[hubballi]

I'm sorry but after a lot of work I feel the results have been very disappointing. I will give a brief summary of what I have done. Suffice to say, I have done everything you are supposed to as feeding and compost etc goes. There have been some good results but the terrible summer as well as the battle again and again with pests makes one want to pack it in. I won't of course but at the moment I feel like it.

Second early Potatoes in bags: Poor yield, yellow leaves and leaves eaten by slugs. One bag had one potato.

Second early In the ground, the front plants had quite a few, the back hardly any. Again, leaves eaten quite badly and yellowing.

Garlic: Promising start in the soil but leaves went yellow and died. Dug the bulbs up which were small.

Tomatoes: Fed with home made comfrey. Some outside, some in greenhouse. Still not ripe. Some had blight.

Salad leaves in home made tabletop raised bed with new compost: Very small, some good yield but despite not over watering the stems rotted. Covered with plastic bottle as nights get cooler but still rotted.

Small round baby carrots in same raised bed: Either rotted or so small not worth bothering.

Early Nante Carrots in soil: Very small and misshapen.

Broad Beans (Sutton): very healthy start, strong plants. Promising flowers but started to wither and drop off before beans developed. Leaves eaten by slugs as well as some other creature that made tiny oval holes. Beans misshapen and poor.

Runner Beans: Great start, strong plants fed on comfrey. Heavy yield but snails eating new flowers. Beans starting to go Misshapen and small black blotches and holes.

French beans: Very very poor. Grown in 3 different containers with fresh compost. Beans that were produced minuscule and bent. More leaf than flower. Fed with comfery.

Peas: Very good. The best veg this year. Battle keeping snails off the plant. Ended up going white with mildew.

Kale: Very good strong plant. Now the roots have some small white grubs in them. Removed them and put  cardboard round the stems to stop more being planted.

Cauliflower: Ditto as with Kale.

Courgettes: Very good start with large fruit. Every courgette now produced is small and yellow at one end on ALL my plants in greenhouse and outside.

Cucumber: In plastic greenhouse with promising start but the fruit withers at about an inch long or is eaten by snails that get in.

Aubergine: Promising pink flowers that never develop or get chewed off by snails.

Onions from seed and sets: Get to the size of a golf ball and the stems are eaten or died off.

Spring Onions: Stems eaten and bulbs not very large.

Raddish: In soil and raised bed. Kept in shade and watered well. Some decent sizes but either eaten by small snails or bolted (even though in cool shade) and too small.

So there you are. The home made raised bed was made about a foot deep with cheap grow bag compost which may be the culpret but I did keep adding better compost along the way.

I have fed the veg grown in the soil with comfrey, seaweed and growmore. I added compost from my recycle bin. Its a small walled garden so the slugs and snails end up getting the better of me every year. When you look around about now and see hundreds of tiny new snails you know you have the same problem again next year. I have used organic pellets and even removed them humanely  by putting them in the compost bin until a later date when I dump them up the country land when I go out on my bike.

At the moment I should still be harvesting potatoes so it gr eaves me when my wife has to buy them at the shops because the leaves are getting eaten. The same with the salad. How can so much all just die for no reason. The small plastic greenhouse I have has some tomatoes still in that have promising fruit and I have salvaged some salad and potted them up in there but they don't look too healthy.

Sorry to put the dampers on here but I need to get this right next year.

Any suggestions ?

[zazen999]

I suspect your compost, lack of adequate bug prevention and no companion planting.

[lucywil]

slug pellets might help!! i never feed my beans, runner, french or broad  and have really good results with them all this year.

this year was the first year i have been able to grow carrots successfully, the thing about this gardening lark is that its all trial and error, dont give up, just keep tying different things and ways

[tam]

Sounds like slug n snail removal would solve quite a bit. Are you growing in an allotment or garden. Every time it rains we go out in the evening after dark with torches and squish the slugs n snails. So very little damage at all. The will escape a compost bin, slugs live in the ground so burrow. They also travel quite far. I don't like squishing them either but I think I do a lot less damage to wildlife than if I let them be and then brought veg from a shop.

Cucumber - it sounds like they cucumbers weren't pollinated. Anything shut in a greenhouse will need hand pollinating unless the doors are left open. You might find hand pollinating helps with the squash in the greenhouse and the aubergines too.

I did great with spring onions in seed trays. Two seed trays of compost, pencil to make holes about 1" apart, dropped a seed in each, Lisbon winter hardy sown start of November, kept in greenhouse over winter and we had spring onions all summer, still a couple left.

My garlic was rubbish too, marble sized 

[pushrod]

Just think how great you will feel  when it starts going right 

Certainly sounds as if there is a bit of a slug/snail problem and maybe your soil could be improved.

[gillie]

"Its a small walled garden"

Is it rather shady?

Gillie

[Salmo]

Nematodes might be worth a try. e.g. http://www.ladybirdplantcare.co.uk/slug.html

It can only get better!!

[Brambles]

I agree with the others...  There is NO POINT  in growing vegetables just to feed your slugs and snails!   My first three years of veg growing, I went out EVERY night with a torch and collected every slug and snail that I could find.   Mine went to the local tip!   I now have very few slugs or snails but have to keep a few to keep my frogs and toads happy    
I am not a very experienced gardener, but I feel you do use rather a lot of feed!   I try to make sure that the soil is well manured and plenty of compost is dug in before crops are planted.... or in the case of brassicas I use a good serving of lime.   Then I only feed through the summer if I feel the vegetables need it....  It works for me!

[sclarke624]

Lettuce stem rot maybe the humidity we had this year.  Raddish bolting heat even though in the shade.  Toms did you start them early enough.  My money maker are the last to ripen, red alert toms ripen early so plenty of time to go red over the summer, maybe for next year.  Just guesses.

[AlotArds]

Hi, I used nemaslug and it works great for about 5/6 weeks, if you are infested with slugs it might be the answer, it is expensive at £8 but it should kill off a lot of the little slimy's.

I hope you have better luck next year

[peterjf]

everything you mentioned was avoidable ,

yellow leaves bugs , slugs , snail etc etc etc

you gotta stick to it ,

i have the plague of plagues with wireworms and slugs ,

but im gunnastick to it and graft my axx off and get rid , reading book after book,

i wont let the little bxxxxxds get me down

[tam]

Is it totally walled? Maybe your keeping out natural predators. Slugs etc. have no issue with walls but hedgehogs and frogs do.

If you have a hedgehog rescue near you they are always looking for secure sites for hedgehog fostering.

You could also add some water, just a sunken old sink or similar and put a little frog spawn in.

[gillie]

Are  you killing your plants with kindness?

You seem to have spent a lot of time and energy on feeding them, perhaps unnecessarily, but not made a serious effort at dealing with their enemies.  Beans, carrots and probably salad leaves should not need feeding.  By feeding them you are encouraging a lot of soft leafy growth which pests think is just fine. 

Are your home made composts fully decomposed?  If not, they will rob the soil of nutrients in the short term.  It sounds as though your potatoes were starved.

Your courgettes, cucumbers and aubergines are not getting pollinated.  Courgettes should not be in a greenhouse, it is not necessary and might prevent insects getting to them.  Aubergines are notoriously difficult, I suggest you stop trying until you have got easier crops to work.  (I have been growing vegetables for over thirty years and have been modestly successful with aubergines for the first time this year).   

I am not sure why your tomatoes are not ripening, assuming the plants look healthy and the fruit has reached a decent size.  Try picking a few and ripening them indoors.  I understand that small plastic greenhouses are difficult to manage as they easily become either too hot, too cold, too damp or too dry.

Everybody has bolting radishes at some time - and rotting salads as well.  Take off the plastic bottles as they will increase humidity and make matters worse.  Pea plants always end up with mildew - my mangetouts are long gone and my huge sweet pea plants are now milky white and will have to come out soon.

Any kind of cultivation requires ruthlessness.  KILL slugs, do not save them up and take them on a holiday.  If you wish to be strictly organic (though you use Growmore) you will end up doing a lot of murdering by hand.  That is what the experts do.  If this is not in your nature you will either have to accept a little chemical assistance or realise that vegetable gardening is not for you.

Gillie

[Sadgit]

This was my best year after 2 fairly average years. I didn't manure/feed much this year and I have only 3 things I swear by.
Fleece, nematodes and slug pellets.

Will work on the ground so I have less weeds as I need to learn how to rotovate and keep it weed free, oh and plant stuff earlier than this year....

and for unripe toms, you don't have them packed in do you?

[Spana]

Hubballi, dont give up.  I've been veg growing over 60 years. I win prizes and cups in our local show but feel just as you do most years. At this time of year when i'm tired and the plots need cleaning out and putting to bed I think is it worth it.  But come next spring you wont be able to resist.  You'll think 'I'll just do a bit ' and before you know it you are making plans to extend the plot Keep with it