The 2023 Growing Season.................

.....and plans for 2024.

As vegetable production slows down it's time to think about what did well, what I don't really have room for and how to arrange things better for next year.

In the greenhouse.........

 I had cucumbers, starting with three plants and ending up with one. They produced plenty - enough to eat through the summer, make the sweet cucumber pickle and some to give away.

Tomato plants, 7 in total - 3 producing large plum tomatoes, 1 with huge beefsteak toms (although they were all the same packet of seeds) and 3 giving me hundreds (might be an exaggeration but it felt like it!) of the small grape sized fruit.

Aubergines gave me enough to make a couple of batches of aubergine and tomato pasta sauce for the freezer and I've already written about the peppers and how some got nibbled, but I put loads of sliced green peppers and a few red  into the freezer ready for stir-fries and ate plenty fresh.

I ended up with just two rows of beetroot across a bed because of filling up the rest of that space with leeks, the seedlings I bought for early leeks are still good and I'm eating my way through them those I grew myself from seed are looking very poor because of being over run by the courgettes which spread out for several feet and did really well this year.

These might be the last few courgettes I'll have, brought in last week when still very small as the days aren't warm enough and too much damp in the mornings for them to get a decent size now.

They may be small, but enough for another courgette crumble, another courgette pesto pasta and one to add into a salad.

The French Climbing beans and runner beans both had quite short producing seasons and the onions stopped growing at golf ball size after the shoots all collapsed - I think next door neighbours cat laid on them. I had just one butternut squash because of not really having room for 3 plants.

I sowed far too many sweetcorn seeds and planted them way too close together but they've been delicious. They are something I would never buy as they need eating straight after picking.

I hope when I take the enviromesh insect protection off the purple broccoli plants they'll produce something for winter. They might not as there are 8 plants in a space that would have been better suited to 3! 

As I said to my friends when they visited " I still think I have 5 acres!"

.............. and what about next year?

Definitely NO onions, I said this last year and forgot when it came round to spring. I'll try for more beetroot and leeks again definitely and must give both lots of beans more space, a bigger circle so they'll do better. I always used to start bean seed in pots in the greenhouse and then plant out and at the same time push some seed into the ground on the other side of the canes but didn't have room to do that this year.

Sweetcorn is a definite but not so many as this year.

 Two or three courgettes plants again, planted so they can trail out over the edge of the beds.

 I need to decide about winter greens, but not until spring when I know how the broccoli has done .

I'd like more than one butternut squash and perhaps I could put a couple of plants in the flower beds.

I expect it will be much the same things in the greenhouse - tomatoes - large and small plum. cucumbers, aubergines and peppers - but I'll grow the orange block peppers as well as the red pointed variety.

The first seed catalogues have arrived so it will soon be time to look in my seed tin and see what I need for next year.

And I need to wash the big pots that I use in the greenhouse - not my favourite job.

Sorry I didn't get around to replying to comments yesterday but I did manage to remember to check for spam comments and there were lots of proper comments in there going back weeks - I need a label stuck on the lap top to remind me to check more often! but I'll probably still forget.

Back Tomorrow

Sue