[Mosslane]

Hi Hubballi,

I think as others have said, try to reduce the number of types of veg and just try a few at first then introduce new ones as you have successes. I tried too much last year and had no success with brassicas at all (rabbits and cabbage whites). So this year I am going for the things we use most, potatoes, onions and beans. Also a bit of salad in grow bags. I don't have a big plot as I am hampered by MS but I enjoy pottering when I can.

Where in Cheshire are you as we are in Cheshire too?

[craggy]

After the hope and optimism  of last year my enthusiasm has been pretty much crushed for this coming season. So many things failed and so many things hindered my progress that it hardly seems worth the trouble but as I love the thought of growing my own veg it's depressing me, especially as I haven't started anything yet.

I have a small walled garden which in the winter doesn't get much sun. I bought a plastic small walk-in greenhouse last Feb and started to grow early veg. Now it's a ragged torn mess, the zip come away from the plastic (even after countless repairs) our cat has climbed up it that many times attracted by the warm heat that it's got great holes on the roof and tears up the side where it has climbed. It's beyond repair and hardly worth replacing if the same is to happen again. As I was made redundant last year there is no hope in getting another.

I did everything by the book and my seeds grew well. I made raised beds including a tabletop one for salads.

I planted:

 Sutton Broad beans - (very healthy plants but eventually they went poor when in the ground producing small, twisted and  dark colored beans. The plants were no better)

Potatoes- in bags of compost and in the ground ( very small yield in soil and bags, the latter most of the foliage eaten by slugs)

Carrots ( small round variety and Nantes, some in ground and others in containers with sand and soil. All very poor growth, the small round rotting in the container)

Kale- (great start but after end of summer have stayed exactly the same, very tall, thin and small compact leaf growth at the very top of the plant getting no bigger to this day)

Tomatoes - (a few variety's all slow to ripen, some getting blight and others very poor yield)

Cabbages (Prima and Greyound all slow growing and when planted out most die, get eaten and the few left now are still very small)

Summer Broccoli (one plant out of every one has survived and looks about to flower)

Cauliflower (ditto as cabbages)

Sprouts (ditto as cabbages)

Onions (Spring, Bedford, garlic all small, some rotted )

French beans (some in tubs and one in rased bed. hardly a bean and the ones that grew were very small and twisted)

Runner beans (very good but beans eventually went misshapen)

Peas (Excellent. Can't complain about that)

Raddish (grew in cool soil in shade and still hardly grew. The ones in soil were eaten by small slugs)

Salad (rocket, lettuce, lambs leaf etc- very poor in new compost in table top raised bed)

As well as all this the slugs and snails eventually won and  ravaged most things (again).

I am not trying to get sympathy here or feel sorry for myself. I am just very very frustrated as I did everything as best I could to the book. Fed everything etc but still things happen that can't be explained and no logical reason. To top it all my seeds that are kept in the kitchen cupboard packets have got slightly damp. I have bought them in the hopuse near a radiator to dry out but I bet someone here is going to tell me they are ruined :-( and I will have to buy more which I can't really do at the moment.

Now I am depressed as I haven't started a thing in the garden as the soil is still frozen and the soil is full of cat mess (yes I do love cats and have 2 myself) the greenhouse looks a mess and is a constant reminder of what could have been. When I see glass houses in gardens I get greenhouse envy LOL ;-)

Well, that's where I am at. Nothing happening except for one broccoli that could be finished off by the frost like that last ones were, a few tall and very skinny Kale (what happened to the food through the winter this was supposed to produce ?) and some very small straggly cabbages.

 

it could be worse,you could be like most of the country,and go to tescos for everything.

[Aidy]

Very well put Craggy.

There will always be a failure here and there. For some unknown reason I cannot get sprouts to grow on my plot, I have grown these on all the other sites without problems I have been on, tried many different methods but still they will not grow. I will win tho, preservere mate. Rome was not built in a day.

[Christine]

Last year I tried lots of new things. The first thing I learned was to leave red cabbage till later as it will start off quite well outside - oh and there's no need to plant the whole packet because no-one needs that many red cabbages.

Second thing I managed to do was to damp off the tomatoes - first try ever but at least the seeds were free.

Third thing I learned was how not to do leeks.  Made every mistake in the book growing from seed.

The fourth thing I learned was that coir pots are not the way to go for me. Wretched things didn't encourage anything to grow proper roots. It's either paper pots or scrounge small ones off freecycle.

But once I went and asked a man who grows good cabbages easily what to do, things looked up. I did exactly what he said and did well. He had not long back had an allotment on the same site so he knew the conditions. So now, thanks to him I can grow cabbages and cauliflowers and better swedes.

Like you hubballi I thought that I had had a bad season till I looked in the freezer today and still have plenty of ready meals made from allotment stuff and lots of pickles made from some of the things that were fit for nothing else.

I reckon the first thing you should learn to do is to make compost so that you can improve your soil structure. That you can do all the year round, it's amazing what you can use to make compost free and you can scrounge a lot from neighbours who can't be bothered. That's free to do.

[zazen999]

Again, thanks for the kind offer of seeds and sets but I will wait until I know what I am doing and get the PH of my soil tested (something I thought was an unnecessary chore)

It's only an unnecessary chore if everything grows well. If not, then lets work from the soil up and see if we can improve things.

Stick with it....you will get there and the success will be all the sweeter.

[madcat]

The other thing you will have learnt is where the sun hits - so you can plan to put things that need the sun in the sun and those that don't care in the shade.  Oh and the importance of spraying for tomato blight!   

And don't fret too much - we all have things we are struggling with ....  however many years we have been gardening.  My dad has been trying to grow decent carrots for 60 years ... I really annoy him 'cos mine are fine ... but I can't (yet!) do sprouts, so he gets even with his magnificent trees!!

[Goosegirl]

Hub - you need some help...! Why not get a group of you together one fine day (ha?) and have a good sorting out session, then go to the pub or a meal out or a take-away with some falling-down water. When you recover, you can look at what has  been achieved and then just look at one area to be going on with and do it. Forget the rest - that can wait (I know the feeling that it won't) but it's not worth getting upset about it. Gardening is so much a pleasure (ha again) that even our failures teach us so much. Don't try to over-achieve and just relax more. Every year there are failures for us all and we can't predict them. I can grow sprouts as tall as me  - why can't Aidy - and my neighbour - grow sprouts ? I don't know. At the end of the day, it's in the lap of the Gods. I bet you can do some things better than we can so get your fingers in the soil and love it.!

[fletcherbaker]

Well after reading this post and due to this being my first year growing anything let alone veg im starting to also wonder "Why bother" Hub your not telling me what i want to here 

[Kristen]

Sorry to read your sad tale. Everyone gets crop failures, but it is truly unfortunate that you have had so many.

I don't know whether its any use, but my advice to newbies is always to grow what they like to eat. If you grow something you are not mad about, and it fails, then that is doubly disappointing. But growing something that you like, that succeeds, and because you harvest it fresh tastes much better than the supermarket, that lifts your spirits and will give you a good base to build on.

I get extremely annoyed when a crop fails. I've been growing veg for donkey's years, so I should know what I am doing, my time is precious, and things have no right to fail! I have clearly blotted it out of my memory, but now I put my mind to it the following did not work last year:

Onions - sets planted overwinter, and the wet did for most of them. Garlic was poor too.

Celery grown for the first time on a whim. Seed sown a month or so late, was a busy time for me, late pricking out, late planting out, never came to anything.

Celeriac - I've grown this often, but last yet I sowed it late and planted out even later. Tasty but the roots were disappointingly small

Main crop spuds - picked up some cheap offer at the garden centre, varieties I had never heard of ... I got what I should have expected, poor results.

Brussels sprouts - rotavated the patch shortly before planting. I know they like rock hard soil, I thought stamping it down would be enough. Result: All sprouts blown and pretty much useless.

Tomatoes - infested with white fly as usual. Even though I grew lots of Marigolds to try to keep them away.

Dwarf French Beans intended as an Autumn greenhouse crop, sown far too late to be any use at all. Started flowering just as the cold weather killed them off.

Christmas spuds. Bought prepared seed potatoes in July, they are still on the window ledge chitting might actually do OK for this year's crop 

Courgettes were a disaster - I convinced myself that they would be fine in the shade of a tree.  Were they heck

Parsnips grown in paper pots. Germination was terrible, several re-sowings, thus planted out so late they didn't come to much.

Salsify was mostly rotted in the ground when I harvested it (early Winter). Dunno why.

But the Cucumbers, Leaf beet, Kolh rabi, Sweet corn, Squash, Strawberries, Raspberries, Beans, Cauliflowers, Swede, Early spuds,  Mooli radish, Lettuce, Tomatoes, Aubergines, Melons - oh the smell of those Melons! - chillies, beetroot .... they were absolutely fantastic!

[Yorkie]

Sorry to hear about all your disappointments, Hub

Please do post a list of seeds which you may have to replace, and we'll all see what we can do.  None of us needs 3,000 seeds of some plants!! (Apart from DD., who has 2 1/2 plots!!)

[craggy]

Well after reading this post and due to this being my first year growing anything let alone veg im starting to also wonder "Why bother" Hub your not telling me what i want to here 

your first tomato,will give you what you want to eat!

[andtiggertoo]

just echoeing what some of the early replies suggested, do look on freecycle. Even if there isn't a greenhouse offered there might be something you could use to make a lean to, maybe a shower cubicle or some old windows etc. You can also request things, it's surprising what people chuck out.

I had some successes last year but quite a few failures too, in particular got none of the following - french beans, carrots, tomatoes, brocolli ( got one meal's worth!). The beetroot was a bit disappointing as was the kale. But my garlic and onions and potatoes were good.

I find the low light levels at this time of year depressing even if nothing in particular is going wrong in my life. Try to look forward, in a just a few weeks the sunlight will be warmer and last for more hours. Chin up we are well past the shortest day.

[hubballi]

What about my damp seed packets, will they be affected as the inside of some of them are lined with foil ? I have dried them out.

I bought the variety of tomatoes that hang in a basket and tumble giving hundreds of toms. Not a bit of it. Terrible poor crop despite feeding, new compost and in the sun. It annoys you when jamie Oliver has them in tin cans and anything he can get them in and they grow in abundance. My friend had some in a very dry and unwatered pot, totally neglected and they were also abundant.

[madcat]

He also has a professional full time gardener just out of shot!   

[diggerjoe]

Hub - last year I had 15 tomato plants all grew well till blight hit did not have one tomato - this year I thought should I bother but then the beauty is you never know unless you have anoher go ( sorry about the rhyme) forget what went before concentrate on what could come.