It's been a funny old year.

[brownfingers]

The stuff in my greenhouse have been a major disappointment this year. The toms got more than their fair share of BEM (about 50%). The toms seem to have come to a standstill now. Nothing much happening on the higher trussess. The cukes are the same. Only one cuke on the plant and that one didn't fully develop. It's now stopped growing but not setting any more fruit. It still looks quite healthy though, as do the toms. They are getting plenty of water and feed.

Outside, the broad beans were magnificent. The beetroot did well too. The odd few toms I have outside are very happy too. Carrots in a raised bed were slow off the mark but are now producing some lovely specimens.

Any ideas why everything in the GH has thrown the towel in? Everything has had the same compost, water and feed, so it's hard to pinpoint any one thing as the cause.

[Penellype]

Agree its been a really weird year. My greenhouse toms are doing ok, although nothing much has ripened yet, but the melons are an unmitigated disaster. The plants have trouble producing flower buds, and if one manages to open it only partly does so before falling off. The leaves are going brown too. The cucumber is slightly better - it has produced 3 fruits to date, but has now gone on strike and is producing only male flowers.

Outdoor tomatoes are diabolical - only Sungold has produced (3) ripe fruit from 5 plants. Plenty of green fruit on Garden Pearl, Roma and Totem, and Shirley (planted out last) look happiest of the lot but nowhere near ready. Sweet aperitif has marble sized and smaller fruit with leaves that look stunted and unhappy, and apart from the bush varieties there are hardly any sideshoots. Never seen anything like it.

Peas, carrots, potatoes and courgettes all doing well, kohlrabi awful - no swollen stems before it bolted. Runner beans starting to set now but so far only 2 beans big enough to eat.

White currants and strawberries mostly did ok, blueberries laden with fruit, but apples have something wrong with them which makes the skin go lumpy and the flesh brown underneath, and they are falling off at the rate of 1 or 2 a day (not good when it only had about 20 to start with).

I suppose it would be boring if every year was the same, but this year seems to be testing the plants to the limit. Its also testing the forecasting models. The GFS long range model (called the CFS) has high pressure over us for the rest of August (warm and dry). The short to medium range GFS (same model) has low pressure for much of the rest of the month (cool and wet).

[Tiny Allotment]

We had a similar thing last year. All the cucumbers in the tunnel were unproductive whilst the surplus plants we planted outside just because we had nowhere else to put them when mad and we ended up with a bumper crop.

The tomatoes inside are producing 100s of fruit but none of it is ripening but the few small tomatoes we planted outside are producing fewer but riper fruits.

It's a darn good job we don't have to depend on the productivity of our allotment or we would starve

paul

[muddled]

It's a darn good job we don't have to depend on the productivity of our allotment or we would starve

paul

Ha! I said the exact same thing to my lottie neighbours the other day!
Yesterday I ate an entirely home produced meal (a fancy omelette and salad) and marvelled at the fact this was the first such meal in 10 months...all that work and only one complete meal?
How on earth did the pioneers manage?

[Penellype]

Ha! I said the exact same thing to my lottie neighbours the other day!
Yesterday I ate an entirely home produced meal (a fancy omelette and salad) and marvelled at the fact this was the first such meal in 10 months...all that work and only one complete meal?
How on earth did the pioneers manage?

There's quite a big difference between surviving and eating what we would regard as a decent meal. It is perfectly possible to live off veg if you include potatoes and sources of protein such as peas and beans, and even easier if you have chickens. Growing it all takes skill, planning and some luck, and storing it for use when nothing fresh is available is challenging, although easier if you have access to a freezer. You might get bored with gluts of certain veg and with living off potatoes and eggs, but you would probably survive. What I would miss most would be bread (and other products made with flour), butter and cheese, and of course, chocolate and coffee!

Having said that, I would definitely struggle if I had to rely on saving my own seed and using only compost, feed etc that I could produce myself. With no access to luxuries such as insect mesh, fleece etc growing all your own food would be really, really hard.

[Lumpy]

Toms in the porch - nope not this year but I have had some from my outside volunteers, just not enough to make the anticipated tom soup.

Tatties - we only had a few in a deep raised bed were pathetic and tasted horrible so back to Charlottes next year.

DFB's late but loads and the runners have lots of flowers but as of yet nothing.

Carrots - still struggling and the celeriac has loads of top growth, no root and is beginning to bolt. Beetroot - well I bought fresh off the market

Radish - humph!

Leeks, apples, pears, savoy, chilli's and sweet peppers were smaller and later than last year but at least they are OK.

Bush pumpkin is really happy in its tyre - huge leaves etc etc but 3 fruit the size of walnuts. I know they are supposed to be small and fit easily into the oven but.......

[Jungle Jane]

The toms seem to have come to a standstill now. Nothing much happening on the higher trusses.

Same thing happening here,have you nipped off the growing tip,above the flowering trusses? I've done this with most of mine now. I'm even wondering is there enough time for these flowers to set fruit. I picked 10 orange-nearly red tomatoes off one gardeners delight plant in my blow away tent yesterday. All the tomatoes outside are still green,some with a couple of flower trusses.

[Penellype]

Just to prove to myself that its not a figment of my imagination...

1st August 2014 - 4 Sungold tomatoes against the fence, and another leaning over the trellis on the right.



Its not easy to see any fruit, but the health and vigour of the plants is obvious.

11th August 2015 - 4 Sungold tomatoes growing in the cold frame. I've taken 2 photos, one from each side, as its not easy to get the whole plants into one photo in this position.



Plants are spindly and sick looking compared to 2014.

A photo including Sungold plants behind the same piece of trellis taken 7th July 2013:



These are already nearly as big as and rather bushier than this year's.

[jacob]

It's been a terrible year. Outside broadies and potatoes have done OK, but tomatoes have hardly set a fruit. The greenhouse is better, but everything is a month behind. So with winter faster approaching up here I fear that my fairly heavy crop of green toms will remain just that. The chilies have just started flowering, so have to grow, then ripen.

[muddled]

Most years I can produce at least one meal a day for my family of four all through the summer (granted it's just eggs and veggies and also granted...I buy in 70% of the chickens food)

This year I'm hardly harvesting anthing most days and I've not had a single glut of anything at all.....even courgettes!

The thing is, I don't feel the weather has been bad enough to have had this much of an effect. Certainly we haven't seen the sort of flooding that made 2012 such a washout...no hurricanes or incredibly late hard frosts.
It's all just been a bit chilly, gloomy, mediocre....and somehow, totally unsuitable for allotment gardening!

[Penellype]

I think the biggest factor has been the total inconsistency of the weather. April was warm, May, June and July were cold, but within July there was the hottest July day and the coldest July night on record. I think the poor plants don't know what season it is.

[Potstubsdustbins]

Funny year indeed I was picking blackberries before tomatoes this year.

[Dorothy rouse]

Some things are better this year, others not. Because of getting Charlie didn't sow the variety of stuff I had last year, so much just didn't germinate.

Charlottes in bags, very good.
Rocket were also ok.
Over wintered onions great, red onions disaster.
Broccoli was good, until caterpillars arrived
Strawbs not good, but new plants
No blackcurrant, rasps, or redcurrant at all, due to me chopping all down.
Beans v good
Toms coming along but nothing compared to the bowlfuls we were getting last year, no tom soup, no passata, no chutney (yet), and they don't seem to have the flavour of last year.
Sweet peas, disaster.
Courgettes coming along at last.

Weird.

[Alison]

I've been in this forum for several years and each year somebody posts about how much more difficult that year has been. This leads me to the conclusion that we all forget and dwell on our current problems. Every year has its challenges and failures and I don't think the perfect year will ever happen but obviously we'll always hope

[Potstubsdustbins]

We're gardeners we ...........................live in hope.

I have had no failures this year except for one and that was down to me, it's just the summer stuff is very late due to the weather.