Allotments/ fruit and veg plots - how are yours faring?

Broad beans and Potatoes eaten by snails and tomatoes hit by blight. Not a good productive year so far.

We are away, and GS is on watering duties.

Just hope everything will be still alive, anything to eat will be a bonus when we get home!

Our cucumbers have been a disaster this year, have discussed this on another thread. Cherry tomatoes ripening well, big ones still rather green. Broad beans good, courgettes small and slow.

I've found this year to be very strange but interesting in my garden. Some old faithfuls have acted dead and then suddenly put a crazy spurt on by way of catch up. Never seen anything like it before. I put it down to a hard frost in April once reawakening was in glorious evidence but at a fragile stage. Happily they are coping but still bear consequences of the trauma. Nature is so fascinating and ever changing. I'm constantly enthralled.

When we left, cucumbers slow starting but picking up nicely. Aubergines, peppers and tomatoes coming on well, with tomatoes ripening.
Outside, broccoli and cauliflower plus cabbage should be ready. Broad beans May get a meal.
Galrlic should ripen now with the hot weather.
Other stuff still growing or like lettuce may be bolted.

My runner beans have been a disaster this year, hardly any germinated and the ones that have are being attacked by a bug which I've treated, I hope! The peas and french beans are doing OK and hopefully there will be some peas to eat next week.

Garlic pulled and second meal of new potatoes with bbq later. Tomatoes wilted in the greenhouse yesterday, they, cu’s and aubergines full of flowers. Beetroot poor, runners slow, courgettes and squash very slow, weeds loving it. Funny old season, only seen cabbage whites in the last couple of days.

I could supply my whole village with rhubarb, it’s absolutely rampant. The gooseberries have failed, and no cherries to speak of. My potatoes are very leggy plants and have blown down in the wind. Tomatoes and peppers are doing well, no blight so far. I’m experimenting with ornamental gourds growing up the fence in pots, which took a while to get going but are romping away at the moment, fingers crossed.

Courgettes devoured by slugs, first crop of beans didn’t appear so started off a second crop, showing but very behind so not sure what will happen. I haven’t planted much else this year as I have been looking after elderly relatives again.

Virtually nothing anywhere near harvesting yet as the really cold weather in late spring held stuff back.

However, autumn sown onions are a big success. Onions are about the only thing that the local wildlife doesn't find tasty!

Courgettes, climbing and dwarf french beans, peppers, tomatoes, spring sown onions and leeks looking promising...

I bought some perennial sprouting broccoli plants earlier, I don't think I'll get anything off them this year, but looking forward to next year ? I grew some from seed once, about 40 years ago but we moved house after their first year so I never knew how well they performed. Then I forgot that such a thing existed...

No apples, either. I have an old tree of a lovely old dual purpose variety which is usually dripping with them. Can't see any on it at all.

We had lots of strawberries and rhubarb too. A small crop of gooseberries, I chopped the bushes back last year.
Greenhouse tomatoes coming along, the outdoor ones much slower.
Salad leaves and lettuce are keeping up with being used more at the moment.
Beetroot and carrots not good. We had enough broad beans to eat for a couple meals and freeze one bag full.
Only planted a small row of potatoes which we have been using this last week.
Runner beans finally getting near the top of the poles.

Yup, funny year. Good crop of broad beans which had been over wintered under cover, potato crop is smallish and late. Summer fruiting rasps have been good, Autumn ones are late but good crop of red and black currants. Courgettes are hopeless this year with some slug damage but are starting to recover, I'm picking French beans but the runners are way behind. Beetroot has gone AWOL but mange tout are flowering. I have a huge crop of globe artichokes which were grown from seed last year but they are horribly spiky! The apple trees are OK but the plums are non existent. Tomatoes are slow but some of the sungold are nearly ready to pick.

Peas beans very good crop courgettes amazing the plants are three foot tall. Black currants and apple trees doing well blackberries too raspberries not good lettuce mould set in. Onions and potatoes good the cauliflowers all separating like net curtains but overall good year.

The original cucumbers and cantaloupe melons were killed off by cold weather but the replacement are romping away now and are laden with fruits. Same with tomatoes, although one plant is very slow at setting fruit. The hanging basket tomato is laden with cherry tomatoes and should be cropping shortly. Lettuce, onions and cucamelon have been cropping for a couple of weeks now. Blackcurrant bush is almost ready for cropping - but it will be a race with the pigeons as to who gets there first!

Here in north Nottinghamshire- on my allotment over the road we have-

Lovely crop of roses and dahlias for cutting

Just pruned Stellar Cherry. Good crop last year, nothings this year.

Very little on Vic Plum, or my three pears.

Red and black currants absolutely dripping. I have told allotment neighbours to help themselves (also good crop of raspberries)

Six green courgettes cropping well
Not so the yellow ones, not getting much bigger than my thumb.

Kalettes lush and tall under netting.
For later in year.

Tried two different varieties of sweetcorn, I think they were Goldcrest and Invincible, both tall and lush, tassels just emerging.

Alisa Craig onion, from seed four to a station, been picking as spring onions for weeks, now bulbing up nicely. Super crop.

Beets bolting, as has spinach.

Runner beans, climbing and flowering and tiny beans coming now.

Leeks, a few sending up the flower spike. Pulled them this morn.

All first early potatoes very good. I did a random grid method of planting (as Monty has done in the past). Did have a good manure mulch though.

All in all reasonable.

My parents-in-law live five minutes from me (and my allotment) and yet, unlike mine, their apple tree is fairly laden with fruit. We have not had a single stick of rhubarb in spite of putting in three extra plants last year, so I’m intrigued that some of you have done well with yours. Interestingly our strawberries have self-seeded and the little plants have produced masses of tiny strawberries that are absolutely full of flavour, they’re like little sweeties.

Beetroot is one of our staples and has always grown really easily, but we’ve had to put in a second sowing this year as the first lot amounted to nothing. Walking round the allotments it’s interesting to see what’s growing on other plots and not one has a productive apple, pear or plum tree this year.

Strawberries look all but over - a very poor year.
Raspberries are ok but not plentiful although we seem to have plenty of blackberries to come on.
One picking of gooseberries!
Not very many blackcurrant- normally I have a freezer full of soft fruit so have lots of blackcurrants from last year (and the previous year).

Why do spring onions never grow to a good size?

We do have plums which I hope will grow to a good size but it is a fairly new tree. BIL lost all his in that cold snap.

Blackcurrants and apples have really done well here, but strawberries and raspberries have been rubbish. squash plants are finally romping away, looks like we may have a bumper crop of pumpkins but not even had one courgette yet, and tomatoes, in greenhouse, hardly any fruit as yet.

Just back from a couple of weeks break.

So the good news

Tomatoes dripping,
Cucumbers - 2 ready
Aubergines growing nicely
Peppers growing nicely

Outside not so good.

Two beautiful broccoli heads that were nearly ready- gone over
Runner beans - all that is left is stalks
Lettuce - bolted
Garlic- ready-
Onions and shallots nearly ready
Carrots growing.
Spring onions disappeared
A lovely cauliflower head though and French beans looking promising.

The garden itself like a jungle

I'm quite new to allotmenting, if that's a word. Still at the clearing and digging over stage, but we did inherit prolific gooseberry bushes and I've made lots of chutney.
I'm having great fun planning it all out (and it's easier than actually digging, especially in this heat) .

We were very late planting this year but suddenly have flowers on the beans, courgettes, tomatoes.
Spring onions are rubbish as usual.
Strawberries were terrible.
Raspberries still going strong!

Waitrose and Lidl sell good jam ?