Review of the year

Well this year is pretty much acknowledged to have been a dreadful year. Bad weather affected most growers and combined with a heavy work schedule and a slightly slap dash confidence in my abilities, 2012 was my annus vebetablus horribilis.

It wasn't all doom and gloom:

• The fruit did well and raspberries and rhubarb were great
• My (bought) butternut squash plant worked well and yielded 5.5 squash (even if I did then let them go a touch mouldy)
• This was the first year I had success with Alliums and the yield was good as they were given an autumn head start
• Mixed success with broad beans - I wonder if I should leave them in longer as I have a harvest around May but then I read about their season being later in summer in cooking magazines so wonder if they are a result of successional sowing rather than a second flush from autumn sown plants.  My experiment for next year I suspect.

On the whole though, my plot under-performed with usual favourites failing me:

• Potato yields were tiny in comparison to previous years
• Tomatoes hardly even had enough fruit and even they didn't turn red before being feasted on by slugs
• Salad leaves never really got started (slugs again) - the only exception was rocket which is pretty much a weed
• Strawberries are probably in need of a move to refresh themselves
• Jerusalem artichokes, like potatoes, had a small harvest. Considering that they are near perennials I don't think moving them will help (and the place they are in is good as they don't over-shadow other plants) but I do think I need to water them more (both more often and just more water)

I did measure harvests (sort of) but the depressingly small amounts may have meant that I gave up in disgust this year.

An update from before the rains

1st June (excuse the mixed timeline but I also updated this on the 16th)

The Maris pipers are flowering but are they ready? They are a main crop after all. (I harvested 940g of pentland javelin on the 12th and made salmon and potato salad - yum) I think I'll leave them till I need the space and the other varieties have been harvested.

The peas are nice and fat as are the broad beans. I am always disappointed by the yield of peas once you shell them. The beans on the other hand a great and filling and mashed with some spring onion on sliced ciabatta rubbed with garlic made a delicious pre meal snack. A fortnight later and mangetout are the stars.

I am so enamoured of the beans and mangetout that I will try a second sowing at the weekend. When clearing the old plants I will leave the nitrogen fixing roots in the soil. I will also plan to sow more beans this autumn.

A couple of plants are bolting and going to seed - sorrel and chard. I've pulled up the chard and resown and keep snipping the sorrel spears off.

I am lucky enough to have a surfeit of strawberries way ahead of my birthday. I harvested even the slightly soft ones and lightly boiled them down with sweetener into a sort of jus. Then you can make a pretty healthy pudding. Cut sponge fingers in half line bottom of a medium bowl, pour over half the jus, add more sponge, then the last of the jus, cover in natural yoghurt. Leave to let the flavours mix. Light but tasty. A fortnight later and the raspberries are coming into their own but rarely making it back home - they're just too tempting.

Beetroot is doing well and I can see tiny kohl rabi seedlings.

I still have two spare patches. What to do with them? I am considering maybe planting sweetcorn among squash. A bit like native Americans who traditionally relied on Squash, beans and corn for food.

Rhubarb, rhubard (and grapes)

Top tip: keep an eye on your rhubarb and divide if it's starting to look weedy

Rhubarb is a relatively short lived vegetable (though we use it as a fruit, it is classified as a vegetable) and can become woody and weedy.  This is exactly what has happened to the rhubarb that I inherited on my plot.  I tried feeding it with compost this spring but to no avail. so today I took advantage of a sunny day to dig up the crown and divide it into new plants. The outer parts are best for replanting as they are less woody and still vigorous.  When replanting though avoid planting in the same spot as it could bear diseases.  I have replanted my mini plants in the rough patch by the water butt and in the fruit cage.

I have also dug up and relocated the strawberry plants that have sent out runner and were at risk of disappearing under the pile of compost that Bernie has relocated and the pile of plant matter that is fast coming off the plot as I tidy.

One unexpected joy was that the grapes we dismissed as unfit even for wine making turned out to be lovely eaten off the vine there and then, warmed in the late summer sun.  Small and just the right type of tart, they would be lovely in a yogurt but I just gorged myself.

Thick and fast

Top tip:
Keep a record of what you are harvesting and when so that you can plan for gluts. Balance the flavour and satisfaction of growing your own with the cost of buying it in - if it doesn't taste better or save you money, it's not really worth giving it limited space.

26.06.10
I have been harvesting cut and come again salads and chard for some time now and had may first sweet and juicy birthday strawberry (in early June) but things are speeding up now. I have been lifting the first of the potatoes since the 14th June but today I got 1.73kg and I feel this is just the beginning.

Slightly anal, I know but I have been keeping an excel record of the main crops by weight and date harvested. Between 26th June and 10th July I harvested 2.75kg of mangetout. Thinking that the plants were spent (and some were very yellow) I cleared half but left the healthiest plants to see what would happen. By the 20th July there was a new crop and I'll keep you posted on the total haul.

Courgettes are notoriously prolific and my heart sank when I read that one plant produced enough for a family of four until September as I had planted at least 6 plants. The first proper lot of courgettes arrived on the 7th July and by 24th July I had harvested 7.77kg of courgettes (and that doesn't include an enormous marrow that I missed). I have had to become pretty inventive in finding new recipes to cope with this and am on the look out for a third freezer to accommodate the loot.

Radishes, a plant normally so easy to grow they give it to children, have more or less failed me but I am persevering. Carrots were pretty when pulled but slow to germinate and so cheap in shops I am not sure if I want to repeat them next year.

When wandering around the allotment it is hard to avoid plot envy – one plot's sweetcorn are magnificent and has grown a turnip enormous enough to make Baldrick proud (it must be all that water), anothr neighbour has inherited an amazing collection of fruit and one green fingered allotmenteer has raised infamously hard to grow cauliflower with impressively large heads. My Chinese neighbour has a perfectly neat plot (I must do better next time) and one of theTurkish ladies has built little earth walls around her plants which seems like a good idea to adopt in later years.

One other plot has not fared as well - most of the plot is left fallow and the gooseberry bushes are groaning under the weight of soon to be wasted fruit. For a greedy person like me that has aspirations for a fruit zone this frustrates the hell out of me – I wonder if I can wangle another plot?

Just a small sample of the courgette glut.