The all new good, bad and ugly of growing your own in 2020

Hope this isn’t going to be too much as I’m working from a text file due to my typing being so appalling these days…

My year tends to start in earnest with tomato seedlings, as in greenhouses they’re a good crop for one with limited mobility. All my tomatoes are greenhouse grown due to the likelyhood of blight in this neck of the woods. I use growbags, with my principal crop (usually Ailsa Craig) in growpots. This year I used fresh Ailsa Craig seed from DT Brown (as last year my crop using Suttons’ was a little disappointing). These came out great this year, very few aberations & very little blossom end rot, but that could have been the weather. I had some DT Brown Christmas Grape which was badly out of date (Xmas 2015), which I thought had failed so I oversowed with some kale. When the tomatoes did germinate, I just cut the kale as baby leaf for my ramen. I also sowed some Nimbus F1 (DT Brown trial/sow by Dec 2018) which were also quite good. Then as I wasn’t going to go berzerk this year I bought three Gardeners Delight seedlings. I must say I’m not really a fan, they didn’t seem as fresh & zingy as say Christmas Grape.

I grew a couple less plants this year opting to use the extra space in the greenhouses for more peppers & courgettes. Last year I was still ripening tomatoes in the kitchen into January, this year I used the last one in mid December I think.

Courgettes (Mr Fothergill’s Romanesco) in the greenhouse did surprisingly well for me. No courgette apocalypse, but I could have better placed them probably. I put three in pots & three in a growbag, the growbag ones also had collars made from the trays mushrooms are sold in (with the bottoms cut out) to create a well - like a growpot

Other stuff I tried

Welsh Onions: Only six germinated and they’re very small so they’re overwintering in the greenhouse. Shiso Purple: Only two/three germinated, and I think they’re annuals in the UK, so we’ll see what happens come the spring (they’re also in the greenhouse).

Comfrey: Failed. They were sow by Xmas 2016, so it was a bit of a punt

I sowed nasturtiums for the first time as they’re good for controlling blackfly, but also very ramen friendly. I think last year I just bought some plants. In the same bed were a handful of runner beans (Polestar), but they all got slugged as soon as they emerged

The Poundshop bareroot apple trees planted just days before The Beast From The East are still with us, the Cox’s Orange Pippin even produced a couple of fruit. The Merryweather Damson which was prolific last year only managed a handful this year. The old apple tree that we thought had died in 2018 didn’t come back, so we cut it right back to the main trunk structure and planted ivy & clematis around it.

Kale & broccoli sowed in 2018 is still going strong and the raised bed I loosely refer to as my potager still has some carrots & beetroot in it, potentially protected from frost by some massive weeds and a thick layer of leaves. The other raised bed is awash with hairy bittercress, which is handy as it’s a very tasty edible weed.

July/August onwards was wrecked after a tangle with the ‘wrong’ antibiotics almost completely immobilised me. (I still have a problem with the stairs). So virtually nothing got done out there unless Mrs Un did it

On to 2020. Given the mobility thing, we've changed two things in the garden:

1) Less focus on traditional labour intensive crops like potatoes, onions & garlic. More focus on things that are easier to grow, and flowers

2) I’ve gone a bit exotic, so have Thai Cayenne, Habanero, & a single Padron pepper overwintering in the house (the Padron is not supposed to overwinter in the UK, but it still looks fairly perky). I’ve also got stem ginger, Japanese ginger, Malabar spinach and Chinese mahogany in the house, with a Szechuan Pepper outside somewhere. Of the liquorice (Suttons) only three germinated out of two sowings - and the growing instructions are a little misleading, so they might take a while to evaluate. Workshop lock is still broken, so need some dry mild weather so I can get out there and fix it so we can get in there and start the new season

Morning all.

I didn't pay as much attention as I should have to growing this year and intend to do better in 2020. However, we had good crops of gooseberries, strawberries, raspberries, cucumbers, broad beans......and that's about it.

Main failure was Brussels sprouts which I planted in a raised bed which I think didn't work. Going to try again next year but in the ground.

Hello, not even 2020 and I'm itching to start planting again.
I just have a small, rental new build garden so everything is in pots, and last year you may remember me moaning about hailmageddon ( wiped out most of my growing plants in five minutes) but I did ok in the end.
Raspberries were amazing, got loads off those, surviving strawberries were also good, Pak choi, lettuce, tomatoes were fine, just alot less than normal, and I got two lovely pumpkins grown in buckets!
This year my lovely husband bought me the greenhouse cover for my vegtrug! It also came with the insect mesh cover which might save my salad crops from caterpillars this year.
Also going to do a few tomatoes, cucumber, there a squash I found seeds for in the cupboard...uchiki kuri? Something like that. Then I've got the raspberries, dwarf apple and cherry trees( which are for show really not for cherry's, the birds will get them).
Oooh also have two sprout plants which should be ready soon and my psb is looking ok aswell.
So basically, I'm doing the same as last year and hoping for no hail!

Hello,
I'm a complete newbie, I started gardening last year (we bought a house with a garden). I had 2 raised beds and a couple of pots,but I hope to expand in 2020, I'd like to build 2 or 3 more raised beds and I'd really love to have a greenhouse as well.
What am I going to grow? Everything :-) Hopefully...
I've already sown onion seeds, they are in the windowsill at the moment, I wonder what's going to happen with them, I'm not very optimistic tbh...