Sowing the seed of new plans after a stop-start year in the garden
Gardening on the Edge by Diana Wayland
It has been a very strange year. Being able to work outside, creating new garden areas (I am always up for a challenge!) and grow vegetables has alleviated that locked-up feeling during lockdown.
But the season has not been without its problems. A long, cold, slow spring meant plants sown from seed got off to a very slow start and germination rates, even indoors, were poor.
I was unable to get all the seed I wanted before lockdown in March, and so had to do without some old favourites which are usually reliable croppers.
And then there was the season itself, during which almost nothing did as well as in previous years.
I only grew Kestrel and Sharpe's Express tatties this year. Both did reasonably well, but both got fungal diseases due to the wetter summer – well, it seemed to be here! – so were cut down earlier than usual to prevent the diseases reaching the tubers.
They normally last into the new year and have already been eaten, so definitely not as many, even without the "guest" variety I like to try each year.
Other usual vegetable crops did not do as well, either: many carrots germinated and then vanished. I blame weasels, as we had weasel runs round the perimeter of a few beds this year. Broad beans, celeriac, beetroot, lettuce and spinach all were poorer. Florence fennel, new this year, failed due to the wet. I will try it again in a sandier medium next year.
The tale was similar in the greenhouse, where peas (a different variety), dwarf French beans, tomatoes and yellow courgettes all were poorer than usual. Unable to get my favourite purple bean, I grew a pale golden one. This cropped prolifically; but all at once and the beans remained very small. The usual green one, although the beans did get a bit bigger, did not crop as well as usual and finished very early.
Tomatoes got blight – for the first year ever – and very few ripened, which is unusual for the variety I have grown the last few years. The only greenhouse success story was the first year of the grape vine fruiting. Small, but sweet and juicy – and not the white grape I thought I had planted!
The only real outside success story was the kohl rabi, which did very well indeed.
Kale, cabbage and neeps are still standing outside and also did reasonably well.
Two onion varieties did very poorly; the excess moisture meant the beds were very wet and many rotted. But one variety did much better than the other two, in dryer new beds. After drying I plaited them. This is the first time I have ever managed to plait up onions and I am very proud of my rather wobbly plaits! I have lost a few though; this particular variety I have found does not store so well.
Next year I hope to get more tatties and am planning to try leeks and shallots.
Leeks, when I first tried them, failed to grow bigger than pencil size. Also new up will be cauliflower and broccoli. They will be started indoors and cloched.
I can do nothing about what the weather throws at us, but am always ready to experiment with plants I have not tried before and working out ways to entice them to produce something worth eating.