Lessons learned

I have been growing my own food for about 20 years now and grew up with a father who was passionate about his enormous vegetable garden in Bellerive. We were self sufficient in most fruit and veg during my childhood with the diet supplemented by home grown eggs and chicken meat.

However I made some stupid mistakes last year and thought it might be educational to share some for those blog readers new to food gardening.

Garlic
First mistake. I usually grow good garlic and I know the important issue is flavour not necessarily clove size. The year before I over watered.The garlic cloves were huge but the crop did not last well and some went mouldy after harvest. Last year I did not water at all but relied on rainfall and as there was not a lot of that I got very small cloves. I think there is a middle ground here and this year I will find it.

Broad beans
I wanted to have a prolonged harvest of broad beans last year and hence staggered the planting of my crop over three months. Stupidly though I planted the last lot on the southern non sunny side of the bed so the seeds germinated but never produced pods as they were oversahdowed by the main crop. A fundamental lack of planning. I will do better this year.

Brown rot in fruit
Last year when Greg Belbin demonstarted pruning for us he said he sprayed his fruit trees against brown rot every month over the winter. I was lazy and ignored his advice and due to some overwatering and lush growth in the trees I had a major brown rot problem.  I will be following the rules for hygeine around the trees and spraying regularly this year.

Some things I did well:

Leeks
I always have trouble with leeks that develop slowly over the winter and then in Septembe bolt to seed and become inedible. Last year I sowed my leeks in early December planted out in early January so now have lovely well developed leeks which will hold up well in the soil for regular harvesting over the winter when this delicious vegetable is so desirable.

Controlling white cabbage moth
I know many people don't grow brassicas as they get fed up trying to control these pests. I am happy to spray with Dipel but hate doing so when the plants are tiny. This year I copied a method from one of our garden group members. I can't remember whose idea it was but it has been hugely successful. I purchased cheap wire rubbish bins form a local discount store and placed them over my young brassica seedlings. The cabbage moths could not get through the small holes and the plants grew well and were well developed before I had to start spraying. In fact I have only had to spray three times for effective control for seedlings planted out in January. It looks a little funny but worked brilliantly. My small outlay for the wire bins will be rewarded over many years of use. Thank you to the person who suggested this.

So a couple of great benefits of gardening, firstly we can always learn, especially from each others experience. Secondly gardeners are optimistic people . Even when mistake are made we look forward to doing better next year.

Happy gardening.