My Gardening Failures in 2012

[Nicos]

Had to be peas for us.
We had about 4 plants out of about 4 lots of sowings. We must have spent about €20 on seeds
Turns out it wasn't field mice destroying them- nor rotting peas underground, but pheasants!

French beans came a close second
. I think we managed to eat a couple of meals of freshly picked...the rest we had to allow to go to pod.
We did however- after hours of podding got about twice as many beans as we'd planted.

[Kristen]

Celeriac are tiny, and almost unusable.
Brussels Sprouts are very small
Peppers and Aubergines, in greenhouse, gave a very small crop.
Melons, in greenhouse, almost no crop.
Butternut Squash absolutely no crop - second year running.

Parsnips OK - long, but a bit skinny.

Newly planted hedges put on huge amount of growth

[BUFFS]

as aberdeenplotter says,a summer with vitually no sun...french beans planted out in april didnt start cropping til sept,cabbage family was consumed by slugs,collected them every dry night,but that made no effect,leeks were useless and carrots were non existant,on the plus side,peppers and chillis,in the greenhouse,gave us a bumper crop,dont ask how,i didnt know that they grew in the dark,but around here the previous year was about the same,so we may have to get used to regular dark summers and adjust our crops to it,thats what will do ,grow succulant rhubarb and chicory outside and the rest inside,the thrushes have kept snail numbers down though,so hopefully we can sort out their cousins this year,weather permitting..,just been out to get some parsnips,and they seem to be a late success,bring on the new year,and a good growing one to everybody..

[Andromeda]

They didn't look as severe as some of the images on google but they were twisted and misshapen?

Sounds very much like clubroot then.

[lettucegrow!]

Can count success on one hand. Cucumbers were good in the greenhouse , it was a little one can't remember the name at the moment. Chard was ok and rocket and salad . Oh and I had one very prolific courgette.
Like others have said going to try harder this year. CONCENTRATE! !

[gardenpassion]

Me, I was the failure this year
I kinda blamed the weather, but in all honesty, I was just too busy doing other stuff. The garden looked nice though, and the Guinea Piggies kept the lawn mowed when it was sunny enough

Try growing some curly kale for the guinea pigs... I grow it for mine and they adore it. It keeps them super healthy too.!!

[MarkHackwell]

Glad to see I wasnt the only one that failed to produce anything this year. My potatoes didnt produce well too wet, The fruit i lost all of because it was too wet so didnt get a chance to pick it, Runner Beans didnt produce anything much and my Polytunnel was too hot on some days and too cold on others so the Tomatos went absolutely mad and got hardly any. As for my raised beds they got in a right mess as most things didn't even get a chance to go in. Ended up with lots of stuff stuck in the Greenhouse unplanted and loads of seeds and plants which were wasted. Just hoping it dries up now so i can tiller the allotment and try too get things in a bit earlier next year. Not enough hours in the day :P.

[chucks]

This has made me feel a lot better about my year.

The only sucess I had was my onions. Lettuce did well but got a bit excited at sowing time and had a glut!

Looking forward to another year in the garden and am currently in the shed doing the boring stuff like sanding down old window frames and building more raised beds. I have a load off fresh topsoil to fill the beds but it's so wet here, it's not likely to be sorted anytime soon!

Hope everyone has a better year.

[Peppermint]

We managed to do reasonably well considering it was our first full year of veg growing. We had frosts until mid June and this affected some of the first early new potatoes but the second earlies and mains were brilliant.

Cabbages, kales and turnips have done very well, as have the few parsnips. The strawberries were late but produced a good crop.

What didn't do well:

Celeriac - very small roots
Fennel - never really took off.
Kohl Rabi - the slugs to a liking to them.
Courgettes - just didn't like the weather.

We have the polytunnel now, but just need good weather to get it, and the wind protection fence, up and sorted.

[Aberdeenplotter]

Peppermint, I once knew a lady who sent me a postcard from Orkney when she was on holiday. She said " the wind was so strong it nearly blew my head off". So good luck when you put your tunnel up . I didn't manage to grow a single courgette this year either

[Snadger]

How long have you got...........

[Peppermint]

Peppermint, I once knew a lady who sent me a postcard from Orkney when she was on holiday. She said " the wind was so strong it nearly blew my head off". So good luck when you put your tunnel up . I didn't manage to grow a single courgette this year either

Aberdeenplotter, according to local lore there are only 10 windless days a year on Orkney We'll probably get the frame up and have to wait weeks a day calm enough to get the cover on

[northepaul]

Dont even go there!!


Happy New Year, happy new growings!

[kentvegplot]

Probably most spectacular failure was the peppers in the tunnel - even with that protection, only harvested 1 pepper from 12 plants!

Butternut and pumpkins also poor, but what do you expect with so little sunshine?

This winter my veg plat has been flooded constantly, with water flowing through the tunnel via the compost bins(!) so I have no idea what the soil will be like come Spring.....

On the plus side, a great year for beetroot!

Here's to a better 2013

[SarzWix]

To say that I have 2 allotments which should be sufficient space to keep us in veg for most of the year, it was a pretty rubbish year here as well; everything was late and the things which did produce, such as the onions and potatoes, were so small that there wasn't enough left over to store. I was very lucky to have my family and friends club together to get me a polytunnel for my 40th in May, but by the time we got it constructed, the sunshine was history and all my tomato plants were so slow that I didn't even get one ripe truss off most of them before botrytis and then an early frost finished them off. Same with the peppers and chillis. Outside, my savoy cabbages still haven't hearted, my leeks are the size of pencils, my swedes aren't even tennis ball sized, my sweetcorn failed miserably (again), slugs ate most of my carrots, lettuce and strawberries, beans produced enough to eat at the time but none to store from 40+ plants...

It's gotta be a better year this year, right? I'm thinking that to prepare for having sunshine in early spring, but none later, then I have to plant out earlier with frost protection (lots of fleece and cloches) and hope that the plants are at a good size before the wet and greyness arrives...