If you could only grow ONE thing...

coffeehound

Spring onions / salad onions / scallions. They're quite easy to grow, and don't take up much space. Fairly expensive to buy in the supermarket and they taste much better fresh out of the ground.

Fosterdog

Strawberries are the one crop I'd have to choose, there's nothing quite as nice as a freshly picked sun warmed strawberry. Even when I've taken the odd year off growing (like this year) I still keep my strawberries going.

malebolge

vegetable (ok, that's a fruit) - tomatoes. Easy to grow and shop bought cannot match the taste.
fruit (ok, that's a vegetable) - rhubarb. Was torn between this and raspberries but decided rhubarb is better when frozen and it can be left days before picking whereas raspberries have sort of a 1 hour time slot when they're perfect.
Herb - mint. Have to choose this because of my daughter's love of mojitos.
Flower - alstromeria. Gorgeous colours, perennial and were my husband's favourite flower. I'm an old softy at heart

orangecrush

Ooh thanks Unrecordings for the rhubarb varieties! Am googling now to find crowns. And looking for the seed potatoes too... back to Pentland Javelin - best tasting potatoes I've ever grown and thrived on sheer neglect when we lived in a tiny house with a 2x2m patio!


I have had success with rocket and scallions in the past actually - the rocket survived a Yorkshire winter (I think it was the year of the beast from the east, actually...) so those will go on the list.


LOL my "one thing" is expanding... this is why I go wrong. I spread my interests too thinly!


On the plus side I was cleaning the chickens out at the weekend and spotted two of my slug-munched perpetual spinach plants had begun to sprout new leaves, as had one of the rainbow chard plants! And my two surviving leeks are getting quite big.



Maleboge I've never tried growing alstroemerias... may give it a go! My herbaceous border was also a disaster this year due to slugs and snails :mad: Our soil is heavy clay and stays wet and cold most of the winter so I think I need to be more selective with what I plant.



Theoretica, I have 2 blueberry plants, and they're in pots with acid soil, but they perhaps need a refresh. Last year they really suffered in the heatwave, so we moved them to a different part of the garden where there was some shade. Maybe that was the error.

jessicaaaron

Hey!

Honestly, tomatoes are the only thing I would grow in a second and have grown in the past. Its just how many food items I can use them in and they are not that hard to grow. I recently got these beautiful upside down tomato planters from amazon and they grew my tomatoes so well that I am obsessed, LITERALLY!


I hope you all are doing well,
Cheers :beer:

in_my_wellies

orangecrush wrote: »

Theoretica, I have 2 blueberry plants, and they're in pots with acid soil, but they perhaps need a refresh. Last year they really suffered in the heatwave, so we moved them to a different part of the garden where there was some shade. Maybe that was the error.

By accident I have 7 blueberry plants, all bought in 2016 and 2017, small and large in small and large pots. Four were behind the wall so the roots were in the shade and some were one the wall in full sun. This year the ones which were behind the wall were stronger and much more productive.
This year I placed the all behind the wall - standing the shorter ones on boxes so the stems were in the sun. On checking them after fruiting the pots in the shade contained many more fibrous roots so I re-potted those but the ones on the wall last summer had poorer roots - I didn't re-pot them, just changed a bit of the compost.
I'm not an expert but from experience from now on I shall keep them where the roots/pots are protected from full sun but the stems get full sun. Oh, and I never let them dry out.

Primrose

Tomatoes and climbing French beans. Ferline are a blight resistant variety with good sized tomatoes. Cobra French climbing beans are delicious, crop prolifically in a good year and keep their shape and texture when frozen. Also it,a rare that yiu can buy decent supplies of these in supermarkets.

andygb

Flowers - begonias or dahlias
Vegetables - tomatoes
Fruit - Victoria plums

lykkelig

Herb - thyme
Flowers - poppies
Fruit - strawberries
Veg - purple sprouting

Ganga

orangecrush wrote: »

Thank you all for your fabulous ideas!!

Sadly some have reminded me of more failures that I had forgotten about 🙈 Cucumbers also got mildew and died, and lettuces were a slug banquet 😂

I do zero pest control, which doesn’t help. We don’t have hedgehogs as its a stepped garden and apparently hedgehogs can’t do steps. Tempted to put in a ramp 🤔

Winter plans include putting in a wildlife pond in the hope it attracts frogs that will maybe provide some predation on the pesky slugs and snails!

I would love an apple tree, but we’ll be moving in the next few years. Wonder if it would live in a pot temporarily?

Tomatoes and potatoes maybe for next year - we did get a potato harvest this year but I grew a different variety to usual and they just weren’t nice. Back on the pentland javelin for next year I think!

Will start looking into tomatoes and putting pennies away for a mini greenhouse.

Thank you everyone!

If you have small children please take extra care with a pond,can be dangerous:eek: