[compostqueen]

It's swings and roundabouts. Some crops will wither on the vine one year and be brill the next, and while one crop is failing another one is thriving, and you'll be getting armfuls.

I think some people have unrealistic expectations and maybe don't put in the groundwork and then complain when they don't reap bumper harvests, and are soon throwing in the towel. 

To make your veg garden a successful place I think you have to love doing it. If you don't, or are too impatient, you may as well buy it from the greengrocer 

[Plottered]

well I dont feel to bad after reading of other peoples failures this year...roll on next year .....im sure I said that last year 

[boosmummy]

Thanks everyone, at least I'm not alone in having such a bad harvest. Looks like my  'unknown' insect pests really were carrot root flies, so that's solved one mystery. Now if only I could work out what caused my onions to turn to mush in the space of a few days. I suspect a suicide pact with the shallots. 

i saw on gardeners world the you should plant carrots in a pot then put it on top of a barrel or something similar because carrot fly cant fly higher than i think he said 18 inches 

As for my garden. my gooseberries have been eaten and because of all the rain the fig tree has lots of figs but they havent had chance to ripen 

And the allotment is in a state of limbo at the moment until i get a good few days so i can go down and mow - then get the shed base built 

[stentman]

Apparently it has been the dryest year in the Midlands since 1976 

Shefali, the BBC midlands today weather lady said the same thing about our dry summer.

Bad stuff - Onions and shallots hammered by the alium leaf miner, hoping for better with my still very tiny leeks. Sweetcorn sporadic germination at best no real crop to speak of. Carrots struggling with the hard dry ground ditto beets. Turnips not happy with the long dry August

Good stuff - Spuds a little on the small side but relatively untouched by pests, parsnip seem to be brill this time round, kale going well, bean glut in progress, enough green tomatoes to make jars and jars of chutney. Swiss chard best yet. Salad plants were ok but they are not in long enough to get clobbered

Overall not a bad year some things that went well last time are poor this year for others it's the reverse. But heck if we all got it right with every crop, every time where would be the challenge, the opportunity to learn and the interest growing your own stuff. 

[bigben]

Good - sweetcorn, new spuds, salad
poor - onions and garlic with whiterot, main spuds pathetic, squash and pumpkins tiny, peas and brassicas trashed by pigeons which did not happen next year

Must net brassicas next year!

[JayG]

Not dire by any means, but yields of the tender summer crops are down due to late planting due to late frosts, and then less than ideal conditions thereafter.

Oh, forgot; the Winter Festival squashes are/were dire (I said I'd be lucky to get one small one this year and that has proved to be a very accurate forecast!)

[mumofstig]

bad luck Jay, I've not got as many as normal, and what I have are on the small size  ...but at least I got some 
Toms in the greenhouse have been okish, but a fight to get them to ripen after they got Botrytis
Beans of all sorts have been rubbish! as were the snap peas But tall peas sown at the same time were good 
Courgette fairy didn't visit for long, a very short season :blink:
Cabbages were good with a lot of watering  Cauliflower was dire.
Got white rot on my onions 
Parsnips, swede, brussels, savoy cabbage & leeks looking good so far, as are end of August sowings of pak choi, turnips, spring onions, carrots and red russian kale.

So a mixed year ...some of the old faithfuls were a let down, but other stuff was good.

oh nearly forgot the spuds..early ones were a low yield (drought) later ones were good

[aelf]

I can't really complain this year:

My only real problem was with the galic and onions - lost most of them to rot. Spuds have been ok, but yealds were lower than usual. Other than that, I have done really well this year with:

all brassicas (best year ever for them)
tomatoes (glut)
courgette (glut)
sweetcorn
carrots
peas and beans
apples, pears and plums (glut)
strawbs and rasberries

[crh75]

For me everything has been OK except garlic and sweetcorn. 

This year here Spring was very dry and so the garlic and over wintered onions started to die back earlier than expected.  I should have watered more regularly.  Then came a very wet summer, this rotted the garlics.  The spring planted onions were great though. 

I think the wet summer was really good for brassicas.   Beans, cucumbers, courgettes, squashes, carrots, beetroots, parsnips, potatoes, lettuces, etc have all done very well as well.

Tomatoes (outdoor) are going OK, not a bumper crop yet but they are slowly turning.

[shokkyy]

Onions, garlic, spring onion, salad leaf, all tree and bush fruit - excellent

Carrots, parsnips, strawberries - eaten by mice

Runner, French, Borlotti, pea, mangetout, sugarsnap, cucumber, chilli - ok, but late and smaller crop than normal.

Red/white/green cabbage, brussels - ok ish.

Squash, courgette, tomato, sweet pepper, cauli, calabrese - pathetic, worst year ever.

[hamstergbert]

spuds in the Morrison tubs, carrots ditto - pretty good.
lettuces and salad leaves - better than fair.

courgettes - worst year ever.  four green off four plants, dozen or so yellows that refused to get any larger than thumb size on four plants.

Runners - started cropping end August, quickly turned to misshapen oversize stringy pods.
Flat beans - started end August, couple of pickings, now givin gup due to cold nights
Toms in greenhouse/tom houses etc - four mixed red/yellows ripe.  Squillions still firmly green.
Toms outdoor - handful of ripe yellows, rest green.
Cherry plums - not as good as last year buyt still pretty well OK
Rhubarb - tatty early on and most stalks really green apart from those crowns forced .
Leeks - look OK, can but h ope.
Capsicums - what are they.
Chillis - could be worse, had a few, dozen or two greens still on the plants
Parsnips - a furtle suggests that they will be fine once frosted.

Beans and courgettes though really depressed me.
Excellent crop of cobwebs on the barbie.......

[stentman]

Bad stuff - Onions and shallots hammered by the alium leaf miner, hoping for better with my still very tiny leeks. [/quote]

Sadly my hopes were well and truely dashed. I checked the leeks in the veg plot at home today all utterly ruined by the dreaded leaf miner. The ones on the lotty though seem ok FOR NOW. So I either use enviromesh or don't grow aliums at home. To paraphrase Winnie the Pooh's tigger spelling. Bee you double G are

[Growster...]

"Bee you double G are"

Ha ha ha ha!

;0)

[Chrysalis]

Same here with radish, beet and turnips     bee you double gee are !  Other stuff not so bad, but the broccoli for next Spring has been and gone already!

[Wavertree Red]

Yeah hit and miss here in Liverpool too.

Early spuds, bit small, patchy. Fantastic main crop though.  Outdoor tomato, four plants potted on from seed, picking loads of them for about eight weeks.  Successful radishes, peas, French beans, mixed leaf lettuce, kale, strawbs, beetroot.

Failures included carrots - munched by the fly AGAIN. In the process of building posh enviromesh cages. I will win in the end  . Onions were on the small side, sweetcorn took a hammering from the wind and brassicas were again underwhelming.

This is our third year. Feel like we've learnt so much since we started but still so much more to absorb. Our plots coming together nicely and things feel more organised now. At the moment I've just finished building a compost bin and nearly built the hinged cages/cloches for the raised beds. Also lined and mulched paths around raised beds. After sitting behind a desk all day can't beat getting your hands dirty.