reassurance needed

[aquilegia]

Someone please tell me they've had miserable harvests this year. After looking through the gallery I'm feeling like an utter failure as a gardener.

So far I've had:
3oz potatoes
three tiny beetroots
a few handfuls of tiny radishes
a few feeds of strawberries
quite a few lettuces. but tiny ones.

OK - admittedly I probably don't grow as much as a lot of you, but what I have managed to harvest so far has been utterly pathetic.  :'(

(I'm still waiting for the fruits on my 40-odd tomato plants to rippen - then I'll be happy!)

[aquilegia]

[Plocket]

Aquilegia, I am hardly the person to reassure you because I don't have an allotment or do lots of veg. However, I did grow some lettuces in two pots this year (my first attempt at lettuce). And the cat c**ped on one pot so the whole lot had to be thrown out. The others are looking a bit scared now!!!

[allotment_chick]

Hi aqui - fear not, old chum.....most of us are there with you - especially if we are working or have other commitments in our lives.  

Anyway, haven't you noticed that all of the best crops are on other peoples plots!?  My friend literally chucked in some autumn onion sets last year and they grew into wonderful bulbs....I nurtured my summer ones and have just had to harvest them because of the weather - results?  Pathetic!

Just remember the mantra..... gardening is still cheaper than the gym and even no result in the garden is better than a day at the office!  

AC x  :D

[tim]

Depressing, isn't it, Aqui?
Would it help if we posted our failures, rather than our successes?
1. Spring onions open sown 29/3 are barely usable even now.
2. All shallots & garlic lifted through white rot. Onions also have it but, with luck, some may be clean enough to store, short term.
3. 2 rows of first early pots got blight before they could be sprayed. One lot had 2 or 3 marbles each. Others have some infection but may go full term.
4. Out of 40 new asparagus plants, about 10 have survived.
5. Half the bought-in broccoli plants went to seed at 3".
6. Bought-in winter cabbage weren't, so we're eating an awful lot of summer cabbages.
7. 2 rows of carrots produced thin, hairy apologies for the real thing.
8. The 'new' romaine-type lettuces look great, but have little heart.
9.  The climbing beans won't. And the gales didn't help. Whereas some folk are harvesting bundles, ours haven't even set fruit yet. Only blackfly. We normally expect to pick runners on 25/7.
10. All the corn was flattened in the gale.
11. The new type cus have flowers up to 8', but no fruit.

Have I made a point? Or depressed you beyond recall?

IF one had the time, successive sowings/plantings? - in different parts of the plot? How's the health of your soil - in humus & nutrients? Do you always water before you sow - & puddle in after planting?
OK - boring old stuff - but, if I've been getting my hands seriously dirty since 1934, with an ex-Army market-gardening father, and would NEVER give it up, there must be SOMETHING in it?? = Tim

[Mrs Ava]

Aqui, we only post our good pics, not our disasters!  Maybe we should start a new thread  showing pictures of our failures.  To carry on Tim's theme:

1.  Have now sowed 7 varieties of carrots, and of those that have bothered to germinate, they are only tiny
2.  Spring sown broadbeans munched by something, and even tho they are now netted, something has gotten in and started on the new babies
3.  Romaine lettuce bolted when we had only just started eating them
4. Garlic got terrible rust so didn't get as big as it should
5. Lost half the shallots to white rot
6. Red Duke of York spuds only produced 3 or 4 spuds per plant - poor harvest
7.  Birds beat me to my redcurrants and stripped the bush clean
8.  And now somebody or something has had it away with all of my gooseberrys!
9. Wind and Mr Fox have bent every single stem on all of my spring planted onions, so they have stopped growing, even tho some are the size of scallions!
10.  Had to sow my peas 3 times before realising the pigeons were eating the young shoots!

You tell us you don't have an allotment, or a garden the size of a country estate, so I figure even just a taster of some home grown veggies is a bonus - I mean, my fennel is a goner, yours is still growing good and strong! Chin up girl.  You know you are going to have more toms that you can shake a ketchup covered stick at!  ;D

[Ceri]

failures to date:
not a single carrot - 3 different varieties, not a bit of orange in sight.  Sweetcorn not even made 1ft high yet, and of each pea seed planted next to each corn plant, exactly none have germinated.  
Seed packets I have bought and are still in their packets because I forgot to sow them: swede, romanesco, celeriac (funnily enough they haven't germinated either!), Charlotte spuds were desperately low yielding and v. depressing as they were the first spuds I've ever harvested!
Boy this is the best thread in ages - I feel so much better now!

[TrailRat]

Makes me wonder if I should bother. ;D

TrailRat

[Roy Bham UK]

I had a dabble in growing the long raddish and at the mo I'm harvesting about one raddish a week but I hasten to add it is tastier than Tesco's ;D

[aquilegia]

Sorry all. Just had a bad day yesterday, so was feeling rather miserable. But having read all this lot, I feel much better knowing I'm not alone :)

But you're right EJ - even one tasty homegrown treat is far better than a whole pound from the supermarket. We've stopped buying strawberries as a pummet full cannot beat the few homegrown ones we've got.

And I've also forgotten the main point of the thing - it's to grow stuff, harvesting is a bonus (I don't get to eat most of my flowers!)

[jo2]

If its any consolation I have always grown runner beans at home, dead easy, throw them in watch them grow and some weeks later loads of beans.  This year, my first go at the allotment they look so pathetic people are asking what strain of drawf beans are we growing.  I have never seen such sad sickly excuses of plants! (admitadly I transplanted them during the hot spell-but these are beyond a joke)

[busy_lizzie]

It is so good to read a thread like this.  Have had good successes this year, but sweet corn little more that 18" high, fennel gone to seed.  beetroot hardly came up.  Peas planted three times and still struggling and carrots planted twice before any response.  Nice to know others are in the same boat.   :D busy_lizzie

[derbex]

My peas, and mange-tout have gone nowhere. Something strange may be at the spuds, first lot of beans failed, similarly sweetcorn, blackfly everywhere, ditto weeds., and one cucumber has powdery mildew (milk works better than bicarb) the other has I don't know what the leaves get speckled then go yellow then brown patches-spider mites?

OTOH -we're eating spuds and cucumbers, it was a good year for the raspberries (and roses :)), plenty of courgettes, the tomatos are just about there and my new stepovers haven't died yet.

Oh and the pumpkins have gone ape -if they keep it up, I will have one pleased little daughter.

Jeremy

[Val]

 :D Isn't it kind of daft but a thread about peoples failures has really brightened me up, what kind of person does that make me ???I didn't grow any beans this year, last years crop, 1 bean. It was so embarrassing :-[ maybe it was the dry weather, but whatever I couldn't bring myself to repeat it, now you've all given me renewed enthusiasm for next year, thanks folks.

[feet of clay]

I thought it was only me that had stuff that didn't 'do'. I'm pleased with my spuds - first and second earlies. My toms are OK - but not a hint of ripening and I have courgettes everywhere cos a 'friend' gave me seeds telling me they were cucumbers - got no cucumbers but 4 big courgette plants - two of which are taking over the greenhouse together with another 'cucumber' that's a squash.  My rocket has - well - rocketted and my carrots are pathetic but the peppers and chillies seem OK and I've finally got aubergine flowers.

[Doris_Pinks]

Carrots........8 sowings and not a single one left! ( I have slugs the size of hippos!)
Fennel............12 healthy plants.....see above!!!
Radish...by the row loads...see above!
Carrots, did I mention them already! Grrrrrrrrr
6 large squash plants..........yes you guessed it!!!
Oh and of course my prize winning sunflowers.........I HATE slugs!!!!
(BUT did manage to get 3 in and protected them well!!)
But on the up side, I had a slug hunt today and murdered over 100 of them!

[carrot-cruncher]

Three rows of parsnips - only 1 grew
Four rows of carrots - approx half have grown
Sweetcorn - still only approx 12 inches high
Green beans - planted at the base of canes but totally ignored them and have all bolted sideways
Peas - I'm positive I planted three rows!!!!!
French beans - struggling manfully
Raspberries - one & half pounds to me, rest to the b****y pigeons
Potatoes - threw in the ground and ignored them, doing brilliantly
Bindweed & thistles - self-sown & colonised rest of the plot.

[growmore]

What's with all the doom and gloom ..







Lets have some positive stuff..The only grumble I have got and it was my own Fault for leaving em too long is that my rocket tatties are growing too big,,With all the gloom stories we will be putting new lottie owners off,,.

[Ceri]

Personally as a first season lottie holder I am enormously cheered by the doom and gloom!  When all I ever hear and see is wonderful huge harvests I can get a bit dispirited, think I must be doing it all wrong and although I'm not tempted to throw in the towel, I could understand others doing so.  Knowing that despite the best efforts of the highly experienced even they have their failures can be a bit of a relief to us wet behind the ears types!  I think celebrating, or at least sharing the failures as well as the successes stops newbies feeling they're not good enough growers to play on this site and staying as lurkers.

[Val]

 ;DWell said Ceri, couldn't have put it better myself, also the experienced might know the reason why the rest of us have crop failurers, we want to see both really don't we, so we've greatness to aspire to. lol.

[Mrs Ava]

It is great to share our successes and failures and provides me with a good dose of healthy envy looking at Growmores cucumbers and healthy glee knowing that others have similar failures as me - or I have a success where another fails...if you get my drift....  :-\  

Thing is, for every failure, something else does great so I am happy with my failures and overjoyed with my successes!  ;D