Well I have decided to give up on a few things.
Tomatoes - my six tomato plants are now having a party in my compost heap and the green tomotoes have been combined with courgettes in the lovely chutney recipe on the farming friends website. The leaves and fruit were going mouldy and stripping them off wasn't helping - I think it was just too damp and sunless in my greenhouse. I will try again next year for third time lucky. (Last year the plants were fine but the tomotoes were totally tiny.)
Leeks - the plants were so small I could hardly see them and there was no hope for getting anything edible. I sowed the seeds far too late and planted them out when there were about a millimetre thick. It was doomed from the start.
Spinach - every seed that I get to germinate bolts immediately, I have no idea why. So I have said bye bye to the row.
Beetroot - I'm not sure about this one, I find these hard to germinate. Then some of them look ok, some bolt straight away and some remain teeny tiny seedlings. I have taken out a row that is never going to produce anything and I'm kicking myself that I left so much ground for it. Well I will know next time.
(By the way, I am cheating slightly with photo as it was taken before the plants went mouldy. I just didn't want to put a minging image at the top of my blog!)
4 comments:
Sorry to hear the news, Saz. Tomatoes also a disaster chez moi. Blight took the lot. Spinach I gave up on almost immediately, for the same reasons as you: it's impossible to stop it bolting, and the 'window' for picking it at the perfect size lasts about 5 minutes.
Beetroot shouldn't be so hard, but it depends on the variety. I have failed to germinate Red Ace and Burpees Golden THREE years in a row, so I'm finally admitting defeat. Bolthardy, however, works brilliantly for me. God knows why. Try another variety until you get one that works!
I hope you like the chutney. Thanks for the link. If your bettroots don't grow very big you could use them as baby beet and pickle them or roast them whole.
Sara from farmingfriends
Hi
So disappointing when things don't grow, but it takes a while to work out what likes your garden and what does well.
The beetroot chutney sounds great for the winter. I will give it a go!
TopVeg
I know what you mean about spinach but I failed to plant my leeks until june last year. saw no reason to just trash em so I left them in the ground and I had some fine fine leeks in Feb/March. They overwinter just fine so if you still have any left in the ground you could just ignore them.
I failed to pull up one of them and it's just gone to seed so I may just try that seend next year (it was an organic seed type and not an F1 so who knows).
If it's any consolation last year I had exactly the same problems as you've got but this year I got it right... controllable raised beds filled with lovely organic mix. Perfect.
Angie
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