The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Growing => Vegetables => Topic started by: Fleecewife on December 31, 2012, 12:04:02 pm
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Reading other threads, it sounds as if most of us have had a really bad year in the veg and fruit garden, and many of us are pretty much fed up by it. I have got to the point where I can begin to think about the coming growing season - but not in a very positive way. Here the last three years have been bad for one reason and another, but 2012 takes the biscuit :raining: . It's always going to be hard work growing veggies at 1000' on a windy Scottish hillside, but at least the ground is sufficiently well draining that we haven't had much standing water, just endless sog :gloomy:
So, what is everyone planning to grow this year? Should we assume it will be another washout or should we just try, try again?
We have decided to shrink our veg patch down to two double/treble rows about 25 feet long, plus growing more veggies inside the polytunnel. The unused part of the veg garden will be sown with grass seed and kept mowed, so if we change our minds we can just lift turf or even make lazy beds.
I love growing potatoes if only because digging them up is so magical, but here where the weeds are ridiculously prolific, growing them involves a lot of very hard work. In 2012 most varieties disappeared without trace, due to wet rot, not blight. I have decided just to grow a couple of rows, of salad and roasters, and buy in mashers for this winter. I haven't bought potatoes for decades until this winter :( :spud:
For the last three years my maincrop onions have grown ok but have not lasted long in storage, so again I have decided not to grow them this year. Instead I have some overwintering onions in the tunnel which should :fc: provide fresh onions for the summer, and I can buy organic onions for winter. I also have my garlic and shallots inside the tunnel.
I always grow brassicas for the winter - kale, broccoli, sometimes sprouts and this year for the first time 'pretty posy' which is a cross between sprouts and kale. I haven't grown cabbages for a couple of years as we tend only to eat a small portion of them and the rest end up as sheep fodder. However, even the brassicas have done really poorly outside this year - there are a few inside but they never do as well. I think I will persevere with both outdoor ones and a few back-ups inside the tunnel.
I always grow my beans inside, but this past year even that crop failed, so for 2013 I will grow a couple of different varieties which have been successful in the past. Usually I grow only climbing beans but I think I will give dwarf french another go this year.
I love tomatoes and will grow them again - Sakura does well in our tunnel and can withstand blight fairly well. This past year they had no blight and we had a big crop, although it was late to get going. A bit more :sunshine: :sunshine: :sunshine: would have made them sweeter. I will have to cut down on numbers though to make room for other crops.
Cucumber Diva was a waste of effort this last year so I will try something different - cucs don't seem to need sunshine, although a bit of warmth does help. They are always grown in the tunnel as are the tomatoes.
I think just a couple of courgette plants will be enough so they have enough space to grow well - they were another crop which was miserable in 2012. Squashes and pumpkins were a total washout. They have to be grown inside these past few years although I grew them outside successfully before that.
I didn't bother with sweetcorn last season as, although I love it, it does cover everything in the tunnel with pollen which then goes mouldy. And the mice love it too :furious:
I used to grow peas outside but for the past 2 years I have grown them in the tunnel. This is not very successful so I will grow just a few outside and try to give them protection from mice and the weather.
Broad beans seem to do fine outdoors, although the mice go for some varieties of them too - but leave other varieties - picky ::)
Other than that I think I will concentrate on growing a wide variety of salad types inside the tunnel. There are far too many slugs to contemplate growing salads outside in wet years. In 2012 we had the invasion of the giant black slugs which demolished the broad beans (although we still got a good crop) and were the reason the brassicas didn't do well. For every giant black slug there must be several hundred sneaky little ones which eat everything from inside. Organic slug pellets are a drop in the ocean against them, and anyway the mice collect them up to prettify their nests.
Fruit was another washout in 2012. This year I will grow a few strawberries inside the tunnel, but for the apples, pears, golden gages, currants and so on, I'll just have to keep my fingers crossed :fc:
How is everyone else approaching 2013 in the garden?
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With the longer daylight (minutes) the thoughts are turning to planning the allotment for the new year.
I have 4 allotments at the minute on 2 different sites which gives me a quarter of an acre - some light sandy soil which is easy to work and some very heavy clay nastiness.
I like to grow lots of different things and i enjoy the planning and the execution (and the labour as exercse) as much as the end result.
I had some problems with certain veg last year ( no brussels) but that was balanced by better performance in other vegs(turnips - never liked or grown before).
I had a very successful year turning all those nasty weeds into very useful compost (in about 4-6 weeks per heap).
So i have no reason really to have a downer on last year - just different.
This means I can look forward with enthusiasm - I have some new things i want to try (tomatillos) and things i enjoyed that I want more of - ie gooseberries and other soft fruits but also new varieties of things I already grow.
The weather has given me an enforced break but i did manage to do my winter work in between the rain.
Bring it on....................... cant wait. :excited:
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We had a mixed year - tbh I took a back seat and John did the planning and sowing and planting - although I did a fair share of weeding ;)
We've almost got the polytunnel up - should be done by March all things being equal (ie no fences or walls falling down that need immediate repair).
We don't grow onions - take too much space and never had much joy storing them and we can buy UK Organic ones pretty cheaply. Leeks have done well and the shallots did OK, so we'll be doing them again. John might do some over wintering ones in the tunnel.
All the squashes and courgettes were rubbish - and we ALWAYS plant too many anyway, so maybe two this year and some squashes in the tunnel.
Carrots do brilliantly here - loads stored in the workshop. Parsnips are OK; beetroot and swede were rubbish but that's because they weren't thinned enough. I got two jars of pickled beetroot and they weren't huge jars.
Sprouts are FAB - Trafalgar and some other battle. Lovely and lots of them. Kale has been good so more of that in other varieties in 2013 - we like the black kale. Cabbages were rubbish - soil not well enough consolidated, we think, plus the hens and pigeons took a toll. So cages being built for next year.
Tomatoes and cucumber not great - our greenhouse is overshaded by a lime tree (lovely tree much loved by bees) so it's OK for starting seeds but once the tree's in leaf, there's not enough sun for tomatoes. Planning to relocate it this year.
Runner beans were good, although not as good as last year. Peas OK; dwarf beans not so good.
Rhubarb was good now we've got it established; no asparagus yet but most of the 10 crowns survived. Gooseberries were hammered by sawfly but we got 12lb - planting poached egg plant this year to encourage lacewings which apparently eat the sawfly. Strawberries not great; birds got all the blueberries and I've put them in too shady a place so they're being moved; raspberries grew loads of foliage but not a bumper crop of fruit. Trees only planted in 2012 :-)
But generally upbeat about 2013 - the weather can't be worse than this year and with the polytunnel and a sixth raised bed, yeah - bring it :excited:
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I work for a small veg grower... The year was catastrophic. Hardly anything outside did anything at all, let alone well. Tatties half the usual yield; broad beans not too bad - none of the brassica did anything much... Even the rhubarb was a wash out, as it came on too early (remember the short dry and hot spell in March?), and then flowered and did nothing else. Tunnel was ok, mainly because in a confined space you can keep the slugs under some kind of control. But even then, due to the constant high humidity a lot turned mouldy before it could be harvested.
In my own garden I didn't do too badly - but it's a tiny garden, so each plant can get individual attention! And I spent a lot on slug pellets, because I was away so much with house sitting etc. So whether it's financially still viable to grow anything under those conditions, I don't know. For the coming year, I already have onion sets, broad beans and peas in; don't know whether they still are in, or have rotted away though... Spring will tell. I always have wonderful plans, always want to do too much and soon get to the limits of space, and then things turn out differently, because I'm given seedlings of some kind or other, or find an old bag of seed at the back of the cupboard that I want to give a chance - and bang goes crop rotation, and it's just "where is there another little bit of space for these plants"... ;D
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I had a miserable year too, partly due to the weather but also to my health. I plan on having my nine inch high raised beds replaced by slightly narrower waist high beds. My rheumatology nurse says that they hope to get me back to where I was before the rheumatoid arthritis struck but, although blood tests show the inflammation is coming down, my body isn't agreeing. I want to make sure I can do the garden this year so raised beds is the answer.
It puts paid to growing climbing beans, which I love to grow, but I can sow some dwarf French and, if I can find out where to get them, some dwarf runner beans as well. In 2013, I really will sow my tomatoes early enough (I say this every year) and grow some in the greenhouse and some in buckets as usual. The beds in the greenhouse are also going to be raised slightly and the buckets stand on the decking area so I can get to them without much bending. I also hope to grow some brassicas and some leeks but the soil maybe too loose for brassicas.
If I can keep the grass down round the blueberries, I may get a crop out of them. Last spring the grass (and a few weeds) smothered them so the fruit I did have was very small. Hopefully, I will be able to grow some squashes too. This year the plants rotted before I could get them into the ground. I'll plant them in the muck heaps. The strawberries put out a lot of runners but little fruit so I'm hoping for better next time. I need to get someone to put some manure on the rhubarb as well as it was very spindly.
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It puts paid to growing climbing beans, which I love to grow, but I can sow some dwarf French and, if I can find out where to get them, some dwarf runner beans as well.
Hestia Runner Beans, at Tuckers Seeds. (Sorry, won't let me paste the link.)
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We had good results with tomatoes, courgettes and cucumbers in the polytunnel this year - but basically anything we put outside got mullered by either the weather or the slugs :rant:
This year we are going to try and bring on all the plants in the polytunnel until they are significantly bigger before we plant them outside to give them a fighting chance.
I am also looking forward to being able to harvest some of the asparagus spears - we left them untouched this year, though some are still growing right now!
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this year I'm focussing on farming slugs,
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this year I'm focussing on farming slugs,
:roflanim:
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Oh no! It all sounds so terrible. We only moved back to the UK in May of last year so this is my first full season with beds prepared and ready to go and I've lined up the lot - a full rotation system is planned and this will be my first ever year of growing potatoes properly (my mum used to grow them and I too remember the magic of digging them up but have not had the space previously as an adult).
Even in the limited time we had last year from creating the beds at the end of May, we harvested sweetcorn, courgettes (too many), beetroot, lettuces, radishes, a few carrots, peas, French beans, broad beans, leeks (still going) and some cabbages. This year I'll have nets to stop the caterpillars devastating the rest of the cabbages, brussels and cauliflowers because they were all promising until the beautiful butterflies hit. My tomatoes and onions were a wash-out last year (blight on the former surprisingly during a dry spell) so I have my fingers crossed they'll do better this year and the first lot of onions and garlic are already in and growing. I'm going to try peppers, chillis, aubergines, melons and cucumbers inside if I can get our Nissen hut sorted in time (turning it into a pseudo polytunnel by glassing in the ends and hoping that'll do for light).
On the fruit side we also had a few raspberries and strawberries planted last year which did well (plus some ancient apple trees which produced nothing and need a good prune and a medlar which did amazingly) and so we're building on that to a full range of soft fruits and fruit tress (we've now planted 50 trees - peaches, apricots, persimmon, mulberry, cherries, apples, pears, plums/gages, quince, almond, sweet chestnut, walnut, hazelnut - plus summer and autumn raspberries, tayberry, loganberry, blackberries, gooseberries, blackcurrant, redcurrant, whitecurrant, pinkcurrant, rhubarb, grapes). But most of the fruit won't start for a couple of years at least. My biggest worry is the amount of watering I'll need to do if it's a dry summer since they all have to get their roots down and even with the first six trees we planted last summer, it was time consuming. So personally I'm hoping it won't be too dry (although my new bees might like it).
This is all from 'the garden of England' with a good slug of optimism! Just wait until reality hits ;D Sending good weather vibes north and west - although our current weather is awful and we have a flooded cellar to prove it.
H
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we tend to grow most of our stuff in the polytunnel as, outside, I just can't keep on top of the weeds!!
Having said that, we have rotovated and prepared a patch outside that we raised pigs on last year - we did plant green manure but I think it's either been eaten (mice, rabbits, pigeons etc..) or just not grown due to the cold and rain.
2012 saw another bumper crop of redcurrants - we got an old fishing net and made a fruit cage from a very old greenhouse frame.
The tunnel produced another glut of peaches - which might not do too well in 2013 as I've severely pruned it back.
Successes were cauliflowers, pointed cabbage, broccoli, climbing french beans, tomatoes, cucumber, blueberries.
Disappointments included strawberries (may need replacing), Kiwi fruit (lot of leaf and flowers and no fruit), grapes (poor germination).
I use Nick Kollerstroms book gardening and planting by the moon - not because I fully believe in the 'power of the moon' but it helps with what to plant/sow each week.
I'm not that organised normally!
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Hester - where are you? It sounds not just like a different country you are in, it sounds like a different planet... :-\ I hardly even saw a cabbage white last year, let alone any other butterfly.
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Ina, I'm in Kent. I must admit it certainly felt like a different planet when I was watching pictures of flooding around the country while we were still under hosepipe ban with me lugging buckets of water back and forth for the new trees and veges. Not to say we had an amazing summer - the hosepipe by was lifted after a few weeks of solid rain - but better than most of you guys, I think. Mind you, we've spent the last ten years abroad so I'm very grateful we didn't have it any worse, it's been quite enough of a climate shock anyway. We've also had a beautiful day today after all that awful winter weather - the cockerel has clearly been feeling that spring is in the air even if the hens were a lot less keen for his attentions,
H
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im still planning. this last year was by far the worst for sunshine, but at least i had no need for extra watering. my deep beds are 14" deep, and prone to drying out. i only had 3 courgette plants of different varieties and that wasnt enough, i try to supply some good clean organic food for a couple of my less well off neighbours but didnt succeed really this year.
im not sure how to plan. if i plan for the same or similar amounts of light and rain then i could slip up if i get a reasonable spring and summer.
my successes were cucumbers and tomatoes in the mini tunnel, kale and leeks, superb leeks, some still standing. i also had some success with trying to keep food coming into winter, ive got more leeks autumn planted waiting for spring and cabbage and more kale coming. enough at least for a good minestrone a couple of times a week or to bulk out a pheasaent or pigeon stew.
i love growing onions, but didnt bother last year. all of my potatoes (pink fir apple) succumbed to blight except one plant whos poor and tiny crop i have saved for planting this year.
whilst i would consider my sweetcorn crop to be rubbish, only 6 full cobs and a handfull of unfertilised ones, i did manage to keep the kernels for this year off a good cob. hopefully the adaptive nature of this plant may allow for a better crop this year.
my garlic crop was half the size bulb wise but really strong flavour wise. im going to plant the larger cloves as soon as it stops raining.
my runner beans wernt anywhere near as prolific as the year before, but i planted them a bit early and they took a while to take off, plant late crop early being the message here i think. i did manage to salt down a kilner jar full tho and am still eating them and the broad beans i froze. bbeans were ok. i eat the whole plant so i cant really go wrong with them. this year i have my second generation of stock saved. im due to start them once i get the propogater sterile and set up again, this week.
spinach and chard did ok, im still eating spinach from the garden and the chard is hanging in there but im waiting for it to make seed which it has yet to do.
carrots and parsnips. year before i had all i could eat but this year i had none, i resowed a few times but i have no idea why i had problems. maybe poor germination or perhaps intelligent slug attack. i will try this season tho, but sow later, under fleece and loads of ferrous oxide pellets.
my soft fruit was either planted this year or the year before, apart from strawbs, they are now 3 yrs old and whilst ive had some lovely sports producing sooo tasty fruit i havent been organised enough to split them out and propogate further.
my compost projects have all done great, using a good thermometer has helped manage them, im hoping to show that wood ashes from the fire can be composted, in quite large quantities, ill know later when i test for ph and npk. the nettle compost i made is looking lovely, 2 years ago i put 3ton of donkey manure onto the beds, this year ive added probably 1 1/2 of home made compost. so this coming season will hopefully result in some heavier cropping, if ive got it right.
wishing you all the best of growing seasons, we need the sun to shine. :tree:
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We had good results with tomatoes, courgettes and cucumbers in the polytunnel this year - but basically anything we put outside got mullered by either the weather or the slugs :rant:
Much the same here in North Yorkshire, my veg garden not helped by my having two back procedures in April and July. The big IF is if it ever dries up enuff to get on the plot and rotivate it, at the moment i think we'd lose the tractor :raining: , but i shall draw plans as i always do and hope for the best. I already have cabbage & lettuce seedlings in the greenhouse ready to go in for an early crop out of the polytunnel. 2012 was the worst year i can recall and certainly the pigs have noticed it this winter as they're on horse carrots from the ag merchants and no other stored goodies that we usually have.
So fingers crossed :fc: for :sunshine: and a better 2013.
mandy :pig:
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We're going to get our polytunnel back up (snow 2 years ago) and convert the second one to a fruit tunnel by using mesh instead of plastic. Then a few raised beds to be constructed somewhere, but we're not in a rush to plant stuff, getting the structures all in place will be hard enough work.
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Brilliant idea though.
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Allotments:
I'm going to plough on regardless and plant all the things I want to plant outside in our newly rabbit-proof fenced allotments in the middle field. I have worked out when I need to start seedlings and have a month by month plan which I have transcribed to the calendar. When we designed the house I ensured that all the sunny side window sills are extra wide so I can put lots of seedling trays on them.
Polytunnel
No great change - just consolidating on all the things we learnt last year:
Limit companion planting to marigolds, a couple of nasturtiums and plenty of basil
Start everything a little earlier
Cucumbers - watch out for nitrogen deficiency and manage promptly, trellis them properly, not overcrowding
Toms - nothing new except change variety this year
Peppers and aubergines - start earlier, harvest promptly, hope for Mediterranean conditions in the tunnel
Compost LOADS and get a HUGE heap going. I usually have about 2-3 cubic metres by the end of the summer and would like to try and double this. Usually I don't have enough brown to keep up with the green once DH starts mowing but we've done a lot of hedge-laying this winter and chipped the brash so I could add in wood chips which will have had 4-6 months composting on their own by the time I put them on the heap. That's a possibility......
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If you want any part-rotted manure, I have LOADS of the stuff.
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Ive started to think about the growing season esp. as at the moment we have very spring like weather (very like an English winter) I KNOW we will get a cold spell , probably/hopefully with lots of snow this month and the next and then it will be
Too cold...tooo cold...tooo cold...OOps why havnt you got plants in or ready?
Last year we had a lovely March and not bad April, which followed the freezing Jan and Feb. I must find somewhere I can start plants off so they are ready if we do get an early start!!!
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Mel, in Switzerland (I imagine a similar climate to yours - you're in Germany, aren't you?) they generally reckoned you couldn't plant anything that was frost sensitive out before early May (can't remember the exact date, it had something to do with several witches) so that's when all the geraniums appeared on the balconies in the lowlands at least. I planted out a load of pumpkin, squash, melon and courgette plants in mid-April one year because we were going away and I'd been growing them indoors. Big mistake. Lost virtually all of them. So don't start growing things inside too early otherwise they'll be desperate for more space before you can give it....that's my experience anyway.
H
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I'm still hoping for help to put up my polytunnel in time to be used in Spring. ::)
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My 2012 was a complete washout. The late frosts and early/persistent rain killed off the blossoms of the trees in the orchard so I had no apples, plums or damsons for the first time in years - only the crabapple produced and I have no use for those - sods law ::)
As for veg beds, I think without a polytunnel I will always struggle - my beds aren't raised and got overgrown with creeping buttercup over half of them, the brassicas got chewed to lace by June and even the spinach and salads were poor crops. I had about a dozen tomatoes in all and they didn't fruit til September which is ridiculous and it took a month to ripen all the green ones after the plants had long gone. I think I had a couple of bags of new potatoes but I don't give up a bed to grow maincrops - I put in a few onions and a box of carrots but what I yearn for is broccoli, kale, beetroot, spinach and courgettes and I got nothing, every plant wilted and drowned :(
I had a year off runner beans as they were too prolific the last few years and I had a freezer box just of beans left. So I reckon I'll put in a couple of stands of beans this year, try the things I love all over again and focus on salad leaves, herbs etc that I use most and cost more than a sack of tatties or horse carrots ;) I don't think I have the heart to plant up that much this year as I may end up having to sell/rent the place out but I do want to get the beds weeded and looking like something nice is growing either way ;)
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Tragic isn't it, really tragic, and everyone's hard work too. It's going to take a really brilliant summer to restore everyone's faith in growing I think.
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It is depressing. What hope is there of a decent summer this year?
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and now we're in a triple dip recession for goodness sake! Thank goodness for my pensions, I am protected forthe moment, but once everything starts to improve I'll be left behind - probably in the gutter with only a cardboard box and my dogs. :roflanim:.
Give me a shout Ellie - I'll come over and help you plant up.
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HesterF....They have 'Witch burning' here on the last day of April.....Its like bonfire night without the fireworks. There are loads of fires (huge ones) all over the village (you need to apply and pay towards the firemen! German rules and regs) Its great fun you either choose a fire and sit AND DRINK round that or wander from fire to fire chatting and DRINKING.
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I spent the afternoon turning some rows and lengthening them becuase i need to plant more potatoes nearer the stream. Last year I could not water them as they were too far from water and the dry weather meant a disapointing crop. Like Mel in Germany we can expect a very cold snap then an early mild spring. I won't rush though as our growing season ends rather late so there is plenty of time to sow direct or transplant.
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This is a great thread! I just posted my own query and now I've read this.
I wish I had room for the polytunnel because it makes everything possible. At sandalfarm, we were at 1000ft and it was just too windy. I have kept one of my frames ready for when the land comes available (maybe allotments for Grantown!).
Growing vegetables is essential for any smallholder, even if it's only kale and parsnips.
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Mel - only just noticed your reply on this. We used to celebrate that in Sweden too - Walpurgis in English, I think. But this Swiss one was later, not actually celebrated just a date to link your geranium balcony planting to (about the second weekend in May).
H