Gyo needs your top tips!

[Snadger]

Each year I like to think I'm pretty switched on with my sowing schedule. The likes of leeks and brassicas will stand for ages either in their pots, or in a clump on the plot to be seperated and re-planted as and when a space becomes available.
What I learned this year is that this is NOT the case with onion plantlets! Onions need to be pricked out and planted reasonably quickly in spring to give them time to establish as many leaves as possible before starting to bulb up in summer. This way, by early sowing and quick establishment you should have sizeable bulbs at harvest time.
My onions were on the small side last year because they were treat similar to the leeks and brassicas and planted as space became available.

This year they will be planted earlier!

[Storming Norman]

What I learned this year - put the stakes in the corner of raised beds straightaway and don't leave it for next year. Also don't rely on the weight of the soil to hold them in place - my beds 'walked' somewhat towards the paths - in the wrong direction of course. It's not so easy to move them back now.

What was successful this year - carrots in pots on the patio. I have never had any success with carrots until I tried this idea which was recommended here [I think]. I've had 2 crops and those still growing can be moved easily to the lee of a wall [or under my lean-to] to keep the weather off them a bit. But I must remember to thin a bit more next year as some are rather tangled with each other. it must be the looser soil, and the raised pots definitely keep the carrot fly at bay. don't home grown carrots taste so much better than shop ones?

[BarleySugar]

My really big success was my chillies, especially as it was really my first year of growing them (thanks to Irie Jan for the seeds). Planted towards the end of January and grow throughout on my southwest facing windowsill, I was picking ripe chillies in June. Next year the space I gave over to peppers will be taken up by chilies so I have more to freeze and dry. I have 3 lovely pumpkins sitting on the windowsill at the moment, they keep better there than in the cold dark garage.
Another must grow is my white beetroot. Although they don't look 'right' on the plate, they taste lovely and sweet, with the added bonus of more prolific leaves than their red counterparts, to use in place of spinach. The red beet leaves do add a different aspect to curries though, and I freeze any leaves that I don't have a use for when the beets are pulled.
Climbing French beans were much more prolific than the runners, so although we love the taste I will be concentrating my efforts on the Frenchies.

Cauliflowers were a complete disaster, hawkmoth caterpillars somehow got to them and ate all the curds under the netting so I didn't even realise they were there. I probably won't bother with them next year, though I will take care to check what is under the covers!

[pdblake]

Make sure you get your sowing times right. It's not so bad sowing early as you have time to sow on time if you get it wrong but not if you sow too late.

Also, make sure you acclimatise indoor sown plants before you plant them out, and don't forget the netting.

My biggest success were onions this year. I sowed standard and giant varieties from seed on Boxing Day, but planted some sets in spring too, just in case.

Last tip is, save your own seed. It's free and, in most cases, simple. After a few seasons you'll end up with seed that is well suited to you particular conditions too.

[pipkins]

To take it easy as this year will be our first full year of growing on the lottie and not to go wild with the Runner Beans a family of three does not need 40 plants like last year

[cornish crabber]

I learned that I really do only need one courgette plant ! 2 is too many ! And I need to check it every day once it starts producing or I'll end up with shed shelves full of marrows that don't get used

[Flummery]

I learned how few seeds I need to buy. I now save peas, beans and tomatoes as a matter of course. Grapevine friends are also a great source of swaps.
I also learned that I can grow my own variety of potato from true seed (not tuber) and am now intending to grow a row of 'Amethyst' and one of Purple Heart - the first is a fantastic purple salad spud and the second a white with a purple middle, both from the seed of Salad Blue (from Quark on the Grapevine!)

[Hazel at the Hill]

I learnt that however clever you feel by going to the trouble of carefully labelling all your seed trays, if you just use any old felt tip and don't use a UV stable marker or pencil, you may as well not have bothered.

[Llamas]

Control aphids naturally by placing flowers inside the greenhouse to attract hoverflies and going on ladybird patrols. They like to hang out on he heads of umbilifers and are easy to scoop up and re-locate.

[SarzWix]

Don't break your ankle in the icy weather before you've gotten all your winter digging finished...

Successes this year include;
carrots - first time grown in a bed rather than in pots. They were sown into trenches dug out and filled with MP compost & sieved soil, then the whole bed covered in Enviromesh over cloche hoops. No carrot fly, and lots of carrots;
parsnips - sown in the carrot bed, only 6 germinated, but they were humungous!;
climbing beans - Cobra and Cosse Violette kept us in fresh beans for about 3 months and plenty to spare for the freezer, Borlotti, Brighstone & YinYang were fabulous for drying.

Didn't do so well;
tomatoes, chillis, peppers and cucumbers - all suffered from scorching when the greenhouse nets fell down, plus, erratic watering and feeding due to the afore-mentioned broken ankle... They did produce a crop but it wasn't anything like it should have been.

[weekendwellies]

Spend at least as much time on the allotment as you do on the Grapevine and reading the mag combined.

[chriscross1966]

Brassica transplanting has last call dates, don't miss them..... Modules can start most things, even carrots if you stick toilet-roll tubes in a 24/tray set. Grow some odd things near the front of the plot... tree onions, oca, snake-gourds etc are always an ice-breaker with the old-timers. Don't try and dig the whole thing in a weekend. Not only are there plenty of better tasting squash than a butternut, a lot of them (indeed nearly all of them) are easier to get a crop from in the UK. Climbing french beans are way easier to harvest than dwarfs and modern varieties like Cobra are epically productive.... There is such a thing as too many courgettes, once the freezer is full of ratatouille it's time to resort to Courgette Suprise (leave a bag of courgettes on a neighbours doorstep, ring the bell, run away and from a safe distance observe their expression of surprise at finding a bag of courgettes). Grow gherkins if only to make your own picallilli. The Dorset Naga is proof that you can have too much of a good thing, but very handy for practical jokes.....

chrisc

[Two_Sheds]

Tomatoes are more grief than they're worth.
Never going to bother with outdoor ones again, after 5 summers of blight. Even greenhouse ones are a pain, needing constant attention like needy 2 year olds.
I'll grow one or two Sungolds on the patio, and that's it.

[Two_Sheds]

Herbs in the back garden are excellent: herbs on the allotment 3 miles away, never get used.

[Two_Sheds]

I started wine-making this year, and it's brilliant, but got a bit stressful at harvest time: going out to pick fruit only to find it wasn't ripe or someone had already had the lot. Or you'd be out and find a huge crop somewhere, but you had no bags or boxes on you to collect them.

Then I started to keep a tupperware box in my bag and just picked a box of raspberries/blackberries/rosehips/elderberries a day, then weighed, labelled and froze them.

Now it's winter I have plenty of time to get the fruit wines going: I've just used the last blackberries but there's still some elders in the bottom of the deep freeze, I know.