Planning for success

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The weather is awful at the moment – too bad even for the most avid horticulturist, never mind a reluctant one – so pen and paper are the current gardening tools of choice, rather than trowel and rake, to start planning for the coming season. First, it’s a good idea to review last year; what worked, what didn’t and what can lessons be learnt.

• We planted broad beans, intercropped with sweet peas, in grow bags under the south-facing lounge window. Great location, but in future we’ll only use grow bags as a cheap source of good compost as they were far too shallow even for the tomato plants. We also grew too many beans of variable quality and insufficient sweet peas, so my plan for a steady supply of cut flowers came to nothing. This year we’ll build a raised bed and adjust the ratio of seeds sown. We won’t intercrop either as the runner beans swamped the sweet peas. The beans produce pretty orange flowers so we may enhance the display with nasturtiums.

• In the vegetable patch, we’ll stake the lines to be drilled this time for ease of planning and maintenance, and stagger sowing. As well as prolonging the growing season, it may also help to combat the unpredictable, unseasonal weather we experienced last year.

• Our early potatoes, planted in tubs, were a success and we had three months supply of spuds throughout the summer. So the only thing we’ll do different this year is to stagger the sowing so we can stagger the harvest. Our main crop was ruined by the wet weather so staggering sowing should help us to hedge our bets and we may fare better this time. Intercropping them with spring onions didn’t work at all as the potato foliage canopy grew so fast to begin with it blocked any sun from getting to the spring onions, although they should have been early croppers. Perhaps we’ll try intercropping the spring onions with carrots or another salad plant.

• The leeks have yet to be harvested so we’ll have to reserve judgement. They do look a bit weedy at the moment though.

• The parsnips failed to show at all, a pity as they are one of our favourite veg. We may not grow them at all this year, or perhaps we ought to swot up on their optimal growing conditions and give them another go.

• The lettuce we started off early in the conservatory developed Botrytis; lettuce sown directly outside was more successful but the slugs took more than their fair share despite the beer traps. To improve this season’s yield we’ll try growing them under cloches, sow them more thinly and more frequently.

• Our carrots were on the small side but I think that this was down to the weather. At least we had some for Christmas lunch.

Before we get carried away and hit the seed display counters in the garden centres, we need to check the shed and review what seed we have left over from last season. Any bought last year should still be viable but the packets do carry expiry dates. We may also want to reconsider the varieties we grow. For example, there may be a cultivar of parsnip better suited to our location. The early potatoes were good croppers, but they didn’t taste great when boiled.

Elsewhere in the garden, maybe some more fruit bushes would be nice but our rhubarb is giving us most concern. We ‘rested’ our main plant last year and bought a couple of new plants. However, after a close encounter with the strimmer, they may be irreparably damaged. We’ll keep an eye on them and, at the first sign of growth, we’ll cover the crowns with large plant pots to force the tender, pink stalks that taste so delicious in home-made crumble. Otherwise we’ll have to start again and forego that pleasure for another year.

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Tags: broad beans, carrots, garden planning, leeks, onions, parsnips, potatoes, rhubarb, seeds, sweet peas, vegetables