Hi lizziemac
we are also newbies, having taken over a half plot at the beginning of the year and we too have had many disappointments - to be honest it has been a very mixed bag.
In addition to the allotment plot we bought a greenhouse for home and lots of tubs in which we have successfully grown:
Lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes, peppers, melons, spring onions, every imaginable herb, plus we have germinated all our seeds for the other crops. No problems, no pests.
Tubs outside at home with potatoes, aubergines, spinach, strawberries, all growing a great.
At the allotment:
Runner beans: from the most lovely healthy plants we now have just one struggling to survive.
Courgettes: Again, lovely plants grown from seeds now covered in blackfly (along with the beans), dead leaves and after a few nice courgettes at the beginning we now have withered diseased looking specimins.
French beans: Same, lovely start, within a week or two completely dead.
Potatoes - now dying and hardly any spuds.
Parsnips - 8 out of about 50 seeds germinated.
Rhubarb - unrecognisable it is so covered in blackfly.
Peas - hardly any have come through.
Chard - again, lovely plants now bolted (how much water do these guys need?)
Raspberries - they were already at the plot and although they have grown ok the flavour and size of the fruit is poor.
We have weeded, watered, watered and weeded. Fed and fussed, spent a fortune on soil improvers, manure, chicken pellets, you name it. Dug over and over to get rid of weeds before we started and we are still overun with mare's tail and horseradish.
Onions, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflowers are doing well, we built a net frame over them and they haven't been got at by anything.
Sweetcorn absolutely magnificent.
So we can well understand your disappointment Lizzie and have just spent the last hour pacing round the back garden wondering whether we should turn over half of it to vegetables and hand back the key to the allotment.
We are so keen, willing to work hard but the disappointments are hard to take aren't they? We seem to have control over what is at home but the allotment is beyond us.