the plot, and it's just not worth having. Fruits come really late, taste terrible, it doesn't produce much, and it grows like a triffid. I shall dig it out over the winter and replace it with a cutting from one of my grape vines (Muscat Bleu, which produced tasty, outdoor-ripened grapes despite not flowering until July thanks to a late frost killing the first set of flower buds).
I've also ordered another apricot tree and a quince tree, and 10 mid-season strawberry plants, as all my current plants are earlies and there are just too many all at once.

Veg wise, I won't be growing broadbeans again. They're just not worth the hassle. You have to de-blackfly them twice a week, then you have to pod them, then you have to pop the beans out of their skins. It's not worth it.
Swede had their last chance, too. They did very poorly for me this year. Most got eaten by slugs or decimated by fleabeetle as seedlings, and the few that remained are still pingpong ball sized.
Courgettes are going, despite having grown them for years. I've come to realise none of us really like them that much. We use maybe one every 3 weeks. Fortunately, the crop was poor this year, but even then most of those got turned into soup.
Tomatilloes I shan't grow again, either. They cropped very well, but it turns out I don't much like them.

Onions did very well for me. I had 20kg, which are stored in my under stairs cupboard.
Grew potatoes for the first time in years, and they mostly did pretty well, although my Rooster had mild wireworm damage.
Squash did very well, taking over the bottom part of my allotment and giving me 74kg of fruit (more than my own body weight).
Tenderstem broccoli has done really well. I have just 10 plants, and they've been cropping non-stop since the last week of May, and are still going now. I'm at over 5kg and counting.
French beans have done really well, too. Over 10kg from 14 plants.

My beans for drying have been a little mixed. The Spagna Bianca and Enorma runner beans have done really well, as have a few crosses between the two which grew from last year's beans (large seeds like Spagna Bianca, but purple and black like scarlet runner beans), so i shall save a few of those to grow next year.
The climbing french beans (Coco Blanc) were only so-so, and the lima beans were a disappointment (I knew it was a risk, as they need a warmer climate than ours), although I did still get a crop from them, it was just rather small.
Next year I have selected a new variety of climbing french bean for drying, and also have my eye on some black-seeded runner beans I have managed to locate (tried to find some to grow this year, but couldn't).

Outdoor tomatoes have done well. Despite being Mountain Magic F2, all but one resisted blight well (and even that one resisted it better than some non-resistant plants on other plots), they all tasted good, and I got a good crop from them. I'll be growing a few more plants next year.
Cape gooseberries are covered in fruit, but none have ripened yet. I chalk this up to sowing too late. I didn't sow them until late April, as both the original seeds I bought and the replacement packet failed to germinate, so I had to by a third packet.
Peppers (grown outdoors, through black plastic) have actually done pretty well, although most didn't ripen until late, and many are still on the plant ripening now. I have selected some new varieties that are supposed to be faster maturing for next year. Slugs eating the unripe fruit was also a big problem, so next year I will be growing a lot of them in mini-raised beds (basically bottomless pots) so that it's easier to protect them.

Collective farm Woman melons did well, producing tasty melons outdoors. Banana melon did poorly in the same conditions. The plants themselves grew like triffids, and produced loads of flowers, both male and female, but they didn't begin setting fruit until pretty late, and although in the end I actually got more weight of fruit from them than I did from the other plants, none of them actually ripened (they all taste like cucumber).
The watermelons did poorly, producing only two goose egg-sized melons (they were tasty, though).
I will try watermelons again next year (with a different variety, meant to be more suitable for cool climates), and will grow Collective Farm Woman melons again, too.
I was also plagued by slugs tunnelling the developing fruit, so i have invested in some drawstring mesh bags for next year, to protect the fruit from slugs.

Beetroot did very well as usual, carrots were a bit disappointing compared to last year, but did okay (seedlings being eaten by slugs was the main issue).
Leeks a still rather weedy. Should have sown earlier.

I have yet to harvest any of my oca or sweet potatoes, but both have produced masses of top growth, so I have high hopes.