I've decided to make a diary this year so I can look back & see what worked & what didnt. Well every year it is a bit of an adventure really - starting off in spring full of ideas, enthusiasm, energy, a freshly dug plot & a clean greenhouse.
We have an 8'x16' veg patch, bordered by railway sleepers & a 6'x8' rather cluttered greenhouse. Behind the greenhouse is a 3' wide patch, sheltered & sunny where last year I successfully grew tomatoes.
A couple of rows of spuds are all we've planted out so far, the chickens were having fun dust bathing in them so the bamboo-screening fence has gone up.
In the green house are peas & chard started off in peat pots to speed them up.
Runner beans (very slow getting going this year),
Tomatoes varying from giant to redcurrant
Cucumber mini munch, only 2 plants grew, dissapointing as expensive seeds
Pumpkin - only one left as the mouse ate the others
Courgette - none left as the mouse ate them too!!
(have replanted pumpkins & courgettes & put them in the kitchen!)
Watermelon - trying something new, no sign of sprouting yet.
Red and Green Basil to grow around the outside tomatoes - apparently it makes them taste better.
Tagetes flowers to grow near the tomatoes as apparently it repells whitefly
Sunflowers large & mini
Nasturtiums to attract the blackfly off the beans. Or do they just attract the blackfly into the garden? Anyway they're good for wildlife.
Other flowers I collected seeds from last year - Sweet Peas, Nicotiana-Syvestris, Godetia, Gazinia, & some mystery flowers that I forgot to label but they grew anyway.

You'll never have to sow nasturtiums again (unless you are more ruthless at weeding than I am).
They do get covered in aphids. My grand-daughter likes to chew the leaves - bit too bitter for me.

I know nasturtiums are supposed to be good in salad, but mine are always have blackfly & caterpillers, so i'm not tempted!

so i'm not tempted!

Not even for the protein?!
The only thing I have that's even started is tomatoes - and I had to artificially warm the soil for them.

Freeranger wrote: Not even for the protein?!
.

bleh! I admit to not being a huge bug eater!
I have just planted some seeds from red & yellow peppers in the fridge as an experiment.

sile} bleh! I admit to not being a huge bug eater!

No sense of adventure!! Apparently we'll all be doing it soon.
I tried pepper seeds from supermarket bought ones and they did start to germinate. I'm not sure what went wrong after that - I think maybe I covered them a bit too deeply, but I only got a few and they kept their hats on then died.
I'm going to try again as it's getting a bit warmer but will try soaking them first this time.

I'm longing for this cold spell to end so I can get my veggies out! I'd planted out a couple of courgettes & pumpkins, but theyre looking a bit sickly from the cold so I've brought a couple back into the greenhouse to recover. I believe tonight will be the last cold night
I hope so, my greenhouse is full up.

Yes, too cold here to do much planting too. Our house is a cottage with thick stone walls, so I have a few things in pots against the south facing side and, touch wood, they've been OK so far, even with a couple of quite hard frosts.

Bit early yet for planting out courgettes and pumpkins, give it a couple more weeks or if the weatrher turns good they could probably go a bit earlier

A bit of a gap in my diary! My green house is bursting, we've started picking the mini munch cucumbers & there's lots of giant tomatoes coming. I've already pinch out the tops as they've grown as tall as they can, & this year I've wound them round strings like Monty Don advised. The sweet peppers are potted up but growing slowly. There's chinese 5-headed cabbage (experiment) sprouted, for autumn/winter. My first lot of chard got eaten very fast, so I grew some more in pots hoping to plant when it was larger, but it's growing really slowly, same as the peppers, I wonder if I bought some duff compost. 2 watermellon plants in a growbag have grown huge & flowering, but the one in a big pot is not so good, maybe that compost again?
Outside in tomato corner about 20 varied plants are doing well, the tagetes must be working at keeping off the flies, but it has swamped the basil - same mistake I made last year, silly me. The pumpkins are flowering, the runner beans are getting there but a bit spindly this year - tried a couple of hyacinth beans but they are still only a few inches tall, so obviously didnt like something I did. We're eating petite pois, new potatoes & baby courgettes already - yum. We have the first ever (in about 10 years) proper crop of blackcurrants coming, must be all the rain.
Lettuce was a fail this year. I put seeds in the veg patch but didnt mark them & DH threw something on top of them :( I composted an old butler sink & put seed in there, then found Misspiggy dustbathing in it! I straightened it out, sowed more seed & put a metal grill over it, then accidently spilled a cup of birdseed into it. Something is now growing there but I'm not sure if its lettuce or birdseed!
I also planted a few redcurrant tomatoes around the garden for the chickens & birds to eat, as an experiment.

If it flies away you'll know it was bird seed.

We've been eating mini munch cucumbers by the ton, but they've suddenly stopped flowering, I hope its a blip & they start again soon. Runner beans have gone berzerk & are now bushier than ever before & infact growing off the top of the poles & reaching for the sky! A strange thing - one courgette plant is producing fruit fine, the other is as big & producing flowers but no courgettes, the leaves also look very subtly different to the other one (same seed packet) could it be a male plant? I'll wait to see if its a late producer before I pull it up.

kitla wrote: A strange thing - one courgette plant is producing fruit fine, the other is as big & producing flowers but no courgettes, the leaves also look very subtly different to the other one (same seed packet) could it be a male plant?

I have a mixed bunch of courgette plants - 2 are flowering, 2 not - and I'm STILL waiting for the fruit (I can see loads of small ones on one but I don't think they've been pollinated) It may well be location, weather (too cold, too hot, too dry, too wet) and pollination issues ... I haven't seen that many bees around particularly bumblebees since spring although there seem to be lots of hoverflies (especially round my dahlias and sweetpeas) and wasps in the garden.
Courgettes have both male and female flowers on the same plant rather than come as gender plants - however, they do need to time it so that there are both male and female flowers are around at the same time. If the leaves are different, it's possible you have a hybrid or even a squash plant, so you might end up with a different type of fruit but they should still pollinate each other without any problems.

My rogue courgette plant has at last produced something..hooray! and I have a watermelon thats the size of a grapefruit so far.

kitla wrote: My rogue courgette plant has at last produced something..hooray! and I have a watermelon thats the size of a grapefruit so far.

On the courgette plant?