Woe is me..

[bobbin]

Oh dear so disheartened.I mentioned in another post my sweetcorn is never eaten by badgers. This year it has failed i think due to weather
I’m in West Sussex. Rain rain searing heat and then.more rain and poor light levels and storms seem to have been my undoing. Even my allotment neighbour who always grows amazing veg
has had very poor results compared to his usual crops. I have had beans spuds and asparagus. Some ho hum scallions and cucumbers. Though nothing like last years.
Everyone’s strawberry’s rotted. Even my dahlias are struggling. I gave up a smaller plot earlier in the year and the couple who took it on worked on it twice. Ive never seen them again.
I took a walk around the allotment to discover some had even worse problems.
In fact I think many have walked away from their plots this year. We have had grass and weed and hedge growth such as Ive never seen. Usually tidy plots are lost under bindweed and weed thugs.
Hopefully next year will be better as we always say.
Have other allotment holders had this sort of problem.

[Nicos]

Part of my garden/ field has been put over to veg and I mirror your experiences bobbin.

My best crop has been weeds without a doubt.

We’re still cutting our grass every 5 days instead of having crispy brown lawns for the past 5 weeks. It does look pretty but it’s extra work when it’s over 8 km worth of walking.

I’ve only watered a couple of times and my waterbutts are brimming over.

On top of that I have no apples, pears, mirabelles, plums,cherries, summer raspberries because of the late frosts.
We had a massive crop of rhubarb and I found 2 apples on 5 apple trees.
A hare ate most of my strawberries!

My climbing French beans fortunately have gone bonkers…and we cropped a total of 32 peas from sowing around 200 ( vole buffet)

I’ve pulled my spuds as they were showing signs of early blight and I thought it was tempting fate to leave them longer. Rubbish crop mostly because I planted them later than usual because of late frosts.

Very rubbish year for me too but I’m not giving up - next year will no doubt be different

Fortunately we hung back on growing much this year for various reasons, and I’m actually relieved we did!

We’re not alone bobbin - that’s for sure!



I’m just pleased I can go to the shops to buy what’s missing!
I’m sure we’d have done better with a poly tunnel but our land is too exposed to pay out and trail one.

[Jungle Jane]

I grow in my garden,not allotment & im not having a good year. This year the weather has been too extreme,I could’ve done better though as well,I planted out late,there’s some plants I still haven’t planted out,haven’t fed the plants etc. A weatherman was talking about how the jet streams slowing down,which is why the rains hanging around longer,I don’t know if that’s true,I don’t have a jet stream measurement tool,some years we do have bad weather conditions,next year will be better

[quanglewangle]

It's certainly been a weird year.

While it's been a real challenge for veggies soft fruit and the ornamental garden have done well.

Took three goes to get sweetcorn going and it's still only just showing silks - hope there's enough time left for it to fill out and ripen.

Squashes - disaster.

Greenhouse yeilds and quality are down. Not a washout, but not like last year.

Lawn, hedges, trees, and boarders - great.

Always next year....

[goosander]

Came back home the other day after a heavy shower of hail and found my courgettes had all the leaves torn off. Planted cucumber and melons in the greenhouse and they were very poor so just left them. Had the best crop of melons so far but every thing else is behind.
That is gardening for you.
Bob.

[Snoop Puss]

The weather has stymied me, that's for sure. We have had repeated spells of very hot followed by very cold conditions. Lows of around 6 ºC for several nights on the trot in July, unheard of here. Since then, extremely hot weather with gale-force winds. The veg patch has really suffered. On the positive side, the conditions were just right for a forest fire a few weeks back, but none happened. Another heat wave has just started, with thunderstorms apparently due, though oddly not forecast. No wind to speak of, fortunately. So fingers crossed...

Also, I've tried going no dig with cardboard plus 10-15 cm of well-rotted muck on top. The cardboard has not been a success and I think a shallower depth of muck would have been better. It's too hot and dry here. Seedlings have found it very difficult to root into the surface material and it takes them a very long time to get going. Am still committed to trying no-dig in new beds I'm hoping to start for next year, just no cardboard and less muck.

Next year will be different. Better if I'm lucky.

Things that are very doing well: summer leeks and brassicas. My winter brassica seedlings are looking surprisingly good too. We've got lots of courgettes, but only because we've got five plants (for a two-person household, that's ridiculous). The tomatoes are very productive at the moment, but the plants look awful, so not sure how long they'll keep going for. I keep counting the squash, though I have to admit it feels a bit like counting my chickens before they've hatched.

Everything else is poor.

[burnie]

Not a bad year for me this year, but there are failures, Mooli went to seed and we got next to nothing, Broccoli going to flower as fast it is growing, up to now the Butternut squashes are massive, but no flowers yet and it is beginning to feel like Autumn is almost here. I get the feeling we might be changing some of our crops due to climate change.

[Bren In Pots]

An odd year, everything’s been hit or miss.
lettuce, spinach, and chard have been bolting, I’ve not had that many potatoes either.
On the other hand kale is doing well and so are courgettes and cucumbers. Then I’ve been sowing lettuce every other week so I do at least have baby leaves.
Gardening is my hobby so any produce is a bonus.

[ameno]

Blight has hit hard and early this year. All of my non-resistant tomatoes have been hit hard, although I'm managing to keep a few plants just about alive - not many leaves left, but they still have uninfected tomatoes, and some of the beefsteaks are even changing colour, so fingers crossed.
The potatoes all got cut down early, too.

Alternaria leaf blights are also hitting several crops hard. My melons and watermelons (my squashes technically have it, too, but the damage is minor), and my late peas, too. Even certain weeds are getting it. I've never seed the like.

And the late frosts meant that I don't have many pears, or many plums on the allotment tree (the garden trees have plenty, as they are more sheltered).

Cucumbers have been a disaster. I often lose my plants early to root rot, but never normally this early. I got 8 fruit between two plants.
I have some rooted cuttings which I plan to try and replace them with (in fresh soil) in the hopes of a late crop.

Had a very good mangetout crop, though (over 5kg), and the onion crop is very good again. All of my beans seem to be doing well, and my squash plants are going mad, with vines trailing to 6 or 7 metres in multiple directions, and loads of massive squashes.
The Emir melons have done very well for me. I've harvest 8 so far, with 4 more still on the plants, all from just three plants, grown outside. They've averaged about 800g each.
Sweet potatoes have loads of leaves, with the vines spreading like crazy, so hopefully that means a good crop of tubers come the autumn. Certainly last year the ones with the most leaf cover were also the ones with the biggest crop of roots.

The watermelons I'm quietly hopeful about. The plants are growing vigorously, and they've set a fair number of fruit, a couple of which are over 1kg now. Hopefully the plants can fend off the leaf blight long enough for at least some of the fruit to mature and ripen.
I kind of need at least one fruit to properly ripen, as I want to save the seeds, since I can't get hold of this variety anymore.
Next year, I also want to try my hand at grafting melons, watermelons and cucumbers on squash roots. I'm hoping it will improve vigour and cropping a bit, and perhaps most importantly (for cucumbers, at least), give them some more resistance to root rot.

[FromYorkshiretoBucks]

As echoed here been an awful year for me.

ive had a decent (maybe 3 tuppaware full) haul of broad beans, and some raspberries my toddler did a good job of self harvesting. I also got a bonus Spud haul from a hidden potato that was hidden when I tipped last years potato tub compost into the raised bed.

I planted tomatoes out late and non have ripened yet, I maybe have a dozen on 5 plants. Pepper plant hasn’t even bothered fruiting.

Cavalo Nero failed not long after germinating (going to plant out direct this weekend I think)

I have Uchiki Kuri doing ok at the moment with about 6 squashes on 2 plants, but biggest is about tennis ball at the moment so more hope than expectation the rest will follow suit.

I have Maybe a dozen Berlotti bean plants up a can structure with loads of beans on but again most are some way from being ready so not sure if they will get there. I bought the plants reduced after being nipped by frost. I kept them inside for weeks to let them recover, which they did. However when i finally planted them out they all died back and lost the leaves and runners they’d grown inside. After cutting them back, most did survive but I probably lost 4 weeks.

On the plus side the Swiss chard for autumn that I transplanted outside is now kicking on

[Penellype]

Very poor year in some respects for me, not all weather related as the problems started early with poor germination from seeds and very very slow growth indeed from seedlings, particularly tomatoes, peppers, peas and beans for which I blame the compost as I have done nothing different.

The early peas that I managed to get going did very well, the maincrops less so as they were hampered by poor germination. Beetroot and spinach are bolting, although they did well before doing so. Early (April) sown carrots are appalling - I have one plant for about every 30 seeds sown. The later ones, sown much later than usual, are better but still very small. Only one of the original 4 calabrese seedlings survived so I had to re-sow and they are consequently very late. Early potatoes were about a month later than usual but crops were fair. Maincrop look to be ok at the moment. Onions at the allotment got white rot, the ones at my friend's are looking ok. Beans have been late although they are now producing ok - heavy rain knocked a lot of flowers off. The pigeons have decimated the pot of french beans at home, slugs are eating the ones at the allotment. Courgettes and cucumbers are doing well and melons look fairly promising. Summer leeks are nearly ready, winter ones are slow.

The indoor tomatoes have almost all got greenback from being too hot and the lower sideshoots that I normally grow on for a 2nd crop have shrivelled and died - this has never happened before. The greenhouse ones look a lot better and are just starting to go red, but the outdoor ones have been so slow (and several were chewed off at ground level and had to be re-rooted in water) that I am not hopeful of getting any ripe fruit at all. Touch wood no blight yet. Peppers are doing well after a slow start and the indoor ones are ripening.

Early strawberries were good but as soon as the rain arrived the remainder were destroyed by slugs and botrytis. The raspberries have suffered badly from being flooded over winter and although there is some new growth it would not surprise me to lose them completely. They did produce a decent crop before the wasps moved in and ate the rest. Blueberries at home have produced a very small crop for the 2nd year in a row. The younger bush at the allotment has more fruit and the pink one is doing well this year. There were no edible cherries and the apricot blossom was killed by frost The pear didn't flower at all again and the minarette apple produced one flower in June (its first) - these are 4 year old trees that should be starting to produce by now. The older tree has about 6 remaining fruit which are probably full of codling moth and are suffering from bitter pit despite careful watering in dry weather. White currants were superb, the red ones self seeded in the hedge at the allotment did well considering their position, but the blackcurrant is still suffering from being pot bound and the drought after planting probably didn't help. The gooseberry did a bit better.

Last week, for the first time for 6 years in August, I looked round my plot and garden and thought "what is there I can eat" rather than "what won't keep until tomorrow". Its been a dreadful year for growing things. I agree the weeds have done best - there seem to be vastly more than usual this year and I am struggling to keep on top of them.

[Snadger]

I can't really grumble. Some things have done better than others but that happens every year.

Personally, one crop I can always rely on is the onions. I grow both Autumn planted and spring planted sets and haven't needed to buy an onion to cook with for many a year.

Beetroot,courgettes,spring cabbage,strawberries,spinach and tatties have all done well.

One thing I have learned is don't sow too early as with cold conditions earlier in the year a lot of stuff got leggy on the windowsill. Still managed to get a crop eventually but crop would have been better if I had delayed sowing..

[annie8]

Mixed bag as usual, but overall not the best year and several things are later than usual. Potatoes, rhubarb and beetroot have been good and carrots look like they will be decent too. Pea quantities was good although all came at same time. Got better gooseberries than normal although plants now shredded by saw fly. Medium success with courgettes and spring onions and don’t think leeks will be great No rasps yet, sweetcorn has been poor (and I never usually have issues with that). Strawberries poor again - got eaten by squirrels and slugs despite my best efforts. Tomatoes are looking ok in terms of crop but they are later than usual and just starting to get them. Growing cauliflowers , red cabbage, cavolo nero, squash and pumpkins for the first time. Cauliflowers, kale and red cabbage have been good so far. Squash and pumpkins looking like small crop but hoping to get something from them.

[Peteyd]

Just to join the chorus...

Its been a bit mixed for me too!

• I tried a few different varieties of tomatoes this year, Only one has been reasonably successful (Roma), all of the plants have succumbed to some form of disease and its been a battle keeping everything going long enough to produce some semi decent fruit.
• I had 3 different types of Potatoes, 2 in bins and one in the ground. My charlottes which were in the bin were some of the best i have ever grown while the Golden Wonders which were in the ground were absolutely terrible and the lot went in the bin!
• Courgettes haven't done much, i only just have my first two fruits on it now - which will be picked tomorrow.
• The cucumbers in the green house have done really well and are still producing some really nice fruit.
• Beetroot seem to be going really well although i haven't harvested yet.

Im sure next year will be better

[MelanieSW]

A mixed year, pretty much everybody on the allotment site has blight, I had to pull the tomatoes this week and cut off the potato haulms.

But in a lot of ways it is still better than last year when the blackfly managed to kill broad beans, runners and CFB, and cucumbers (!!). And the courgettes all got mosaic virus. Radishes bolted and Brussels sprouts stayed pea size.