My dwarf french beans have done well (in the NW) but the strawberries have not done so well this year. The outdoor tomatoes are thriving. We have eaten some but have loads more developing.
Updating bathroom with a walk-in shower unit.
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I love gardening, though my mobility is limited theses days, and I don’t know why I haven’t interacted with the gardening thread before.
Anyway, advice anyone , I always grow runner and French beans both in the tubs and a row in the ground though space limited. I have always had success, beans growing out my ears !, this year though they are sooo slow hardly growing at all since I planted themout. DH says that when he walked passed the allotments this morning other people’s seem the same, maybe I’m impatient this year. My tomatoes in the green house have only just started to flower.
How’s everybody else doing ?
My dwarf french beans have done well (in the NW) but the strawberries have not done so well this year. The outdoor tomatoes are thriving. We have eaten some but have loads more developing.
In the SE and our runner beans have grown really well. In fact its difficult to get past them. However most of the flowers have dropped and there are very few beans. Thinking of pulling them up and planting some rocket. Except the slugs seem to like the seedlings too much! This growing your own is a pain!!
The year of the Bean in Dorset then, yes, have to be picked before the bean forms inside and no strings!
Our runner beans have certainly caught up, we have so many we are inundated at the moment!
Also in Dorset hillwalker70.
We had a lot of french beans too but my OH seems to rather leave them on the plants than pick them, so a lot gone too far. It's an annoying habit of his - I go to get a few for a meal and find loads sat on the plants.
Tomato plants are producing well, the outside ones looking good.
Oh lovely, a thread I can join in. My Runner Beans are doing well this year (Dorset). Just one wigwam started off under cover and planted out mid May in well manured ground. I water well every eve after sun off them and always spray flowers as told this sets them, water once s week with liquid seaweed, inundated with beans, courgette plant alongside also doing well. Think they need fresh ground each year and loads of muck, hopefully you will be picking when mine are over.
Our beans are poor too. We only had a success in germination after the third attempt of both runner and climbing French beans! I've never known it to be this bad to be honest either and I've also noticed many of our neighbours have had similar disappointment. It was a similar story with the beetroot too.
This is the first year that I've tried growing Romanesco and they just keep bolting, still eating them though, they look just like purple sprouting and are delicious; got to eat them before they actually flower though! ?
Curiously, for me it is the beans that are doing so well - broad beans apart. We are currently eating home grown, french and runner beans and sugar snap peas and mange tout.
The failures are root veg, and soft fruit, a fair to middling crop of black currants, no gooseberries, few strawberries, some raspberries, cabbages are coming on slowly. However the apple trees are over laden with fruit.
Strange how much things vary from place to place, even when they are close to.
I have had several pickings of raspberries and lots of gooseberries.My strawberries for some reason not so good this year neither are my runner beans. Tomatoes are still green but have plenty on the vines in the greenhouse and on the ones out in the garden. Miffed about my beans as i usually have plenty and enough to freeze too.
P.S.
DH just informed me that there will be enough runner beans ready for Sunday lunch!
??
We’ve had a few servings of broad beans, a nice few cucumbers coming plus courgettes. Our greenhouse tomatoes doing well, the Sungold cherry variety delicious as always. I have a table out at our front gate in the summer with an honesty jar and have already sold a few surplus courgettes and cucumbers, not enough tomatoes ready yet to put out.
I have had fail with my courgettes this year , I am usually giving them away to reluctant friends , none at all now , just the wrong flowers . I accidently bought hanging basket tomatoes and they are still in the greenhouse , seem to be getting slightly coloured , but I have nowhere to hang them , they are hanging all over the shelf !
Runner beans now flowering, no plums, very few apples, hardly any pears, very small strawberries. I hope the raspberries turn out better. Tomatoes beginning to form. As someone else said it's just as well we don't depend on them. Am I the only person in the world who can't grow courgettes?
Not even a bean …..
I do like runner beans
Sounds like a wonderful excuse, Callistemon but with all the best of intentions....of course. 
DH thought he'd let the veg garden 'go fallow' this year;p he said it would do it good.
Or was that an excuse?
We had a bumper crop of strawberries as well and the gooseberry wine has been started!!
Good potato crop, runner beans doing OK, ditto courgettes.
Poor crop of broad beans and peas but we've just started eating the pointy cabbages and the cavallo nero's almost ready.
Fingers crossed for the tomatoes. I think they'll be OK.
DH didn't plant beans this year - perhaps he had a premonition that it wouldn't be a good year 
Our tomatoes are struggling and I doubt we will get a crop at this rate.
The strawberries were good and the rest of the soft fruit seems OK.
The perennial flowers are doing well in the borders, so it is a very strange year.
Our runner beans failed to do anything at all!!
Our runner beans (first sowing) were an absolute washout but the replacements are doing fine, almost at the top of the canes and some flowers opened this week. We were late sowing cucumber seed due to going on holiday but the first four flowers have just opened. The tomatoes in the greenhouse are turning red. I live in Devon and we've had a lot of sunshine lately.
Our runner beans are between half and three quarters up the poles but not a lot of filling out growth yet. We were picking them until Late autumn last year, maybe the same thing will happen again. Broad beans were good, second lot coming on. French beans first picking any day now. Have had a couple lots of peas too. Carrots are finally a decent size despite the lack of rain.
Cherry tomatoes in greenhouse just showing red tinges. Lots forming on outdoor ones but still green.
I'll echo what everyone else has said. I've got an allotment and the runner beans have performed the worst out of all the other veg so far.
I think it is because of the inconsistency of temperatures which they don't like and really they don't thrive much below 8C and it has been that at night regularly in June.
I think we should all see a spurt of growth now, but we won't get a long season with them this year for sure.
Wow, such a difference between us! My buddlia is not even budding yet but my outdoor cherry tomatoes are already forming!
I am in the Stockport area and we are still waiting for the heatwave, we have had a few odd days of sunshine but it's dull and windy again today.
Same here, 1st sowings failed, started again and these are at least starting to make an effort .
My runners are only just starting to cling to their poles they’ve been in the ground for a month or more, very slow im not hopeful of being able to give some away as I usually do.
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