What are you gonna grow different next season?

wssla00

Here are mine-

More chillis- only grew one plant (an impulse buy from aldi)
More tomatoes and different varieties of them
A lot more flowers for cutting and putting in vases
Lots more berries
More rhubarb
only first early potatoes
More carrots- but atlas and chanteray only
celery
more herbs
More onions- but Japanese bunching ones as these have done so well
No runner beans- the hover flies got all the pollen and they didn't set
LOADS more french beans- I love them and they work really well
More spinach and more successional sowing of it
More baby cucumbers- I just rub the spines off with my thumb and they were fine!
Lots more salad- really lovely and perfect for the summer
Going to try more fennel as it seems ok so far but not dug it up
May not bother with beetroots- I don't know why but most of them were real no shows
More sweet peas and normal peas
oh and more peppers- going to have a proper go at them this year!

alys_fowler

im going to be growing dwarf beans instead of green beans and i will try to grow some cucumbers,different varieties of tomatoes,some courgettes and definately more spring onions and lettuces and carrots

ALIBOBSY

Well I learnt its bl**dy hard planting out anything when over 7 months pregnant lol, and not to leave hubby in charge of the greenhouse and your baby seedlings whilst going into hospital to give birth. Lost too many plants at that stage during end of May start of June when heavily pregnant/in hospital/just out and sore so didn't get that much of a haul this year.

Also going to get hubby to build a proper brassica cage to sit over the raised beds to keep off those damn caterpillers as my old nets kept blowing off and letting them in.

Next year will be fit and able to get on with it, but need to ensure we keep the new chickens off the beds.

ali x

cooking-mama

good luck for next year Alibobsy...hopefully things will be easier...tho with a toddler to contend with!!!
,A brassica cage....now that sounds good,is there a DIY version?,ive only heard of fruit cages before and thay all seemed too big for my needs.

twiglet98

I'll do just one container of new potatoes, this year I did about 10 bags, 2nd earlies and maincrop, got a maximum of one kilo and far less from some of the bags. The cost and effort of topping the bags up with compost each week made them horrifically expensive potatoes that tasted no better than those from the farm shop (or, dare I say, the supermarket). Learned too late that I didn't have to use bought multipurpose compost to top up, they'd already cost a fortune by then!

Will finally make use of the newly rotavated 5m by 5m patch that once used to be a manure heap. Probably get raspberries out of tubtrugs and into the ground here, and lots more soft fruit. I have poultry netting round the raised beds but will need to keep the wild birds off these and not just the hens.

Fewer courgettes - I'm the only one in the family who really likes them, though I can always give them away so perhaps just resiting so four or five plants don't take over a whole bed. They could go up in the corner with the raspberries.

Less beetroot, all this year's roots are still underground, though some of the leaves have been picked to cook with spinach. Nobody can work out what to do with them.

The spinach bolted, must have got the watering wrong. I planned to eat a lot, we've had one meal from it, the rest was given away or composted. Next year I will remember successional sowings, rather than a whole row at a time. Lettuce ditto, will do more of our favourite Salad Bowl Red, smaller and more frequent sowings.

I'll position sweetcorn at the back of the bed, not (stupidly) in the middle, where it blocked light from the beans trying to grow behind it.

No more big tomatoes, they just fall over in my exposed garden, but I'll grow more tiny Balconi Red. This year I had them in baskets, bottomless pots set into tomato growbags and in Morrisons flower buckets. The flower buckets worked best.

The 30-odd strawberry plants that went into an old bath this year produced about seven strawberries and a million runners. Some of the runners did get pegged into pots and are now growing independently. Strawberry relocation also planned (maybe with the raspberries).

More sugar snap peas rather than mangetout. Climbing french beans, no runners as preparing them is such a pain, same goes for broad beans. I really only grow them because I like the flowers!

I have masses of herbs in pots, yet we hardly use them. Parsley, sage, rosemary and chives are used, and mint and basil, sadly the thyme, marjoram, oregano, feverfew, tarragon and lemon balm haven't been touched. They look nice, I must be more imaginative and use them all.

I will not sow radishes again, nobody wants to eat them, nor horrid spiny cucumbers. Peppers don't like our cold winds. Brassicas... just no. Love eating them all, but the caterpillars love them even more, and it's too depressing.

Carrots - the jury's out. Tiny crop, and they're only £2 a sack from the farm shop.

Finally, the one chilli plant looks fabulous, but we haven't harvested any yet. Watch this space!

Gefjun

I'm a bit late with this but next year I will:

1. Get a big pot and grow herbs near to the kitchen door
2. Keep the momentum going with the veg patch through the year rather than starting off in earnest at the start of the year and tailing off through the summer
3. Plan successional sowings better and stick to the plan
4. Buy fresh compost to start seeds off in as I lost the first lot this year through using some overly cold and wet compost from last year (I think)
5. Net the cabbages a lot earlier - I still don't know how mine are going to turn out after they were mauled by caterpillars
6. Not bother with turnips as DH doesn't like them - replace with beetroot
7. Grow different colours of veg e.g. yellow courgettes at DHs request - green courgettes are apparantly boring!
8. Plan, plan, plan - and stick to the plan
9. Remember that everything grows bigger than I always anticipate, so space rows out more
10. Add some containers to the two raised beds to maximise space
11. Grow fewer tomatoes as I've lost lots to blight in the last two years
12. Sort out the potting shed so I can actually use it for potting
13. Remember to cloche/fleece seedlings that get planted out early - I've missed out on what could have been a decent crop of squashes and marrows as I lost the first lot of seeds through bad compost, then the second lot of seedlings after they got nipped by frost after planting out, third lot weren't started early enough so haven't had time to mature before the cold weather has it now.
14. Not bother with brocolli.
15. Remember that I seem to kill a lot of things, so plant more to compensate!

irishwexford

I took note of what we like to eat and in summer plenty of salads,fortunately we had enough lettuce and beetroot.
Will grow more winter stuff, cabbages, swede and winter broc.
Sprouts attacked two years running so giving these up.
Have plenty of fruit bushes but we want apple, pear and plum trees.
Carrots not worth the bother of keeping fly at by so will give these up.
We have good supply of sweetcorn but will grow twice as much for freezer.
Grow more herbs
Have enough parsnips and leeks growing to last the winter.
GROW LESS COURGETTES AND SQUASHES.
I plan to grow less stuff but look after it better. Quality instead of quantity.

jsh99

Orange_King wrote: »

:rotfl:
Less Tomoatoes

I agree totally! And also fewer courgettes!

Ditto! OH is now fed up with courgette soup and stuffed over grown courgettes!! I had 5 plants for two of us. And I'm fed up with tomatoes with everything! (OH does not like them but I had 10 indoors plants and 8 outdoors!!)

rosy798

For next year I plan to grow, along with the normal things:
Tomato Christmas grape
Tomato Black cherry
Tomato Black krim
Squash spaghetti
Squash that looks like snakes ( if I can find the seeds)
purple peas
yellow monge tout Golden sweet
Loads of chillies: chocolate chilli, lemon drop, pretty in purple, bhut jolakia, and peter penis chillies (yes that right penis chillies!!!)
Chocolate brown sweet peppers Sweet chocolate
Chocolate mint (see the theme here)
Basil, cinnamon and licorice as well as normal

So if it all works out will have a colourfull garden

valk_scot

I've had the allotment thirteen years now and every year I try three or four new things...which is how I've arrived at the reasonably sucessful combination of crops I grow at the moment. But one thing I've also learned...just because it didn't grow sucessfully this year doesn't mean it won't next year, and vice versa. If you really like a certain vegetable try growing it for three years before you give up on it. Oh, and the best piece of allotmenting advice I was given when I started was this: If you want to keep it, put a net on it! Nets keep out pigeons and butterflies.

Next year I am going to grow some dye plants like calendula and woad. I've got a Victoria plum tree on order and I'm going to grow more peas, cauliflowers and calabrese. I'm going to remind myself that I hate chard so despite it being pretty I really shouldn't grow it just because of that.