The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Growing => Vegetables => Topic started by: VSS on May 09, 2012, 09:55:22 pm
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I think we are going to be really struggling to get much in the way of crops this year. A month ago I sowed radishes, salads, broad beans, peas, turnips, carrots, spinach beet, beetroot, spring onions etc. Only the beans, radishes and salads have come up. I would normally expect to be harvesting radishes and salads by now. All that has managed to grow in a month are the seed leaves. :'(
This weather is Rubbish!!! Anyone else finding their garden just isn't growing?
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Me!!
And I was thinking it's just me being rubbish. I've got some teeny shoots but....
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Where my garden is going to be is still full of building 'stuff' as the weather has been so bad that OH hasn't been able to do much - except get my piggies new house and pen ready...bless him.
i really want to get some rubarb in as it's worth it's weight in gold.. I paid £2.99 a kilo at the local village green grocers last week - enough to make two puds cost me £11.0!!!!Ouch...
last years plot is now in the new pig pen so am going to put runner beans in the little bit of flower garden i've managed to get started on - but this wet cold weather is not helping.
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I have two troughs of salad leaves which are showing through although the third (sowed a few days later) isn't yet. No sign of my chives or chard.
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Vss,I am so glad I planted by broad beans in October!,they are about the only veg that is doing any good,my tomatoes are about 6/8 inches tall though seeded in the house,everything else from the polytunnel is very slow,sweetcorn is about a foot now,chillies,lettuce are still tiny and some have completely given up,I planted some aubergines and still waiting for them to come up :-\ I also have a problem with my beetroots!
Trouble is there is not enough light or heat,the morning glories have their third set of leaves,but I only managed to save half of them,dyed,my rhubarb is growing but at the moment is less than half the size it was last year and still quite spindly :'(
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Same here.
Had to seed everything in the polytunel this year as the house is being rebuilt and everything is very slow. Tomatoes - tiny still - and the cucumbers and yellow peppers didn't come at all. Aubegines just peeping up but look frost damaged!
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Dreadful so far my veg garden is under 2 or 3 inches of water and far too soft to venture on to.
My potatoes are sprouted and ready to go in, normally i put them in on Good Friday but constant rain has mean't they're still sat waiting, think i'll resort to grow bags for them!
The greenhouse is bursting with stuff to go out though have lost a couple of courgettes to the minus five frost the other night, soft stuff tomatoes, courgettes, squashes etc are all really slow its juts not wet or light enough.
Did manage to get muck up to the polytunnel and that awaits the aforementioned soft stuff but its far too cold to risk it. The joys of living in the North east!
lets hope we get an indian summer in lieu!
Mandy :pig:
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Not a seed in the ground yet :o
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Every year is like that here, so I start most things off either indoors, in a heated propagator, or in the polytunnel. Most things catch up with The South eventually and we do get crops - usually. There was one year when we lived in Edinburgh and had a couple of allotments, when we had a sea fog which went on for over a month - most crops rotted or failed to grow, but most years we get something, although we never get everything.
I suppose I have the advantage of expecting the weather to be rubbish so I am prepared for it, whereas this rain has come at completely the wrong time for you guys further south. I hope it improves soon.
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even the seeds in the greenhouse seem sloooooowww!!
Just hope it'll all catch up eventually...
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Onions and garlic growing well outdoors but everything else from beans to peas and broccoli are growing in pots in the
Jungle house until the weather improves.
Tried tomatoes outside for a few hours on Tuesday as it was fairly warm but they have gone down hill after a few gusts of wind hit them :pig: just wish some good weather would arrive now.
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umm, all good here, in the beds so far, kale, sprouts, brocolli, spinach, broadbeans, leeks, garlic, onions, all doin ok, i know im south west but the warmth IS coming, definite change in the weather over the last few days. be patient i reckon, its late but the seeds will all catch up. i think its going to be a roasting summer, rooks are high in the trees. ;)
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Not a seed in the ground yet :o
Me too. Idid put some spuds in but I expect they have rotted! Still feels like March here, so I'm ignoring the name of the month and waiting to feel some warmth on my back! Even my sprouting seeds on the windowsil have given up the ghost and gone mouldy (they might have been OK in the winter when we had the woodburner going but the house is a steady 13 degrees at mo!!!).
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I hadn't made the connection but my rhubarb is spindly this year. It probably thinks it's to early in the season to be making much effort.
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Three days of inpenetrable thick sea fog :( :( but today it is a clear blue sky like Greece :D :D. No wonder our poor plants don't know what to do - loads of beans, courgettes, pumpkins have rotted in the greenhouse, and yes, the rhubarb is pathetic too. But sunny days ahead :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
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Signs of life in the chives but nothing in the rocket yet. My salad leaves are showing but not growing much.
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Hoed off the ground where I did the first sowings of turnip, beetroot spinach, carrots and peas as nothing has come up at all. Re-sowed turnips and beet, more rasdish and salad leaves, and planted out a dozen or so lettuces from the conservatory.
Fingers crossed this lot will grow.
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I previously asked if people thought it would be a bad year for fruit. Zilch has set here- no walnuts cherries,plumsetc etc the lot hit by a late frost then gales. Last year (our first here) was a bumper crop all rounds and we arrogantly thought we would be able to feed 2 new pigs from neighbours veg plots and orchards plus the nuts on the lanes.
30 degrees here yesterday so no doubt if we do have a few seeds that have popped up they are amongst the weeds and 2 feet high grass.This time last year everything was so advanced and the veg plot was amazing - now we have garlic, onions etc and spuds but nothing else - neighbours will start planting out this week - maybe their years of gardening here has taught them that being miles from the coast and over a 1000 feet up means severe winters and hot summers. I guess we may catch up on the veg front but the loss of fruit is a real blow. lots to learn !
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We are 117 mtrs up and 9 miles inland with not too much to stop bad weathr.
any seeds i sowed direct in the soil les growth medoum failed . starts like cabbage es din't do too well .
Luckily the glashouse hase come into it's own and i've also used the windowcill to get germinations going then harden in the glash house .repot at a bigger size then hold back till they are at least three inches tall and growing well .
none of the four or ficve carrot varietu=ies have done much except fotr a brand called Flyaway and out of nine stations direct sown six have flourished and are now about three inches tall..
all over wintered onion sets have come on well and novenber through to first of march planted garlic had really tanke off the biggest are nearly two feet tall.
We are still cropping PSB and dwarf curly kale . Some glasshouse sown winter letuces have come on well and are nearly 10 inches across . we had tow massive four inch long 1 1./4 thick french breakfast raddishes that were as sweet and crips as yoy could ever imagine .. the rest of the five inch long row failed to arrive.
On going round all my raised beds this afternoon I was dismayed at the failure rate of seeds sown mid April .
I'm now about to start germinating some more carrot seeds in " KY jelly" ( plain not chocolate or strawberry etc. ;) in a big bore syringe in the airing cupboard and hope to be able to deposit blobs of sprouted seed in the beds at every three inches or so along a straight edge. The duty chemist did look amused when I asked it it had fungicides or spermicides in it even though I'd told her what I wanted it for .
I've done this presprouting /sowing before and run out yards of carrots etc using poly bags with the ends carefully snipped to give a tiny exit hole and used fungicide free wall paper paste for the medium but nowadays it's all got various anti mould /fungicides added and that kills off any hope of germinations.
If this works in KY i'll be trying to use guar gum powder made up as a boiled paste and see it that works & also trial xanthum gum for the same reason as they are all vey cheap food grade thickeners .. they are easily available on eBay etc.
Come to think of that I do have some frozen guar gum paste in the big outside chest type deep freezer that is going to get defrosted as soon as I finish this post but as it's two years old it may have lost a bit of usefulness.