Notes on a season
Good
- Potatoes, beans (broad, french, runner), mixed salads, peas
- Jerusalem artichokes. About 15 foot high and just thinking about flowering (nobody seems to know whether this should be permitted but unpreventable without stilts). No idea what’s going on under the ground but they have certainly provided a talking point! Next year I must stake as I plant rather than trying to deal with 7-foot stems, and with something more sturdy than a bamboo cane and a bit of string.
- Slugs. What whoppers. Shame they are inedible.
- Frogs. Yay!
Bad
- The “two sisters” idea of planting beans in with the sweetcorn – maybe I have unusually vigorous beans/weedy sweetcorn but the former is pulling the latter to horizontal.
- Tomatoes (blight); courgettes and squash (slugs); carrots (didn’t germinate or, more likely, got eaten as soon as they did. I had some lovely if minute carrots in pots on the patio – 2″ max of pure carrotty yumminess – so I suppose something down the allotment munched them); garlic (rotted); spinach (bolted)
- Borlotti beans: only one plant made it. Darn slugs.
Intermediate
- Cucumbers: those fruits I got were fantastic but I never got around to potting the plants on from the 4″ pots they germinated in. Poor things died.
- Shallots: grew well, tasted good, shame they got drenched the day I harvested so mostly rotted.
- Sweetcorn: not ripe yet so the race is on. Could do with an indian summer, please. Brought two weeny cobs home yesterday because they were almost nearly sort of ripe if you squinted sideways at them, and they were excellent.
Next year
Raspberries, more herbs, a proper salad bed. Gooseberries? Flowers for cutting. Parsnips. More peas, sugarsnaps too. More muck and slug prevention. Squashes. Possibly asparagus. More time**. A shed, so I don’t have to cart all the kit about in my car. My own runner beans: I wasn’t going to grow them but Dave down the bottom had some spare plants which I found a home for. Feel a bit guilty because his beans drowned in the rain (he’s down the bottom) while mine thrived on it (up the top), so will buy my own seed next year.
*ha ha ha.
**any suggestions gratefully received.
September 25th, 2007 08:24
Sounds like a mixed bag, which is about what I had this year. I was lucky with tomatoes and with chillis, ditto J. artichokes (have you decided about the flower malarky? Ours are just opening now, but as you say, stilts would be needed to intervene), chard (do chard next year – is really good and easier than spinach), beetroot and radishes (which I sort of thought I wasn’t that fussed about but now know for sure). Not so good – courgettes, pumpkins, beans, carrots, parsnips. So, not bad, but not great…
October 24th, 2007 12:24
“The “two sisters†idea of planting beans in with the sweetcorn – maybe I have unusually vigorous beans/weedy sweetcorn but the former is pulling the latter to horizontal.”
We tried 3 Sisters after seeing it described by Carol Klein on GW. Complete waste of time, and I suspect she’s never tried it or she’d know that!!
We’ve had the worst year we’ve ever had for cucumbers, beans, squashes and courgettes. Still picking tomatoes though!
Suggest you get next years garlic in asap. Much better if planted now. Can be grown in pots if necessary – or started in pots then planted out later.