What were your gardening triumphs this year? (and what didn't work so well?)

[Tracie 10]

I've just mentioned in another post that I tried growing cucumber plants from seed this year and I was amazed at how well they did - I've lost count of how many cucumbers we got from just five plants!

 

However, my tomato plants were less of a success - I made the mistake of planting three plants in a growbag and then placing them in a position in the greenhouse that recieved a lot of sun (and at that point I didn't realise I needed to shade them ). The growbags dried out every day whilst I was at work and consequently, the fruit split. I still got a lot of fruit off the three plants, but next year I plan to get shades on the greenhouse and plant the seedlings in troughs rather than growbags!

 

What was your gardening success this year? And what will you do differently next year?

[neeeeeeeeeek 10]

My toms all all in growbags in the greenhouse but I just put 2 in each. I have millions of toms, just need a bit more sun to ripen them. I grew an aubergine plant and have had loads from it and it's still going strong.

[Tracie 10]

Yeah, I think I did push it with three plants

 

I quite fancy having a go at growing an aubergine plant next year - I know very little about them though. Did you grow yours from seed, neeeeeeeeek?

[neeeeeeeeeek 10]

Naaa, bought a little plant from somewhere, stuck it in a bigger pot and watered it lots! It lives in my plastic greenhouse with everything else. To start with it just had loads of purple flowers, I thought that was going to be it, then thids purple blobs started appearing!

[Strix 11]

I finally managed to get rid of the gravel pit that the builders (I assume) laid on top of pondliner next to our patio, and got the fir tree obstructing the view from the patio door shifted

 

We now have a proper flower bed (which I've managed to keep weed-free ) though I may be digging some taller stuff out and moving elsewhere.

 

I bought 2 wisteria to disguise the ugliest fence on the planet (not ours) and one of those is thriving at an alarming rate

 

My wall and hanging baskets didn't die this year either

[medusa 16]

Successes from this year-

 

My yucca has been amazing. Many guests have looked out of the kitchen window and asked 'is that a ******* triffid?' Two flower spikes about 7 feet high, that look like huge creamy white bluebells. Seriously impressive.

 

My elderly, misshapen, well past its best apple tree has thousands of apples on it this year (now let's hope the weather stays warm enough to ripen them before first frosts and they drop off!).

 

Failures-

 

The new herbs in the herb garden took extreme exception at the hot temperature and drought conditions (my back wasn't up to carrying a watering can for a lot of the summer).

 

Some of my iris germanica got rot in their tubers during the cold wet spring (including my pride and joy- a black Helen Proctor, which I'd carefully raised for 10 years).

[zweena 10]

This year, before we got the allotment, we've managed tomoatoes, lettuces of different varieties, rocket, spinach, beetroot, potatoes, little carrots, sweetcorn, peppers, leeks and brocolli: all in pots, and all from seed!

 

However, the damned parsnips would never take, we reckon a dud seed packet. The rest are doing well or have been consumed, but did anyone find the weather buggering up the growing season? Like our tomatoes: we have an abundance of green ones, but with so little sun, them and the sweetcorn are just not ripening! And with the spinach, it was yummy, but then the extreme hot weather made it bolt. Some of the potatoes were bitten by the late frosts as well. What an odd season! It's so annoying!

[bensonhedges 10]

I grew six 7ft sunflowers from seed - they bloomed brightly yellow in july, then the wind and rain came - now I have yellow petals scattered all across the garden and six glum looking seed heads on 7ft stalks. Success and failure all in one!!

[Tracie 10]

Yep, the weird weather this year caused me some serious grief too! Firstly the late frost at the start of April pretty much killed everything I've rushed to get planted, then both my spinach and the brassicas bolted in the heat during July The tomatoes I got took ages to ripen too.

 

I thought about growing some sunflowers next year - they look so cheerful and summery. Not sure I fancy clearing up petals all throughout late summer though!

[Strix 11]

My hollyhocks have been spectacular, although I did have to go out and tie them up in a heavy downpoor.

 

I've neglected the veg planting this year, as we've been concentrating on more structural things like painting the miles of fence we seem to have (sloping garden, divided by fencing), and setting off things we want to create the structure of the garden.

 

We've planted a couple of small wall climbing bushes that will eventually fill walls and fences, but have planted things like sweetpeas that would bolt up the new trellises and fill them for this season, allowing the shrubs and clematis to do the job properly next year.

 

We have a climbing rose doing rather well, but we didn't plant that

[medusa 16]

Ooooh- thought of another good one, although it's probably got nothing at all to do with me and more to do with the weather and position. My paeony was so successful this year all of my neighbours and family had flowers in their house off it. It's a really tall pale pink one, and the flowers were the size of footballs, and there were 70 of them on one plant, so I had to cut them because I just couldn't get the plant to stand up once the flowers opened.

[stackmonkey 10]

most of my 'failures' this year have been because other plant have been successful and have crowded them out.

I've done some thinning and re-arranging to sort that out and need to do some more.

my patio roses in pots (indoor roses taken outside and re-potted) haven't done well because i didn't water enough in the heatwave. the surviving ones have been replanted in the borders and are recovering nicely; the vacated pots now have more suitable alpines that I can safely neglect...