Grow your own dinner 2014

A question about : Grow your own dinner 2014

Given that MBE has resigned from his position of leadership, I have started a new thread for 2014.

So, let's start.

What do you hope to grow this year? What worked well last year and what didn't? What will you try again?

And, as always, can someone please tell me what to do in January - or come and do it for me?

xLV

Best answers:

• Thanks for the new thread!
  I've got some test spuds on the go in my greenie, and some more in my parents greenie. Theirs are doing much better than mine
  I've got garlic in pots waiting to go in, onions waiting to go in and chillies ready to sow.
  I'm getting very impatient that it's not really garden time I even have new hunter wellies and new gardening gloves and am itching to get out and dirty them up!
• Success of last year goes to crystal apple cucumber,lots of fruits, over an extended season.
  Have planted a new soft fruit bed, plants were reasonable but had to buy posts / wire / straining bolts which got expensive.
• Followed MBE's thread last year, so looking forward to doing the same here.
  Last year the raspberries, loganberries and bramleys did really well. The squash and courgettes got off to a slow start but had a good crop at the end, should last me a couple more months.Tomatos and salad crops were good as were climbing french beans and broad beans.
  The failure was gooseberries, with sawfly and leeks with rust. Heres to a great year for growing fruit and veg.
  Caz
• Happy New Year to all you green fingered MSEers. I was an intermittent lurker last year, silent but inspired by all your efforts on the growing front.
  I have been given a half acre plot to use for growing fruit and veg. In other words a mega allotment. The task is daunting but my financial situation makes it a real necessity. I have three large raised beds in my own garden which gave and gave last year. I had French beans, dwarf beans and runner beans coming out of my ears for weeks on end. The only real disaster was the sweet corn which matured but took up a great deal of space and overshadowed my courgettes.
  This year will be very different - ad hoc just won't do so I need a plan. But where to start?
  Help!!!!!!
• Sorry I went AWOL last year. I really lost my mojo in the garden and did minimal work to let it tick over. I could kick myself because of course this means I now have a lot of work to do this year.
  I found last year frustrating re:growing. But successes-raspberries romped away, black currants did well, French beans, broad beans and runners were good, peak were ok.
  Not good: potatoes and may not do them again, my worst year yet for chillies and pepper to. Toms were ok but not great, either in or out of the greenhouse.
  So, what to grow this year???
• FOUND YOU Thanks Little Vics
  Didn't grow anything last year (due to having to have 2 hips replaced), but managed to forage quite a lot from what was already growing on the place so this year the veg plot should get back in production when I find it under the brambles.
  I intend to grow only what we eat and to freeze the surplus. At the moment I'm working my way through some seed catalogues.
  I had saved up for a polytunnel but unfortunately I've already spent the money on a luxury (a new foal - my other passion) Ah well, I'll have to start saving again.
  I'll certainly be popping in here on a very regular basis to keep up to date with 'jobs to do'
  Have any of you ordered your potatoes yet?
• I'm going to try to grow potatoes in tubs this year - I've got 2 old bins that should do the trick. I daren't put them in the ground after what happened a couple of years ago! I was still digging them up last year!!
  I am useless at varieties of things though. We like a good roaster/masher - any suggestions?
  I had a very successful year with courgettes, but less so with other things. I'm hoping to replant all my strawberries into a better position where I can net them, and also have a bash at using a cold frame properly.
  You might remember from last year that we kind of inherited some land - sadly there's no news on this because the lawyers are dragging heals. I'm not overly bothered just yet because of the insane amount of work to do there.
  Having said all that, this is Yorkshire so I'll probably only have 2 sunny days in 2014 to do any gardening at all!
• We have three raised beds, a fruit bed and a couple of borders with berries in.
  Raised bed 1 is already well underway with autumn-planting red onions and three varieties of garlic. All of these are shooting and got a good amount of growth done before the cold weather set in so I am hopeful of a good crop!
  Raised bed 2 still has some salad from my last planting in October. This year half will go for more salad, and I will have a think about what to use the other half for.
  Raised bed 3 is asparagus - the crowns were planted last year when they were one year old, so now they are two. Still nothing to be cropped this year (or possibly one or two spears from the better performing crowns), but we can be patient :-D I have a bag of chicken manure waiting to be spread on this bed in late Feb or early March to give the plants a good feed.
  The fruit bed has raspberries - which have never fruited amazingly (they were here when we moved in) given the amount of space they take up. Still we will persevere! There is also a rhubarb crown which does well enough for a couple of rhubarb crumbles each year (about the right amount for us!).
  Finally we have redcurrants, blackcurrants and whitecurrants - all new bushes planted a year ago so no fruit as yet, but I am keeping my fingers crossed that we will get a crop this year.
• Help
  Whenever I grow potatoes they have very tiny nodules on them, it feels as if they have pimples on them. They appear ok to eat as the flesh when peeled looks ok with no holes. We are on acidic sand.
  Any Ideas what it is and how to get round this problem - Thanks
• I've planted my garlic out this morning
  I started them off in pots in November but looking at them this morning, they were disgustingly pot bound so it had to be done
  I've also got 14 aloes that need to be potted up sometime very soon too
• Hi everyone! I've been lurking for some time, but figured its about time I contributed. We've been growing a rather random selection of things in our back garden over the past year, potatoes, french beans, courgettes, and tomatoes, which generally went OK. It was lovely eating things we grew for ourselves!
  We got an allotment in October which we have made a start with - it came with raspberry canes, blackberry bushes, a rhubarb crown and a healthy row of strawberries, which we have tidied up for the winter, and we've planted some rows of onions and garlic. We also found some more surprise onions this weekend, which was nice!
  We still have half the space to dig over but the earth is quite clay-y and claggy at the moment so its not a good time, with all the rain. We hope to put in all the things we had in the garden last year, and also see what else we fancy. With any luck we will be moving some time soon, so its not really worth putting anything in the garden this year - this also means we will probably have to give up the allotment come October, as we will most likely be in the next village, which is a different parish council. Garden space is something we are specifically looking for so we can hopefully take up a bunch of things and transplant them rather than lose them totally
• I'll be growing potatoes in tubs, they've been very successful over the past 3 years and I stick to what I know works for me. I have a 5 year old Coxes Orange Pippin espalier, soft fruit - raspberries, loganberries, gooseberries and blackberries in tubs as are the two rhubarb plants, and strawberries in a small bed which my neighbour's lovely DD benefits from. I don't like them but I was given them a couple of years ago and can't throw out a healthy plant. I also have a tub grown Victoria plum, a Doyenne du Comice mini pear, a dozen or so herbs and 17 tubs of shrubs, roses, etc. Unfortunately I've run out of space, my 12' x 14' lawn takes up a good part of my 20' x 18' garden and I'd love to use that but the dog likes it as it is
• Thanks Annie.
  I googled scab on potatoes but the pictures didn't match what I'm getting. I'm getting very small raised pimples in the colour of the potato skin. Does scab start off like this? What I think I'll do is keep the beds better watered. I have some old hosepipe with holes in it and a nearby tap so I'll use my battery timer and water them every day, to see if I still have a problem.
  Thought I'd try swift as a first early and then one of the 'sarpo' varieties for later. I noticed some sarpo tubers in the garden centre, need to work out the cost to see if the internet or the garden centre is the best value.
• oooh - rhubarb. Might have a go at that. Is it easy?